(no subject)

[bindsthedead]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Sarah
Contact: sarahthesilent@plurk
Age: over 18
Current Characters: n/a


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Old Kingdom Chronicles
Age: 18
Canon: Sabriel
Canon Point: Right as she's crashing the Paperwing into Holehallow

Background: Wikipedia! And this page too!

Personality: Sabriel's outward presentation is of a serious, mature young woman, who sometimes comes across as a little morbid, due to her affinity for Death and the Dead. She takes tasks assigned to her seriously, and it takes a lot to rattle her. She often gives off an impression of carefully controlled force, giving the impression she's older than she actually is whenever she gets serious.

Arrogant might be the wrong word for it, but Sabriel has confidence in herself and her abilities both magical and mundane, and though this is sometimes shaken, it's not something that ever goes away.

This isn't to say that Sabriel acts like a stoic badass 24/7. She can be playful and teasing to people she considers friends, and was quite happy to do normal teenage girl things like sneak out to the movie theater with her classmates, and apparently wants to meet young men her own age. The way her demeanor can switch from proper young schoolgirl to wise beyond her years necromancer is occasionally unnerving, but neither side is an act- though Sabriel finds herself feeling far less like a schoolgirl given what she's gone through recently.

Sabriel spent thirteen years attending a school for 'young ladies of quality' and it shows. Sabriel learned etiquette as well as how to fight in chainmail with a sword and cast spells, and while certainly not obsessed with perfect etiquette, she's generally polite and addresses people by their proper titles, though she doesn't insist on people calling her Abhorsen- being called that actually makes her a little uncomfortable. When she dislikes someone, she's still generally polite, though her demeanor tends to veer towards passive aggression and condescension, speaking to people as though they're either children or servants, regardless of actual age or social rank. At least part of the time, this isn't through deliberate effort, either.

Beneath that, Sabriel is going through some changes. Having recently left school to track down her mysteriously vanished father, she's discovered that the training she recieved hasn't left her nearly as prepared as she thought she was, and the forces arrayed against her are far more powerful than she could have dreamed of. While 'naive' is probably not the right word for it, she chose to travel alone into an unknown country, guided only by memories from when she was four and without much of a plan and without even a map. She doesn't rush into danger for the sake of it, but when given a choice between playing it completely safe and stepping into the unknown to get something done, Sabriel will always move forward, though she does try to take some precautions, particularly after getting chased by various undead monsters. At her current canon point, she still doesn't have much of a plan beyond 'Save my father'.

Because Sabriel's father, at her current canon point, is the person she loves most in the world. He's her only family, and while she only saw him physically twice a year, he astrally projected to visit her once a month, and taught her about necromancy. Upon arriving at his house, she learns that she doesn't know nearly as much about him and the Old Kingdom as she thought she did. Abhorsen was not his name, but his title, and the Old Kingdom is in chaos and overrun by the Dead.

Oh, and her father is probably dead, and the powerful Greater Dead creature responsible is sending monsters after her, and the duty of Abhorsen- to lay the Dead to rest and protect the living- now falls on her shoulders. Rather than running back to Ancelstierre, or staying in the relative safety of the house, Sabriel pursues the chance her father might be alive. After all, he's a powerful mage and necromancer, and she assumes that with her help, of course he'll be able to defeat the enemy that imprisoned him!

Still, Sabriel is pragmatic, if not particularly cold blooded when dealing with living people. While she's uncomfortable with people calling her Abhorsen (and insists that she isn't, she's just filling in for her father), she doesn't hesitate to fulfill her duties as such. While she knows she only has a limited amount of time to save her father, she helps people troubled by the Dead whenever she can. Rather than stewing in helplessness or self pity, she strikes out to do what she can, even if it means putting herself in danger. She doesn't seem to have much patience for deliberate vagueness, and she expresses frustration when shortly after her canon point, neither Mogget or Touchstone are able to tell her what they know about the situation. She doesn't have much patience for Mogget's smugness or Touchstone's over the top servility, even if she's sympathetic to the latter's pain, and eventually warms up to him once he starts acting more genuine.

While we don't see her interacting with her classmates much, it's clear she considers at least some of them friends- she mentions going out to see movies with some of them, and is still in contact with them twenty years after her current canon point.

Her attitude about Death is also worth noting. While Sabriel is mostly casual with her use of Charter Magic unless it's use alarms people, and is proud of her power and skill with it, her feelings about her necromantic abilities are far more ambivalent. She certainly doesn't see herself as a monster for having such powers, or hate herself for them, but while she has no hesitation about using her bells or walking into death when it's neccesary, she's aware that the power she wields is both dangerous and potentially corrupting. She's eager to read Charter Magic textbooks, but is nervous about a grimoire dealing with necromancy, and sometimes wishes she didn't know as much as she does about Death.

Abilities: Sabriel's abilities are divided into two categories- Her Charter Magic, and her powers as an Abhorsen, which come from having one of the foundations of the Charter in her blood, giving her greater power as a Charter Mage and the ability to combine it with Free Magic.

Charter Magic is the more common form of magic in the Old Kingdom. By mentally pulling marks out of the Charter, Sabriel can create a variety of magical effects- fireballs, lightning bolts, projectiles, shields, healing, and a few other things, including using magic to anchor people's feet to the ground or completely immobilize them. She can also enchant objects, create wards, and soothe people- listing everything she can do would take way to long. If she has access to wood ash and water, she can baptize others, granting them the ability to use Charter Magic- although she will need to teach them, since it's not an ability you can use by instinct. While Sabriel has a lot of raw power and talent, she still has a lot to learn about Charter Magic.

Sabriel's powers as Abhorsen are mostly necromancy. She can feel people and animals die- for example, she feels the water going into the lungs of a drowning person. Her death-sense also allows her to sense and track undead creatures, and feel if there's been a great deal of death at a particular location, or if people have been buried there. Also, she can force her spirit out of her body and into the realm of Death, although this leaves her body frozen solid and completely vulnerable, unless she puts protections around it before she goes in. (This power will not work in-game until further notice)

While Sabriel generally uses the bells, she has demonstrated that she can exert a limited amount of control over the dead without them. Also, she can raise the dead- either as shambling zombies (Which she will refuse to do) or, if they only just died and she can patch up their bodies, and pull their spirits back in, restoring them to true life. (For humans, this seems to require a baptism.) (Again, probably not going to be relevant in-game)

Ranna: The first, and smallest bell, the sleeper. It makes people who hear it fall asleep
Mosrael: The second bell, the waker. It's repeatedly described as a seesaw, forcing the ringer into death as it brings the listener into life. One of the doors on the way to Abhorsen's House is described as opening to its sound, and in later books it's mentioned that it's used to awaken bound Free Magic spirits. Sabriel's unlikely to use it.
Kibeth: The third bell, the walker. This bell can both give freedom of movement and remove it, making whoever hears it walk where Sabriel wants them too. It
Dyrim: The fourth bell, the Speaker. It can grant the power of speech, or remove it. In later books, it's mentioned but not shown that it can 'give forgotten words their meaning' and possibly allow for the reading of minds, so it may have other communication related ablities.
Belgaer: The fifth bell, the thinker. It can grant free will, independent thought, and restore memories and "all the patterns of life" to the Dead, but it can erase these as well. In later books, it's used to release someone from a binding. Other necromancers have apparently used it against their enemies to drive them mad.
Saraneth: The sixth, and deepest of all bells- the binder. It binds the target to the ringer's will.
Astarael: The weeper, the final bell. Sends everyone who hears it into the deepest parts of Death (and apparently, earplugs are ineffective in blocking it). This bell will not be used except with prior mod permission and as part of a larger plot.

Other:

At her current canon point, Sabriel's also carrying Abhorsen's sword, an ancient blade imbued with powerful magic to make it an effective weapon against the undead and magical monsters, the Book of the Dead, a magical grimoire that deals with magic relating to Death and the Dead, and two Charter Magic spellbooks that discuss magic but aren't magical in and of themselves.

⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
First Person Sample:

[The voice that echoes into everyone's heads is carefully composed- but Sabriel can't quite keep anxiety and irritation out of her mental voice, even as she keeps everything she absorbed in years of etiquette lessons at the front of her mind.]

Hello, everyone. My name is Sabriel, and it's a pleasure to meet all of you.

I know none of you chose to be here, any more than I did, and all of you are probably just as eager to return to your homes. However, while we are here, we ought to do what we can to ensure our presence here doesn't make things any worse. [There's a hint of guilt in her mental voice. Apparently, people here weren't used to public displays of magic, and the effect of emotions like fear were only amplified when groups of people felt them together.]

In any case, I'm a mage, and while people here are obviously unnacustomed to magic, I doubt it's the same among my fellow- my fellow guests. [Because she really can't think of another polite way to describe their situation.] If any of you have experience with magic- or use it yourself, I'd like to compare notes. Particularly about these amulets and elemental cores- the magic involved is foriegn to me, but with time, I ought to be able to understand it, and perhaps that will be the first step in returning to where I belong. [Because if she could learn Charter and Free Magic, Sabriel's confident she can unravel the magic native to this world.]

Third Person Sample:

Sabriel had little experience with larger cities- aside from one carefully supervised visit to Ancelstierre's capitol with her schoolmates a few years back, the largest town she'd spent any time in had less than a tenth of Verens' population. Even after a few weeks, the vastness of the city was occasionally overwhelming, and she found herself seeking out odd jobs that brought her outside of the city's bounds for respite from the noise and the crowds.

There was another advantage to leaving the city bounds- the freedom to use her magic without worry about alarming the people around her or accidentally wrecking things from her own magic- or the inhabitant's fear of it- going out of control. Her attempt to blow the clouds off of people's heads with a whistled wind-spell had gone disastrously enough to dissuade her from openly using spells in public for a while. Still, Sabriel thought, she might as well take advantage of this respite from the dangers of the Old Kingdom to catch up on her reading.

Still, setting aside her own worries about Verens, and the lack of progress on finding a way back to the Old Kingdom to rescue her father was surprisingly easy as soon as she opened her spellbook and started reading, not noticing how the grayness around her shifted to bright sunshine, the grass around her shifting from wilted and brown to healthy and green as a smile spread across her face and golden symbols swirled above her palms before fading away as she dismissed the spell, satisfied that she'd understood how this particular spell was used. Experience and repeated warnings had taught her the dangers of attempting to cast magic she didn't fully understand.

Getting up to stretch for a little, she snapped the book shut and set it aside- only to hesitate when she realized that what had been plain grass before was now sprinkled with tiny sky blue flowers that grew larger and multiplied as she laughed in surprised delight. Even the foliage on nearby trees seemed thicker and more vibrant- as though her happiness had brought everything to life.

Questions: