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P L A Y E R
☓ Name: Gail
☓ Personal journal: cacopheny
☓ Age: 31
☓ Other characters in The Devils See: NA
☓ Email: cacopheny @ gmail . com
☓ AIM/MSN/Yahoo! Messenger: throughoblivion @ AIM
C H A R A C T E R
☓ Name: Lirael
☓ Series: Abhorsen, by Garth Nix
☓ Reference:
Wikipedia Article
Book Reviews
The powers and outlook of an Abhorsen, if she was a D&D class.


☓ Canon point: Shortly after the end of the book Abhorsen, by about a month.
☓ Age: 19
☓ Previous TDS memories?
For proof of memories: Previous TDS application
For remaining on the island in stasis: Link to last thread IC.
☓ Personality:
Lirael grew up in the Clayr Glacier in the Old Kingdom, not knowing her father and barely remembering her mother, feeling vaguely abandoned by the lack of both. While her earlier childhood was relatively happy despite this, playing with all the younger children, taking lessons, and anticipating the day when she would join the ranks of the future-Sighted Clayr, she still stood out from her peers in many ways. It was around when she turned eleven that she realized how different she really was: in appearance, she was pale, dark-haired, and slight while her cousins were tanned, blonde, and beautiful; in interests, she thought about death and darkness and was serious in nature rather than sunny and cheerful; and in powers, for all the other Clayr had the Sight, the magical ability to see into the future. Lirael, despite doggedly growing older while the Sight woke in her younger peers, never had it. That was the start of her first spiral into depression, and of her feelings of worthlessness. Without the Sight, she was not a proper Clayr; without the Sight, she didn't belong, and she had no way to relate to anyone around her.

On her fourteenth birthday, still without the Sight, Lirael's depression and morbid nature led her to nearly kill herself, stopped partly by fear, partly by chance, and partly by a lack of proper opportunity. While she got herself help from the Clayr who caught her at her not-quite-death, a new job as a Third (and later Second) Assistant Librarian in the Great Library of the Clayr, and eventually a new friend in the Disreputable Dog, it didn't make her feel any more accepted, and her low self-worth never rose. She didn't speak to anyone but the Dog, avoided social gatherings, even avoided making eye contact and took to hiding in her own long hair, so she wouldn't have to talk to anyone who had the Sight or who might take her for as alien as she felt. She fell to such levels of asocialness that her shyness is now ingrained in her. Large groups of people and strangers make her severely uncomfortable, unless she has a job to do among them.

Lirael is a very serious person, taking duty and responsibility seriously-- and she doesn't really take teasing well, either. On the rare occasions she even realizes she's being teased and doesn't simply take the joking seriously, she is likely to get flustered and exasperated with the teaser-- even when her dearest and only friend, the Dog, teased her it put her on edge. Knowledge is important to her, as a Librarian and a clever girl, and she's perfectly happy to spend most of her time either reading or exploring when she doesn't have something else to do to keep her busy. She still doesn't think much of herself, though, no matter how learned she might be: all her life, she has considered herself less important than the other Clayr, and if ever a need should arise for a sacrificial lamb to protect the greater good, she automatically assumes it should be herself. After an adventure dealing with a Stilken-- a Free Magic creature of terrible hunger-- that she accidentally set free from its binding magic, she learned how to be brave, and often took it upon herself during the course of her years as a Third Assistant Librarian to rid the Great Library of potentially dangerous creatures, so as to protect the other, proper Clayr from them.

Only recently in her life has she ever been given a purpose outside the life of the Clayr, a reason to live as it were. A month and a half ago, she was sent away from the Clayr Glacier where she'd lived all her life, out into the Kingdom itself, to save a young man from himself and stop the end of the world... though all she knew at the time was she was out in the world, alone, facing more monsters than she could imagine, with a new ability as a Remembrancer-- a "gift" on her nineteenth birthday that the Dog led her to find-- and a very whiny Prince she didn't know how to talk to. Thankfully, from him she learned of (and read) The Book of the Dead, was given the bells of the Abhorsen-in-Waiting-- weapons with which to fight the Dead and Free Magic-- learned the identity of her father, the previous Abhorsen, and of her calling: to put the dead to rest, to walk the path she is set. Does the walker choose the path, or the path choose the walker? as The Book of the Dead asks. She can, when under the office of that calling, act with confidence and deal with confrontation, but it's still such a new thing to her that she always falls back to her old ways in times of stress.

At the end of that "adventure", Lirael and a small group of friends, family, and magical beings of various kinds vanquished a great evil on her world, the Bright Shiner known as Orannis the Destroyer: a manifestation of all that is evil and bitter and destructive in the world, with the power of a sentient atom bomb. They defeated this evil, with unexpected help and unexpected loss, and even with a month to recover, Lirael was still somewhat reeling from the events. Living without her best friend, the Dog, and without her right hand, had been difficult, but at least there she had a place in the world.

