Morrigan Reid {Eris Albrecht's 3rd alt}
Apr 10, 2016 20:28:58 GMT -6
Post by Morrigan Reid on Apr 10, 2016 20:28:58 GMT -6
The Raven of the West - Morrigan Theme
Name: Morrigan Reid
Class: Druid
Age: 28
Born in: Western Isles
Appearance:
Morrigan Reid
Even in heeled boots Morrigan does not stand at an impressive height, being only 5'4. A slim and healthy build for her size, though unsurprisingly lacking in any noteworthy muscle. Regardless of her lacking physical strength and muscle to show for it she is certainly fit and her physical endurance is deceptive, capable of maintaining a running speed for far longer than one would suspect at first glance.
Morrigan has long, thick, wavy black hair that she painstakingly maintains to the best of her ability. Humid air, dry air, heavy winds, and rain can undo her efforts with disheartening ease, but she never gives up. Morrigan's skin is fair, leaning more towards pale, but she has started to gain some colour since leaving her convent. She has a beauty mark just off to the left of her lower lip.
Morrigan's body is somewhat tattooed. Currently her back, both of her palms, and her left thigh bear old runic symbols for tatoos, said to aid in the channeling of magic by her convent. Whether Morrigan believes this to be true or not, she does still enjoy the tattoos, but prefers to keep them hidden to avoid having to explain their symbolism and meaning. Morrigan prefers not to draw unnecessary attention to herself. However, if he tatoos have been exposed for whatever reason, she will be happy to explain them.
Comfort is something Morrigan strives for in her clothing, usually opting for light and softer fabrics. Since wandering out from her convent she has adapted more common Elibean fashions in with the garments she wore back home. Long sleeved vests and jackets, slim slacks or stockings, boots, or light robes and dresses with corsets are her favourites, often adorned with dark wolf and bear furs or raven feathers, a staple of her convent. And gloves, she nearly always wears gloves of fur or leather. Blacks, midnight blues, and purples tend to be the dominant colours of her apparel, suiting her hair and complementing her violet eyes.
Personality: Morrigan is, to those that know her best, a deep thinking and spiritual woman. She loves to ponder subjects that even those back home would deem strange or incomprehensible. These subjects are usually focused around the condition of her fellow humans, how they came to be in the position they are in and how they can best progress forward. While history may intrigue her she tends to skim over it once she has a gist, and returns her focus to the present and future.
However she is shockingly focused for such a philosophical femme, directly applying her vision to the people around her. Rather than study away she has embraced an ideal of being constantly in motion by connecting her three-selves; her body, mind, and soul. She can appeal to the beliefs and hearts of many people, proving a charismatic speaker and leader. As a leader she would prefer to walk with her people rather than before. Not out of fear, but perhaps modesty. She understands that a good leader needs others to respect their position, but does not wish to lord over anyone for her own gain. The needs of others will come before her own ego and pride.
While she doesn't come off as shy Morrigan can come across as cold or uninterested, offering half-hearted responses and smiles to things such as greetings or generic introductions. She understands the need for small talk but doesn't necessarily gather much joy from it, only ever utilizing it if she has an ulterior motives. To her there must be a meaning behind everything, so when there is a proper reason for talking to someone, or she is speaking with someone she feels understands her or has grown truly close, she can be much warmer and expressive. Trust is something she values heavily, but she finds it fairly difficult to develop that trust. However it is with those she trusts that she will share herself with.
Morrigan had deep goals for the people of her home, but she is of a firm belief that they need to strive to those goals as a collective in order for their future to be secured. While she wants the people around her to be happy she draws a line at how far she's willing to suppress her own views and beliefs for them. People are often a focus for Morrigan, always on her mind, and it can get rather draining for her to think on them too much. She feels successful and happy when her goals benefit those around her, but can feel incredibly disheartened if she fails even one person.
Thinking and pondering too much can put her in a funk, and the best way she mediates that is to throw herself into her training. Her style and practice of magic is very physical and does not allow for too much thought beyond itself. Meditation is something else that she practices, and when stressed can often be found meditating somewhere quiet and peaceful.
Story: In the Western Isles, in the mountainous forests north of Jutes, there is resides a large village that remains almost completely isolated from the rest of the isles. The villagers there refer to themselves as “The Convent”, a society run by powerful mages for so long that they have long since forgotten a time where they did not.
What they did remember, however, are their customs, traditions, and societal rules. The Convent is run by mages for the sake of nuturing and raising even more powerful mages, so that they too can pass on their increased knowledge and secrets to the next generation. Magical proficiency and skill was paramount to their society: only the best mages were given places on the Convent's Council, and there were always six council members. Two members for each school of magic.
Their stated goal is to eventually have an entire society of mages who can wield all three types of magic with equal mastery.
It was that society, the Convent, which Morrigan Reid was born into.
Morrigan Reid is the sole progeny of Isaak and Ursula Reid, who specialized in elder and anima magic respectively. The two did not have seats on the council, and never would, but they were still relatively respected mages in their field. Morrigan, however, was born with greater magical potential than either of them had. When the Council tested young Morrigan for her potential they were pleasantly surprised. As such Morrigan, alongside other promising youths, were selected to receive special tutoring in the ways of magic from a young age.
Morrigan's studies did not have her practising magic at all, as the first type of magic she would practice would be determined by her teachers and the council on her tenth year, which was how the Council had handled the development of the gifted for a millenia. Instead she simply studied, observed, and read about the basics of each school of magic.
Morrigan learned that Anima was divided into sub-schools based on the natural elements. The convent's sages were very physical in their practice and teachings, and focused equally on movement along with study in order to truly “become one” with the natural world. They had honed and developed different styles of movement for each element. An example would be that wind movements were almost lazy, natural, evasive and indirect, while earth movements were solid, firm, grounded and direct.
She learned that Elder magic was also divided, thought not as heavily. If she were to become a practitioner of elder magic she would learn to focus on one particular school of thought at a time. To focus on the physical applications of her magic, to bring the nether into the outer world, would be beneficial for using tomes such as Ruin, where as a more spiritual and abstract school of thought would better connect her with Luna.
And lastly, of course, Morrigan was taught about Light magic. While usually referred to as Soul magic by the Convent, Soul magic was exactly that: magic drawn from ones soul. It was not drawn from the physical world, nor was it drawn from the nether. The Convent believed the Soul magic required a mage to become one with their inner selves. To bring the purity of their soul into the physical world using their bodies as a vessel. It required absolute openness and faith in whatever their soul believed strongest in.
Her studies were time consuming and Morrigan placed a great importance on them. However this never did stop young Morrigan from making friends outside of her group. Her closest friends growing up were Raine Meera and Fergus Roderik. Raine was another girl chosen by the council, whereas Fergus was the opposite. The boy had been deemed “magically inadequate” and his parents were advised to have him seek other roles in the Convent, such as becoming a builder or hunter. The Convent did have need for such things in order to survive, after all, but those roles were often passed to those who were not gifted.
While some of the other children in the group shunned Fergus, usually because their parents discouraged interaction with the less gifted, both Morrigan and Meera continued to play with Fergus when they didn't have their studies to tend to. As the children grew closer to pre-pubescence, Morrigan began to develop a childhood crush on Fergus. While she wasn't all that shy being direct with such feelings were new to her, and she was not certain how to get them across to the boy.
Which was unfortunate, because Meera did. Morrigan was heartbroken and hurt when she was told by the two that they had decided to start dating, but she eventually came to accept it and did what she could not to let her personal feelings interfere with the friendship she had with the two. At first Morrigan thought it'd just be a childhood crush between the two and worried that a break up between them would destroy the friendship.
But miraculously, that break up never came.
At the age of 10 Morrigan, Meera, and the other gifted children were selected earlier than any other children to discover their speciality. The council all believed Morrigan's speciality would lie with Light or Soul magic, based off their experiences with the girl and having watched her grow, but the written test and overall analysis of Morrigan's mindset proved otherwise. Morrigan had a leaning towards elder magic, which tended to be the second most common determination. Anima was by far more common, but the issue then was for the children to discover which element they specialized in.
Instead Morrigan, Meera, and other children were then brought under the direct tutelage of the four best elder magic users outside of the Council. These four teachers were, themselves, all in consideration to take a seat on the Council when one of the current Elder magic representatives either passed away or decided to step down. Morrigan knew these important decisions were decided by a competition, but she had yet to see a change in the Council and knew little of the process otherwise.
To both commemorate the event and “aid her growth” in her selected school of magic, Morrigan and the other children were given a runic tattoo on their backs. The tattoo was to better enable magic from the nether to flow through her, and to represent the presence of the nether. It was “always at their backs” after all, and the rune would “protect them” from losing themselves to the nether. Morrigan questioned whether the tattoo did much of anything. After all Morrigan didn't feel any more magical or the presence of the nether once it was applied, but she saw meaning in it: it meant she was ready to truly become a mage.
One of the most jarring and important lessons to Morrigan was one of her first. Before she first cast a Flux spell, or even drew magic from the nether, she and every other child was brought before the hunting cages. Where animals that had been captured alive were kept to be slaughtered at a later date. Morrigan was shocked to find that a wild bear was actually chained up in the building that contained the hunting cages. The bear snarled like mad at the sight of the children, and Morrigan was just as nervous about the situation as the other children were.
Her favourite teacher, a man named Erebus Gray, told each of the children that they had to sit down right in front of the cage, just far away enough from the bars that the bear's claws could not get through to them. They would sit there and read a book for an hour a day, every day, for half a year, completely alone aside from Erebus, who would be at the opposite end of the hunting cages to watch them. They were told to never look up from the book the entire time, and to do nothing but read until their time was up. Erebus' reasoning was that the bear was to be likened to the nether. “You will feel the nether, but you will never see it. You must never see it. Embrace the knowledge that it is there, but look no further."
This training served to harden Morrigan's ability to focus at a young age, and she would never deny that she would think back to that lesson if she felt herself losing focus in the heat of the moment.
Every solstice a tournament was held between the young mages of the Convent. The age groups were only divided between ages 10-15, 15-25, and 25-however old. It was considered an important festival and every child was encouraged to view it as an opportunity to prove themselves. Of course neither Morrigan no Meera would win their age group in their first year, but from age 12-15 the two always made it to the finals. The council took note of their skill and consistency, and were further impressed when the two girls proved pivotal in using their magic to help contain a situation where the animals from the hunting cages broke loose.
They were ready to truly test their will, and were allowed to go out into nature with the other hunters. Of course most of the Anima mages had already spent much of their time training in the nature just outside the Convent, but for Morrigan the opportunity was huge. She found herself surprisingly at home in the forests and even the mountains, using stray boulders and chunks of rock as targets to practice her magic.
Occasionally she would spar with other mages from her convent. First she was challenged because the other mages were eager to test their skill. As she grew, and her rate of victory became noticeably higher than most, she was challenged because her fellow mages saw her as a trial or obstacle to overcome. Morrigan didn't necessarily enjoy being viewed as such, but she still refused to let herself lose a spar.
It was her 16th year that her life truly changed. Morrigan was approached by one of the Elder magic councilmen: a woman named Julianne Yara. Julianne told Morrigan that she, along with some others including Meera, were to be given special opportunities to learn more about the convent and prove themselves worthy of becoming members of the Council. Morrigan, at the time, was not yet sure if she wanted to be on the council, but she recognized the merits and that such a position could at least serve as a stepping stone to whatever she truly wanted from her future.
Morrigan, along with a few of a group called the “Truly Gifted”, were taken into the archives used only by the members of the Council: off-limits to other mages. The archives did not contain books related to magic, as that undermine the Convent's purpose of churning out the best mages possible, but instead carried records from previous councilmen.
There Morrigan learned of how the Convent sustained itself over the centuries. She learned of men and women who engage in special trade with the Convent, trading ore that the ordinary villagers mined from the nearby mountains and lumber from the forests for finished products. Cages to contain their captured animals, trained dogs to aid them in hunting, and other things that made life as easy as possible so that the Convent could direct it's focus onto magic.
The Council revealed that they would occasionally select the “Truly Gifted” to spend time on the mainland in order to further prove themselves. This time was usually spent aiding these allies of the Convent, performing various “missions” for them. This allowed said allies to save coin on mercenaries, and in turn these allies remained loyal to their pact with the Convent and kept up with their relatively generous trade.
Unfortunately the Council had lost members of the “Truly Gifted” as a result, and to prevent large losses the Truly Gifted were only ever sent in pairs.
While the others in her group accepted the information readily Morrigan processed it with scrutiny. She wondered why so much of this information was kept from the Convent, and if that was truly good for them? Leaving all of this up to such a narrow group within the Convent seemed counter-productive and limited to Morrigan, but she did not want to question the Council outright. She had only just learned of this information and would need to learn more to form a solid opinion about it.
Either way, before Morrigan and any of her generations' “Truly Gifted” were sent to the mainland, they began to learn magical combat in earnest from the members of the Council themselves, and the best non-magical warriors the Convent had to offer.
For three years, alongside her studies and the solstice tournaments, Morrigan was taught how to evade melee weaponry and how to deal with bows. Morrigan was already very adept at handling other mages and could even put up a solid fight or forge a safe retreat against mages more skilled and powerful than herself. She had a rough time learning to survive against weapons at first, but in time she became quite proficient at it.
By her 18th year her generation was determined to be skilled enough to start embarking on these missions. Morrigan was paired with a Soul magic user on her first mission, and she got along well enough with this girl. Morrigan and this girl were led to the shore of the ocean, where they would meet with the captain of their contact's ship and proceed from there to the ship itself.
The contact was not actually on the ship, but either way Morrigan enjoyed the change of scenery and eventually adapted to the sensation of being out on the ocean. She was unfortunate, however, when a pirate ship decided to attack the one she was on. While pirates were not much of an issue closer to the mainland their ship was still out on open waters, and so Morrigan got her first real taste of combat.
She performed...adequately. The Light mage with her handled the situation better than she had, and Morrigan was disappointed in herself as a result. Fortunately she more than proved her worth when she arrived to the ship's destination in Etruria, and was given her mission. Though Morrigan asked her contact more questions than the man, a minor nobleman and successful merchant, cared to answer, she still performed the duty she was given exceedingly: wipe out a group of thugs that a rival merchant had hired to sabotage the work of her client.
Morrigan used her training well in this mission, successfully evading the axes and clubs of her targets while systematically bringing them down with her magic. While Morrigan refused to take their lives she was not against causing them great pain, and as she grew older, bolder, and stronger she would even go so far as to cause long lasting bodily damage to her enemies. Still, Morrigan would avoid killing at almost all costs.
When Morrigan returned to the Convent from her first mission she was praised for a job well done, and was surprised to see that Julianne Yara had finally stepped down. Morrigan then got to watch the rite of succession for the first time in her life.
The four chosen Elder Magic practitioners chosen by the Council to have the opportunity to take the absent seat performed two contests. The first challenge was to find a way to utilize their magic to create a potent spectacle for the entire Convent to witness. The second challenge was show off a new skill or technique that would aid the next generation in their studies. The final challenge was, of course, a tournament. The overall winner would be decided by the Council, and the Council decided that the successor would be Morrigan's old teacher: Erebus Gray
After the rite of succession Morrigan caught up with Raine for the first time in months. Raine's mission had also gone well, but she had been paired with an Anima Water specialist who unfortunately crushed on her regardless of her relationship with Fergus. This man, Jules Stendarr, had been one of the children who had bullied poor Fergus when they all were younger.
As Morrigan and Raine grew older, continued their studies and work for the convent, Jules would continue to pester Raine. It took two powerful acts to finally get Jules to lay off: both Raine and Morrigan bested Jules in a one on one duel. The second was the official joining of Raine and Fergus, when they were 22 years old. There were no weddings in the Convent, but rather an official joining was the conception of a child. Indeed, at 22 Raine was pregnant.
Morrigan had long since grown out of her crush on Fergus. In fact she had dated a few suitors since then. As such she had nothing but joy for her dearest friends, who were considered an official joining regardless of the Council's disapproval or Raine's own family's disapproval. The Convent believed magical talent to lie in blood, after all, and as such it was a waste for Raine to join with the talentless Fergus. However the Council was no regency, nor did they bother with arranging pairings. They had far too many other things to be taking care of.
On top of continuing with her missions, her spars, her studies, and solstice tournaments, Morrigan was approached by Councilman Erebus personally. He stated that he believed her ready to begin studying a second school of magic. Morrigan knew full well that the jump from Elder to Soul was considered impossible and dangerous by the Convent. So Morrigan began to study anima, as if she were at the age of 10 and had been chosen to study it in the first place, while keeping up with her other duties and passions as well. To mark the occasion she received two new runic tattoos on her palms, which supposedly “aided in the channeling” of anima magic from her body into nature.
The fact that she handled all of this pressure and continued to show progress was considered noteworthy to the council. Of all the elements Morrigan was discovered to have the strongest affinity for lightning magic, and thus began to focus on the sharp, pointed, and quick movements the Convent associated with lightning magic. Morrigan became proficient at integrating this magic into her combat style and continued to either win or place in the finals for each solstice tournament.
On her 25th year a strange event happened. The Convent was visited by a well-off Sage from Etrurira. Evidently he had paid on of the Convent's Etrurian contacts a great deal of money to learn where they hired their mage mercenaries from. The Council met with this Sage and discovered that he desired to study with the Convent and learn their secrets. Morrigan, though not part of the Council, saw no harm in it. They could keep a careful eye on the Sage during his time there, and perhaps they'd be able to learn more about how Etrurians and other main landers practised magic.
The Council disagreed completely. They declined the Sage's requests, even when he offered to pay them in either coin or goods. This Sage felt slighted, and left the Convent after cursing out the Council. Morrigan questioned why the Council declined his request, and their response was that “Our secrets are ours, and ours alone. It is best that way”.
They were just following decrees left to them from previous Councilmen. That wasn't a good enough answer for Morrigan, but she knew she could not say anything on the matter unless she herself was on the Council. Thankfully, it seemed that was a likely end path for her.
By age 27 Morrigan had successful completed 15 missions and had won 9 solstice tournaments, placing in the finals for an impressive 17. 26/34 for either winning or placing in the finals for solstice tournaments since her first year was so good a record that it became clear to most that Morrigan would be considered eligible for a spot on the council. Though she was humble about it, Morrigan was made fully aware of this, and began to feel true inspiration towards taking that seat. What she could do to advance the Convent in such a position, for example.
Her 27th year was a rather large one, however, for far more unfortunate reasons.
In the generation below Morrigan two Truly Gifted went MIA on one of their missions, which left the Council extremely nervous. They tried to contact their Etrurian ally through their contact in Jutes, but they had no success. Morrigan of course, did not know this, so the following events were as much a shock to her as they were to the rest of the Convent.
A large group of well armed men and women showed up in the middle of the night. The Convent had nightly guard shifts, thankfully, and the guards alerted the Councilmen. When the Council met these mercenaries at the gates they encountered their leader and employer: that same well-off Sage from Etruria. This time he made no requests, but rather had a single demand: share their knowledge and practices with him, or their Convent would be destroyed.
It was never stated in history that the Convent ever went to war. But that night, war came to the Convent.
The Sage ordered his hired men to start their assault on the Convent, and the Convent scrambled to fight back. They had many magic users that were skilled in individual or paired combat, but the Convent had never practised group combat. So in the beginning there was a great deal of chaos, and Morrigan watched in horror as some mages struck down their fellows and kin with their own magic.
As the Convent was pushed back things started to turn more in their favor. Morrigan herself crushed several armoured lance users with her magic, constantly keeping an eye on her allies to protect or assist them whenever she could. Unfortunately many of the non-magical members of the Convent suffered the most injuries and casualties. After all the convent did not have access to strong metal armour or superior weaponry.
Fergus himself was shot down by several arrows, prompting screams from Raine. Morrigan watched on in sorrow and fear as her best friend ran to the downed father of her children. He wasn't moving.
And almost instantly Morrigan sensed a change. She watched as Raine looked up from her fallen lover, fury and sorrow clear on her face, and gripped her tome so tightly her knuckles went white. Somehow Morrigan just knew that her friend was going to make a mistake.
She was going to look straight into the nether.
Raine furiously chanted out curse after curse, casting increasingly powerful Luna spells after Luna spells. Her fury and might became such that many of the Convent's mages stopped fighting to watch in awe and horror, as black energy practically poured out from Raine's body. Only the agonized screams of the Sage's men, and soon the Sage himself, were heard over her chanting.
Morrigan screamed to her friend, making her way around the fallen to try and reach Raine, but it was too late. With one last scream Raine shattered the very soul of the Sage himself, grabbing a Ruin tome and impaling the lot of them with jagged, twisted tendrils of shadow.
As they drew their final breaths, all emotion seemed to leave Raine's face. Morrigan clutched her friends shoulders, shaking, and begged for her to speak to her. Raine's empty eyes stared deep into Morrigan's, but they did not register anything. She breathed evenly, as if at peace, but did not speak in reply. Raine simply stood there, even as Morrigan collapsed into her friend, sobbing.
It was Councilman Erebus, Raine and Morrigan's old teacher, who approached Morrigan first. He placed a hand on the raven haired woman's shoulder, and when she looked up to him with desperation he shook his head.
“The nether does not usually take so much. But whatever it does take, it never gives back.”
All Morrigan could think was “how can we know that?”. There was an entire Elibe beyond the Convent, and if they had amassed so much knowledge in just that small space, who was to say greater knowledge didn't lie beyond the Convent. Knowledge that could save the soul of her dear friend. Knowledge that could advance the Convent, and integrate them peacefully into the rest of society.
The Convent was changed after the attack. A grand funeral was held for those who did not survive the attack. While Morrigan was relieved to see that Fergus had been saved with staff magic, she had to give him the news that no staff would save the soul of his beloved. Their now two children would grow up with an emotionless, empty husk of a mother. The reality nearly broke Fergus, and Morrigan felt his pain all too strongly.
Even two Councilmen passed away, which meant that a challenge would have to be held to replace them. One had been a representative of Anima, and the other Elder. Morrigan herself was named as one of the four with the potential to take the position, and she was significantly more focused on obtaining the spot than ever before. She did not trounce her competition in the challenges, but she was still a clear victor. The winner for Anima turned out to be Jules, the man who used to harass Raine and bully Fergus. He too had been changed by the attack, and wound up agreeing with many of Morrigan's points on the Council.
He even aided her in her first true feat as a member of the Council: deciding how to progress forward. Morrigan made a case that the Convent could no longer depend on isolation. They had not only lost one of their few contacts to greed, but suffered violence and death as a result. Had they been a proper part of society there would have been less odds of them being attacked so openly.
Morrigan continued on by pleading the case of Raine. The Convent knew not how to restore her, but who was to say there wasn't a mage in the rest of Elibe who didn't? The Council was divided on pursuing integration into society as well as investing in the restoration of Raine. While discovering a way to bring someone back from the nether would be a historic advancement in the study of magic, the Council did not agree on spending resources into researching the subject.
So Morrigan made a counter: she would leave and to search for such knowledge, and also search for other knowledge from the outside that could help serve and protect the Convent. However, in her absence, the Convent was to establish proper rapport and trade with Jutes, ending the need to make connections with shady merchants from a land they did not yet truly understand. Though still somewhat divided the vote was decided in Morrigan's favour, the deciding vote being Jules himself.
Jules and Erebus volunteered to head the beginnings of diplomacy with Jutes, while Morrigan herself prepared to leave the Convent on her own, for the first time. Before she left she was approached by a teary eyed Fergus. He hugged his friend and made a single request: “bring her back”.
How could Morrigan possibly say no?
“The only thing I want is to bring my people into a better tomorrow. They need it. They need me. It is my hope, and mission, that my best friend will be present to witness this.”