Lily Ivory (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vintage_magic) wrote2014-08-04 11:32 am
vintage_magic) wrote2014-08-04 11:32 am
Application for Holly Heights
OOC INFORMATION;
Player: Lady
Age: 25+
Personal Journal:ladyofthethread
Contact Info:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
embroideress
Other Characters: n/a
IC INFORMATION;
Characters Name: Lily Ivory
Age: 31
Canon: The Witchcraft Mysteries
Canon Point: In a Witch’s Wardrobe (book 4), chapter 18. After being arrested for breaking into the Paramount Theater.
Species: Human
Gender: Female
Orientation: Heterosexual. Lily has had dates with three guys in the books and slept with a couple of them. There’s mention of a couple of old boyfriends from many years ago. Plus, she tends to note attractive men and get a little flustered around them. Although she does have a good number of female friends, she doesn’t show any romantic interest in women.
History:
Pre-canon
Growing up in the small west Texas town of Jarod, Lily’s childhood was troubled. Her father Declan was a male witch who walked out on his family when Lily was still a toddler. Lily’s mother was apparently a normal woman who had trouble accepting that her daughter had magical powers.
Lily learned that she was a witch when she was 8, getting into an argument with a classmate during a school campout. The classmate called her a “nasty old witch,” infuriating Lily and causing the other children to turn on her. She climbed to the top of the cliff next to the campsite, magically helped by the vines there, and cursed her classmates. All of the other children got food poisoning as a result and the people of her hometown shunned her because of her strange abilities.
After that, Lily’s mother sent her to live on the outskirts of town with Graciela, the witch who had raised Lily’s father after his parents died. With her adoptive grandmother’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. But she wasn’t completely successful with the latter two and 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 magical training. 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, a dozen people got bitten and three 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 any longer so Graciela told her to go to a witch friend of hers in Mexico.
But Lily disobeyed and went looking for her father instead. After about a year, she finally tracked him down in a remote Bavarian town. The reunion was a negative experience with her father rejecting her and sending her away although he later claimed it was to protect her from a demon he had become beholden to.
Afterwards, she spent over a decade wandering the world alone, visiting many countries but never staying anywhere for long. 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
Shortly before the start of the first book, Lily moved to San Francisco in hopes of finally making friends and living a normal life. She opened a vintage clothing store called “Aunt Cora’s Closet,” sharing the space with her new Wiccan friend Bronwyn who ran a herbal stand in a corner. However, she was soon visited by Aidan Rhodes, a powerful male witch who knew her father and who claimed to be in charge of the city’s witches. Against her protests, he presented her with a familiar, a half goblin/half gargoyle that could transform into a potbellied pig; she got stuck with him when Aidan left while her back was turned and named him Oscar.
In search of inventory for the shop, Lily’s assistant Maya brought her to Frances Potts’ house. There they met Jessica, a little girl who lived nearby. Shortly after the girl left, Lily and Frances heard the scream of the child-abducting demon La Llorona and learned that Jessica had disappeared. Concerned because normal humans wouldn’t hear a demon’s wail unless they’re marked for death, Lily decided to cast a protection spell for Frances without the other’s knowledge.
The next morning, she received a visit from Inspectors Romero and Nordstrom of the SFPD, who had learned of her late night visit to Frances’s house from a surveillance camera. They questioned her and informed her that Frances was found dead in a pentagram. Disturbed that her spell had failed, