NamelessTrax
Kage
It looks good and thought out. Interested to see how she works with others. An exact height number would be appreciated, other than that, it is approved. The balance of the summonings are good.So, not really sure if I totally got a handle on lore and stuff, especially vis a vis the demons and so on, so obviously that stuff can all be tweaked as needed.
Also the art is pretty rough, I normally do my stuff digitally but I am in the middle of months long, customer support saga over my broken laptop, so you guys get the ultra rare- limited edition shitty pen and paper version of Seneca and her mark.
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Seneca Mistingdale / The Scholar
"Associate Professor of Demonology (Former)", "The mad hermit of Silverwind Peak", "Demonbinder" , "Witchtongue" , "That crazy bitch who burned down half of the campus summoning an infernal behemoth"
Sex: Female | Age: 87 | Ht: tall, even for an elf | Wt: scrawny | Hair: black | Eyes: one is brown, one is neon green, apparently due to the influence of her mark |Skin: Extremely pale | Body Type: Beanpole
Ethnicity: Elf | Mana Sphere: Outer | Occupation: Hermit Researcher | Homeland: The City of Aetheria | Faction: The Arcane Council (former)
Your Mark
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Seneca's mark covers the right side of her face, from her temple down to her cheek bone, with the central, inner pattern manifesting over the surface of her eye. The coloration is bright, neon green. Seneca feels the mark the most when she is engaged in focused, manic intellectual work, especially arcane research. Seneca usually keeps her mark covered with her hair.
Talents and Techniques
Seneca is proficient in both summoning and warding, although the latter is primarily a supplement to ensure her summoning goes smoothly. She can forge binding contracts with demons, extracting service from them in exchange for payment in the form of mana and she can banish or confine lesser demons who are hostile.
Seneca carries a large, leather bound tome which records the roster of demons she has standing contracts with. Seneca can summon and dismiss these demons at will albeit at the cost of her mana. Any other demon Seneca might want to work with will require negotiating a new contract, which can be an involved and costly process and can be outright impossible if the demon in question is unwilling. Seneca can communicate telepathically with her bound demons to issue orders or receive information.
Seneca can reliably maintain two of her normal summons at once for a period of perhaps a few hours and can manage to maintain three for a short period of a few minutes. Seneca can maintain one summon for an extended period of several hours if necessary, though it would not be a pleasant experience.
Grimoire
The Wretched Tribe: A pack of five, winged imps. They are pathetically weak and small, so much so that they had to forge a contract collectively instead of as individuals, but they are capable of concealing their presence with magic and so are excellent scouts and spies. In combat they can serve as distractions by throwing small stones and shouting jeering insults but they are too cowardly to directly attack.
The Questing Rook: A misshapen: vulture-like demon with; powerful, grasping feet and a sword-like beak full of sharp teeth. The Questing Rook is large and powerful enough to fly while carrying up to two people and it can emit a forceful spray of venomous, acidic bile from its maw. One of its favourite strategies is to blind a foe with its bile, seize them with its claws and drop them from a lethal height.
The Harvest Maiden: A loomingly tall, slender demon of feminine appearance with four arms. Clad in a bone mask, a red robe and armed with four, razor sharp sickles, the harvest maiden is a swift and powerful melee combatant. Able to scythe through lesser foes like wheat before the scythe the harvest maiden can also unleash a wailing scream with a brief, paralytic effect. More powerful foes can resist this effect and it becomes markedly less effective if used in succession.
The Shattered Tyrant: Seneca's most powerful summon, so much so that she can only manifest a fragment of its full might and even that is an exhaustive ordeal. The tyrant manifests as a gigantic arm and hand reaching up from a tear in reality, with eyes at the tips of each finger. Besides crushing opponents with its sheer bulk and strength, the tyrant can fire sustained beams of concentrated, fel energy from each of its five eyes.
Seneca's contract with the tyrant only allows her to summon it once per lunar phase and due to its arrogance it demands all other summons be dismissed before it takes the field. At present Seneca would be unable to do anything else at the same time anyway due to the demands on her concentration and mana.
Skills
Arcane Knowledge: Fully trained by the foremost magical authority in the land, Seneca has extensive knowledge of arcane matters, her expertise is demonology, but she has a purely theoretical understanding of most commonly known branches of magic as well from interacting with her peers and keeping abreast of their research.
Dedicated Researcher: Seneca is highly proficient at combing through vast quantities of information. She is able to quickly sort through and analyse data to zero in on the most relevant and useful points.
