Lily Ivory (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vintage_magic) wrote2011-12-17 01:01 pm
vintage_magic) wrote2011-12-17 01:01 pm
[OOC] Application for Soul Campaign
[ PLAYER INFORMATION ]
Player Name: Lady of the Thread
Timezone: Eastern Time (GMT-4)
Personal Journal:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladyofthethread
Contact Information: AIM is AugusteR but I rarely use it; PMing through LJ works better
Current Characters: Kou Shuurei
Links to Activity Check: here
Beta-reader: N/A
[ CHARACTER INFORMATION ]
Name: Lily Ivory
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Canon: The Witchcraft Mysteries (a mystery novel series by Juliet Blackwell. The 3 books so far are: Secondhand Spirits, A Cast-Off Coven, Hexes and Hemlines.)
Timeline: Canon updated 6/9/13 to: Book 4, chapter 3. A woman collapses at the Art Deco Ball and Lily discovers that her displaced soul is trapped in a mirror.
Near the end of book 2, chapter 22. At this time, Lily is climbing the bell tower stairs at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts and is about to exorcise the demon Sitri.
Canon updated 4/10/12 to: Near the end of book 2, chapter 23. Lily has just exorcised the demon and then has a confrontation with Jerry Becker's murderer at top of the bell tower stairs.
Canon updated 8/15/12 to: Book 3, chapter 27. Lily begins casting the Living Things in You spell in an attempt to reveal Malachi Zazi's murderer.
Character History:
Lily grew up in Jarod, a small west Texas town near El Paso. Her mother seems to have been a normal woman and had trouble accepting that her daughter had magical powers. Her father was a male witch but walked out on his family when Lily was still a toddler. He had wanted to take Lily with him but was opposed by Lily’s mother and Graciela, the witch who had raised and trained him after his parents died.
Lily learned that she was a witch when she was 8. During a school campout, she asked a classmate to trade her plain oatmeal because she didn’t want the sweetened bowl she had been given. She refused and Lily concentrated, making the bowl hot so that the other girl would drop it. After Lily switched the bowls, her classmate pointed and shouted, calling her a “nasty old witch.” This made Lily furious since she had been raised with the image of witches as ugly hags in league with the devil. A sudden gust of wind blew sparks from the fire onto the other girl’s lap and hair and while the adults rushed to help the girl, the other kids turned on Lily, yelling accusations and pushing. She climbed up the cliff next to the campsite, magically helped along by the vines growing there. From the top of the cliff, she cursed her classmates, causing all of the other children on that trip to get food poisoning.
After that, Lily’s mother sent her to live with her grandmother Graciela on the outskirts of town. With Graciela’s guidance, Lily spent the next several years learning to admit to herself that she was a witch, to control her temper, and to hide her powers from normal humans. She was only partially successful with the latter two.
There were other incidents over the years. Lily’s first boyfriend ended up with a minor head injury after she realized he was just showing off to win a bet. And she was kicked out of high school after their star football player, who had been harassing Lily, developed an ailment which badly affected his play.
However, the major one happened when Lily was 17 and forced her to leave town before she could finish her training with Graciela. Lily’s mother belonged to a snake handling church and they tried to exorcise Lily by tying her down and setting poisonous snakes on her. Lily feared for her life and while she didn’t enchant the snakes, 12 people got bitten and 3 died. She had to turn herself in to the police to protect Graciela from the mob that showed up at her house. She spent weeks in jail before the charges got dropped after witnesses dropped out and the prosecutor fell ill; Graciela denied it but Lily knew it was her doing. She couldn’t remain in her hometown after that so Graciela told her to go to a witch friend of hers in Mexico. But Lily disobeyed and went looking for her father instead.
It’s never stated how long Lily’s search takes but she finally tracks him down in a remote Bavarian town. There are very few details revealed about that encounter although it’s alluded to several times as a negative experience. It’s implied that her father was somehow tempted by power and chose evil. Lily mentioned that he had severe burn marks and claimed she barely survived that meeting.
Afterwards, she spent years traveling the world alone; Scotland, Jamaica, Morocco, Thailand, Amsterdam, Botswana, Geneva, France, Spain, and North Africa were among the places she visited. She eventually found herself in a rural French cemetery, wondering if anyone would mourn her when she was gone and realizing that she wanted to find a community, make a home and have friends, possibly even start a family. Then, one night in a Hong Kong bar, she met a parrot named Barnabas who suggested she try San Francisco…
Secondhand Spirits
The series begins when Lily is 31. She has recently moved to San Francisco and opened a vintage clothing store called “Aunt Cora’s Closet,” with her new Wiccan friend Bronwyn running a herbal stand in a corner of the shop. She hopes to finally make friends and live a normal life. However, she is soon visited by Aidan Rhodes, a powerful male witch who knew her father and who is in charge of the city’s witches. Against her protests, he presents her with a familiar, a half goblin/half gargoyle who can transform into a potbellied pig; she gets stuck with him when Aidan leaves while her back is turned and names him Oscar.
In search of inventory for the shop, Lily’s assistant Maya brings her to Frances Potts’ house. They meet Jessica, a little girl who lives nearby. A while after the girl leaves, Lily and Frances hear the scream of La Llorona, a demon that kidnaps children, and learn that Jessica has disappeared. Lily is concerned because normal humans can’t hear a demon’s wail unless they’re marked for death and decides to cast a protection spell for Frances without the other’s knowledge.
The next morning, she receives a visit from the police who learned of her late night visit to Frances’s house from a surveillance camera. They question her and inform her that Frances was found dead in a pentagram. Disturbed that her spell failed, Lily decides to investigate Frances’s death and find a way to get Jessica back from La Llorona. Along the way, she becomes acquainted with Max Carmichael, a reporter trying to debunk the supernatural, and Herve LaMansec, a voodoo priest.
In the end, she finds out the truth behind Frances’s death and the children who have disappeared from that neighborhood over the past 35 years. With the help of Bronwyn’s coven and Aidan, she manages to rescue Jessica and banish La Llorona from San Francisco bay.
A Cast-Off Coven
About a week later, Lily is asked to look into a possible haunting at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts; the students are scared and some believe the school is being haunted by the ghost of John Daniels, a student said to have committed suicide by throwing himself down the bell tower stairs in the sixties. In exchange for looking into the matter, Lily is promised some vintage clothes found in a sealed closet at the school. But before she can find anything supernatural, Jerry Becker, a wealthy benefactor of the school, is discovered dead at the foot of the bell tower stairs. Lily initially wants to leave finding the killer to the police but Aidan visits her the next morning and asks her to investigate the death. He reveals that Jerry was a client of his and suggests that Lily contact a psychic called Sailor for help. Lily agrees because she was obligated after receiving Aidan’s help with La Llorona.
Eventually, Lily is able to identify the demon at the school and learns that it’s trying to find a host to permanently possess. She brews something at home and then returns to the school with the clothes from the closet. Outside the school, Bronwyn’s coven helps her burn the clothes and Lily puts the ashes into her cauldron. Warning everyone else to stay outside, Lily goes inside the deserted school and hauls her cauldron and other supplies up the bell tower stairs in order to perform the actual exorcism. She succeeds despite the demon showing her illusions and two of her friends showing up. Afterwards, she has a confrontation with Jerry Becker's murderer at the top of the bell tower stairs.
After the killer is arrested, Lily returns to the art school and seals off the closet where the demon had been conjured to prevent anyone from accidentally summoning him again. Considering the things that have happened since she moved to San Francisco, she decides it would be best to try to finish her training and asks Aidan for help.
