neverenstones | Wake Application Post

thewake Application
The Player
Name	Dray
Age	29
Personal Journal	dray
Email Contact	dracothrope at gmail drayma
Current Character(s)	N/A
The Character
Name	Fara fa Edilion
Age	18
Appearance	Fara is a young noblewoman, from a distinguished family of city-state overseers. She stands around 5'7", is slim of build, and has pale, olive tinted skin prone to burning under sun and reddening after drinking. Her hair is black, short and often crimped into intricate waves. When she's able to, she dresses proudly in the colours of her family: blues of various shades, silver, and black. She enjoys intricate beadwork and an eccentric variety of patterns and textures in her wardrobe, and pearls or other semi-precious black stones on silver jewellery. She isn't vain: when it's more practical she will not shirk appropriate wear for the task. She has an observant, pointed look about her facial features, with sharp, pale blue eyes and thin lips. Her body language is still, especially for someone of her and enthusiasm and optimism. When Fara is enthusing about something she uses tonality and volume rather than bodily gesticulations.
Character History	Fara fa Edilion was born into a complex noble family whose responsibilities boil down to the running of the city-state of Edilion. Her family has heavy ties to other human city-states across the continent. Humans from the northern province of Novinitu largely exist under the patronage of the draconic-looking asandae. This means that Fara's family only partially have rulership of Edilion, as the full governance of the city is overseen by asandus representatives. Fara grew up in a quagmire of political manoeuvring between the council of her most eminent family members and these asandus reps, where legislation proposed by the asandae often conflicted with the needs and wants of the human residents of the city, and had to be fought over to change. Fara's inheritance, not to mention the complex hierarchy of the rest of her family, is partially to blame due to asandus love of order and structure. Because of it, she nor her sistren will ever have to worry about plots to usurp the Evren Stones (see 'powers and abilities' below), as the system of lotteries and boards determining who stands for what place in line of inheritance changes every three to four years. It's awfully complex but because she has been steeped in this kind of lifestyle from birth, this serves as a base point by which Fara is capable of thinking quite diplomatically and with great tact. Fara grew up intimately aware of the dance of inheritance: who was in line for the Stones, when, and how far away -- for her, things were relatively easy, as she has been between fourth and third in line to inheritance most of her teenage life. Her entire peer group consisted of cousins from different branches of her family, but she never the less forged deep friendships that afforded cultural education of her cousins different city-states of origin. As Fara's father hailed from a family of northern trading magnates in the sub-arctic port city of Navale, she often travelled between the two, usually with her two closest friends, Jael and Nella fa's Edilion. This afforded her her first love of exploration, which she holds to this day. Being a naturally inquisitive young woman meant that Fara spent a lot of that travelling time studying, reading about other city-states, about Edilion's history, and quite a lot about asandus culture, given that she was transfixed by the splendour of the inhuman species. Her mother, a preternaturally intelligent but decidedly cold woman, kept a large library on her estate that Fara would disappear into for days. She grew up quite sheltered in some respects, but with a wide-spanning knowledge of her home and other important human settlements on the continent. When the time came for her Exchange -- an Avengaean human custom in which youths are encouraged to set out from home to live and work at another settlement for a time -- Fara was positively delighted to be chosen to be sent to the far southern city-state of Isiodoth. Her Exchange, like that of every other young Edilion noblewoman, included a marriage contract, and as Fara and her parents had been in correspondence with a likely prince of the southern city for the past three years, everything was converging together for an adventure of a lifetime. Fara brought her two favourite peers with her on her southern trek, expecting light-hearted adventure and new friends along the way, but this only lasted past her journey to the desert city of Fensirt. She had picked up friends named Kaitan Friave (a human), as well as Tunada and Qensuna (daemons, both), and had begun to make inroads to befriend her asandus guard, Laedo. Her plans to bond with these people were thrown on its head when her caravan was attacked by roving caetrans, magic-using creatures diametrically opposed to asandae. From there, Fara's life was thrown into complete and catastrophic disarray. She was saved by Laedo, Kaitan and Tunada only to find the briefest reprieve in a human desert fortress before several deadly, mysterious asandus elite made a play for her, whisking her away to an isolated prison camp far northeast in the mountains. In the meantime, the caetrans that had lost her made a full-on assault of the city of Fensirt, acting on false intel that the Edilion woman had been returned there. Kaitan, Laedo and the daemons determined that these magic-generating creatures were spurred to