Charlotte Firiana

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Charlotte Firiana

[attr="class","appsubname"]a new path to be carved

[attr="class","appheading"]GENERAL INFORMATION

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[attr="class","appheading"]PERSONALITY

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Charlotte has been described as many things: gloomy, foreboding, cryptic, frightening, and even inhuman. To at least some extent, each of these descriptors has a degree of accuracy. Charlotte is not an individual who easily experiences joy; her personal circumstances have seen to it that her sense of hope and optimism has long since been almost completely crushed. Instead, she clings to a sense of duty. If Hope, Faith, and Optimism have deserted her than duty, and perhaps even spite, are what will force her to move herself through the day.[break][break]

But what many may not describe her as is 'whimsical'. And it's possible Charlotte does not quite see this even in herself, but perhaps as a subconscious means of providing herself with just a bit of fun, something to lean on in her troubling life, she has a habit of speaking in very airy, mysterious, or even poetic fashion, often talking in riddles or employing the use of elaborate metaphors or analogies in her speech. Though it is just as possible that the nature of her abilities and how she obtained them has left a mark on her psyche, but this whimsical aspect to her personality is certainly present.[break][break]

But this aside, she is indeed a very grim, dreary, and off-putting individual. She rarely smiles, does not laugh, and her eyes can fix you with a look that makes your soul feel heavy. Many people are unnerved merely at her presence, avoiding her, while others are drawn to the air of mystery she exudes. She is a very blunt individual when it comes down to it, and will not hesitate to tell her clients exactly what she sees for them should they enlist her talents for Fortune Telling, even if the news is very bad. Her seeming lack of concern for others and infrequently demonstrated emotional capacity has also caused many people to regard as a cursed, inhuman being.[break][break]

Charlotte does not care. She does not care what any of them think of her, for she is more concerned with something much bigger than the petty misgivings of people - she is concerned with saving them all from inevitable ruin.

[attr="class","appheading"]APPEARANCE

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Quite in line with her personality, Charlotte's appearance is the very picture of gloomy and dark. One might never know she is an Ajatar on account of the fact that she never shape-shifts. In fact, to her own knowledge, she can't; she lost that capability some time ago. She possesses a light build, standing at 5'7" and only weighing in at 103 lbs. Her figure is more or less fit due to her frequent traveling, hiking, and general surviving, but she is still mostly lacking in defined musculature. Her skin is of the olive complexion, mid-toned with darker and lighter flecks.[break][break]

Her body is not especially shapely, and is instead trim and well-suited for bearing the majority of traveling attire found in the world - this body selection of hers, which was settled onto all on its own without her control, may have been subconsciously impacted for that regard. She has violet, wavy hair that dips to just below her shoulders, the longer strands of which are usually curled. Her eyes are a bright, gem-like purple color, and are easily the most alive-looking part of her, and her eyelids and lips are frequently decorated with cosmetics of similar purple hues.[break][break]

This color preference appears evident in her style of dress as well, as she sticks almost strictly to clothing in those colors, or else straying into black. Though she adorns herself primarily in travel-capable clothes, including sturdy travelers boots, and efficient leggings, she also employs the use of somewhat gothic-oriented clothing, employing the occasional lacy or frilly dress, purple bracelets, and even fishnet material - this is all done as something of an image, to help her attract potential customers who want all the bells and whistles of a fortune teller, though she'd be lying if she said she didn't at least somewhat enjoy the look.[break][break]

Lastly, in any attire, she is usually seen wearing her deep violet cloak and hood, hiding her form from prying eyes when unwanted and providing her with both a valuable traveling garment and a means of furthering her mysterious image. She is also always seen traveling with an orb of clear crystal that emits a soft glow, which often floats beside her, seemingly completely of its own accord.[break][break]

[attr="class","appheading"]HISTORY

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Born to a pair of loving parents in Rielcia, Charlotte could not say she wanted for much when she was young. Her chiildhood was more or less very uneventful, and happy. The world was more or less at peace at the time, Rielcia was prospering, and Charlotte had plenty of friends.[break][break]
It was a rather plain life, but who could complain?[break][break]

As an Ajatar, Charlotte had the innate ability to shape-shift which began to manifest around the time she hit puberty. She lived in an Ajatar sub-community within Rielcia, so she was often surrounded by her kind and learned their values of honesty, but one cannot live in a bubble; every now and then there would be people coming through town, or she would venture out, and sometimes she would catch flack from individuals who regarded her poorly for being an Ajatar, casting a dubious eye at her or wanting her out of their presence as soon as possible. On such occasions, her volatile shape-shifting would often cause her to morph into somewhat gloomier appearances, an indicator that something was clearly wrong. If she came home looking like that, her mother would usually be right on top of things, preparing her favorite foods and reassuring her on her validity as a person.[break][break]

But Charlotte still often felt plagued by the same questions many Ajatars face; who was she, really? What was her identity, what made her stand out next to others? If you and others like you could be anything, then what could you really say was unique to yourself?[break][break]

An answer would come to her sooner than she may have expected. One particular day, in her adolescence, Charlotte and her friends were running around the City, entertaining themselves with their advanced games of "Extreme Hide and Seek", something you could only play in the mystical land of Illusions. But today, things would be a bit different. Whether it was because of boredom with the same routine, a tremendous show of guts, or perhaps just plain stupidity, Charlotte's friends all seemed to unanimously dare one another to take their game into the South-Western region of Rielcia, widely known for its dangerous and especially bewitching illusions.[break][break]

Charlotte was initially giddy with the prospect, but it wasn't long after the friends had all entered a wooded glade of ephemeral mist that Charlotte found herself lost. Her friends were nowhere to be found, and despite her calls for them, she heard no response. She began to cry, begging for help, when out of the corner of her eye she swore she saw a woman.[break][break]

She turned to face her, but there was nothing there. Then, off in the distance, she could faintly see her again. She knew it could just be an illusion, but desperate as she was, she pursued. Once again, the woman was gone, and Charlotte saw a fleeting glimpse on her peripheral. She chased the fleeting images of the woman for what seemed like hours, never finding her or getting a good look at her, but always feeling like she was right nearby, and all Charlotte needed to do was turn a few inches to see...[break][break]

She began to feel frightened again as the thought entered her mind: Just who was chasing whom?[break][break]

But just as she had this thought, she heard a voice. To this day she cannot remember what it said, what it sounded like, and at times wonders if she heard it at all. But after the sound of the voice that was or was not there, she felt a touch to the back of her head, like a buzzing in her nerves.[break][break]

And then all was black. Across the scape of her dreams, she thought she saw a blue rabbit hopping into a void of nothingness.[break][break]

When Charlotte awoke, she found herself in her own bed, in her own room. She couldn't remember how she had gotten home. When she asked her parents about it, they just seemed perplexed, wondering what she was talking about. Similarly, her friends were just as confused when she brought up the matter to them, none of them having recalled that Charlotte was missing for any length of time; according to them, they had all gotten scared by an illusion shortly after entering the ephemeral glade, and ran back to their homes. They said Charlotte had been with them.[break][break]

That same fear as before settled in her once again. But worried though she was, she decided to try and let it go, hoping it was just some fevered dream. However, as she slept that night, a real dream came to her. And in this dream, she saw a world of death. All around her, people were dying, the land was corroding, and a horror was seeping from beneath the planet's crust. It was the End of the World.[break][break]

She awoke with a start, breathing rapidly. The nightmare had seemed incredibly real, and she could recall nearly every detail as though she had just seen it, rather than dreamed it. When she managed to sleep again, she once again dreamed of the end, but this time she saw a world of unending torture. People lived with eternal lives, but it could not truly be called life, for they all lived in torment and endless grief. A shining being stood above them, horrible in its brilliance, and watched with endless glee as they suffered. It was The End, carried out by a different means.[break][break]

This time she was sobbing when she awoke, and when her parents came to investigate, they found that she was inconsolable. But she would not tell them what she had seen. She feared that if she did, she would somehow make it real, and kept her silence.[break][break]

But night after night after week after month, the dreams repeated themselves endlessly, and she eventually stopped crying or feeling fear. Instead, she began to feel grim resignation, and her disposition had lost all of the cheer she was once known for.[break][break]

To her parents' increased worry, they began to notice that her appearance had begun to settle with a seeming permanence. She was not yet at the age where she should have had full control of her shape-shifting, and yet she hadn't transformed in several days. To make matters worse, the appearance she bore was the one they often recognized as 'Charlotte's Bad Day', the gloomy, grim-looking girl.[break][break]