Hexes and Hemlines
Lily soon finds herself drawn into another investigation when Inspector Romero asks her to be an unofficial occult consultant on a bizarre murder case. The victim was the leader of the Serpentarian Society, a rationalist group trying to debunk superstitions; Malachi Zazi was found dead on the dining table of his 13th floor penthouse, stabbed with a shard from a broken mirror and surrounded by bad luck symbols the morning after one of the society’s midnight supper parties. Lily feels an unusual lack of vibrations from the body and finds the victim lacks fingerprints, making her wonder if Malachi wasn’t human.
She visits Aidan for a lesson and sees a vision of Malachi with snakes wrapped around his neck as if they were scarves during a scrying attempt. When Aidan learns that Malachi was murdered, he warns her to drop the investigation but refuses to give a reason. Lily ignores him and they part with Aidan angry at her. She returns to the shop to find Bronwyn hasn’t come in for work and goes by her friend’s apartment to see what is wrong. It turns out Bronwyn’s daughter Rebecca is there and is upset because her husband Gregory is a suspect in Malachi’s murder. Lily thinks it can’t just be coincidence and agrees to help. But before she can start her investigation, she is visited by a timebending witch named Doura, who also warns her off the case.
Ignoring Doura’s warning, Lily proceeds to look into the Serpentarian Society and talk to guests from the dinner party. The investigation is complicated by a group of devil worshippers, hexes and a rattlesnake found at Malachi’s apartment, the corpse disappearing, reports of a person running around wrapped in scarves and a hat like Malachi used to, a coven of evil witches working with a scientist in pursuit of eternal youth, and a hex that weakens Lily’s powers.
Bronwyn eventually asks her to drop the case because Rebecca didn’t want to be associated with witches and she agrees at first. But then someone leaves a hex on Bronwyn’s doorstep and Lily’s protectiveness causes her to decide whoever is behind it must be stopped despite her friend’s wishes. Lily gets into arguments with several of her friends for her meddling and Max, who she had been dating, tells her they should just be friends because he can’t accept that she’s a witch. Feeling lonely and like an outsider, she tries to bring the case to an end with magic. She gets a wax poppet to represent the unknown murderer from Sailor’s aunt Renna, a gypsy witch. Despite some hesitation, she starts casting the Living Things in You spell, which causes the victim to think that there are snakes inside of them, with the murderer as the target.
Character Personality:
Lily is a lonely misfit witch who had never really fit in anywhere before settling in San Francisco. Her goals when she moved there were relatively simple. She just wanted to make friends, become part of a community, run her shop, and possibly find love. But as she makes new acquaintances and friends, she finds herself becoming protective of them and feeling obligated to help when supernatural entities appear and cause trouble.
She is guarded and doesn’t easily trust people after being shunned her whole childhood and being run out of her hometown while still a teenager. Even in the more open-minded atmosphere of San Francisco, she still tries to hide her witchiness and doesn’t confide that to new people easily, believing she’ll be looked at differently. She’s evasive about it when the police question her after Frances’ death and when Max comes into the shop looking for herbs. And although her friend Bronwyn is a Wiccan and works in her shop, Lily doesn’t readily reveal that she’s a witch. They finally talk about it when Bronwyn sees her upset and asks her if it was about being a witch; she had noticed the cleansing rituals that Lily performed in the shop each morning and drawn the conclusion herself.
Despite being guarded about her status as a witch, Lily is protective of others, sometimes to the point of being meddlesome. This is especially true when it comes to protecting normal humans from supernatural entities because she knows she’s better able to deal with such things. She takes it upon herself to cast a protection spell for Frances although it wasn’t asked of her and to rescue Jessica. And although she asks Bronwyn’s coven for support in dealing with La Llorona and Sitri, she advises them to stay back and let her actually deal with the demons. When Max questions why she has to intervene in the investigation at the art school and encourages her to just walk away, her reply is, “This is who I am, Max. If there’s some sort of spiritual entity terrorizing people, and I can help… well, I feel obligated to do what I can.”
Since her powers had caused her to be shunned while growing up in Texas and she spent her years abroad traveling alone, Lily never really made friends or had much practice interacting with others so she can be awkward in social situations. She usually seems to do okay in dealing with customers at her shop but it’s not until San Francisco that she really starts to make friends and there are times when her words leave them gaping because she isn’t used to having to mind what she says. There are also other subtler signs of awkwardness. She gets nervous whenever she’s waiting on someone’s doorstep, hoping for admittance because she remembers how she was unwelcome as a child; she still considers it “a minor miracle” when someone actually invites her into their home. And although many people probably wouldn’t think much of getting a wedding invitation for someone they don’t really know, Lily is excited when a business associate invites her to her niece’s wedding. While she doesn’t voice these feelings out loud, Lily does think them and it shows her yearning for acceptance among normal humans. Many well-known pop culture references like Star Wars and Mary Poppins also tend to go over her head, which makes people look at her strangely sometimes.
She can also be insecure, both about her relationships with people and her powers. She worries about losing Bronwyn’s friendship when she goes against her friend’s wishes and continues investigating a case involving Bronwyn’s son-in-law, after finding a hex on Bronwyn’s doorstep and deciding whoever left it had to be stopped. And being romantically attracted to Max, who is skeptical about all things supernatural, she worries that he won’t be able to accept the fact that she is a witch. After coming to San Francisco, making friends and gaining a familiar, she realizes how lonely she had been before. And while it’s better, I think she’s still kind of lonely considering how she clings to her friendships.
She sometimes doubts herself with regard to her powers since she was forced to leave her hometown before her training was finished. When Frances dies despite the protection spell that she cast, she feels guilt and horror and wonders if she’s losing her powers. Similarly, she wonders if she’s losing her powers in the third book when her magic isn’t working as well as usual due to some evil witches putting a hex on her. At one point in the books, she sits in her living room and practices basic magic like commanding the lights on and off and lighting candles without touching them, just to make sure she hasn’t lost her magic completely.
There’s also a humorous side to Lily. She’s often making wry or ironic observations to herself and sometimes making jokes to her friends. Sometimes, they’re sarcastic but not too often. And although her choice of words is usually normal, her thoughts and speech are occasionally sprinkled with colorful expressions from her Texas days, such as “whomperjawed,” “scareder than a sinner in a cyclone,” and “as mean as a skilletful of rattlesnakes.” And despite having left Texas over a decade ago, she still retains an accent and speaks with a twang.
She isn’t the most patient person and can get frustrated or exasperated easily. However, she tries to keep herself from losing her temper because it’s dangerous with her powers.
Character Abilities you would like to expand on further:
Along with Aidan, Lily is one of the two most powerful witches in San Francisco.
The power she uses most often is her ability to sense vibrations of the past from inanimate objects and buildings. Although she can also sense things from other objects, her specialty is clothes and they’re easier for her to read. Some examples of the things she can sense… She once drops a garment as if scalded because the vibrations of grief are so strong; it turns out the owner had lost a daughter to La Llorona and made a deal with the demon to get her back. Another time, she can’t feel any distinct vibrations from a dead man’s clothes and thinks something is wrong; it’s later revealed that the man had forfeited part of his soul to get out of an agreement with a demon. She’s able to tell that a customer had been crying recently by feeling her earrings and suggests she try on a pair with a confident energy that she had in the shop. She describes one dress’s vibrations as brash and gutsy. And she dislikes new clothes and describes them as feeling soulless.
With buildings, she’s able to sense the energy traces left by those who have inhabited the buildings or passed through them over the years. Using these, she’s able to make guesses about things that happened there, such as fights, murders, suicides, natural deaths, and how long ago they occurred.
She can also sense other people’s vibrations and attempt to read their auras. She tends to rely on this when speaking to people because she doesn’t trust her ability to judge people. She also says that witches can recognize their own and is able to tell Aidan is a witch as soon as he walks into her shop the first time due to the energy he gives off.
Lily’s other specialty is herbs and brewing. She is very knowledgeable about herbs and grows most of her own on her terrace. Her bigger spells usually involve taking herbs and other ingredients and brewing something with them in her cauldron. These sometimes require a blood sacrifice so Lily will make a small cut in her palm and allow a few drops of her powerful magical blood to fall into the cauldron. At the last step of brewing, a cloud of vapor will burst from the cauldron and briefly form a face; this is Lily’s helping spirit, who finalizes the spell; her familiar Oscar also helps with spellcasting, allowing magic to slide through the appropriate portals more easily. The resulting brew for things such as drawing magic circles to be used in conjunction with incantations and placing objects such as candles in specific locations.
She also uses herbs and magic for healing purposes in conjunction with normal first aid skills. When Max is injured in a magical knife attack, she takes him back to her apartment and stitches him up, treating him with a combination of a brew, a poultice, a magical circle, and incantations. It’s not instant but the magical components of this treatment significantly speed up the natural healing process.
Lily knows how to make a variety of magical items, including carving protective medallions, creating conjure balls (magical amulets in the form of balls of wax filled with herbs and charms), and spirit bottles (embellished bottles filled with herbs and oils, meant to trap evil and negative energy). Her Book of Shadows (spellbook/journal) is also shown to include a recipe for goofer balls (a type of hex) but she never actually uses that one since she prefers to keep to the positive side of magic.
There are a couple of times when she creates a persuasion charm by mixing certain herbs, placing them in a bag, and charging it with a chant. By putting the charm in her pocket and holding another person’s hand, she’s able to sway them to be helpful, answering questions more easily and granting access to areas where she normally wouldn’t be allowed.
In the first book, Aidan asks her to create a mandragora for him; it’s a type of familiar elf made from the root of a mandrake plant. The process requires the root to be buried for a month after the initial preparations and the end result hasn’t been shown in canon but Lily is shown making the preparations for it and mentions it’ll take another twenty days in the second book so presumably she has the ability to create a homunculus from the root.
Lily’s father has some kind of special relationship with snakes, which she inherited. She isn’t afraid of snakes since she considers them to have saved her life in the incident at the snake handling church. She is once able to get a rattlesnake poised to strike at her to uncoil and scurry away, using a chant. And although she is reluctant to use it and made sure to also brew the antidote, she learns and casts the Living Things in You spell in the third book in order to reveal a murderer; the spell uses several snake ingredients and makes the victim think there are snakes inside of them. And once when she is distracted while trying to make conjure balls, she instead ends up with wiggling wax snakes.
Lily is capable of telekinesis, occasionally flinging doors open with her mind. By concentrating, she can make an orangey red light emanate from her hand and light a dark room. She can also send out a blast of energy from her hand, strong enough to knock over a man a short distance away.
She once lights some candles without touching them so she seems to have basic pyrokinesis, too. By concentrating, she can make objects hot. And when Aidan asks to feel her energy and they make a connection, several pewter candle sconces in the room melt.
Sprits and demons are attracted by Lily’s energy and she seems to have some summoning power. (Although it appears possible in this canon for even people with little paranormal ability to accidentally summon demons.) While dealing with the demon at the art school, she avoids saying his name or drawing his sigil for fear of conjuring him before she’s prepared to deal with him. And once when an acquaintance unexpectedly appears at her shop, she wonders if she had unintentionally summoned the other woman by thinking of her the day before.
There are also many other spells/abilities mentioned briefly in the books: a fertility spell to help her herb garden grow faster, a prosperity spell to encourage the success of her store, an antitheft charm to make potential shoplifters think twice, a parking charm to help find a parking space, a cocooning spell to prevent others from overhearing a conversation, a love charm requested by a customer to get someone she’s interested in to notice her, being able to tell who is calling before picking up the phone, a near-perfect memory aside from names, an encyclopedic knowledge of fairy tales, great concentration.
During the first book, Lily acquires a voodoo relic known as a Hand of Glory. It’s supposedly the pickled left hand of a hanged man with a thick candle cradled in the palm; when the candle is lit, it will open all doors and provide light as bright as day. Although she hates it, she admits it’s rather useful and uses it a couple of times in later cases to open locked doors.
According to Lily, witches can’t sink. She gets dragged under San Francisco bay by La Llorona while trying to rescue a child and after she’s released, she floats right to the surface like a cork instead of having to swim up. Being a witch is hereditary in her canon and this seems to be an innate ability for witches due to genetics rather than the use of magic. She also notes that witches can’t cry, presumably another genetic quirk of witches.
As for more mundane abilities, she knows how to drive and owns both a purple van for the shop and a vintage red Mustang convertible. Due to being in the vintage clothing business, she’s familiar with various methods of washing and removing stains and can make minor repairs to garments although she employs someone else to do alterations. And she is a good cook.
Character Weaknesses you would like to expand on further:
Lily’s powers themselves can be a drawback at times. She’s not in complete control of her powers due to her incomplete training. She has to avoid saying demon’s names or sketching their sigils for fear of accidentally summoning them. She has never joined a coven because she’s afraid of what forces might be unleashed if her power were combined with a group of other witches. The one time she makes love in the books, she wakes up a few hours later and finds that clothes are dancing around her shop, a result of unintended sex magic. And Lily says it’s not safe to be around her when she’s angry.
Her magic is somewhat limited against demons. She needed Aidan to summon La Llorona for her and Graciela working a long distance spell to help with Sitri. And in both cases, she asked Bronwyn’s Wiccan coven (whose members practice Wicca but do not necessarily have supernatural abilities) to help so she could piggyback off their energy. Even then, she was only able to exorcise the demons rather than killing them. She sent La Llorona back to the Rio Grande area where people were more aware of the danger. And after she banished Sitri from the school, she noted that he is gone for now but not forever, figuring that the demon will probably find her someday when he has regained strength and was bored. Also, she isn’t a physical fighter and she notes that her magic is “more the brew-in-the-peace-and-quiet-of-my-home kind of talent than the middle-of-the-action, throw-down-situation kind.”
There are also other limitations. Her powers can be blocked by things like hexes. By taking dirt that she had trod on, spitting on it, putting it into an empty walnut shell, and burying it in a dead man’s garden, some evil witches were able to partially block her magic. During this time, Lily found spell casting more difficult and a couple of times, the spells didn’t work. Magic also doesn’t do well against humans in pursuit of self-destruction. For example, a protection spell won’t guard against suicide. And while charms can help enhance, they won’t completely change a person’s behavior; for example, the persuasion charm only works on people already inclined to be helpful.
Lily’s magic is also heavily dependent on having access to herbs and other supplies. There are some things which she can do only by concentrating or using incantations but many of the spells require creating brews or charms or drawing magic circles.
Despite her extensive powers, Lily is weak in some areas of magic. She is terrible at scrying and divination. When she gazes into her crystal ball, she usually only sees fleeting shadows and it frustrates her so much that she’s tempted to throw the crystal ball out her window and watch it shatter on the pavement below. Graciela didn’t believe her lack of talent in this area and Aidan comments that it’s very unusual for such a powerful witch to not be able to see. She also can’t read cards, tea leaves, or palms.
She also notes that she’s not a necromancer and lacks the ability to communicate with ghosts. Although her energy tends to draw spirits, she’s never able to understand anything they say and needs help from others such as Herve or Sailor when she needs to speak with ghosts.
Lily is not very technologically savvy even though her canon setting is modern and is basically the real world with the addition of supernatural elements, which most normal people aren’t aware of existing. She says that portable electronic devices scramble her sense of vibrations and doesn’t own a cell phone. She doesn’t even like talking on a regular phone much because she doubts her ability to judge people normally and auras don’t convey through wires and electronics. She does own a notebook computer and have internet access but says all the bits of code jumping around uncontrolled make her nervous and worries that some opportunistic entity might jump in. The time she is shown using it in canon, she sets out stones and lights a candle for protection before beginning. And when she borrows Max’s digital camera, she’s not sure how to get the pictures off without a cord and has to ask for help. Lily even wryly thinks she might have done better as a witch hundreds of years earlier if it hadn’t been for the massacres.
She is not good at lying which can be a difficulty in hiding the fact that she’s a witch.
She also never finished high school due to being forced to leave her hometown so she has gaps in her education. Her friends were gaping over the idea that she had never read The Great Gatsby and hadn’t even heard about equivalency diplomas. She’s particularly bad at math and hates algebra.
Ironically, Lily is allergic to cats and when she temporarily takes in a black cat after its owner is murdered, it leads to a lot of sneezing.
[ SOUL CAMPAIGN SECTION ]
What abilities will your character retain in Soul Campaign?
-Lily will keep the non-magical portion of her first aid skills. She’ll still be able to do things like stitch up wounds or mix poultices but won’t be able to enhance them with magic.
-She’ll retain her knowledge of herbs.
-She’ll still know her spells and incantations although they won’t actually do anything.
-She will retain a weakened version of her ability to float since it’s due to genetics rather than magic; she won’t be like a cork but she’ll still be extra buoyant compared to an average person.
-She’ll still have a good memory and good concentration.
-She’ll keep her driving skills although they wouldn’t be of much use in Death City with guests not being allowed to have cars.
-She’ll keep her laundry and cooking skills.
What weaknesses will your character lose or gain in Soul Campaign?
-The only weakness she will lose is that her powers doing unintended things would no longer be a concern.
-The biggest weakness Lily will gain is that she would lose all her magic and access to her helping spirit and Oscar. While she could still attempt to brew things and make charms if she’s able to find the ingredients, they would have no magical effects.
-BREW would also take away her athame (ceremonial dagger) since it’s a knife.
-She’s not a physical fighter and not particularly strong so she’ll be at a disadvantage without her powers.
-She won’t have access to all the herbs she had back home so that would impede her ability to create poultices and the like until she manages to grow new ones in Death City.
-Being a witch in her canon, she would likely be paranoid about the idea of a war against witches, especially considering what happened before she was forced to leave her hometown. Also, even though they occurred hundreds of years ago, she refers to historical witch hunts or makes references to “burning times” a few times in each book. She’ll likely be trying to hide the fact that she was a witch in her world.
-Since she’s not completely comfortable with technology, I imagine she would leave her communicator in the apartment most of the time rather than carrying it with her. This could possibly get her into trouble if she ever needs to send an SOS.
The wish Death the Kid made to the BREW in 2009 was to “rescue Death City and stop the waves of Madness from overtaking the world.” By whatever means necessary. Pretend you are the BREW. Why would you choose to bring this character to Death City?
Although Lily moved to San Francisco with hopes of finally living a normal life, she feels obligated to get involved when supernatural events occur around her because regular humans can’t properly deal with such things. Rather than the quiet life she had wanted, she ends up fighting demons. Within the space of several weeks, she rescues a child from La Llorona, exorcises a demon, fights against a group of evil witches, and helps solve two murders. So, she has experience dealing with dangerous situations and less fear of the supernatural than most people, managing not to panic even when nearly drowned by La Llorona or being shown various illusions by Sitri.
[ MEISTER ONLY SECTION ]
Why is your character a Meister and not a Weapon?
Lily would be a Meister because she takes the leading role when fighting supernatural entities in canon. Although she asks for help others such as Aidan and the members of Bronwyn’s coven, they’re there for support and she takes the main role in actually dealing with the demons.
What is your character’s Meister Ability? Why?
Soul Fashion Sense - The meister can sense moods, energy, and soul wavelength on articles of clothing upon contact. Works best when the meister can hold the garment for a minute while concentrating and works better on items worn often.
This created ability is my first choice because Lily runs a vintage clothing shop and can feel vibrations of the past from old clothes. This ability comes up often in canon and is emphasized in all the summaries on the back covers of the books. Although she uses many other powers which can match up to existing Meister abilities, a lot of those powers only come up once or twice and don’t fit her that well overall. And while this would be less useful in combat than some other possibilities, Lily does state in canon that fighting magic has never been her strength. So, I’d greatly prefer her to have an ability related to clothes to fit her series’ theme.
Scorching Soul
Although Lily doesn’t regularly use fire powers per se, brewing is her other specialty and she explains it as relying on “the magic of the fire, the process of boiling, and the transformation from liquid to steam to condense and focus one’s intentions.” She seems to have a bit of pyrokinetic ability since she once lights candles without touching them as basic magic practice. She can also make objects hot by concentrating on them and the time that she made a connection with Aidan, their combined power seemed to melt several pewter candle sconces.
Soul Seal
This ability could reflect the protective part of Lily’s personality. She regularly carves protective medallions and often carries around extras, which she gives out to friends and acquaintances when she thinks they might come across supernatural entities. She’s also capable of casting protection spells. And when fighting La Llorona and Sitri, she tries to set things up so the demons will only go after her and not the friends who are assisting her.
[ SOUL INFORMATION ]
Describe your character’s soul with six adjectives.
Protective, Lonely, Insecure, Guarded, Awkward, Humorous
What does your character’s soul look like? Be creative.
Lily’s soul has long wavy hair with lots of tendrils sticking out and its expression is one of great concentration. Although ivory seems like the obvious choice due to her last name, the color of her soul is actually green to reflect the herbs she grows and uses in her magic back home.
[ SAMPLES ]
Provide a First Person style sample in the form of a post to the DEMISE network.
[Lily looks at the communicator with a frown. Although she doesn’t like speaking on the phone, she has to get out of this town before she ends up on the modern version of a flaming pyre. She decides it best not to show her face and manages to set the device to voice after some fiddling and consulting the manual. Trying to sound casual despite her nervousness, she starts to speak. There’s still a twang even though she left Texas years ago.]
Hello. My name is Lily Ivory and there’s been a mistake, I reckon. I sell vintage clothes for a living and wouldn’t be much help here unless you folks threaten witches with polyester leisure suits. [She laughs briefly, hoping her half-truth sounded convincing.]
If y’all could tell me where I can rent a car or get a bus ticket back to San Francisco, I’d appreciate it. I have my shop and a potbellied pig waiting for me at home. [And a demon to exorcise from the School of Fine Arts…]
Provide a Third Person sample set during the last minutes on their world and/or their first few moments in the Kishin Chamber.
Not wanting to put anyone else at risk, Lily instructed Oscar and the Wiccans not to enter the building no matter what they saw or heard. She then picked up the cauldron full of ashes—the remnants of the frilly Edwardian underthings and gowns from the closet where Sitri had previously been bound—and went inside. She moved through the deserted hallways of the San Francisco School of Fine Arts in the direction of the haunted bell tower.
She paused to listen at the base of the circular stone steps. The convent-turned-art school was eerily quiet tonight; even the ghost of John Daniels was silent. She chanted as she slowly climbed the curving stairs, stopping to rest a few times due to the weight of the heavy cauldron and the other supplies she carried. As she rounded the final curve, the door at the top of the stairs shimmered, a warning of what was beyond.
Suddenly, it was blacker than midnight under a skillet.
“What in tarnation?” Were Sitri’s tricks starting already? From her earlier encounter with him, she already knew he was capable of producing illusions. She no longer appeared to be on the stairs but in a large, darkened room. If her hands had been free, she would have grabbed for the protective medicine bundle she kept tied at her waist. She chanted, concentrating, trying to dispel the illusion. She continued even as the screen flickered on and the red-haired man gave his explanation.
