Personality
Cerridwen, for the most part, carries an easy air about her. She's open and level-headed to any interaction whether barbed or gentle and returns any atmosphere in equal, smiling measure. She prefers blunt honestly over sly charm and is quick to shut an obvious snake down. She plays the game with a practical mindset, searching for the quickest method to protect those who deserve it, and cut down those who do not.
Altruism does not come naturally to her, as much as she envied that trait in her mother. She wants to be a good person, but her nature is better suited for the wilds or battlefields. More than searching for warm company, she more naturally finds herself secluded and alone, most comfortable in the wilds where survival is law and getting your hands dirty is only natural. When it's either her or them, she will choose herself, and often feels shame in that when she returns back home where she has to obey the rules of society to survive.
If it were up to her, she would live a life on the road, thrill-seeking and curling her pretty hands into bloody fists. It's a pull she finds hard to ignore, and she tends to stuff it down into whatever crevice it will fit when she's busy attending the glamourous echelons of high society. In leaving her island hometown, Cerridwen agreed to uphold a family she never knew, to protect a duchy she has no personal ties to, in efforts to be the good person she idolizes and prays to become. She half-hopes that one day the wilds will stop calling her, half-hopes to give in.
When faced with extreme circumstances, Cerridwen is consumed by fight or flight instincts. She takes to the adrenaline rush and hunter's mindset frighteningly easily, and has a form of tunnel vision for whatever she marks as her goal. She becomes pragmatically scathing of any obstacles in her way and finds the chase dangerously elating, especially when she's the one playing hunter.
She doesn't know which extreme is more foolish of her to pursue; her thrill-seeking, or her attempts to be everything her noble family needs her to be.
(364 words)
History
CW Warnings: Murder, attempted kidnapping, violence
Her upbringing off the isles of the coast of Faline was nothing short of idyllic. Cerridwen's mother raised her to be kind and helpful to those around her, and to know the rewards of hard work when it bettered everyone around you. Her more cynical fathers taught her to be careful and sharp-witted, to be equipped with a wealth of knowledge she wasn't sure she'd need in such a safe place. There was no curfew, no boundaries on the island except for the vast ocean cutting them off from the fabled mainland where her fathers came from. She could run through the densely packed glades, dive into the ocean, and be back in her fathers' library before the sun went down, all at her own leisure.
It was so idyllic that it was suffocating. Her mother was so cloyingly optimistic and sweet, and her fathers always withheld their reasons for their hatred for the mainland. Curiosity burned under her skin, and she took to self-sufficient hobbies to get as far away from their sheltering arms as she could. Cerridwen learned how to hunt, shoot, forage, camp, swim, and learned enough of navigation from their library that she'd never get lost if she ever made it to sailing. She grew strong and freckled under the sun, always yearning for something she could never name.
She was nineteen when an outsider far from Ivras allowed her a glimpse beyond the island's honest ways. She was an awful, brazen woman who released foul-breath every time she grinned, a liar at heart who took a strange pride in that fact, knowing she could still draw people like Cerridwen in to listen regardless. Cerridwen poured over every muscle and scar and knew not to trust the stories flowing over every last one, but they still fascinated her for easily they spilled from the stranger's lips. The woman was awful and knew it, and knew no shame from it. Cerridwen's fathers disapproved of the company she kept, but as long as the stranger wasn't from Faline, they didn't stop her from following at the woman's heels deeper and deeper into the woods.
It was a golden afternoon like any other when the scene she came across revealed just how awful the woman truly was. Blood soaked the ground in a poaching job gone wrong - but there was no beast on the ground, only the apothecary's daughter with rope around her wrists and a knife in her gut. She'd struggled and paid the price, and the stranger stood with her gathered company and said with her same easy charm that if they lost one girl to catch, it hardly mattered when another could take her place.
Cerridwen turned and ran, an animal to their chase, her limbs moving on their own when her mind was caught in cold horror and fear. Her lungs burned as the sunlight faded, promising nightfall before she could reach home. Desperation only got her so far when they coralled her into an ambush and laughed, and with her back against the wall, fear turned into feral hatred, and she cursed them all.
