Throne of Shadows App

1. Player Information
Name: Bree
Username: AIM = ThriceWiddershin Plurk = ThriceWiddershins Email = ThriceWidderwhins@gmail.com
Current characters in ToS: None
Reserve: Reserve is here

3. Original Character Information
Name: Zoey Westen
PB: Ksenia Solo
Journal: http://cordelisse.dreamwidth.org/
Age: 23
Appearance: Zoey is pale, with black hair and blue eyes. Slim, though muscular, build and around 5’4 in height. She gets her eyes from her father, and her colouring and height from her mother. Her usual clothing of choice involves a shirt/tank top/tunic, jeans/shorts/leggings, boots/flats and a leather jacket if the weather calls for it, but she loves wearing skirts and dresses, too. She owns a wide variety of fedoras (there’s a wide brimmed, 1940’s style one that’s her favourite). She enjoys bright colours, but in moderation, so there will usually be one brightly coloured piece of clothing in whatever she’s wearing; at the very least a scarf.

If it’s nice enough out… she runs around barefoot; a holdover from gymnastics. Shoes are a pain in the ass when you’re doing a floor routine or are on the balance beam. She tends to use her agility to get to out of the way places, or find just the perfect place to sit/perch (the higher the better). It’s not quite parkour, but by the gods she can climb and jump and scale her way to out of the way places with ease.

Her face is heart shaped, and there’s a small scar running just through her right eyebrow from what was dubbed the fireworks incident. There’s a faint smattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks, but they’re not really visible unless you’re right next to her.

Her straight black hair falls around her shoulder blades and is usually worn down, though she wears it pulled back or braided if she’s doing gymnastics or corde lisse. There are always a handful of hair ties around her wrist, in case she needs one on short notice. She wears glasses sometimes, a pair of cat-eye frames in dark blue. They’re her “librarian glasses”.

She has a tattoo of a flowering vine, starting at her foot/ankle, that winds up her right leg, curves up her hip and onto her back, stopping at the top of her right shoulder. Very similar to this.

There’s a series of scars across her shoulders, back (heaviest on her left-hand side) and left leg that can’t be anything but claw marks. But claw marks belonging to no animal that exists in nature. On her upper right arm there is yet another scar that can be nothing except a bite. After they’re healed (upon her arrival in the city of Dagaz) they’ll still ache sometimes.

On the back of her neck there is a vertical, rectangular black mark. Nondescript, doesn't seem to be anything more than something resembling a tattoo, but she doesn't seem to be terribly keen on talking about it. In fact, if she's thinking about it she makes a point to keep it covered with her hair. The same goes for the scars on her back.

There is a small metal cuff around her right wrist. It is ALWAYS around her right wrist. She never takes it off. Strange...

She carries herself like the odd combination of gymnast and swordfighter that she is, though she has been known to adopt a more... slouchy, relaxed air. Goes along with the whole ‘underestimating her’ thing.

Since her father’s disappearance she’s taken to carrying her throwing daggers a lot of the time. They were a gift from him... and she carries them to feel close to him. To ensure she remembers what she’s searching for. An acquaintance made her a whole series of sheathes and various other weapons paraphernalia.

Homeworld: Zoey's homeworld is definitely modern. It's... pretty much like our own, honestly; there’s not much special or unusual about it. Save for the simple fact that Zoey is a seer. No aliens, no magic, no demons or vampires. She is literally the only odd duck, as far as she knows. She's never met ANYONE like herself. Not until she was drawn into The Carnival. There she met drummers who could see the past and present.

The Carnival was… different. It wasn’t a part of her universe. It wasn’t a part of ANY universe. It was its own universe. An… instance of reality. It occasionally ended up places that it wasn’t, such as Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory, or the Enterprise. These visits allowed the inhabitants an occasional taste of life outside the gates. The Carnival was a large part of Zoey’s recent history, and while she is immensely glad to be free of it she would go back in order to protect those she left behind.

