Post by Thelisia on May 31, 2020 15:09:11 GMT -6
Name: Thelisia
Alias: "Witch of Literature"
Age: 26 human years
Race: Human, part Fae
Pre-existing or Original: Original
Alias: "Witch of Literature"
Age: 26 human years
Gender: Female
Race: Human, part Fae
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Pre-existing or Original: Original
Date of Birth: June 18th
Place of Birth: A run-down village whose name has become irrelevant. If you ask her, she will say she is born in any forest where magic runs free.Physical Appearance:
A witch, though perhaps not traditional, Thelisia works hard to keep her heritage as a witch live and active. While normally when traveling she keeps a traditional (albeit almost comical) black witch hat on, her outfit matches more of a nobleman's suit, complete with a cravat and frills on the sleeves underneath a luxurious purple coat. The eye-catching outfit is matched by an unusual 6'0 for a woman of her pale nature, made only more absurd by the hat. A strange sight, but stranger still is the woman who hides her face under the hat.
Special Abilities: As a servant to her books, Thelisia's powers go hand in hand with these duties: The Creation and Chronicling of Literature. As her soul must remain in constant union with the literature she channels, these are the only spells that the witch Thelisia may take.
-Creation of Literature: Thelisia can conjure an animated book of magic to use as her weapon. These book acts as an extension of her soul, and thus is indestructible so long as Thelisia remains alive. However, if Thelisia takes mortal damage, her book will take the damage instead, thus becoming disenchanted for the rest of the thread.
-Creation of Literature: Thelisia can conjure an animated book of magic to use as her weapon. These book acts as an extension of her soul, and thus is indestructible so long as Thelisia remains alive. However, if Thelisia takes mortal damage, her book will take the damage instead, thus becoming disenchanted for the rest of the thread.
Regardless of whether the book is enchanted or not, Thelisia can also draw out pages from her book to use as weapons. When thrown these pages become like throwing knives, but can also be used to deflect a single blow. Only two pages can be spawned per post.
-Chronicling of Literature: Rather than use a page as a weapon, Thelisia can instead use them for the unlikely purpose of writing. By doing so, Thelisia can then recreate the attack, spell, or object that was recorded at the cost of burning a different page. While these recreations are accurate, they are purely ephemeral and will fade soon after their creation. Once an object has been chronicled, however, Thelisia can call upon the page the later on, though the conditions still remain: one page must be used to write, and one to conjure.
Weapons: None besides the pages she writes.
History:
In the world of Ildea, the gods existed alongside humanity. They instructed civilizations, punished cruelty in rulers, and nourished all life with bodies of infinite magic. But even gods were mortal, and before long the godless kingdom with its 8 united houses began a long a cruel war against the gods. In the end the godless kingdom won, but not without its price. The war had escalated so greatly that the planet ceased to spin, creating a sun-blighted hell where life would fizzle out under a relentless light. As gods fled the world, one who still held love for her creations sacrificed her form and life to create a veil over the planet. Now protected in shifting periods of shade and light, humans could continue to thrive. But now without the god's endless well of energy, the world and its inhabitants would slowly lose their ability to weave the threads of magic. The only people who could continue to use spells were:
-the descendants of the goddess, whose presence continues to bless her children
-the ascetics of the goddess, whose discipline and faith in the goddess have gifted them with a link to her powers
-the enemies of the goddess, who have consorted with daemons and fae in exchange for heretical strength
And thus the church of Ildea, founded by the first and maintained by the second, rose up to persecute the third. And as the church grew from a mere congregation to a theocracy to a Holy Empire, these heretics would be slaughtered with no quarter. And thus did they flee, into the worlds where magic remained -- the true origin of their power. These heretics thenceforth would wear the slurs of persecution unto themselves as accolades, their bounties as badges, and their titles as second names.
They were the witches. And this is the story of the witch known as Thelisia.
The signs of magic were very clear upon her face as she grew from infant to babe, a fate worse than death for the daughter of a simple rancher and milkmaid. For their families were peasants, they held no blood or linage to the goddess. For the crime of having a beautiful mage, they would be tried for heresy and executed. Thus did they choose to send her away into the depths of the forest, where the screams of a baby would never be heard... or perhaps where someone much wiser would find a soul worth saving.
Penithelisia was the name she was given, though as a child the name would prove too unwieldy for a tongue that had yet to learn her first tongue, let alone the tongue of witches. Thus she was called Penny, and raised by the whole of her coven, to whom she would return their efforts in love and talent. She was a natural witch, but not due to some higher affinity to magic, but to the diligence that she had set herself to. And in such diligence she found great success in the physical practice of magic. She was taken by the "Witch of Ink" Theian, whose skill in manipulating the 3 elements of earth, water, and nature proved perfect for all potions beyond the ink mentioned in title. Young Penny found great success here, learning how to mix gum arabic, water, and charcoal, how to roast herbs for suitable grinding, and how to mesh clay, wood pulp, and water to create paper. And so when Thelisia set her mind to using magic, the processes burned into her callused hands would birth a powerful magic that would bring paper to life and ink to paper. A magnificent witch, though one seen as odd in her coven.
For you see, witches did not use magic through books.
For you see, witches did not use magic through books.
Books to a witch are irrelevant, as they taught through action and oral tradition. It was no different for Penny, who began her studies as an apprentice of ink, who carved the magic into her skull by the repetition of years of hard discipline and labor, who was tasked to memorize every wisdom her coven had given her regarding the ways of magic. Even beyond that, most witches would prefer not to pick the tools of their enemy. The Theocracy used literature as a powerful weapon, that priests and scholars may cast spells and persecute fellow mage in the name of their faith. That they may take ancient words of wisdom to paper, only then to blur the ink with fanciful stories and colored lies. A witch that would take up books was no longer a witch, but a traitor. And thus did young Penny initially swear to not study by the book or to use her magic to craft books. Instead she made simple papers for art, scrolls for chronicling the days and the sales of her teacher's trade. But never for magic, and never for literature.
Though it would not be forever. As diligent as she was, the young girl was not one to stay in one place. She would follow her teacher to villages that risked their safety under the church for the aide of the witches, and she would assist her teacher in blessing these villages for taking that risk. And one day, after such an excursion, young Penny caught the glimpse of a strange lady she had never met. Yet this strange lady.. wore the same hat that her master did. The hat of a witch.
And so Penny wandered out into the wider city of the world, silently trailing behind a traitor witch.
A city full of magic of all kinds, full of people of various trades, arts, and histories. To a young witch it would feel like an impossibility. Some secret haven that was beyond the theocracy's eyes. A place of learning beyond the concept of blood and faith, where she did not have to worry about her status as an outcast. She stayed here for a while, and though the young witch lost sight of the stranger that brought her here, the young girl was not unaccustomed to the ways of the outside world. She had no money, and she had the diligence needed for proper work. Without fear or shame she begged on the streets and inquired about work, and eventually by following the fingers of benevolent strangers(and some malignant, though they never kept their fingers after~), Penny found her new home at a bookstore.
The bookstore was a bright world for her, one full of an old trade and a new passion. She had never been worked harder to craft pages, to quickly learn how to bind pages together and attach leather to covers. Penny learned multitudes new languages as she transcribed every old and weathered tome into newer vessels. She was filled with the wit of ancestors of worlds unknown, from which whet a curiosity that lead to proper learning. In just 2 short years, Penny became a master at her craft, and once again her magic blossomed as she crafted books from thin air, writing spreading across blank pages like a sprout spreading its roots into the earth. And it was this point that a 14 year old Penny decided to take her new learning back home.
A witch, carrying tomes of magic in hand.
The coven are not a heartless lot, but there are few that are more stubborn to their creed. Older witches whose scars and burns would never heal decried Penny's actions as nothing more than betrayal and sought to outcast her. The younger witches who had raised her from a dying baby understood mercy, and that to leave so young a girl with the blood of a witch would be condemning her to death by either the church or their bounty hunters. And yet still, her teachers saw a new girl in Penny, bright and confident in more than just her hands. They would state the simple truth that Penny had grown far greater than anything they could have taught her in those two years, and that as a witch she now held wisdom of the outside world and connections that could save lives in the future.
Penny, no longer an idle victim of her circumstances, made her arguments as well. That the magic her coven had taught her was not one of exclusion but synchronism. They were all more than aware that the forms of magic and their practice came in as many multitudes as there are people born every day, and that these practices also have the right to flourish as witchcraft does. And that the preservation of the art of magic devoid of theocratic ideology would necessitate the bastion of all knowledge, even those within books.
But Penny was still one child, one who disliked all manner of strife. One who remained ever curious, ever ravenous for truths of the world around her. A child who now wanted to meet with the traitor witch, and learn from those eyes as well to see why traitors become as such. And so even before the final verdict was cast, Penny took the option of exile. She doffed her title of apprentice, and decided to take on a new name. Thelisia.
Thelisia's adventures could fill a book, the epic of a teenage youth coming to terms with her place in the universe. A girl who discovered literature from all walks of life, and came to understand what she wanted in life. A revolutionary, who learned far greater the crimes of the Theocracy, but more importantly learned what little part she could to do make it right. A thief, who fought church and state as she slipped into forbidden territories and warzones to collect books that would otherwise be locked up or burned. A wild card who fought for the preservation of all literature, even if it meant fighting her own associates. All the while never abandoning her craft of origin, in fact deepening with it as she finally made her pact with the fae.
A rite normally held purely among witches, Thelisia took it in solitude as her definite choice to continue the path of a witch even if her fellow witch would never accept her. And thus she swore to her literature, to protecting the knowledge of the occult and taboo and to ensure that they will continue to live. To make sure that the world will remember the fae, and never forget their own place in the world of magic. And thus the witch that was not a witch grew and learned and fought, fought even when the great army of the Theocracy looked down upon her.
Even when Thelisia met the traitor witch, turned general.
The traitor witch Alice had abandoned her own coven when they forbade her both the permission to learn from books and the ability to advance to her own title of witch. She willingly betrayed the coven to learn from schools, all the way until she enrolled and was accepted at an academy owned by the theocracy. And as she rose in ranks Alice, now Aliciel, became an official in their military. Fighting for the sake of her study, even if it meant the slaughter of a fellow witch. Aliciel had not expected Thelisia to last long when they first met, but was pleasantly glad to see a fellow witch enter the greater world. But Thelisia was too wise to trick into the folds of the Theocracy, and she had her own goals set before her. And thus the two, fellow traitors, fellow scholars, fellow witches, were forced to right.
And Thelisia would return to her coven, carrying tomes of Aliciel in hand.
They could never truly accept her, but the witches were humbled to learn that even when branded a traitor, Thelisia never went back on her origins and her brethren. She came back with knowledge of how to fight the Theocracy, of those who were sympathetic to the cause of witches and could offer them bastion in modern civilization. Of outcast towns who were abandoned by church and desperately needed their aid as fellow heretic magicians. And thus, as Theian had once predicted, the knowledge of an outcast would save many lives.
But even then, Thelisia would turn down any offer to stay. Her pact was not to the coven, but to the fae. And as both blood of witch and fae ran through her heart, so to was that heart as ephemeral and fleeting as the fairy's wings. Even more so, Thelisia would never settle if there was new tomes to be found, and groups that would wish to quash and hide the knowledge contained therein.
And thus Thelisia left the village, not as a traitor, but as a fully redeemed witch of her own. With her own title: Thelisia, Witch of Literature.
And even as Thelisia enters a new world, one so different from her lands, her pact to the fae remains steadfast. As does her intuition telling her there were many books to chronicle here. And so without any falter in her step or weakened resolve in her smile, a strange lady sets forth.
A fae cares not for the past, nor think deep of the future. They live for the present, for the day itself and the treasures that it brings.
Thelisia's day has just begun.