MoM Application / Information Post

[thegriffinofdeath]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Dalrint
AGE: Old
JOURNAL: dalrint
IM / EMAIL: AIM: farobservr
PLURK: Dalrint
RETURNING: Yes. Currently playing Pacifica Northwest

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Anastasya Griffin
CHARACTER AGE: Appears 17, is actually over a hundred..
SERIES: Might and Magic
CHRONOLOGY: Between Heroes of Might and Magic VI and VII
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: Random! Roommates would be cool.

BACKGROUND: The world of Ashan is a fairly typical high-fantasy realm, with knights and wizards and zombies and angels. The stories tend to focus around the Holy Griffin Empire, a typical empire of broad-shouldered humans carving out order in the face of various other factions, some allies (like the wizards and necromancers) and some not, like the demons. And the history is one of back-and-forth between these various groups, fighting for control.

When Anastasya is born, the human empire is the Holy Falcon Empire, and the Griffin family has been reduced to a dukehood. Anastasya is the youngest daughter of the duke, along with her twin brother Kiril, and is spoiled pretty thoroughly with her brother taking the blame for their various mischiefs. Things have been going, if not well, not terribly awful for the last hundred years or so, with nothing more than border skirmishes to worry about. The empire is a bit corrupt and going kind of crazy, but really, what fantasy empire isn't doing that?

Which is why awful things have to happen, of course. Anastasya is raised to be a priestess of Elrath, the Dragon of Light (and one of a number of Dragon-Gods who kind of...rule the world? But not really). Her life would be quite ordinary except that her teacher, the Angel Uriel, is way more invested in her than he should be. (IE: They are in love and it's kind of creepy.)

Unfortunately, Anastasya's upbringing hadn't really prepared her for any real defense of herself, and her mind is taken over by someone trying to start a war, and they use her to murder her father, the Duke. A Imperial Inquisitor is sent to find out what happened, which means months or years of torture for Anastasya, so her older brother Anton, their father's heir, kills her to spare her that pain.

Fortunately? her aunt Sveltana is a necromancer, and being unwilling to lose her favorite niece, she steals Anastasya's body and raises her as one of the necromancers. Anastasya is forced to go on a quest to find out what happened to her, and to train her mind to protect herself against every being controlled like that again. During the course of it, she is forced to confront a lot of things she doesn't really like about herself (of course) and finally grow up. War will do that. She frees the man the empire believes controlled her, her father's advisor Jorgan, only to discover he's actually not human, but a member of the Faceless (kind of like...dark elf vampire...things...it's never very clear) and not responsible, and he aids her in facing herself and dealing with her new nature as an undead necromancer.

The necromancers on Ashan worship the Mother Namtaru, a great and kind of horrifyingly ugly spider queen, and one of the aspects of another of the dragon-god's, the Dragon of Life, Asha. (which is ironic, yes.) In order to finally protect herself completely and accept who she is, Anastasya drinks the blood of Namtaru, and goes from being a normal undead necromancer (yeah) to a vampire undead necromancer. (Yup.)

During all this, she discovers that the person who had been controlling her was, in fact, her former teacher and lover, the angel Uriel! (Everyone pretend to be surprised.) She, along with her siblings, who have each fallen in with one of the various factions around Ashan, invades the empire, kills the angel (well, Anastasya basically reverses what he did to her and controls him, preventing him from protecting himself from an army of demons...oops?) and then restore order to the world. Yay!

Afterwards, Anastasya retired to the lands of the wizards, the Seven Cities, and goes on to become a great Necromancer. She eventually adopts a daughter and marries another vampire (as you do) and becomes the hierophant of the Mother Namtaru, and leader of the Necromancer faction.

And life, or unlife, goes on. For an awfully long time...

PERSONALITY:

Anastasya's life has been a series of extremes, and her personality has been forced to change and adapt to them in order for her to survive. As a child, and as a young woman who would be a Priestess of Elrath, Anastasya had been quite spoiled, given all that she desired and protected from consequence by her father and her twin. This left her with a rather strong belief that the world was...the way it was supposed to be, and her place in it was secure and safe. It let her dream of things like falling in love with an Angel, and to believe that something like that was not only right, but...reasonable.

This all, of course, came tumbling down, and the illusions that bound up her childhood were shattered with her death and the death of her father at her own hand. That changes you deeply, and when she was brought back she was...harder. She had to be. That innocent child was still there, inside her somewhere, and she still is in a way. But she surrounded by an edge of determination and sarcasm and force. While before she would never have dreamed of say, raising an army and taking on the might of the Falcon Empire just to find answers, in her new form she was doing that within a week. Within a few months she had gone from Priestess of the Light to Necromancer of the Darkness, and she embraced it for all that it was.

This has left her...hard. And she knows it. When the truth of her betrayal was revealed to her, she didn't hesitate before taking her revenge on Uriel, and didn't regret it in the least afterwards. It would have horrified her when she was alive, when she was 'younger', and now it was...as simple as any of the other acts she'd had to take since being raised. Something that needed to be done, and who else to do it but her? No more whining.