History: Zoey Irulan Westen grew up in England with two parents that indulged her early interest in history and literature. They often took trips to various historical sites, as Cassandra Westen’s job was quite well-paying. It was when she was eight that Zoey’s gift of ‘sight fully manifested itself. Even before that age she was a keenly aware little girl, who sometimes knew things before they were going to happen. But it wasn't a constant, not the way it was once it fully manifested. At first she didn’t think anything of it; sure, she’d know the words someone was going to speak before they said them, or know without a doubt that someone was going to drop something or trip moments before it occurred; even a person's name before they were introduced. She had had it happen before. It was no big deal. But it wasn’t until her first vision that she started figuring things out. That young, she didn’t know to keep it to herself. She told. It didn’t go well; the information spread through the school like wildfire, and by the end of the week her schoolmates thought she was weird and a little crazy. She learned her lesson well, and from that point on guarded her gift closely.

When she was ten, Zoey’s mother died. And she had a vision of it; it was the first time a vision had ever affected her personally, and it broke her heart. Afterwards, her father took a job that involved them having to move regularly. Tom Westen didn’t need to work, as his wife had left her family very well off, but he wanted to do more than just live off his deceased wife’s money. It took them everywhere from France to Australia. Zoey went to a lot of different schools, and rapidly grew accustomed to it; she kept to herself a lot of the time. There were maybe two or three people that she became close enough to that she actually kept in touch.

Shortly after her father found a job that let him put down roots in North Carolina (he opened a book shop), Zoey left for college and majored in ancient/medieval history (Europe) and mythology and folklore, minoring in archaeology. She had found herself with a great interest in the subject, ever since she was a child; especially the myths involving seers.

That focus/interest was, of course, due to the fact that she was intimately familiar with prophecy and foresight. And as she was was the only seer she knew her only source of knowledge was books. (A detailed explanation/description is located in the skills/abilities/powers section)

She hasn’t tried anything else like throwing runes, or reading tea leaves or anything, but there are books in her suitcase on the subject. She’s wary to mess with things she doesn’t understand. She can’t exactly help the seer business.

Her father vanished while she was on her graduation present, a trip abroad. Even across the ocean... she managed to SEE it. Zoey woke up from a horrific dream, screaming and crying tears of blood. All she could remember was danger and darkness. When she returned to North Carolina... he was gone, no sign of where he had gone to, if he had been taken, if something had happened to make him leave. So she gathered anything that might be a clue, or hint, packed up the rest of her stuff, and took off trying to find him. Something started pulling at her, drawing her to it... and she kept going towards it until she reached the Carnival of Rust. For whatever reason, she was brought there. Whether or not it has something to do with her father’s disappearance she has yet to find out

Powers/Talents: Zoey was her father’s little girl. He taught her how to play pool, and sword-fighting (when she proceeded past his ability he found her an instructor wherever they were living). When she wanted to learn gymnastics he, of course, agreed. She LOVED gymnastics, and kept up with when she could, even learning corde lisse and aerial silks. She used her gymnastics skills to get to out of the way places, or a good place to sit (the higher up the better). While she was abroad, she found a place to teach her corde lisse/aerial silks more in-depth. It turned out she had a knack for it.

She is skilled with dual long daggers, long swords and gladius, as well as the quarterstaff and bow; although the quarterstaff is her least strong weapon, due to her only recently taking it up.

Zoey is also ambidextrous; which she puts to very good use in her tendency to dual wield weapons.

One of her favourite non-physical hobby (besides reading, of course) is photography. She loves taking photographs of places; especially old buildings. She kind of collects cameras as much as she collects swords. While living in Australia, she discovered a love of pottery and sculpture. Throwing a pot on a pottery wheel or working with clay freehand quickly was added to her list of favourite hobbies, and no matter where she lived she tried to keep up with it. The pottery wheel that her father gave her as a birthday present travelled with them. It was just a matter of gathering the rest of the necessary supplies.

She has an ear for accents and enjoys occasionally dropping into something different. During college she'd pick a class and use a different accent in that class. Fooled the professors, and amused the few students who had other classes with her. Interestingly, this often happens when Zoey is drinking (and sometimes when she's tired). When she drinks she tends to get... English. Both vocabulary and accent. It’s much more noticeable than when she is sober (there is the slightest hint of an accent then, due to her having moved around so much).

She doesn't consider herself a polyglot (though she is, since the definition is being able to speak or write multiple languages), but she does know a few different languages rather fluently. Russian, French, Greek, and Czech to be exact. She knows a decent amount of Latin, and curses in pretty much every language that she could learn. When she's extremely tired she tends to stop thinking entirely in English, so she occasionally shifts into speaking other languages. She's gotten pretty good at realising when it's happening, though.

Zoey learned to tango and waltz when she made the acquaintance of an instructor while in Spain. He was close to being someone she considered a friend. She would deny this, of course, instead deeming him a 'close acquaintance'.

Something ELSE her father taught her was how to throw knives/daggers. And when she was young he would take her to fairs and re-enactments (and the occasional bar) and essentially make the claim that his daughter was more of a man than the big burly guys doing the knife throwing. Obviously they didn't exactly believe that was in any way possible. So then wee!Zoey would show her skill. They bought many a fancy dinner that way.

Zoey is also a seer. Dreams and portents, etc. Past, present, future. Whether or not it’s appropriate or even accurate, she tends to use the term ‘foresight’ as a catch-all term for her gift. Nothing particularly powerful (or so she thinks, anyway; there’s always the potential for more, isn’t there?), usually manifesting itself in dreams or a prickling at the back of her neck, on her skin. The prickling/crawling of her skin is the primary way her abilities warn her of danger. The stronger the sensation, the more immediate and bad the danger is. Sometimes she gets an idea about something and it occurs, or words pop into her head and someone around her utters them mere moments later. She can’t count the number of times she’s learned someone’s name before being told. Sometimes she just KNOWS. Someone will spill a drink, or trip on some stairs, and the like. Her dreams are usually cryptic, fragmented, and sometimes hard to remember upon awakening beyond the vague feeling that SOMEthing is going to happen, and whether it’s good or bad (the details would reveal themselves in time; usually in déjà vu or the like). When she does remember the details upon waking, it’s sometimes hard for her to piece together what they mean. The worse the visions/dreams are, the easier it is for her to remember the details. Sometimes she even wakes from her dreams with the taste of something lingering on her tongue (the taste of tar, the taste of blood, for examples). The worse the vision/the more important the vision the more intense it is. At their worst she is screaming and writhing in agony, crying tears of blood. Lesser degrees involve feeling and suffering the pains of injuries, spitting up mouthfuls of blood. She has taken to keeping a detailed journal of all her visions. It has expanded over time to fill several journals.

In part because of her gift of foresight, she is something of a sensitive when it comes to things the naked eye can’t see. She’s very aware of her own mind, having essentially trained herself to be once her gift manifested and she figured out what it was. She’s not telepathic or anything even remotely close to it, but she is aware when other people try to muck around with her head and can fight them/keep them out to some degree. Whether this is a result of dealing with her gift or just sheer stubbornness Zoey doesn’t know.

Personality: Zoey is incredibly fairly sarcastic at times, especially if she doesn’t know someone. She can be friendly, but is very cautious about letting people get close as a result of moving around so much after her mother died (for her father’s new job). What was the point of making friends if only to move away a few months later? So Zoey instead gained acquaintances wherever she went. People who she got along with well enough to not mind spending some time with them, but never really truly got to know them, or let them get to know her. She also gained an ability to be all right with being alone. Though she has a deep-seated longing for close friends, she’d never admit it. A bit guarded is a good way to describe her.

Zoey is an extremely intelligent young woman, though she doesn’t mind pretending to be less so sometimes, in order to make people underestimate her. She doesn’t generally care what people think of her, and she’s well aware of the fact that she’s more than a little bit odd at times. Portents of the future tend to do that to a person. She is not all that great at math. It was one of her worst subjects in school, and she had to work her ass off to get any sort of decent passing grade.

Zoey loves the rain. When she was a child she’d go outside and play whenever there was a downpour. Afterwards she would go inside and her father would fix her a cup of hot chocolate. Then they’d sit down and read. When she was small he’d read to her. But not the typical fare one would usually read to a child. He read her the Dune series, Dracula, and Shakespeare’s plays. And as a result she was usually completely at a loss as to why other children didn’t know what the Fremen were, who Van Helsing was, hadn’t read The Colour out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft, or weren’t familiar with Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet. This tradition also led to her becoming an avid reader as she grew up. She also devoured every mythology she could get her hands on; the mythology books took up a lot of room on her bookcase.