They asked one day if Charlotte could change her shape to something else, and she told them she couldn't, though she didn't particularly care regardless. They called a number of physicians and magicians, eager to see if they could diagnose any problems with their daughter, who still would not speak to them of her dreams. The physicians could find nothing wrong with her physically, while the Magicians could, at best, only obtain a loose sense that something in her had changed. One of them suggested that if there was some problem preventing her from changing, that it may have all been in her head. But with Charlotte refusing to speak on her concerns, there was nothing that could be done about that. Finally, her parents simply gave up, and Charlotte's appearance remained as it was, never to change again.[break][break]

Time passed this way for a couple of years, until one night, Charlotte was surprised to find a different dream visiting her usual tortured sleep. In this dream, she saw her and her parents, suffering under a variety of disasters that all seemed to end in their doom. They were, in a way, almost fantastic in their variety, some of them so inconceivably improbable that it was as though the gods themselves had ordained that the Firiana family must die. For the first time in a long while, Charlotte once again felt fear, both for herself and for her family.[break][break]

The dreams returned to her again for two nights, and as she began to fear it was a premonition, she made the decision to leave her home, an act of cowardice that would hopefully save her from whatever disaster was coming. However, immediately after this thought occurred to her, she saw a Vision once again. But this time, it was the first vision she had ever seen while conscious. And in this vision, she saw her parents living happily and healthily, with no trace of her in their midst.[break][break]

Two things were made clear to her in that moment. The first was that these were, in fact, visions, visions that were showing her glimpses of the future, and that also meant that she knew what she must be: a Seeress, one of those spoken of in old texts and only rumored to truly exist. The very same being that the charlatans on the streets sought to imitate with their fortune-telling.[break][break]

The second thing that she realized was that her decision to leave home had changed the future she was seeing. And if that was possible, then that meant it was possible to change the future. Which meant it may be possible to avert the End of the World she had seen in her dreams.[break][break]

"Well it's about time you figured it out," echoed the sound of strange voice in her head. "Oh don't be so rude," came the sound of a second voice, this was feminine.[break][break]

Charlotte was almost frantic, wanting to know why she was suddenly hearing voices now, but they reassured her.[break][break]

'We are your sponsors, Charlotte Firiana. And you have finally made the decision we were waiting for you to make."[break][break]

These 'sponsors' were apparently responsible for Charlotte's newfound gift to foretell the future. And they were very cagey with their identities - there were several of them, speaking to her all at once, but the core message Charlotte took away from them was as such: her decision was a good one. She possessed the capability to search out the truth, and to help her world keep a fighting chance of defying an apocalypse.They told her then that they would not be able to speak to her always; there was much for them to do. But Charlotte should be advised that she would never be alone, not really.[break][break]

It was, in a very strange way, comforting to know. The voices went quiet, and Charlotte assumed they had gone off to do... whatever it is they do. She had her immediate suspicions regarding who her sponsors may be, but she also determined that perhaps some things were better not asked. Charlotte spent the rest of that night quietly collecting what few things she felt she needed, left a note to her parents asking not to be searched for, and left without giving them a proper goodbye.[break][break]

It saddened her, but it would be better for them this way.[break]
They could not follow her into the world she was now choosing to venture towards; she would not want them to.[break][break]

From that point on, she traveled first to other cities and then to other countries, dedicating herself to any libraries she could find. She poured herself into reading about seeresses as described by various texts, and even began to peruse magical tomes at the advice of one of her sponsors, who spoke up to her one day seemingly at random. True enough, Charlotte found that she had an unexpected knack for magical power, though was curious to note that one some days, her abilities with Evocation magic were particularly powerful, and then on other days they would suddenly weaken.[break][break]

This was until another sponsor piped up one day, and suggested she try out some other schools. Charlotte didn't think it was possible for most people to use magic from more than just a couple of magical schools, but at her sponsor's urging, she did as instructed and found that true enough, on the days when one school was weak, another was strong. Ther only thing that remained consistent was her power of Divination, a power which seemed innate to her, and which had only grown through her encoutner with the entity in the woods that day long ago.[break][break]

She also learned, through her perusal of books on divining, that the phony fortune tellers on the streets did have at least one detail correct - a true seeress could make use of cleansed, pure crystal as a conduit for their powers, and shaping it into an orb helped to increase focus. With this information in mind, she found a herself an Elf who was a skilled mineral-worker  in Dirys and, using all of her savings, she commissioned the crafting of such an orb.[break][break]

She then spent much time in the country of minerals, both due to being stranded with no more money, and because the abundance of crystal helped her to learn focus and control over her power. She also found more libraries where she could read and investigate further into how to focus her ability, and from these texts she learned to read the moon and the stars.[break][break]

Eventually, she began to use her services as a means of making money, so that she could finance her continued living and travels.[break][break]
She also continued to follow the occasional and unpredictable advice of her sponsors, increasing her magical power as well. Now with an excellent grasp on her powers, she travels the world seeking to warn others of the potential destruction in their futures, but this is mostly done on the side. Her true purpose, as dictated by herself, is to investigate everything she can in the hopes that she will find the catalyst for the apocalypse she has seen in her visions.[break][break]

And when she does, she seeks to stop it.

[attr="class","appheading"]ABILITIES

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[attr="class","appability"]➢ Power of the Seer[break]
Charlotte possesses the ability to perform scryings. These scryings can be used to take a look into the Past, Present, and the Future. Generally, when using this ability, Charlotte must have a focused target in mind, whether that target be a person, an object, or even a concept. Without this focus, she has nothing to work upwards with. Performing scryings at will takes a lot out of her, and thus it is not something she can do overly frequently, but it is an extremely potent tool for gathering information. To a lesser extent of a full scrying, Charlotte can instead use the moon and stars to get a general gist of certain events that may be in motion, and she can also use Tarot cards to get a picture of someone without fully using her power as well. These substitutions are often vital methods to ensure she does not overtax herself on a fully-executed vision. Divination is Charlotte's natural-born magical talent, and it has only been empowered by her contact with the entities who sponsor her. Still, it is not perfect; if Charlotte is attempting to gaze at the past or future of a specific person, and they are aware of this, they are capable of willing themselves into locking away their hearty and mind from Charlotte, preventing her from seeing anything they don't wish her to see. She also, to her frustration, finds that when trying to look into the past at certain world events, there are many spots in history that are inexplicably blacked out from her vision, as low locked behind a mist.[break][break]

Though Charlotte usually has to use this power actively, occasionally a major event that happens somewhere in the world will have a drastic effect on the future, and in such cases, visions will come to Charlotte completely unbidden.
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[attr="class","appability"]➢ "Sponsored" Sorcery[break]
Whatever entities seem to have an interest in Charlotte have afforded her the ability to use magics that, under normal circumstances, she would never have had access to. Charlotte is capable of utilizing magic from the schools of Evocation, Abjuration, Conjuration, and Transmutation, but her ability with each of these varies considerably on a very unreliable basis. She has come to realize through trial and error that her ability to access these schools is determined by her multiple different sponsors. And when one is lending more of their power, the others step back, causing her skill in one field to increase, while her other skills degrade. As such, Charlotte can only wield powerful magic in one school at a time, and sometimes this can persist for days. There are very rare occasions, though, when all of her sponsors appear to be present, and thus she can rapidly switch between their support to cast powerful spells all over the map. 
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[attr="class","appability"]➢ Orb of Crystal[break]
Unsatisfied to rely solely on the apparently fickle whims of her sponsors, Charlotte took the care to teach herself one consistent spell outside of her natural-born school - the transmutation art to remotely move around an object. Charlotte would not consider herself a telekinetic, as she can't really move other objects; she has focused specifically on her Crystal Ball. With practice of this magic, Charlotte has near constant remote control of her orb, allowing it to follow her around seemingly on its own and float beside her, and even allowing her to use it as a weapon, a range projectile that she can fully control, with its near-unbreakable material being ideal for both offense and defense. This is her preferred means of self-defense, as she cannot always rely on the magic afforded to her by her sponsors. This does, however, become more effective when she has access to Conjuration magic, as it allows her to teleport her orb around, increasing her combat options significantly.
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[attr="class","appability"]➢ Darksight, Light Sensitivity[break]
As an Ajatar, Charlotte has excellent vision even in extremely dark places. Unfortunately, ever since obtaining her new powers, she has found her appearance locked into place, having seemingly lost her power to shape-shift, and even her Shadow Walking appears to have abandoned her... and even more unfortunately, she retained the Light sensitivity. Charlotte burns in the sun more easily than others, and while she does not find light to be intolerable by any means, it is certainly not comfortable. She prefers cloudy days and shade, certainly, and will have her cloak bound and hood up if the sun is out in full force. Artificial light from torches or electricity does not appear to bother her to the same degree.
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[attr="class","appheading"]Fortuna-RPG