She watched as her slumbering magic seized them, turning her pursuers into animals, their laughter turning into screams, then squeals. Cerridwen was stunned, gripped by a fascination so consuming and foul that she couldn't look away if she tried. She came closer to them in the midst of their shock, plucked a dropped bow from the pile of their clothes and shoes, and took aim at the nearest one.
Her prey scattered on unfamiliar limbs as the arrow found its mark, and it was her turn to give chase to them all, horror singing in her pounding heart with such wretched glee. Tracking them, cutting off their gutteral cries one by one - it was wrong, and she knew it so clearly - but as she hunted them down, she only remembered the strange pride the stranger took in her wretchedness, finding herself grinning with no eyes to cast judgement on her in the dark of the woods.
Night had fully fallen with only moonlight her guide. The stranger was the mark Cerridwen left for last, unchanged when she'd stayed behind as the leader of her foul group. It was just as alluring to watch her beg for her life as it had been to hear her lie and brag, and Cerridwen felt nothing when her arrow pierced her lying throat and her blood mingled with that of the apothecary's daughter. The girl's death was avenged, but that hadn't been Cerridwen's motivation for the hunt nor her calm retracing of her steps to bury every last mark, their curse lifted upon their deaths.
Her parents ran to meet her when she came home in the grey morning light, gravedirt buried under her fingernails, her heart calm as they embraced her and thanked Grace she was safe. She hoarded the story of her hunt to herself, her own lie resting comfortably in her chest like a trophy the stranger lauded around. Their deaths were hers, and only hers.
The event helped lessen that curiosity for the next few years, knowing that this cloying kindness wasn't all the world had to offer, and that everyone she encountered was capable of its exact opposite. Nothing stopped anyone from true cruelty. Not even her.
It was with that experience under her belt that she considered the offer to leave the island behind for good when she came of age. Relatives from her fathers' side of the family arrived out of the blue, offering an illustrious heritage and a responsibility to uphold, and it felt like the beginning of an adventure.
It was with a smothered eagerness to return to that awful excitement the island could never offer that she agreed. With full awareness of the depths of kindness and cruelty both, she stepped aboard as an Andraste alongside her uncle Aristedes and accepted that voyage into the dark.
(989 words)
Curse of the Wild
Note: Magic will not be used without explicit OC consent
- Power: 2
- Discipline: 2
- Cost: 3
- Corruption: 0
Cerridwen has the ability to curse others to change their form into an animal of prey unrecognizable to the general populace as a person. Those under her curse cannot speak a language, use their common telekinesis, or specific magic if they're a mage. Only Cerridwen or those who can understand animal-speak can hear them if they try to talk. Forms the cursed can take are such like mice, ferrets, hawks, foxes, or non-standard Anathema animals. These forms do not carry over mage-attributes and have no distinguishing advantages over nonmages who she curses.
With her current level of discipline, Cerridwen initiates the curse if she wishes harm upon those she targets. Ill will fuels this curse and cannot initiate out of good intentions currently. Her discipline stat informs how easily she can cast the spell and how intense her motivation needs to be, and more discipline can allow for other moods or intentions to shape the spell beyond ill intent. Higher discipline can also allow for more shapes, like monstrous dragons or other non-standard Anathema beasts.
Her power stat informs how difficult her curse is to break. A mage with more powerful stats than hers has an easier time meeting one of these conditions. Currently, her curse can be broken if:
- Cerridwen breaks it herself;
- if her targets surrender to the curse and accept what they've become, temporarily allowing their loss of humanity (current standard: may be positive/optimistic of new form);
- if a time limit expires (current standard: two weeks);
- or for a mage with magic nullfying or curse breaking to work their magic on her target.
- Death also releases a target from her curse, revealing their true form.
OOC: If another player accepts the curse for their character, they may choose what form best suits their character. What animal would your character turn into based on their personality?
Cost
Magic does not work or has no effect except under specific circumstances. (2) Her curse has specific rules for how to cast it and how one might break out of it.
Magic use has a short-term adverse effect on the caster's mood/frame of mind. (1) When Cerridwen changes someone into an animal, she's caught by the desire to give chase. She can fight the call of the hunt and shake it off, but it's difficult to find a reason why.