Zoey has an irrational fear of elevators. Something about it being a small enclosed space that moves freaks her out. Oddly enough, enclosed spaces that don’t move don’t bother her at all.

She has a much more rational wariness of reflective surfaces. Particularly mirrors. After all she has been through, how could she not?

Maybe it's because of how she was raised, or the fact that she's just had to deal with things, but she's generally able to keep a level head when it comes to intense or stressful situations. Take care of things, deal with what's happening now, and deal with the rest later. She might be freaking the fuck out on the inside, but on the outside she's reasonably calm and collected. Granted, she tends to get a little mouthy when under pressure. Sarcasm and snark are weapons she uses a lot.

Being able to compartmentalize things has come as a direct result of her gift of foresight. She's trained herself to put whatever it is she has to in a box at the back of her mind so she can deal with reaction, fall apart a little, or anything else, after the immediate crisis is done, once she's alone. This ability to compartmentalize has been helped, in no small part, by her adaptability. She's an incredibly adaptable young woman, and even if she hadn't been that way from a very young age she would have become so over the course of dealing with her gift and being trapped in the Carnival.

As a result of moving around so much and spending so much time on her own, she's an incredibly independent person. And pretty damn stubborn to boot; it helps with the remaining calm and collected in tough situations.

Why would your character be chosen? I think the reason behind this particular Zoey’s being chosen might be her status as a seer. Either that or her sheer stubbornness. But really, I think it’s probably the foresight. Or quite possibly the combination of stubbornness, seer-gift, and adaptability.

How much does your character know about nonhumans? Well, Zoey is an incredibly well read young woman, and due to her gift she became an intense researcher when things either A) interest her, or B) are an integral part of her person like the being a seer thing. So I could see her maybe knowing a decent amount; having heard SOMEthing, at least, in her reading.

Why this character: Zoey is one of my favourite original characters I’ve created, and definitely the most played. She’s just so FUN! I have such a grand time with her snark and mouthiness. I will DEFINITELY be able to keep this character voice and find them interesting after playing a while. I love seeing how she develops, and how different CR effects her. As well as how all that she has gone through changes her/her interactions with people.

Past Game History: WOW. Where do I begin? Um, well... ::clears throat::

Shortly after her arrival at the Carnival of Rust Zoey came to the realisation that there was far more to the Carnival and, indeed, the Carnie himself, that met the eye. From their first official encounter after being conscripted into the Carnival’s service in the acrobatics practice tent where she realised he had Nemo’s eyes and then experienced a vision of wood nails being pulled from flesh. It only got worse from there.

The portents and dreams she was receiving certainly didn’t help things. Her gift was different at the Carnival. Zoey’s “prophetic dreams” weren’t all that detailed there. While outside the Carnival she was likely to get details, SOME, anyway (even if she didn’t remember then straightaway)... at the Carnival all she usually received was vague impressions. Perhaps because of the nature of the Carnival there were a lot of vague, dark nightmares, where there’s something bad but she has no idea WHAT it is or HOW to deal with it. And when she DID get a dream where she remembered all the details in stark, vivid detail, they were always dark, horrible things that usually left her unnerved and somewhat ill.

The realisation that not everyone was as... aware of the dangers and unnatural-ness of the Carnival was made most evident when she aided the Carnie and a young woman named Ashlin in fastening the tents for securely. That was the moment when she started protecting others. Ashlin was the first, as she was both wholly unaware and entirely innocent. So she began her tendency to attempting to step in and/or draw attention to herself in an effort to keep Ashlin and others safe. That was why she volunteered to hold the nail in place for the Carnie. Only her hand got stuck, held in place as if by some invisible force, with an accompanying vision.

