Entanglement Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_measurers) wrote2010-04-14 10:55 pm
the_measurers) wrote2010-04-14 10:55 pm
Entry tags:
Application
Entanglement has switched over to a dressing room format for now, so applications aren't needed for the time being.
FANDOM CHARACTER APPLICATION:
ORIGINAL CHARACTER APPLICATION:
Whichever application you're posting, please put the character's name, if they're an OC, and their fandom (if any) in the subject line.
Note again that you are allowed to use musebox posts and posts on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
testrun_box for your sample. In that case, your total amount of tags written will be added up, so the initial post can be shorter than normal for a sample. You're still required to use a prose format and set the sample in the game universe though.
ORIGINAL CHARACTER APPLICATION:
Whichever application you're posting, please put the character's name, if they're an OC, and their fandom (if any) in the subject line.
Note again that you are allowed to use musebox posts and posts on
testrun_box for your sample. In that case, your total amount of tags written will be added up, so the initial post can be shorter than normal for a sample. You're still required to use a prose format and set the sample in the game universe though.
Livvi Mahelt II
Livianna Mahelt is the daughter of Edward Julius Mahelt, a wealthy industrialist who made his fortune through the production and trade of cotton, and his wife Elisaveta. Livvi was their third child, born three years after twins Lucien and Lucreci, and her early childhood was typical for a girl of her age and social class. She was taught at home by a governess from an early age, and in addition to her academic studies, Livvi also learnt needlework, dancing and music. Her relationship with her parents was always rather distant, as her father spent much of his time working, and her mother was more concerned with the demands of high society by her children, but she was close to her sister, her governess and many of the others who worked in their household, and she looks back on those first years as a happy time.
When Livvi was ten, she began to see things that weren't there, waking dreams. At first, she kept very quiet about these images, knowing it wasn't usual and hoping they would simply go away. It wasn't to be. In fact, they increased in frequency and intensity, becoming more violent and frightening in nature. She decided to confide in her mother. Despite the fact that their relationship wasn't a particularly close one, Livvi trusted her, and was confident that if anyone could rid her of these visions, Elisaveta Mahelt could.
Imagine Livvi's shock, then, when upon hearing her describe what she had seen, her mother burst into tears and sent her away to her room.
It was her father who explained it to her, later that day. He told her that she was beginning to manifest Gifted: that she had abilities beyond what was normal, and that would cause some people to admire her, and others to envy her, and that while her visions weren't in themselves dangerous, they probably weren't the full extent of her extraordinary gifts, just the beginning. Livvi would have to go away to school, to be with others like her and learn to control her abilities; it was the only way of ensuring that she would be safe.
It wasn't as if she hadn't heard of the Gifted. They weren't talked about much, but Livvi listened, and she knew that there were plenty of things they weren't allowed to do, and that some people were envious but more were afraid. She began to wish she hadn't told anyone at all, but her father, who loved Livvi dearly, found a place for her at the best and most expensive school for gifted children in the country, Charrington College for Girls.
For the most part, Livvi enjoyed school. She was able to learn just as much as she wanted, she developed solid friendships with the other girls, and in time she was even able to get past the homesickness that had plagued her in the beginning. She found the place intellectually and socially engaging, and certainly not the sort of horror she had been led to believe it might be. However, for all the students, using whatever unusual gifts they possessed was strictly forbidden, and there were classes for those who hadn't mastered conscious control, with the sole aim of stopping spontaneous manifestations of talent.
Livvi wasn't ever able to stop the images she saw from appearing, but she learned to keep quiet about them, and to distinguish the real from the unreal even under stress, and she began little by little to understand how this world she could perceive, the world of 'thought behind thought' as she called it, operated. After a year at the school, she also realized she had control of another gift, that of healing. A friend, Francesca, had fallen ill with influenza, and Livvi sat at her bedside, wishing fervently that she could do something to help her, when suddenly a blue light sprang from the palms of her hands, connecting her to the other girl, and instinctively Livvi knew that she had to draw up the sickness through that connection, to make Francesca well again.
Livvi Mahelt III
It occurred to her that if her teachers knew about this new ability, they would forbid it, and so she didn't tell them, not until long afterwards, when a more serious incident forced her hand. Livvi had been away from school to visit her family, and returned to find that another girl her age, Cecily, had fallen gravely ill and was close to death. Livvi was refused admittance to see her, since it was feared her illness would prove contagious. She told her teachers that she could heal Cecily, that no matter what they thought about the dangers of using powers, it couldn't be right to let someone die when Livvi could save them.
After some debate, they agreed, taking her at her word. Livvi linked to Cecily, placing an energy connection between them, and began to channel out the sickness. Very rapidly she began to feel the effects on herself, but she persevered, knowing how much was at stake. Moments later, Livvi lay unconscious on the floor, overwhelmed, the connection forcibly broken by a sense of self-preservation deeper than her need to help. When Livvi woke again, Cecily had already died. She was told in no uncertain terms that her gift was flawed and dangerous, and that she ought not to use it, and was wrong to have kept it hidden. Wracked with guilt over her failure, Livvi could only agree.
She comes to Senburu-Trati'salan from almost a year after Cecily's death, having just returned to school after the holidays. Livvi has, on the surface, recovered from the trauma in her past and is once again a keen student and caring friend, supported by the community around her. Her use of her gifts has been, in practice, severely inhibited by the attitudes she has been taught, although she maintains that under the right circumstances using them isn't exactly a bad thing.