Canny Negotiator: Anyone who regularly has to bargain with demons is obliged to quickly master the art of the deal or they are likely to lose their soul. That merchant wont know what hit him.
Esoteric Polyglot: Seneca has learned several ancient or obscure languages in order to study certain texts, including the infernal language of demons. None of these languages are in common use in the present day so they won't be of use in communicating with actual people, but that is of little interest to Seneca anyway.
Personality
+Driven, focused, relentless.
+Pragmatic, practical, straightforward
+intellectual, curious, astute
+meticulous, organised, prepared
-blunt, asocial, caustic
-obsessive, self neglectful, sometimes manic
-petty, vindictive, argumentative
-repressed, un-empathetic, cold
Backstory
Seneca was born to elven migrants to the vast city of Aetheria. Studious, curious and logical from an early age, Seneca seemed destined for a career in academia, sometimes to the bemusement of her parents. Perhaps this pursuit was partially driven by the strange birthmark Seneca saw everyday in the mirror and the odd sensations that sometimes seemed to emanate from it. That very same, highly distinctive marking set Seneca apart from her peers, who regarded her with a combination of unease and ridicule but Seneca taught herself not to be bothered by such trifles, she grew into a focused, slightly cold child uninterested in childish pursuits and opinions.
Seneca's talent for magic manifested early and she demanded proper tutelage in the arcane arts younger than was the norm. Natural talent and an obsessive, meticulous hunger for new knowledge propelled Seneca through her studies at a rapid pace and assured her entry into the hallowed institutions of the Arcane council, first as a student and then as a researcher and finally a professor. Impressive as it was, Seneca's rapid rise through academia left enemies in her wake, jealous and frustrated peers who were further disgruntled by Seneca's generally cold and dismissive attitude towards, well, everyone.
As Seneca burned more bridges and alienated more people they began to conspire against her, restricting her funding and access to important resources and rare texts. It didn't help that, at the same time this was occurring Seneca's research was moving beyond the realm of conventional demonology into more radical, untested ground. Over years Seneca became an increasingly marginalised figure within the council, her reputation transitioning from child prodigy, to eccentric genius, to plain old eccentric.
Seneca didn't care one whit for the opinions of her intellectual lessers, but as they interfered with her funding and access her ability to actually do the research she was passionate about become more and more impeded, infuriating her. Eventually Seneca snapped and resolved to prove the validity of her research and her genius with a live demonstration of a bold new summoning method.
Now because no one would willingly come and observe her demonstration Seneca obviously had to take the initiative and perform it impromptu at college wide assembly of the students and faculty and of course because the ritual invoked a greater infernal there was a certain amount of brimstone, fire and structural damage to the university grounds. Really though the whole thing was blown out of proportion by her detractors who, if they had been paying attention instead of screaming, would have noticed how mana efficient and stable the summoning was!
Alas, genius is never appreciated in its time and Seneca was unceremoniously stripped of her position and title and ejected from the Arcane council. Vowing vengeance and vindication, Seneca disappeared into the Mistveil mountains in search of the solitude that would finally allow her to focus on her research. Eventually Seneca found a suitable location near the peak of Silverwind mountain, setting up a crude laboratory in a convenient cave system. For decades Seneca essentially lived as a hermit, descending only sporadically to the villages at the base of the mountain to trade her arcane services for supplies and equipment. The villagers quickly came to think of her as some kind of mad witch, but unlike her colleagues these yokels had absolutely no ability to interfere in her work and so she happily disregarded them.
For decades Seneca happily, patiently expanded her understanding of magical theory and demonology, charting countless breakthroughs and discoveries that no one else witnessed. Eventually Seneca turned her attention back to the mystery that had started it all for her, the strange mark on her face. Frustratingly, maddeningly even, the mark resisted all attempts by Seneca to unravel its properties. No matter what experiments she performed, no matter what obscure texts she consulted, the mark remained an enigma. For the first time Seneca was stumped.
It was around that time that Seneca began experiencing unusual visions of a stone woman, instructing her to seek out a shaman. It was the kind of thing Seneca might have chalked up as a sleep deprived hallucination but it was also the only clue Seneca had obtained after months of fruitless study. Frustrated but determined, Seneca packed up her modest belongings and descended once more into the wider world in search of answers.
Going forward, I would also like to mention that at sometime, each character will get an opportunity for their “OP” moment. Especially if I see things line up development wise and adhere to plotline. I’m a sucker for these kinds of things, and because they are few and in between.
I may have taken some liberties with her back story but let me know if I need to change or adjust somethings!