Zoey made acquaintances and friends, growing close to some and protective of... quite a few more. Jason Oliver, Morpho, Ashlin Thomas, Jilles Bandone. As well as Juniper Jensen and Angel. And Nemo, the man trapped inside the fortune teller’s booth whose appearance had been stolen by the Carnie holding them all captive. She even told a few of them what she could do; which NEVER happened. It was a card she kept very close to her chest. Jason… grew to be quite important to her. Whatever it was between the two of them wasn’t something that Zoey could put into words. It started out as simple fun, finding enjoyment where she could in the hellhole she found herself stuck in. But she grew quite fond of him. He was someone she was content to see what would happen with; he helped make the Carnival a little bit less awful.

Even as she found herself letting people get close, letting herself care and grow protective she was trying to figure out the secrets of the Carnival and to keep those around her safe. For some of them she would even put herself deliberately in the line of fire to keep the Carnie’s attention off of them. Not everyone could see what she saw.

She met a pair of drummers who had a gift similar to hers, which was unexpected. It was the first time for that, and she hoped that in asking questions about their gift she might learn more about her own. Despite the fact that they LIKED the Carnival, and the Carnie... she still found herself liking them a little.

After only what seemed like such a short time, only a fortnight or two, something changed. Zoey had been feeling under the weather for days, a lingering malaise that she couldn’t explain... and it finally culminated in her being broadsided by a vision unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Tears of blood, blinding agony, a twisted nursery rhyme, and images that would haunt her forever. What was worse was that the Carnie KNEW. Knew that she was a seer. Granted, in all likelihood he already knew. But now she knew he knew. And he knew she knew he knew. She might have learned more about the Carnival from that vision, but it also drew the Carnie’s attention to her.

That night she discovered even more about the person masquerading as a Carnie than the portents and visions had already showed her. Later that evening she went to the bathhouse to shower, wash away the lingering tears of blood and try and let the hot water soothe away the aches and pains. The Carnie had other plans. Taking the unfamiliar form of a young woman, she caught Zoey by surprise. There was a punishment for what she had seen, what she had said. And in doing so revealed something that Zoey hadn’t known. The punishment she had in mind backfired, catching the Carnie in its snare as well. It was only together they managed to escape the danger the bathhouse mirrors afforded.

Shortly after that, the Carnie disappeared and the Carnival started to go... haywire. So Zoey ventured into the roped-off House of Dusk in an attempt to discover whether or not she was trapped within its walls. Within its mirrors. It was the only place explicitly roped off, so it stood to reason...

All of this has made Zoey understandably cautious around mirrors, and all over more wary and protective of those she has come to care about. And being yanked into yet another unknown situation against her will isn't going to do good things to her temper and irritability/snarkiness.

4. Samples
Please either include a first-person entry that could be your character's first post on The Network, or a third-person prose or action spam sample that could be your character's reaction to arriving in Dagaz. For the other two samples, links to previous character examples are fine.

First-Person: This is getting beyond fucking ridiculous. I’m so bloody tired of constantly being yanked from one strange situation to another with no rest or reprieve. Is there something about me that just screams ‘Fuck me over’? Am I CURSED? It’s certainly beginning to fucking seem like it. I’m trapped, once again, somewhere against my will. I suppose the fact that it’s not a Carnival should be a source of relief. But it isn’t.

I left people behind.

I left them.

I left him.

Third-Person:
Zoey is realising the price paid for seeing

Third Sample: Something was wrong. More wrong than usual Zoey had previously thought, anyway. She had gone into the hall of mirrors before Tamara, sharpie in hand, to try and pre-empt any sort of attack by the reflections. Whereas only moments ago she had been hearing growls and hisses coming from the mirrors. But now they had gone silent. Which was equally unnerving. Where had they gone? What could have possibly silenced them? She had no answers for that question. And THAT worried her.

Squaring her shoulders, she pulled the sheet from the first mirror. And froze in surprise. That... was not the hall of mirrors being reflected back at her. It was just... nothing. Shadows, swirling and drifting like smoke in nothingness. She brushed her fingertips against the reflective surface, frowning.

This was bad. She could feel it in her bones, in the prickling of warning on her skin. What are you trying to tell me?! She couldn’t do anything if she didn’t know what the danger was. Sometimes her gift was incredibly frustrating. Is it the Reflections... Or something else?

Before she could do anything but pull her hand away from the glass, the shadows were billowing OUT of the mirror, curling and twisting around her like an embrace. With a scream it pulled her through to the other side.