focus on Fara by a prophecy surrounding her chances of creating or somehow becoming a future human god, thus granting her entire species the forbidden fruit of magic and tipping the scales of dominance that had been holding the planet in check for unknown generations. Fara, made aware of this only very late in the game, had begun to surmise that somehow her family and her city-state were under duress. She had been put to the question by asandus religious militants, but never given a clear answer about what her part was in her kidnapping. Her friends gained in the desert were ultimately able to work together with the local population of daemons to break Fara free, but at that point the daemons reneged on their agreement, taking control of Fara to bring her to an unknown point somewhere near the center of the continent. Qensuna, being a daemon herself, was able to work her way through the solid wall of kidnappers to the human at the horde's center, and Fara, working with her, began to crack the psychological code that was controlling the daemons' actions as a hive-minded mass. The two struggled for days to get the horde surrounding them to allow Fara to get free, but they had a breakthrough only once they had converged upon Fensirt, over which asandae had joined combat against the caetrans to determine ownership of the shattered oasis' remains. Daemons, being magic users thriving off of the scraps of the two larger species, could sense that mass quantities of expended magic had been slagged across the city, and Fara and Qensuna were able to code a change of direction into the daemons' behavioural patterns that veered them directly towards Fensirt, and into the battle. From there, Fara groped her way towards implementing useful commands, ordering the horde to take down both caetrans and asandae; she was feeling deep-seated rage for the creatures over their mounting injustices. When it seemed that the daemons might wipe out both forces by draining them of their very lives, the goddesses Aska and Zenite joined the fray, snatching Fara away from the field to deal with her directly. It appeared that the only reason Fara had not been struck from history had been a due to a disagreement between the two. Zenite wanted Fara destroyed, erased from existence to prevent humans from obtaining a powerful source of magic that would manifest should she somehow become or create a human god. Aska wanted Fara isolated and studied, the better to understand how a human might obtain magic to such potency to spark the process. Both were unnerved that Fara was capable of controlling the daemon population, for the appearance of the horde was an unexpected factor in their celestial chess game to determine whose decision to honour. The battle of Fensirt was to be the deciding factor for the possession of the human, and Fara, realizing this, seized her chance to negotiate. She only managed to survive the confrontation with the goddesses because she bartered for her own isolation: the goddesses agreed to seal Fara in the tomb that the city of Fensirt had become, encased in magic made impenetrable by their force of will. The point at which Fara will join the Wake is roughly three months after she has been put into isolation. Only two attendants -- one for each goddess -- have had access to her, and Fara is resigned to never seeing another living human in her life.
Personality	Fara is bright, enthusiastic, and well-trained in the art of politics and social cues within her large family. She has the proclivity for assessing tactics and could perhaps become a leader one day with a little time and training, but she has always prefered to work with others over any kind of delegation. She is a keen listener and a debater, but she is also compassionate and explorative, eager to learn new things about people and places. Fara's life had been quite sheltered right up to her Exchange day, and her view on other species touches on xenophobic. Her family strongly believes that asandae are a tolerable inconvenience, always overly stuffy and prone to anal retentiveness even if they are beautifully sculpted and invaluable in their gifts of magic to the city. Her entire culture has always placed daemons on the very bottom of the totem pole: living creatures serving base needs and jobs that humans would never stoop to, such as textile production, butchery, and other primary and secondary industries. She had not been consciously aware that she was she was speaking down to non-human species until she spent extensive time with Qensuna, but sometimes she has a humans-first mindset will slip through her learning. She can sometimes be seen as naive and easy to manipulate, and Fara is only half of the time capable of using that to her advantage. Now that she has gone through so much she is more cautious than she used to be as a child, but she is also more lonely and easy to unnerve. She grew up privileged and from a huge, many-branching family from which she drew her entire circle of peers, and being isolated from other humans and the world at large has left a hole in her heart that wants desperate mending after the psychological beating she's been through.
Powers and Abilities	Despite worries of the contrary, Fara has no magic or special abilities of her own. If she were given the Evren Stones, she would be able to use them to see, manipulate, and refine any magic in the vicinity, but she still would not be able to generate this raw resource -- only asandae and caetrans in her world are capable of that.
World Summary	Avengaea is a fantasy world in which, with their ability to generate and manipulate magic, caetrans rule the Southern continent and asandae rule the North. While asandae are generally seen as the 'good' guys and caetrans as the 'evil', both come with their own baggage around which humans and other species have to bow and scrape. Fara's world centers around the city of Edilion, though she has been to other places on the Northern continent (some by choice, some, not so much.) Edilion is touted as the northern human central hub for the planet, and it is home to one of only two acknowledged royal human lineages. The city's keepers are the human noble line, named unimaginatively the Edilions (or 'fa Edilions' if appellations are to be used!) This line centers around a singular matriarch, the holder of the Evren Stones. The matriarch, when wielding the Stones, is capable of manipulating magic in the same way that daemons can: she can see it and pick it up, shape it to a task or a spell, use it to enhance her senses or defend herself -- and more often to leverage political strength and autonomy against the considerable asandus presence in the city. Fara has grown up watching this interplay of politics, has been steeped in it since a young age. She sees very little wrong with the system as it stands, but has a particularly vehement allegiance to her family and a naive but optimistic view on humans across the rest of the continent. Most humans from Edilion see asandae as benevolent care providers and as scheming political masterminds both, though in Fara's recent experiences the former view has boiled away to leave a mostly bitter aftertaste. Humans have no magical abilities of their own. They cannot see magic, nor can they manipulate it in its raw form. The only way that humans can even interact with this vital element is through physical triggers built into (for example) every day household items or (another example) teleportation nodes primed to a specific entry/exit. What most humans don't know is that Aska and Zenite (the two goddesses of the planet) were born from mortal stock, generating vast fields of magic that they chose to imbue their loyal followers and eventually their entire species with. If a human were to begin to generate that kind of energy, their species would be uplifted, and would pose a threat to the current balance. Fara's is a world that has been entrenched in a rigid order for a very long time. Even the slightest threat based on the words of a prophecy has led to her mistreatment, and has soured her to the idea that these creatures would provide unfaltering guidance to the humans that they claim to protect.
Writing Sample: Network
[A young woman with wavy black hair comes on-screen, her face drawn in a serious expression. Her hands are folded serenely, one over the other, on the table before her as she faces the camera.] Please, I need to speak with somebody who has been here for some time. I have questions about bending... and I have questions about gods. I know I have been here for a while now, but I feel like I can't wait any longer! It's been so... so... miraculous, having you, all of you help me up when I was in need. I know I may have come across as very silly, and I've never really explained exactly why I've been... well, you know. But I need some advice, and I don't mean the kind that you give every new arrival. I think I understand why I'm here, now, but I don't want to go this alone. I need help.
Writing Sample: Third Person
After she'd been settled into the manor overlooking one of Nautilus' wide, spiralling roads, Fara had taken her time to get the lay of the land. She'd traded her rather inauspiciously fancy dresses for a pair of practical canvas pants (too tight for her liking, but still roomy; she had no idea what 'jeans' were, but these she wore!) and a chaste, short-sleeved top, both hand-me-downs from other residents who'd since moved on to bending their own clothing. She carried her slippers loosely from one hand, preferring the feel of fresh, untrimmed grass on her bare feet. To others, this might seem silly, but the woman had spent three months trapped in a desert bluff without so much as a hint of moss to keep her company. To a girl from the parklands of Edilion, this felt truly heavenly. She had made her way up to the crumbling walls of the fortress, choosing one half-fallen turret to climb. The chunks seemed well embedded in the earth, their stony facades well-covered with creeping green life. She'd meant to make it to the top to get a look at her surroundings, but she discovered the repercussions of the glass-filled city of Kalliste that had fallen on Nautilus before she ever made it off the ground. "Oh, ouch!" Fara grabbed at her foot, feeling a stab of pain and betrayal as she hopped back a step. She dropped her slippers, looking down at the damage: a shard of something had sliced the pad of her foot with a nasty gash, and now that she looked more closely, splinters of glass much more recent than the tumble-down of stone bricks around her lay almost everywhere. How she'd managed to avoid them this far was a mystery. "Zenite take it," she gave a low curse as she lowered herself gently and carefully onto the ground. She dug her little mirror out of the waist-line of her pants, composing herself with all the candor of a young noble. It helped that, though the slice was smarting with a steady pulse, she'd suffered worse all throughout her confinement. She meant to attempt to get her network communication device working once and for all, however she paused, startled, when she heard a small 'pock!' of a noise behind her. Twisting, casting a nervous glance about in case the stone wall she was resting near had finally decided to give in, she caught sight of a white and olive little tin, rectangular, innocent looking. There was a equal-armed cross sitting plumb in the middle, a sign for which Fara was completely ignorant, but she picked it up in any case and opened the clips with blood-smeared fingers. Inside: bandages, tweezers of a kind, and some tiny packages that revealed themselves to be wipes, which Fara discovered by ripping them open and recoiling at the alcohol scent. "Where on Avengaea did this come from?" she asked, and then, feeling that rosy glow of embarrassment, refined her question, "er, on Nautilus?" She ignored the pain in her foot for a moment, scanning the line of the fortress, and then the manor... she didn't see anybody, but she knew well enough what use all of these supplies could be. She got to work. Nautilus was proving to be a strangely friendly place, she was realizing... so long as she watched her step!