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Ianthe | The Locked Tomb Series | Not reserved
PLAYER INFORMATION
Name: rie
Age: 32
Contact: PM
Timezone: PST (GMT-7)
Other characters: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Ianthe (Tridentarius). Last name is a bit complicated, as she's sloughed off her previous identity to become a Lyctor, a soldier of God. "God". She goes by "Ianthe the First, Saint of Awe", but just "Ianthe" will do for our purposes.
Canon: The Locked Tomb Series
Canon point: post-Nona the Ninth
Age: 24ish
History: Wiki
Suitability: The Locked Tomb trilogy might as well be a horror-based canon. Lots of murder and torture and death, yay! Sometimes even self-induced. Ianthe herself has been involved in lots of horribleness, including but not limited to: eating her cavalier's soul, gaslighting everyone around her, assisting in the murder of her former mentor, and just being a rude bitch all around.
Is this a re-app? No.
Inventory:
Currently wearing:
An opalescent hooded robe
A white military-style uniform
An excessively ornate rapier, razor sharp
An apple; it cannot decay.*
A male corpse, once a Cohort soldier. She doesn't really know who it is. It, too, cannot decay.*
*Lack of decay is due to Ianthe preserving the apple/corpse using her manipulation of life/death energy (called "thalergy"/"thanergy" in canon). If this will wear off once she arrives, well. Even better!
Powers, abilities and/or inhuman traits:
A caveat before I start this section: in canon, Ianthe is a "lyctor", a soldier of God. What this essentially means is that she has astonishing control over the business of life and death. I'll list a few of her abilities here, though the actual extent of her powers is unknown even to herself. Understanding thalergy/thanergy in her canon involves advanced mathematics, intrinsic talents, and intense amounts of practice. She'll retain the mathematics but not the innate ability to perform any of the following.
NECROMANCY
Bone magic: Manipulation of bone and cartilage.
Level one: she can control her own arm.
Flesh magic: Manipulation of the flesh - the blood, the tendons, the muscles, the subcutaneous fat - any and all of it.
Level one: she can manipulate small amounts (~a finger's worth) of raw material, only from corpses. Must reach level one in Bone Magic first.
Level two: she can manipulate moderate amounts (~a limb's worth) of raw material, only from corpses.
Level three: she can manipulate small amounts (~a finger's worth of raw material, from corpses or from living beings. Of course, living beings are much more difficult, considering that she'll be fighting against their will.
Level four: she can manipulate the entirety of a corpse. This will NOT include reanimation, much to her dismay, only manipulation (ie, shaping the fat into a sticky little heart to present to her favorite twin sister).
Level eight: reanimation of a single corpse. Capped at one hour of control.*
*Despite having limited control over the skeleton of a reanimated corpse, she cannot manipulate bone matter in the same way that she can flesh. "Reanimation" is defined here as temporary control over the corpse as a whole. The corpse has no magical or superlative powers of its own (well, aside from... being reanimated). Fresh corpses might retain physical strength; decaying corpses might take a few steps and crumble to pieces.
HEALING
Level one: she can heal minor wounds on herself (and her pet corpse). She will not have the ability to heal or manipulate wounds on anyone else. She cannot heal non-physical wounds. (ie, bacterial infections, psychiatric conditions, magical curses, etc.) She'll need a nap afterwards.
Level two: she can heal moderate wounds on herself/her pet corpse. She'll need a few hours to a few days of rest afterwards.
PROJECTION
Level one: She can project her consciousness into distant corpses (~10 feet). She can only reach level one in projection after reaching level eight in Necromancy.
Level two: Distance of projection increases by 50 feet with increasing levels. In canon, she can control a corpse over millions of miles, but we'll take this step by step.
WARDING: The use of blood (others' or her own) to keep areas warded against intruders.
Level one: She can create basic wards using her own blood only. Considered "basic" due to: length of time active (~an hour), area of effect (~2ft x 2ft), time to set up (~24 hours).
Each subsequent step increases active time by one hour, doubles area of effect, and cuts setup time in half.
She can start using foreign blood for her wards once she reaches level six in necromancy.
Level three: max.
NON-MAGICAL TALENTS
She's incredibly skilled with her rapier. At first, this was simply because she subsumed the skills of her cavalier, but after months of practice she's an accomplished swordswoman of her own right.
She's an excellent liar.
She's smart. Too smart. She does not use this power for good.
MANIFESTATION
Character flaws/traumas:
Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss, baby!
CONTROL FREAK
SELF-CENTERED:
VINDICTIVE:
MANIPULATIVE:
Manifestation name: The Neurosurgeon
Character trait(s) the Manifestation reflects:
The name references Ianthe's actions during Harrow the Ninth, where she (major spoilers ahead) is compelled by Harrow to perform a partial segmentation of Harrow's brain. As to why this references her flaws: Ianthe might have been compelled into the act, but she took it as an opportunity to manipulate and gaslight the hell out of Harrow. She took a difficult situation and tried to build upon it — not only to amuse herself with Harrow's suffering, to gaslight her about certain goings-on in the Mithraeum, to cement her position at God's side. It didn't all work out the way she wanted, but the act and how she capitalized upon it says much about what sort of person she is.
Description:
A pallid creature, like an animated death shroud. As substantial as smoke. It moves slowly and deliberately.
It might be mistaken as a wisp of a cloth plucked up by the wind by far away; at first sight, it does not evoke a sense of danger. Only as it nears, and the shape of a body beneath the cloth can be seen, might an onlooker feel wary. There are stains of shifting green and grey at the mouth and hands, at the knees, at the smear of its eyes. Reach out and touch it, and you'll find the cloth, the space beneath it, blood-hot.
If you're close enough to touch, however, a quiet sense of loss will descend. The feeling of knowing you've lost something great but cannot quite remember the shape of it. Knowing you're only a dust mote in the span of time and perpetuity, that nothing you can do will have any effect on the world around you.
Attacks and behavior:
It's rather subdued, all things considered. It flutters with the wind; come into its sphere of influence and the shroud might wrap hotly around you. On a cold night it might even seem comforting, at first.
Until that bone-deep sense of grief begins to encroach. Until you try to spit out a word you'd had at the tip of the tongue, a name, a love that hasn't quite blossomed, and you realized that you can't remember it.
Path towards resolution:
This is something I'd rather not spell out immediately, because Ianthe's so-called redemption can take form in so many different ways.
I do know that I want her to confront the fact that she doesn't have anything under control, especially not her twin sister Coronabeth. Her plans may not pan out the way she wants. Her capacity for love exists, and yet she's placed so many brambles in her own path that it might not matter - she might have lost it all already. I just want her to see that she isn't sitting pretty on top of the lies she's heaped; she has to fall from grace before she can be built up into anything less awful.
The tragedy of Ianthe is that she doesn't think there's anything tragic about her. Let's change that.
SAMPLES
One and two
Name: rie
Age: 32
Contact: PM
Timezone: PST (GMT-7)
Other characters: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Ianthe (Tridentarius). Last name is a bit complicated, as she's sloughed off her previous identity to become a Lyctor, a soldier of God. "God". She goes by "Ianthe the First, Saint of Awe", but just "Ianthe" will do for our purposes.
Canon: The Locked Tomb Series
Canon point: post-Nona the Ninth
Age: 24ish
History: Wiki
Suitability: The Locked Tomb trilogy might as well be a horror-based canon. Lots of murder and torture and death, yay! Sometimes even self-induced. Ianthe herself has been involved in lots of horribleness, including but not limited to: eating her cavalier's soul, gaslighting everyone around her, assisting in the murder of her former mentor, and just being a rude bitch all around.
Is this a re-app? No.
Inventory:
Currently wearing:
*Lack of decay is due to Ianthe preserving the apple/corpse using her manipulation of life/death energy (called "thalergy"/"thanergy" in canon). If this will wear off once she arrives, well. Even better!
Powers, abilities and/or inhuman traits:
A caveat before I start this section: in canon, Ianthe is a "lyctor", a soldier of God. What this essentially means is that she has astonishing control over the business of life and death. I'll list a few of her abilities here, though the actual extent of her powers is unknown even to herself. Understanding thalergy/thanergy in her canon involves advanced mathematics, intrinsic talents, and intense amounts of practice. She'll retain the mathematics but not the innate ability to perform any of the following.
NECROMANCY
Bone magic: Manipulation of bone and cartilage.
Flesh magic: Manipulation of the flesh - the blood, the tendons, the muscles, the subcutaneous fat - any and all of it.
*Despite having limited control over the skeleton of a reanimated corpse, she cannot manipulate bone matter in the same way that she can flesh. "Reanimation" is defined here as temporary control over the corpse as a whole. The corpse has no magical or superlative powers of its own (well, aside from... being reanimated). Fresh corpses might retain physical strength; decaying corpses might take a few steps and crumble to pieces.
HEALING
PROJECTION
WARDING: The use of blood (others' or her own) to keep areas warded against intruders.
NON-MAGICAL TALENTS
MANIFESTATION
Character flaws/traumas:
Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss, baby!
CONTROL FREAK
Ianthe's a bit of a headcase about control. She hates it when others have any semblance of influence over her. In fact, to show you how twisted her sad little brain is: the way she shows her "love" for her "love interest" in the second novel is that she gaslights the hell out of her. Just because she can. Just because control is an aphrodisiac, as long as she's the one on top.
She takes it further, too: in a battle between what could be the worst creature in the universe (God) and her mentor, this is how the novel describes her actions:
"Ianthe, with the world in the balance, reaching her hand out and pressing down on the weight marked BAD."
Why?
Because God is the most powerful creature in the universe, after all. And even if she might not actually care about his motivations, she has the most control over her own machinations when she's close to him.
Follow the trail of breadcrumbs back to the source and you'll see that her controlling tendencies existed from the start: she believed she was in complete control of her narrative by pretending that both she and her twin sister had her necromantic genius. She pulled off this farce until her early twenties, when it all came to a head.
SELF-CENTERED:
Everyone on this earth is selfish. Ianthe weighs every outcome against her personal goals and always chooses the path that will suit her best. That's not to say that she's intrinsically sociopathic. She's not evil. Evil is so easy to write-off because there's no chance of redemption. Something that has never known the light doesn't know to strive towards it. Ianthe's evil lies in the fact that she knows the weight of all of her actions, and chooses to prioritize her goals(and her sister's existence) above all else anyway.
I say "her goals" instead of "herself" because we're three novels into a four-novel series and we haven't been given a clear picture of her motivations.
I can stipulate, however. The way she treats the so-called "good" characters of the series involves a hell of a lot of manipulation. She doesn't care if she's destroying innocent lives, as long as she's getting exactly what she wants. Yes, she'd kick a puppy if she got something out of it. Even if that "something" is shocking someone who loves puppies.
That's why I haven't named this section selfish - Ianthe is, because of course she is, but it's not all about "power for Ianthe" or "glory for Ianthe". She has a specific end goal in mind, and she'll be damned if she lets anything else get in her way.
The exception of this is her sister. Ianthe believes she has Coronabeth in the palm of her hand, but the opposite may very well be true.
VINDICTIVE:
Oh, is Ianthe vindictive.
For example, when another character (Harrowhark) forces her into a specific set of actions, Ianthe makes Harrow's hair follicles extra active just to mess with her. Playing up her thimbleful of charm, she'll weave her tangled web.
That said, Ianthe's patience is legendary; she's more than willing to play the long game if she's the winner at the end of the day. If she has to wear a sweet face, she'll wear a damn sweet face; it just means the rot underneath the mask is all the uglier when she tears it off.
MANIPULATIVE:
Ianthe's greatest trait.
She has the callousness of youth, of someone tall and statuesque who's always quietly been the smartest person in the room (without anyone else knowing, which was the best part). But she's not - evil. She's bad, or BAD, like that quote up there says, but in a situation where she'd have to let someone die - let's take the trolley dilemma for example. The choice isn't about the weight of a multitude of lives versus a few. Does she have an audience? Then she'll destroy the few without a doubt. Is her sister amongst the few? Does she care about the many? Is she capable of swooping in and saving both groups? Would she have a better chance of convincing the audience to view her in a good light? Are there others she can manipulate into assisting her later down the line, depending on her choice now?
So - all of that boils down to: no, she doesn't give a damn about the correct answer to the trolley dilemma. If her sister's involved, it's an easy choice. If she isn't? She's not thinking about the ethics. She's thinking about which outcome would best suit her.
That is to say, she's thinking about how best to manipulate everyone into falling into line behind her.
Manifestation name: The Neurosurgeon
Character trait(s) the Manifestation reflects:
The name references Ianthe's actions during Harrow the Ninth, where she (major spoilers ahead) is compelled by Harrow to perform a partial segmentation of Harrow's brain. As to why this references her flaws: Ianthe might have been compelled into the act, but she took it as an opportunity to manipulate and gaslight the hell out of Harrow. She took a difficult situation and tried to build upon it — not only to amuse herself with Harrow's suffering, to gaslight her about certain goings-on in the Mithraeum, to cement her position at God's side. It didn't all work out the way she wanted, but the act and how she capitalized upon it says much about what sort of person she is.
Description:
A pallid creature, like an animated death shroud. As substantial as smoke. It moves slowly and deliberately.
It might be mistaken as a wisp of a cloth plucked up by the wind by far away; at first sight, it does not evoke a sense of danger. Only as it nears, and the shape of a body beneath the cloth can be seen, might an onlooker feel wary. There are stains of shifting green and grey at the mouth and hands, at the knees, at the smear of its eyes. Reach out and touch it, and you'll find the cloth, the space beneath it, blood-hot.
If you're close enough to touch, however, a quiet sense of loss will descend. The feeling of knowing you've lost something great but cannot quite remember the shape of it. Knowing you're only a dust mote in the span of time and perpetuity, that nothing you can do will have any effect on the world around you.
Attacks and behavior:
It's rather subdued, all things considered. It flutters with the wind; come into its sphere of influence and the shroud might wrap hotly around you. On a cold night it might even seem comforting, at first.
Until that bone-deep sense of grief begins to encroach. Until you try to spit out a word you'd had at the tip of the tongue, a name, a love that hasn't quite blossomed, and you realized that you can't remember it.
Path towards resolution:
This is something I'd rather not spell out immediately, because Ianthe's so-called redemption can take form in so many different ways.
I do know that I want her to confront the fact that she doesn't have anything under control, especially not her twin sister Coronabeth. Her plans may not pan out the way she wants. Her capacity for love exists, and yet she's placed so many brambles in her own path that it might not matter - she might have lost it all already. I just want her to see that she isn't sitting pretty on top of the lies she's heaped; she has to fall from grace before she can be built up into anything less awful.
The tragedy of Ianthe is that she doesn't think there's anything tragic about her. Let's change that.
SAMPLES
One and two