Personality:
Upon first meeting her, Livvi is likely to strike others as a very polite, self-contained girl, skittish and anxious around strangers that she feels she might have reason to mistrust. This impression can be somewhat misleading, as she's actually warm-hearted and affectionate once she's sure that a person's intentions are good. She quickly forms strong bonds with those she cares about or those who seem needy to her. Helping people makes Livvi feel good, so she'll do it whenever she's able to. However, not all of her 'help' is always wanted, and she's got into trouble before through making too many intuitive assumptions about people and coming up with entirely wrong conclusions.
Livvi is very much a product of her time, and she holds some outdated views that may seem strange to others. She's also completely unaware of her family's class privilege, and would be surprised if were pointed out to her. Livvi, like her father, believes in free-market capitalism and the continuing growth of the British Empire. She'll be very reluctant to talk about politics, however - to her, it's not something children discuss in polite society. She also won't want to talk about her gifts except with those she trusts, as she's already seen too many negative reactions from others.
At heart, Livvi is an introvert, and she can spend a lot of time alone in thought. Sometimes this may lead others to think she's unhappy, but she isn't. She has a lot that she needs to process mentally, particularly when sorting through new images from the unconscious, and she needs time alone in order to do so. As long as she's allowed this, she can be pleasant company the rest of the time, but prolonged socializing will leave her irritable.
Livvi Mahelt IV
Livvi's primary power is healing. Essentially, it works for her like an energy transfer. She can connect to an ill or injured person and draw out what's causing them pain. This appears to the observer as a current of blue light between healer and patient. However, this leaves Livvi herself to carry the energy of the sickness. Fortunately, it's an inefficient transfer, and so the effects on her are milder than they would be otherwise, but it's common for prolonged or difficult healing work to leave her dizzy and feverish, 'charged' with more than her body could handle. She can't heal those who are close to death: the work is too taxing and the effects on her too strong. It has been hypothesized that if someone actually dies while Livvi is trying to heal them, the open connection would kill Livvi, too. Obviously, she's in no hurry to test this out.
If Livvi were given the opportunity to develop this power, dependent on the circumstances, she might be able to reduce the negative effects on her through practice, or find a workaround such as chain-linking with other healers/receptive individuals, passing the current between them until it dwindled to nothing. It also might function as a potential weapon, with Livvi passing strong charges to targets in order to cause harm. (These are the upper limits of her abilities, with nurture, as currently her talent is a raw, undeveloped one and not indicative of her full potential. Any increase in Livvi's powers will be played out IC.)
Livvi also has the ability to visually perceive elements of the collective unconscious. She will pick up on the words, symbols, images and archetypes that resonate strongly with the people and places around her. She doesn't, however, usually have the knowledge to interpret these, viewing them in an overly literal manner and not understanding the nature of her own power - she describes it as looking into another world. She'll react intuitively to familiar elements, but not those from alien worlds! It's most useful to her for monitoring the general mood of her environment and its changes - she can tell, for instance, when the populace as a whole is growing more fearful or anxious.
The potential for development here mainly depends on Livvi becoming conscious of what she's actually seeing and what it means. At that point, she can begin to play healer to the collective psyche, or to manipulate it in small ways, depending on the ethics of her teachers!
Livvi Mahelt V
It had been over an hour since Livvi Mahelt had been woken from her long sleep in the - what had they called it? - pod, and she still wasn't certain that any of this was making any sense. It was like a dream, and not a waking dream with its own sort of order, but one of the chaotic dreams of sleep which no amount of logic could account for. She wasn't in Britain any more, she had been told. She wasn't even on the same planet she had been before.
It was overwhelming.
'You do realize,' she said to the (NPC!) older woman who sat beside her, 'that you have taken me away from my school. You've kidnapped me.' That was the sort of thing rebels did though, wasn't it? Livvi listened to the news broadcasts on the wireless. 'I want you to send me home,' she said, plaintively.
'Weren't you listening?' The woman's eyes were kind, but sad. 'We didn't bring you here. Chance did, and we couldn't send you home now even if we tried.' Not without catastrophic consequences.
'Then I'll...' Livvi desperately searched for a solution. 'I'll go to the Fay'lia! You said that their technology was far beyond yours. All I've got to do is explain the mistake to them and then they'll send me back.'
Her companion's initial expression of horror quickly resolved itself into understanding, and she shook her head. 'Child, you don't know what you're saying. You don't know what they'd do to you for merely having been here.'
Livvi's shoulders slumped. She didn't think this woman was lying, and even if she was, there was no way past it. Adults lied to people her age all the time, there was nothing you could do. An alien symbol swam then before her eyes, a symbol of the otherworld, green on black, but Livvi pushed it away. Her inner sense was all off-kilter here, she didn't know what half the rising images meant, and it was disconcerting, like she was ten years old again and unable to navigate the waters of thought beyond thought. A thought had to be intelligible, didn't it, even when expressed this way.
She was going to need a lot of quiet rest to sift through this.
'There has to be a way,' she said then. 'Maybe you don't know it, but someone will find it someday, because I'm not about to believe that I'll never see my family again.'
It was true, thought the nurse as she sat beside the girl who had recently awoken, whether she believed or not, but she didn't say it. Some illusory hopes needed to be held longer than others.
Re: Livvi Mahelt V