Still, she doesn't want to be a monster. She doesn't believe she is one. So she tries to temper it with more normal actions. She fell in love with another vampire (a somewhat more complicated story than that, but it would do) and they adopted a human daughter together. Someone whom Anastasya could...remember around. Because she likes to do that, to feel human again, even if she can't actually be human again. These attempts have left her with a somewhat off-beat sense of humor, and tendency towards wry, not quite biting sarcasm, and a bit more of her old humanity than would have remained otherwise.

Because most necromancers, and almost all vampires, abandon the emotions that drove them as humans. But Anastasya refused to do so. She believes that embracing what had made her strong or what had made her weak when she was alive makes her a better person even in her new form, and she channels it into her words and actions. (Which explains why she was able to go from willful priestess to hierophant in such a short amount of time.)

So while other necromancers might seem distant and cruel, Anastasya is caring and determined, more willing to take a stand in the problems of the 'living' and more interested in their day to day lives, short though they might be. Will it hurt? Probably. She's had to watch three generations of her family come and go, but it's worth it. At least, she thinks it is worth it.

And if she's still smiling, in spite of it all, she'll probably be okay.

POWER: I am giving her two 'powers' that kind of work as opposite sides of each other. And one unrelated.

Necromancer Vampire form - Anastasya is a powerful necromancer, which in her world gives her access to the abilities to raise the dead in various forms, and usage of the elemental and shadow schools of magic. She can raise the dead and exert her control over them (just her own undead, not all undead), reanimating them with some semblance of what they were, or just as mindless puppets to do her bidding. (Skeletons are almost always the latter, for instance, but ghosts tend to remember who they are, etc.)

She will still be a vampire, and when in this form for an extended period will need blood to survive, but will be losing the other powers of a Might and Magic vampire. (Draining life essence/turning to smoke and such.)

Human form - In MoM, she will have a human form (her old alive one), which at first she will not be able to control and will 'seep' into and out of depending on if she is using her magic. If she uses her powers, she slowly reverts back into her necromancer/vampire form, and while not using her magic she slowly shifts back into her human form. The more she uses her abilities, the more tired she becomes and the more likely she will be to become human again, and be unable to switch back for a short time.

Eventually she will have control over this, and be able to shift at will, and use the 'elemental' aspects of her magic without reverting. But not until she learns how to control it. And any usage of her necromancer powers would automatically shift her back into that form.

Bluebeak - A magical, enchanted Raven that used to belong to her aunt, and that acts as Anastasya's familiar and can be summoned by her. Only Anastasya (or other members of the Griffin family) can understand him.

Magic Addendum:

Shadow Magic is a combination of two fields, necromancy and shadow manipulation. Necromancy consists of the raising and maintaining of undead life, typically with direct intervention via reanimating a decomposing corpse. This isn't limited to humans, though skeletons are the most 'typical' of the things raised, and can be used on animals as well. In Anastasya's case, the things she raises tend to endure until she either actively removes the magic used or they are destroyed, but the act of doing so can be quite tiring, directly proportional to the size and power of the creature being raised. It can be used as well to create creatures by 'mixing' the corpses of other things, such as sewing bits of dead bodies together to create a ghoul. In her world there are a wide variety of necromancer monsters, great skeletal dragons and chimeras, but here she'll be limited to what she has access to, so skeletons, ghosts and ghouls.

Shadow manipulation is basically the usage of negative energy that injure the living and heal the dead. This is how she maintains her necromancy targets when they get injured. It can be thrown like a fireball or raised up like a temporary wall, or used to imbue an undead creature with temporary strength and stamina.

Elemental Magic is limited to frost and lightning magic due to being a necromancer, and typically in the most classical senses. Frost magic is frost bolts that freeze and slow and a blizzard that does the same over a wider area. Lightning magic is a classic lightning bolt spell and a chain lightning spell that jumps from target to target.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

[Voice]

[There's a quietly delay after the comm turns on, punctuated by the sound of ruffling feathers and the occasional tap of a finger before the owner finally speaks, though she's clearly addressing someone else at first.]

And I think...it's...working? The red light is on, do you see that? They said that's what-well, anyway, either it's working or it's not. At least I hope you all can hear me.

[And now it finally seems like the comm has her direct attention.]

My name is Anastasya Griffin. I've met...some of you already, I imagine, but for the rest...ah...hello? It's nice to meet you. Well, as much as any of this can be called nice, at least. It's certainly the most comfortable kidnapping I've ever experienced.

Regardless, I...did have a legitimate reason for bothering you all. I had a question about powers. Specifically, if anyone else has been granted something that...changes them? I suppose something akin to being a shape shifter, and yet…not.

More all-encompassing than that. Oh. [She hesitates, and there's a squawk suddenly, distinctive and crow-like, from behind.] I know Bluebeak, I know, but I can hardly just...announce it. No. Best not to.

[There's a clearly disagreeable second squawk, but it seems Anastasya is already turning back to the comm.]

Let's just leave the question at that. I'm curious about...transformative powers. If anyone would be willing to discuss them with me, that would be a relief.

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: Anastasya had a thread on the test drive.