Lirael’s arrival in the Devil’s Sea came barely a month after getting settled again in the Old Kingdom. She took a dunking in the River of Death, and came up on the shore of the island. Between the monsters to fight, the small community to get to know, and the job of chief healer to pick up, she started to open up with others more easily and take on responsibility more publically. She still isn’t any good with people, and she still hasn’t grown past her problem with verbal confrontations-- they still cause her to wilt, stammer, cry, and eventually run away-- but she has the backbone now to show her face on the network to organize a rescue party, and she has some measure of authority that she isn’t too afraid to exercise.

Between the hospital, which she mostly takes care of on her own, and the routine patrols around the island, she keeps herself busy, and even sort of counts a few people as friends. Just a little bit. Not too much, however, because her favorite people have a distressing tendency to turn into headstones. The loss of a couple of her last friends turned her a bit more distant, but also a bit less sensitive; this may or may not hold true, if she is given the chance to make more, closer friends who manage to stick around.


☓ Abilities:
~Death: As the daughter of the previous Abhorsen, Lirael can sense the presence of death, whether it be recent or aged, and the undead. She can also enter Death, as if it were a separate plane of existence, made up of a flowing River that carries souls to the world beyond. When her spirit is in Death, her body is still in Life, frozen in place-- literally: her body becomes covered in frost, and a chill fog rises around it. The longer her spirit is in Death, the more the frost expands. In the Devil's Sea, her Death Sense is still fairly reliable, if fainter and fuzzier than usual, but her ability to actually go into Death of her own accord is greatly reduced, and she can only do it in places of recent death, where a "doorway" has been opened: within the hour it's easiest, and by the time four hours have passed it's exceedingly difficult, and by the time six hours have passed practically impossible.
~Bells: As part of her office as Abhorsen-in-Waiting, Lirael has a leather bandolier of seven bells that is worn across the chest. When rung, these bells have particular spell-like effects, particularly on the undead and creatures of magic, but also to some extent on the living. The bells can be rung more than one at a time-- but only if one has two hands. They require willpower and focus to ring properly, as the magic that made them gives them something of a mind of their own, or else the effect of the bell might harm the ringer, usually in a form related to the bell's power. Each bell has a name and a power:
* Ranna (the smallest) brings sleep, stillness, and peace. It is the most forgiving of all the bells of an inexperienced or clumsy ringer, and is the least likely to cause a bad effect if wrong poorly, though at times it might make her sleepy to ring it, as well as whomever it is supposed to be affecting, and it has been known to put an entire room to sleep instead of just the enemy.
* Mosrael wakes the dead, pulling the spirits into Life as long as there are bodies or spell-space prepared for them, while sending the ringer's spirit into Death, instead, leaving their body behind encased in ice.
* Kibeth creates movement to the ringer's will, but is also tricksome and can make the ringer walk, as well, whether in a straight line, in a circle, or even in a jig, sometimes disrupting her concentration or just being annoying.
* Dyrim can restore speech to the mute, or still speech in one who speaks too freely, with some other subtle usages also aligned with communication, such as the revealing of secrets or even the reading of minds.
* Belgaer affects the mind, both restoring memories and independent thought in someone without either, or erasing them, and covers the lifting of bindings. It is perhaps the most dangerous of bells to ring without enough focus and attention, as it can damage the ringer's mind, and it likes to hear the sound of its own voice.
* Saraneth binds the dead or-- more rarely-- the living and forces them to follow the ringer's will, but it can also scatter the will of the ringer if rung without the proper focus and willpower. It is the best friend of an Abhorsen.
* Astarael (the largest) sends all who hear it into Death, and while it is not necessarily permanent, it is usually permanent for the ringer, meaning ringing Astarael is usually tantamount to suicide and thus is not done except in dire need.
As items rather than abilities, these bells work most of the time in the Devil's Sea-- with the exception of Mosrael, which only works when she is able to enter Death-- but their application is limited and sometimes dangerous.
~Charter Magic: Blessed by the magical Charter at birth, Lirael can mentally access the never-ending flow of that Charter-- structured, ordered magic-- and cast spells by stringing together symbols: drawing them, saying their names, or even infusing the marks into a whistle. In the Devil's Sea, this magic is very weak, and most days she has trouble even sensing the Charter.
~Remembrancer: As both a Daughter of the Clayr and an Abhorsen, after exploring a cave underneath the Clayr Glacier and finding The Book of Remembrance and Forgetting, Lirael has both that book always on her person and a small, hand-held mirror called the Dark Mirror through which, if she stands in the river of Death and donates a drop of her own blood, she can see into the past. This ability only works in Death, and thus is severely limited in the Devil's Sea.
~Charter-skins: As a benefit of studying the book In the Skin of a Lyon, Lirael can create a Charter-skin, or a magical "fabric" that, when she fits herself into it, lets her "wear" a shape not her own. Creating skins takes at least four hours of spell-work, each skin can only be used once, and she can only wear a skin for a maximum of two or three hours before it starts becoming uncomfortable and fraying at the seams. The shapes she can make are that of a barking owl, a russet bear, and an ice otter. Without reliable access to the Charter, creating a Charter-skin becomes an all-day affair, if she's even that lucky!
~Sword: Lirael has an enchanted sword, made by her nephew Sameth for her use and balanced for the left hand, and knows fairly well how to use it. Since her arrival at the island, she has been exhaustively practicing with it, and has gotten much stronger with her left hand than when she first arrived.


☓ Weaknesses:
~Shy: After almost a decade of hiding from social interaction in general, Lirael is very shy. She can, in an emergency, take command and control of a situation-- but in anything where she doesn't have to make split-second decisions to save someone's life, she really would prefer to keep herself in the background and not talk to anybody. It makes her lonely and uncertain how to even reach out, much less make a friend, and she’s practically terrified of verbal confrontation.
~Curious: For all she's more fond of dogs, Lirael resembles a cat in at least one way: she's extremely curious, and if there's a mystery, so long as it doesn't require involving herself with people, she's usually going to investigate it. In the Clayr's Glacier, her curiosity often got her into difficult spots, going places others never dared and sticking her nose where it really didn't belong, but at least she always managed to get out again.
~Low Self-Esteem: Lirael spent the first eighteen years of her life feeling outcaste and worthless, being the only Clayr in the Clayr's Glacier who didn't have the ability to See the future. Only in the past six months has Lirael had any sense of self outside of that. It's a very hard thing to put behind her, especially now, separated from the few things that pulled her in the right direction.
~Suicidal: The Abhorsen's innate sense of Death makes them rather morbid people, and with her lifetime of depression and loneliness behind her, it is hardly surprising that Lirael actually tried to kill herself twice. Once was aborted by chance and fear, and the second time by a close friend and guardian. Since then, she hasn't thought of killing herself directly, but it wouldn't be hard to bring those thoughts to the surface again, especially if it requires sacrificing herself for others-- her life, she feels, is much less important than others'.
~One-handed: Very recently in her own past, Lirael lost the use of her right hand, bitten off and burned clean at the wrist. She has since mostly gotten used to this loss, but she still has trouble with many things that quite often require two hands-- and she certainly cannot wield both a bell and a sword, like she’s used to doing.
~The Charter: While Lirael's ability to touch the Charter is a boon to her in her own world, here the Charter is distant and cold, and it is difficult to even touch, much less pull marks out of. It leaves her-- who has long been dependent on magic and the comfort the Charter gives-- feeling completely adrift and alone.

☓ Strengths:
~Common Sense: Logic is Lirael's friend, as are expediency and practicality. The simplest way to do something, that's what she'll do, and if you're doing something stupid-- well, she might not call you on it, because that would mean having to confront you, but she'll certainly know it, and be ready to try and fix things when you fail.
~Strong Will: This is a requirement of being an Abhorsen, for sometimes one's will is the only thing between a necromancer and death at the hands of the Dead she summoned or is battling, a strong will keeps the necromancer's bells in hand, and a strong will is required to keep steady footing against the strong current of the river in Death. Lirael has it, though she doesn't always realize it: when she is focused on something, it is difficult to break her focus; she has a strong resistance to beguilement and compulsion; and when she wants something, if it's only a question of willpower and personal effort, she'll very likely succeed in getting it.
~Courage Under Fire: When someone's life in on the line, Lirael's heritage and strong sense of duty allow her to put her shyness aside and actually take something like command-- though even then she's always polite about it, not wanting to offend. Still, she has a cool head in an emergency and isn't easily frightened by danger or the unknown, and is quick to leap to the defense of another.
~Knowledge: While Lirael's knowledge is of a world not connected to Earth, she still has a lot of it, and while it might not be directly applicable to know how to bind a Stilken or learn the true name of a Greater Dead or even fix the binding on a book... it might wind up applicable, somehow or another.
~Healing: Over her time spent in the Devil’s Sea, Lirael spent a great amount of time studying medicine and healing, and has put much of her magical practice towards that use. She took over the hospital when all the actual doctors vanished, and she takes that duty very seriously.

☓ Intranet post sample:
Network tag at TDS on Livejournal

☓ Log post sample:
Log tag at TDS on Livejournal

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