A war with witches? If this was a joke by the demon, it wasn’t funny. Not one cotton pickin’ bit.
[ NOTES ]
The journal for this character will be magicandvintage.
Player Name: Lady of the Thread
Timezone: Eastern Time (GMT-4)
Personal Journal:
ladyofthethreadContact Information: AIM is AugusteR but I rarely use it; PMing through LJ works better
Current Characters: Kou Shuurei
Links to Activity Check: here
Beta-reader: N/A
[ CHARACTER INFORMATION ]
Name: Lily Ivory
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Canon: The Witchcraft Mysteries (a mystery novel series by Juliet Blackwell. The 3 books so far are: Secondhand Spirits, A Cast-Off Coven, Hexes and Hemlines.)
Timeline: Canon updated 6/9/13 to: Book 4, chapter 3. A woman collapses at the Art Deco Ball and Lily discovers that her displaced soul is trapped in a mirror.
Canon updated 4/10/12 to: Near the end of book 2, chapter 23. Lily has just exorcised the demon and then has a confrontation with Jerry Becker's murderer at top of the bell tower stairs.
Character History:
Lily grew up in Jarod, a small west Texas town near El Paso. Her mother seems to have been a normal woman and had trouble accepting that her daughter had magical powers. Her father was a male witch but walked out on his family when Lily was still a toddler. He had wanted to take Lily with him but was opposed by Lily’s mother and Graciela, the witch who had raised and trained him after his parents died.
Lily learned that she was a witch when she was 8. During a school campout, she asked a classmate to trade her plain oatmeal because she didn’t want the sweetened bowl she had been given. She refused and Lily concentrated, making the bowl hot so that the other girl would drop it. After Lily switched the bowls, her classmate pointed and shouted, calling her a “nasty old witch.” This made Lily furious since she had been raised with the image of witches as ugly hags in league with the devil. A sudden gust of wind blew sparks from the fire onto the other girl’s lap and hair and while the adults rushed to help the girl, the other kids turned on Lily, yelling accusations and pushing. She climbed up the cliff next to the campsite, magically helped along by the vines growing there. From the top of the cliff, she cursed her classmates, causing all of the other children on that trip to get food poisoning.
After that, Lily’s mother sent her to live with her grandmother Graciela on the outskirts of town. With Graciela’s guidance, Lily spent the next several years learning to admit to herself that she was a witch, to control her temper, and to hide her powers from normal humans. She was only partially successful with the latter two.
There were other incidents over the years. Lily’s first boyfriend ended up with a minor head injury after she realized he was just showing off to win a bet. And she was kicked out of high school after their star football player, who had been harassing Lily, developed an ailment which badly affected his play.
However, the major one happened when Lily was 17 and forced her to leave town before she could finish her training with Graciela. Lily’s mother belonged to a snake handling church and they tried to exorcise Lily by tying her down and setting poisonous snakes on her. Lily feared for her life and while she didn’t enchant the snakes, 12 people got bitten and 3 died. She had to turn herself in to the police to protect Graciela from the mob that showed up at her house. She spent weeks in jail before the charges got dropped after witnesses dropped out and the prosecutor fell ill; Graciela denied it but Lily knew it was her doing. She couldn’t remain in her hometown after that so Graciela told her to go to a witch friend of hers in Mexico. But Lily disobeyed and went looking for her father instead.
It’s never stated how long Lily’s search takes but she finally tracks him down in a remote Bavarian town. There are very few details revealed about that encounter although it’s alluded to several times as a negative experience. It’s implied that her father was somehow tempted by power and chose evil. Lily mentioned that he had severe burn marks and claimed she barely survived that meeting.
Afterwards, she spent years traveling the world alone; Scotland, Jamaica, Morocco, Thailand, Amsterdam, Botswana, Geneva, France, Spain, and North Africa were among the places she visited. She eventually found herself in a rural French cemetery, wondering if anyone would mourn her when she was gone and realizing that she wanted to find a community, make a home and have friends, possibly even start a family. Then, one night in a Hong Kong bar, she met a parrot named Barnabas who suggested she try San Francisco…
Secondhand Spirits
The series begins when Lily is 31. She has recently moved to San Francisco and opened a vintage clothing store called “Aunt Cora’s Closet,” with her new Wiccan friend Bronwyn running a herbal stand in a corner of the shop. She hopes to finally make friends and live a normal life. However, she is soon visited by Aidan Rhodes, a powerful male witch who knew her father and who is in charge of the city’s witches. Against her protests, he presents her with a familiar, a half goblin/half gargoyle who can transform into a potbellied pig; she gets stuck with him when Aidan leaves while her back is turned and names him Oscar.
In search of inventory for the shop, Lily’s assistant Maya brings her to Frances Potts’ house. They meet Jessica, a little girl who lives nearby. A while after the girl leaves, Lily and Frances hear the scream of La Llorona, a demon that kidnaps children, and learn that Jessica has disappeared. Lily is concerned because normal humans can’t hear a demon’s wail unless they’re marked for death and decides to cast a protection spell for Frances without the other’s knowledge.
The next morning, she receives a visit from the police who learned of her late night visit to Frances’s house from a surveillance camera. They question her and inform her that Frances was found dead in a pentagram. Disturbed that her spell failed, Lily decides to investigate Frances’s death and find a way to get Jessica back from La Llorona. Along the way, she becomes acquainted with Max Carmichael, a reporter trying to debunk the supernatural, and Herve LaMansec, a voodoo priest.
In the end, she finds out the truth behind Frances’s death and the children who have disappeared from that neighborhood over the past 35 years. With the help of Bronwyn’s coven and Aidan, she manages to rescue Jessica and banish La Llorona from San Francisco bay.
A Cast-Off Coven
About a week later, Lily is asked to look into a possible haunting at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts; the students are scared and some believe the school is being haunted by the ghost of John Daniels, a student said to have committed suicide by throwing himself down the bell tower stairs in the sixties. In exchange for looking into the matter, Lily is promised some vintage clothes found in a sealed closet at the school. But before she can find anything supernatural, Jerry Becker, a wealthy benefactor of the school, is discovered dead at the foot of the bell tower stairs. Lily initially wants to leave finding the killer to the police but Aidan visits her the next morning and asks her to investigate the death. He reveals that Jerry was a client of his and suggests that Lily contact a psychic called Sailor for help. Lily agrees because she was obligated after receiving Aidan’s help with La Llorona.
Eventually, Lily is able to identify the demon at the school and learns that it’s trying to find a host to permanently possess. She brews something at home and then returns to the school with the clothes from the closet. Outside the school, Bronwyn’s coven helps her burn the clothes and Lily puts the ashes into her cauldron. Warning everyone else to stay outside, Lily goes inside the deserted school and hauls her cauldron and other supplies up the bell tower stairs in order to perform the actual exorcism. She succeeds despite the demon showing her illusions and two of her friends showing up. Afterwards, she has a confrontation with Jerry Becker's murderer at the top of the bell tower stairs.
After the killer is arrested, Lily returns to the art school and seals off the closet where the demon had been conjured to prevent anyone from accidentally summoning him again. Considering the things that have happened since she moved to San Francisco, she decides it would be best to try to finish her training and asks Aidan for help.
Hexes and Hemlines
Lily soon finds herself drawn into another investigation when Inspector Romero asks her to be an unofficial occult consultant on a bizarre murder case. The victim was the leader of the Serpentarian Society, a rationalist group trying to debunk superstitions; Malachi Zazi was found dead on the dining table of his 13th floor penthouse, stabbed with a shard from a broken mirror and surrounded by bad luck symbols the morning after one of the society’s midnight supper parties. Lily feels an unusual lack of vibrations from the body and finds the victim lacks fingerprints, making her wonder if Malachi wasn’t human.
She visits Aidan for a lesson and sees a vision of Malachi with snakes wrapped around his neck as if they were scarves during a scrying attempt. When Aidan learns that Malachi was murdered, he warns her to drop the investigation but refuses to give a reason. Lily ignores him and they part with Aidan angry at her. She returns to the shop to find Bronwyn hasn’t come in for work and goes by her friend’s apartment to see what is wrong. It turns out Bronwyn’s daughter Rebecca is there and is upset because her husband Gregory is a suspect in Malachi’s murder. Lily thinks it can’t just be coincidence and agrees to help. But before she can start her investigation, she is visited by a timebending witch named Doura, who also warns her off the case.
Ignoring Doura’s warning, Lily proceeds to look into the Serpentarian Society and talk to guests from the dinner party. The investigation is complicated by a group of devil worshippers, hexes and a rattlesnake found at Malachi’s apartment, the corpse disappearing, reports of a person running around wrapped in scarves and a hat like Malachi used to, a coven of evil witches working with a scientist in pursuit of eternal youth, and a hex that weakens Lily’s powers.
Bronwyn eventually asks her to drop the case because Rebecca didn’t want to be associated with witches and she agrees at first. But then someone leaves a hex on Bronwyn’s doorstep and Lily’s protectiveness causes her to decide whoever is behind it must be stopped despite her friend’s wishes. Lily gets into arguments with several of her friends for her meddling and Max, who she had been dating, tells her they should just be friends because he can’t accept that she’s a witch. Feeling lonely and like an outsider, she tries to bring the case to an end with magic. She gets a wax poppet to represent the unknown murderer from Sailor’s aunt Renna, a gypsy witch. Despite some hesitation, she starts casting the Living Things in You spell, which causes the victim to think that there are snakes inside of them, with the murderer as the target.
Character Personality:
Lily is a lonely misfit witch who had never really fit in anywhere before settling in San Francisco. Her goals when she moved there were relatively simple. She just wanted to make friends, become part of a community, run her shop, and possibly find love. But as she makes new acquaintances and friends, she finds herself becoming protective of them and feeling obligated to help when supernatural entities appear and cause trouble.
She is guarded and doesn’t easily trust people after being shunned her whole childhood and being run out of her hometown while still a teenager. Even in the more open-minded atmosphere of San Francisco, she still tries to hide her witchiness and doesn’t confide that to new people easily, believing she’ll be looked at differently. She’s evasive about it when the police question her after Frances’ death and when Max comes into the shop looking for herbs. And although her friend Bronwyn is a Wiccan and works in her shop, Lily doesn’t readily reveal that she’s a witch. They finally talk about it when Bronwyn sees her upset and asks her if it was about being a witch; she had noticed the cleansing rituals that Lily performed in the shop each morning and drawn the conclusion herself.
Despite being guarded about her status as a witch, Lily is protective of others, sometimes to the point of being meddlesome. This is especially true when it comes to protecting normal humans from supernatural entities because she knows she’s better able to deal with such things. She takes it upon herself to cast a protection spell for Frances although it wasn’t asked of her and to rescue Jessica. And although she asks Bronwyn’s coven for support in dealing with La Llorona and Sitri, she advises them to stay back and let her actually deal with the demons. When Max questions why she has to intervene in the investigation at the art school and encourages her to just walk away, her reply is, “This is who I am, Max. If there’s some sort of spiritual entity terrorizing people, and I can help… well, I feel obligated to do what I can.”
Since her powers had caused her to be shunned while growing up in Texas and she spent her years abroad traveling alone, Lily never really made friends or had much practice interacting with others so she can be awkward in social situations. She usually seems to do okay in dealing with customers at her shop but it’s not until San Francisco that she really starts to make friends and there are times when her words leave them gaping because she isn’t used to having to mind what she says. There are also other subtler signs of awkwardness. She gets nervous whenever she’s waiting on someone’s doorstep, hoping for admittance because she remembers how she was unwelcome as a child; she still considers it “a minor miracle” when someone actually invites her into their home. And although many people probably wouldn’t think much of getting a wedding invitation for someone they don’t really know, Lily is excited when a business associate invites her to her niece’s wedding. While she doesn’t voice these feelings out loud, Lily does think them and it shows her yearning for acceptance among normal humans. Many well-known pop culture references like Star Wars and Mary Poppins also tend to go over her head, which makes people look at her strangely sometimes.
She can also be insecure, both about her relationships with people and her powers. She worries about losing Bronwyn’s friendship when she goes against her friend’s wishes and continues investigating a case involving Bronwyn’s son-in-law, after finding a hex on Bronwyn’s doorstep and deciding whoever left it had to be stopped. And being romantically attracted to Max, who is skeptical about all things supernatural, she worries that he won’t be able to accept the fact that she is a witch. After coming to San Francisco, making friends and gaining a familiar, she realizes how lonely she had been before. And while it’s better, I think she’s still kind of lonely considering how she clings to her friendships.
She sometimes doubts herself with regard to her powers since she was forced to leave her hometown before her training was finished. When Frances dies despite the protection spell that she cast, she feels guilt and horror and wonders if she’s losing her powers. Similarly, she wonders if she’s losing her powers in the third book when her magic isn’t working as well as usual due to some evil witches putting a hex on her. At one point in the books, she sits in her living room and practices basic magic like commanding the lights on and off and lighting candles without touching them, just to make sure she hasn’t lost her magic completely.
There’s also a humorous side to Lily. She’s often making wry or ironic observations to herself and sometimes making jokes to her friends. Sometimes, they’re sarcastic but not too often. And although her choice of words is usually normal, her thoughts and speech are occasionally sprinkled with colorful expressions from her Texas days, such as “whomperjawed,” “scareder than a sinner in a cyclone,” and “as mean as a skilletful of rattlesnakes.” And despite having left Texas over a decade ago, she still retains an accent and speaks with a twang.
She isn’t the most patient person and can get frustrated or exasperated easily. However, she tries to keep herself from losing her temper because it’s dangerous with her powers.
Character Abilities you would like to expand on further:
Along with Aidan, Lily is one of the two most powerful witches in San Francisco.
The power she uses most often is her ability to sense vibrations of the past from inanimate objects and buildings. Although she can also sense things from other objects, her specialty is clothes and they’re easier for her to read. Some examples of the things she can sense… She once drops a garment as if scalded because the vibrations of grief are so strong; it turns out the owner had lost a daughter to La Llorona and made a deal with the demon to get her back. Another time, she can’t feel any distinct vibrations from a dead man’s clothes and thinks something is wrong; it’s later revealed that the man had forfeited part of his soul to get out of an agreement with a demon. She’s able to tell that a customer had been crying recently by feeling her earrings and suggests she try on a pair with a confident energy that she had in the shop. She describes one dress’s vibrations as brash and gutsy. And she dislikes new clothes and describes them as feeling soulless.
With buildings, she’s able to sense the energy traces left by those who have inhabited the buildings or passed through them over the years. Using these, she’s able to make guesses about things that happened there, such as fights, murders, suicides, natural deaths, and how long ago they occurred.
She can also sense other people’s vibrations and attempt to read their auras. She tends to rely on this when speaking to people because she doesn’t trust her ability to judge people. She also says that witches can recognize their own and is able to tell Aidan is a witch as soon as he walks into her shop the first time due to the energy he gives off.
Lily’s other specialty is herbs and brewing. She is very knowledgeable about herbs and grows most of her own on her terrace. Her bigger spells usually involve taking herbs and other ingredients and brewing something with them in her cauldron. These sometimes require a blood sacrifice so Lily will make a small cut in her palm and allow a few drops of her powerful magical blood to fall into the cauldron. At the last step of brewing, a cloud of vapor will burst from the cauldron and briefly form a face; this is Lily’s helping spirit, who finalizes the spell; her familiar Oscar also helps with spellcasting, allowing magic to slide through the appropriate portals more easily. The resulting brew for things such as drawing magic circles to be used in conjunction with incantations and placing objects such as candles in specific locations.
She also uses herbs and magic for healing purposes in conjunction with normal first aid skills. When Max is injured in a magical knife attack, she takes him back to her apartment and stitches him up, treating him with a combination of a brew, a poultice, a magical circle, and incantations. It’s not instant but the magical components of this treatment significantly speed up the natural healing process.
Lily knows how to make a variety of magical items, including carving protective medallions, creating conjure balls (magical amulets in the form of balls of wax filled with herbs and charms), and spirit bottles (embellished bottles filled with herbs and oils, meant to trap evil and negative energy). Her Book of Shadows (spellbook/journal) is also shown to include a recipe for goofer balls (a type of hex) but she never actually uses that one since she prefers to keep to the positive side of magic.
There are a couple of times when she creates a persuasion charm by mixing certain herbs, placing them in a bag, and charging it with a chant. By putting the charm in her pocket and holding another person’s hand, she’s able to sway them to be helpful, answering questions more easily and granting access to areas where she normally wouldn’t be allowed.
In the first book, Aidan asks her to create a mandragora for him; it’s a type of familiar elf made from the root of a mandrake plant. The process requires the root to be buried for a month after the initial preparations and the end result hasn’t been shown in canon but Lily is shown making the preparations for it and mentions it’ll take another twenty days in the second book so presumably she has the ability to create a homunculus from the root.
Lily’s father has some kind of special relationship with snakes, which she inherited. She isn’t afraid of snakes since she considers them to have saved her life in the incident at the snake handling church. She is once able to get a rattlesnake poised to strike at her to uncoil and scurry away, using a chant. And although she is reluctant to use it and made sure to also brew the antidote, she learns and casts the Living Things in You spell in the third book in order to reveal a murderer; the spell uses several snake ingredients and makes the victim think there are snakes inside of them. And once when she is distracted while trying to make conjure balls, she instead ends up with wiggling wax snakes.
Lily is capable of telekinesis, occasionally flinging doors open with her mind. By concentrating, she can make an orangey red light emanate from her hand and light a dark room. She can also send out a blast of energy from her hand, strong enough to knock over a man a short distance away.
She once lights some candles without touching them so she seems to have basic pyrokinesis, too. By concentrating, she can make objects hot. And when Aidan asks to feel her energy and they make a connection, several pewter candle sconces in the room melt.
Sprits and demons are attracted by Lily’s energy and she seems to have some summoning power. (Although it appears possible in this canon for even people with little paranormal ability to accidentally summon demons.) While dealing with the demon at the art school, she avoids saying his name or drawing his sigil for fear of conjuring him before she’s prepared to deal with him. And once when an acquaintance unexpectedly appears at her shop, she wonders if she had unintentionally summoned the other woman by thinking of her the day before.
There are also many other spells/abilities mentioned briefly in the books: a fertility spell to help her herb garden grow faster, a prosperity spell to encourage the success of her store, an antitheft charm to make potential shoplifters think twice, a parking charm to help find a parking space, a cocooning spell to prevent others from overhearing a conversation, a love charm requested by a customer to get someone she’s interested in to notice her, being able to tell who is calling before picking up the phone, a near-perfect memory aside from names, an encyclopedic knowledge of fairy tales, great concentration.
During the first book, Lily acquires a voodoo relic known as a Hand of Glory. It’s supposedly the pickled left hand of a hanged man with a thick candle cradled in the palm; when the candle is lit, it will open all doors and provide light as bright as day. Although she hates it, she admits it’s rather useful and uses it a couple of times in later cases to open locked doors.
According to Lily, witches can’t sink. She gets dragged under San Francisco bay by La Llorona while trying to rescue a child and after she’s released, she floats right to the surface like a cork instead of having to swim up. Being a witch is hereditary in her canon and this seems to be an innate ability for witches due to genetics rather than the use of magic. She also notes that witches can’t cry, presumably another genetic quirk of witches.
As for more mundane abilities, she knows how to drive and owns both a purple van for the shop and a vintage red Mustang convertible. Due to being in the vintage clothing business, she’s familiar with various methods of washing and removing stains and can make minor repairs to garments although she employs someone else to do alterations. And she is a good cook.
Character Weaknesses you would like to expand on further:
Lily’s powers themselves can be a drawback at times. She’s not in complete control of her powers due to her incomplete training. She has to avoid saying demon’s names or sketching their sigils for fear of accidentally summoning them. She has never joined a coven because she’s afraid of what forces might be unleashed if her power were combined with a group of other witches. The one time she makes love in the books, she wakes up a few hours later and finds that clothes are dancing around her shop, a result of unintended sex magic. And Lily says it’s not safe to be around her when she’s angry.
Her magic is somewhat limited against demons. She needed Aidan to summon La Llorona for her and Graciela working a long distance spell to help with Sitri. And in both cases, she asked Bronwyn’s Wiccan coven (whose members practice Wicca but do not necessarily have supernatural abilities) to help so she could piggyback off their energy. Even then, she was only able to exorcise the demons rather than killing them. She sent La Llorona back to the Rio Grande area where people were more aware of the danger. And after she banished Sitri from the school, she noted that he is gone for now but not forever, figuring that the demon will probably find her someday when he has regained strength and was bored. Also, she isn’t a physical fighter and she notes that her magic is “more the brew-in-the-peace-and-quiet-of-my-home kind of talent than the middle-of-the-action, throw-down-situation kind.”
There are also other limitations. Her powers can be blocked by things like hexes. By taking dirt that she had trod on, spitting on it, putting it into an empty walnut shell, and burying it in a dead man’s garden, some evil witches were able to partially block her magic. During this time, Lily found spell casting more difficult and a couple of times, the spells didn’t work. Magic also doesn’t do well against humans in pursuit of self-destruction. For example, a protection spell won’t guard against suicide. And while charms can help enhance, they won’t completely change a person’s behavior; for example, the persuasion charm only works on people already inclined to be helpful.
Lily’s magic is also heavily dependent on having access to herbs and other supplies. There are some things which she can do only by concentrating or using incantations but many of the spells require creating brews or charms or drawing magic circles.
Despite her extensive powers, Lily is weak in some areas of magic. She is terrible at scrying and divination. When she gazes into her crystal ball, she usually only sees fleeting shadows and it frustrates her so much that she’s tempted to throw the crystal ball out her window and watch it shatter on the pavement below. Graciela didn’t believe her lack of talent in this area and Aidan comments that it’s very unusual for such a powerful witch to not be able to see. She also can’t read cards, tea leaves, or palms.
She also notes that she’s not a necromancer and lacks the ability to communicate with ghosts. Although her energy tends to draw spirits, she’s never able to understand anything they say and needs help from others such as Herve or Sailor when she needs to speak with ghosts.
Lily is not very technologically savvy even though her canon setting is modern and is basically the real world with the addition of supernatural elements, which most normal people aren’t aware of existing. She says that portable electronic devices scramble her sense of vibrations and doesn’t own a cell phone. She doesn’t even like talking on a regular phone much because she doubts her ability to judge people normally and auras don’t convey through wires and electronics. She does own a notebook computer and have internet access but says all the bits of code jumping around uncontrolled make her nervous and worries that some opportunistic entity might jump in. The time she is shown using it in canon, she sets out stones and lights a candle for protection before beginning. And when she borrows Max’s digital camera, she’s not sure how to get the pictures off without a cord and has to ask for help. Lily even wryly thinks she might have done better as a witch hundreds of years earlier if it hadn’t been for the massacres.
She is not good at lying which can be a difficulty in hiding the fact that she’s a witch.
She also never finished high school due to being forced to leave her hometown so she has gaps in her education. Her friends were gaping over the idea that she had never read The Great Gatsby and hadn’t even heard about equivalency diplomas. She’s particularly bad at math and hates algebra.
Ironically, Lily is allergic to cats and when she temporarily takes in a black cat after its owner is murdered, it leads to a lot of sneezing.
[ SOUL CAMPAIGN SECTION ]
What abilities will your character retain in Soul Campaign?
-Lily will keep the non-magical portion of her first aid skills. She’ll still be able to do things like stitch up wounds or mix poultices but won’t be able to enhance them with magic.
-She’ll retain her knowledge of herbs.
-She’ll still know her spells and incantations although they won’t actually do anything.
-She will retain a weakened version of her ability to float since it’s due to genetics rather than magic; she won’t be like a cork but she’ll still be extra buoyant compared to an average person.
-She’ll still have a good memory and good concentration.
-She’ll keep her driving skills although they wouldn’t be of much use in Death City with guests not being allowed to have cars.
-She’ll keep her laundry and cooking skills.
What weaknesses will your character lose or gain in Soul Campaign?
-The only weakness she will lose is that her powers doing unintended things would no longer be a concern.
-The biggest weakness Lily will gain is that she would lose all her magic and access to her helping spirit and Oscar. While she could still attempt to brew things and make charms if she’s able to find the ingredients, they would have no magical effects.
-BREW would also take away her athame (ceremonial dagger) since it’s a knife.
-She’s not a physical fighter and not particularly strong so she’ll be at a disadvantage without her powers.
-She won’t have access to all the herbs she had back home so that would impede her ability to create poultices and the like until she manages to grow new ones in Death City.
-Being a witch in her canon, she would likely be paranoid about the idea of a war against witches, especially considering what happened before she was forced to leave her hometown. Also, even though they occurred hundreds of years ago, she refers to historical witch hunts or makes references to “burning times” a few times in each book. She’ll likely be trying to hide the fact that she was a witch in her world.
-Since she’s not completely comfortable with technology, I imagine she would leave her communicator in the apartment most of the time rather than carrying it with her. This could possibly get her into trouble if she ever needs to send an SOS.
The wish Death the Kid made to the BREW in 2009 was to “rescue Death City and stop the waves of Madness from overtaking the world.” By whatever means necessary. Pretend you are the BREW. Why would you choose to bring this character to Death City?
Although Lily moved to San Francisco with hopes of finally living a normal life, she feels obligated to get involved when supernatural events occur around her because regular humans can’t properly deal with such things. Rather than the quiet life she had wanted, she ends up fighting demons. Within the space of several weeks, she rescues a child from La Llorona, exorcises a demon, fights against a group of evil witches, and helps solve two murders. So, she has experience dealing with dangerous situations and less fear of the supernatural than most people, managing not to panic even when nearly drowned by La Llorona or being shown various illusions by Sitri.
[ MEISTER ONLY SECTION ]
Why is your character a Meister and not a Weapon?
Lily would be a Meister because she takes the leading role when fighting supernatural entities in canon. Although she asks for help others such as Aidan and the members of Bronwyn’s coven, they’re there for support and she takes the main role in actually dealing with the demons.
What is your character’s Meister Ability? Why?
Soul Fashion Sense - The meister can sense moods, energy, and soul wavelength on articles of clothing upon contact. Works best when the meister can hold the garment for a minute while concentrating and works better on items worn often.
This created ability is my first choice because Lily runs a vintage clothing shop and can feel vibrations of the past from old clothes. This ability comes up often in canon and is emphasized in all the summaries on the back covers of the books. Although she uses many other powers which can match up to existing Meister abilities, a lot of those powers only come up once or twice and don’t fit her that well overall. And while this would be less useful in combat than some other possibilities, Lily does state in canon that fighting magic has never been her strength. So, I’d greatly prefer her to have an ability related to clothes to fit her series’ theme.
Although Lily doesn’t regularly use fire powers per se, brewing is her other specialty and she explains it as relying on “the magic of the fire, the process of boiling, and the transformation from liquid to steam to condense and focus one’s intentions.” She seems to have a bit of pyrokinetic ability since she once lights candles without touching them as basic magic practice. She can also make objects hot by concentrating on them and the time that she made a connection with Aidan, their combined power seemed to melt several pewter candle sconces.
Soul Seal
This ability could reflect the protective part of Lily’s personality. She regularly carves protective medallions and often carries around extras, which she gives out to friends and acquaintances when she thinks they might come across supernatural entities. She’s also capable of casting protection spells. And when fighting La Llorona and Sitri, she tries to set things up so the demons will only go after her and not the friends who are assisting her.
[ SOUL INFORMATION ]
Describe your character’s soul with six adjectives.
Protective, Lonely, Insecure, Guarded, Awkward, Humorous
What does your character’s soul look like? Be creative.
Lily’s soul has long wavy hair with lots of tendrils sticking out and its expression is one of great concentration. Although ivory seems like the obvious choice due to her last name, the color of her soul is actually green to reflect the herbs she grows and uses in her magic back home.
[ SAMPLES ]
Provide a First Person style sample in the form of a post to the DEMISE network.
[Lily looks at the communicator with a frown. Although she doesn’t like speaking on the phone, she has to get out of this town before she ends up on the modern version of a flaming pyre. She decides it best not to show her face and manages to set the device to voice after some fiddling and consulting the manual. Trying to sound casual despite her nervousness, she starts to speak. There’s still a twang even though she left Texas years ago.]
Hello. My name is Lily Ivory and there’s been a mistake, I reckon. I sell vintage clothes for a living and wouldn’t be much help here unless you folks threaten witches with polyester leisure suits. [She laughs briefly, hoping her half-truth sounded convincing.]
If y’all could tell me where I can rent a car or get a bus ticket back to San Francisco, I’d appreciate it. I have my shop and a potbellied pig waiting for me at home. [And a demon to exorcise from the School of Fine Arts…]
Provide a Third Person sample set during the last minutes on their world and/or their first few moments in the Kishin Chamber.
Not wanting to put anyone else at risk, Lily instructed Oscar and the Wiccans not to enter the building no matter what they saw or heard. She then picked up the cauldron full of ashes—the remnants of the frilly Edwardian underthings and gowns from the closet where Sitri had previously been bound—and went inside. She moved through the deserted hallways of the San Francisco School of Fine Arts in the direction of the haunted bell tower.
She paused to listen at the base of the circular stone steps. The convent-turned-art school was eerily quiet tonight; even the ghost of John Daniels was silent. She chanted as she slowly climbed the curving stairs, stopping to rest a few times due to the weight of the heavy cauldron and the other supplies she carried. As she rounded the final curve, the door at the top of the stairs shimmered, a warning of what was beyond.
Suddenly, it was blacker than midnight under a skillet.
“What in tarnation?” Were Sitri’s tricks starting already? From her earlier encounter with him, she already knew he was capable of producing illusions. She no longer appeared to be on the stairs but in a large, darkened room. If her hands had been free, she would have grabbed for the protective medicine bundle she kept tied at her waist. She chanted, concentrating, trying to dispel the illusion. She continued even as the screen flickered on and the red-haired man gave his explanation.
A war with witches? If this was a joke by the demon, it wasn’t funny. Not one cotton pickin’ bit.
[ NOTES ]
The journal for this character will be magicandvintage.