Profile
Basic Information
Thesis Statement
We travel the currents of a river like seeds– like little notes across the lines of sheeted music. The music plays a lullaby. Quake in anticipation of the solace we'll find in the calm before the storm, do not shun the voices that speak through us, and remember the ‘us’ that project our voices into the void. We travel the currents of a river like seeds– but the river is blood and the blood is emotion and the emotion is magic. (dreamlog - 1/1/20xx) Through dreams we reach an understanding past the cognitive realms and further. Through dreams, one may be able to reach a further understanding of Phantoms, and perhaps even magic itself.
Focus
An ocarina made from a conch shell– or maybe just a shell with holes. It makes no noise when played, but white noise like the ocean can be heard when held to the ear. Once belonged to Bercy’s grandmother.
A pair of sunflower lapel pins, stolen from Yuto Nakano.
A silver promise ring, forged by Haruki Okumura.
Appearance
An unimposing frame with posture and movements that imply that he’s being carried along by some unseen current or melody. Waifish wouldn’t be an understatement, and he has huge ears and a pointy upturned nose which exacerbate this. Mousy brown hair prematurely greys to white, and is just long enough to be unmanageable– except for the braid which frames his face on one side (sometimes to be tucked behind his ear). Gold eyes are bellied by tones of deep green. His skin is lightly freckled with a larger splotchy beauty mark on one side.
He tends to prefer greens, purples, teals, golds, and browns for clothes, comfy and eclectic in his choice of wear. Rather than a traditional witchy hat, his hat is a floppy pointed cone which doubles as a pillow. Star and moon motifs appear in jewellery here and there, and he enjoys nautical references from time to time– dreams are an ocean, and he is the dream voyager.
Familiar
A harbour seal named Filou.
Misc
Foods
- Grilled Mackerel - reminds him of home, big comfort food. Prefers it plain
- Soup - loves. Clam chowder is his favourite, especially
- Caffeine - huge dislike. Avoids coffee, tea, etc
Animals
- Harbour Seal
- Gull
Personality
Berceuse or Bercy appears relaxed and unguarded. He treats others familiarly, and takes almost all reactions in stride– he’s not fussed about the withdrawn, the aloof, or the violent. The dazed state with which he seems to carry himself makes it almost seem like he doesn’t care or wouldn’t remember who he interacts with– they’re all part of the room, the atmosphere, the dream he perpetually walks in– but once a name finally sticks in his mind, it stays.
His lackadaisical air is accompanied by a habit of speaking and acting in vague and sometimes confusing ways. Bercy genuinely tries to be straightforward and truthful– but he’s awful at it, easily forgetting details, or being unable to put his thoughts and feelings into the right words. Words are so much harder to communicate with than dreams, and this seems to be the only time he gets visibly agitated. His own habits of sleepwalking and lucid dreaming also means that he tends to mix up reality and dreams, forgetting what actually happened and what didn’t.
It seems he frequently imbibes in his own magical soporific to ‘keep his mind open’-- without it, he becomes a jumpy, nervous individual who speaks too quickly to really be parsed and cringes at all the harsh edges of the world.
Backstory
Summary
- Born in Ireland, moved to France when his mother disappeared
- Went to boarding school after his magic manifested
- Joined his father’s business when he was a teenager, including a magical antiques trading ring
- Attended college to expand his education specifically to help his father’s business
- Learned to use his dream magic as a way of sensing magical concentration and thus finding magically affected antiques, but also to steal them
- Every time he’s had a prophetic dream in his life, ignoring it led to great personal tragedy– first of his mother, then his father, and now he’s plagued by dreams about himself
- Having had dreams of an item of power at Stardust Academy, he’s intent on entering the Academy with a myriad of excuses– to steal the item, to save himself, and of course for the network connections that can open up with such a degree
Backstory
Petrel was born in Ireland. Selkie’s blood did intersect very briefly on his mother’s side generations ago, but it was still a surprise when his mother disappeared to the call of the sea without warning– a surprise to everyone except small Petrel, who had dreamed of it. His father was the captain of a shipping operation and was absent for long stretches of time, so Petrel was sent to live with his uncle in Marseilles, France.
A quiet, distant child, he didn’t connect with many of his peers until his magic began to visibly manifest and the dreams of others began to bleed into his own. It’s difficult to say if this helped or hurt however– for Petrel, the boundaries defining one person from another from himself faded away in his perception of the world, but many also pulled away from him due to his lack of perception on privacy and identity.
To keep him out of trouble, he was sent to boarding school where he began the use of his wizard name, Berceuse, and when he was old enough he jumped on the opportunity to leave school and join his father, the one person who had always remained so far away from him, at sea.
The two bonded very quickly. It seemed sea life agreed with Berceuse in a clarifying sort of way, as the influence of dreams of hundreds of people around him faded away out on open water. For Berceuse’s father, having an opportunity to keep the last remnants of his family right by his side was a relief. Teenage Berceuse was quickly inducted into his father’s business in its entirety– including smuggling operations and a magical antiques trading ring.
It was in the dream-quietude of the sea, in the presence of antiques of varying magical importance, that Berceuse slowly began to realise that magical items and perhaps even magical phenomenon could have an impact on dreams. This wasn’t a new discovery at all, but he suspected that it also meant that one could communicate with magic itself through dreams.
He never really succeeded with this, but in his efforts he was able to practice using dreams as an interface for divining the location of magical objects. This allowed him to track down even more antiques, and through his father he was able to meet others in different arms of the business– archaeologists, poachers, art collectors, and wizards. The other abilities that his dream magic granted him also made him highly effective at spiriting collections out of the noses of the unsuspecting.
Learning how to find targets of historical and magical importance was what finally led him back to land, and into the arms of academia. After his undergraduate career, he was even able to track down an old family heirloom, an old conch shell carved with holes, which his grandmother had sold away when his mother disappeared. He had intended to gift it to his father, however his father disappeared (along with the entire ship he captained) under mysterious weather circumstances. Berceuse was not caught off guard– only mortified, because he had also dreamed of this.
For some time he’s continued to try to fill his father’s role in the business, however whether at land or at sea, another horrible dream began to plague him– visions of a comet, of the starry sky mirrored in a glassy ocean, and his boat caught between and torn asunder. The first time he had this dream was the day before he first heard about the Stardust Academy’s new scholarship, and he believes that his own near future is tied to Stardust Academy– that if he ignores this dream then he too will disappear.
Magic
Dreams (Blue-Green)
Dream Inducement
Bercy can induce lucid, vivid, or nightmarish dreams in the sleeping, and daydreams in the waking. As opposed to ‘illusions’, daydreams are more like getting lost in one’s thoughts– losing your attention to whatever was on your mind in the moment of drifting off.
To induce a dream, Bercy creates a black starry water with his focus which acts as a sort of dream inducing soporific. It tastes filmy and a little sweet– unless Bercy laces it with nightmares, in which case the sweetness has a hint of rottenness to it. The same water can be changed into a mist field, though it has very little effect on those who are already alert or on edge.
Without his focus, Bercy can also sing magic into effect, however it only works on the sleeping or already drowsy, and occupies Bercy enough that he can’t really watch or procure at the same time.
Dream Watching
Bercy can also read other people’s dreams (but not daydreams) whether he is sleeping or awake. Interpreting dreams is difficult, and though his study of archetypes and symbolism* has helped it is about as vague as most divination magic. It also relies on the strength of the person’s dream– many dreams only appear as hazy colours, as things like thoughts, smells, and feelings are not things Bercy can see, and he loses a lot of the context.
*Dreams are not just the voice of a person’s tumultuous subconsciousness– between the inherited ancestral memories of all humans exists a collective unconsciousness, and it has an unspoken universal language formed over generations of human memory. The collective unconsciousness is a “code” for interpreting the individual subconsciousness. This is a language spoken in symbolism (typically presented to Bercy in the form of Jungian archetypes).
Some examples of common dream symbols are teeth falling out to represent stress or death, or nudity to represent social vulnerability.
Dream Embodiment
A person’s emotions and their dreams can influence and be influenced by magical phantoms– the phenomenon of people in one location sharing disturbing dreams can be a side effect of rogue ambient magic or phantoms negatively influencing dreams. Essentially, in a dream state, Bercy can use the magic atmosphere to read the ‘vibes’ of the area around him to get a summary of emotions from both conscious and subconscious.
In his sleep, Bercy can tap into that connection between dreams and magic to sense nearby Phantoms and the impressions that people’s emotions have left on them, translating their feelings into archetypes which may afterwards be interpreted. Actually parsing it is… well, your mileage may vary.
In dream embodiment, Bercy is prone to sleep walking, sleep talking, and only remembering some of whatever was said. Honing this ability and studying the hypotheticals and theories behind it is part of why he wants to be at the Academy (as well as being the focus of his thesis), but it’s also a skill he’s loosely practised for hunting magic antiques.
Déjà Vu
Very rarely, Bercy gets a dream of premonition (or steals it from someone else). Also, if the overall atmosphere he reads in a dream embodiment is foreboding enough and the magic is strong enough, he may be able to predict that something bad is going to happen. My intentions are that his only ‘deja vu’ for the entire game will be the one that led him to apply to Stardust Academy however, and do not intend to use this power for the rest of the game.
Game Mechanics
Casing
Strengths
Using Inducement, it could be possible to lower the guard of a target, or even lower the attention span of potential witnesses. To kill, Bercy would most likely strike while someone is asleep– inducing a strong nightmare and then killing them with a procurement of that nightmare. Otherwise, he would have to plan ahead and store nightmares to use later.
Weaknesses
Bercy is not physically strong, and is small in stature. His magic has circumstantial use– unless he has a nightmare stored on him already, he can’t really defend himself with his magic. His dream inducement is difficult to use on those who are already on high alert, and anyone looking for a murder target is likely on high alert. Lastly, his dream embodiment makes Bercy highly prone to hallucination, and he’s only half aware in this state– making him an easy target.
As for killing and being caught, he may leave behind black water or residue from using Dream Inducement. If he manifests nightmares, the wounds on the victim will be telltale for anyone who uses summons (feral/animalistic injuries), so while it may not single him out, it may narrow it down. Time of the crime may not condone him either, but may be an additional argument (if someone is killed in their sleep or at night).
If Bercy uses dream inducement to cause daydreaming, witnesses are not guaranteed to completely miss the act and may have heard/seen things even inside of their daydream, just removed from the context of reality.
Items
Selkie Skin Drum
The antique that Petrel is sure was directly responsible for his father’s demise. It only creates sound underwater, which travels for hundreds of miles all around. It is still tagged for sale.
Logbook
A waterlogged journal tied tight with hemp cord and stained with red seaweed. Despite the sea water, the ink hasn't bled too badly.
It's filled mostly with poems, all of a certain structure-- the first line alludes to a season or time, the second line to an object or person, the third to a place of origin, and the fourth to a destination.
One may recognize the subjects of some of the poems-- a black pearl, a crying boy, a tongueless saint... the very last entry talks about a heart beat of the sea, and that page is bookmarked by a torn out piece of paper with different handwriting. This page reads:
"I cradle you in my arms / You cradle me in your dreams / Listen to the ocean's song / Shushing softly your lullaby."
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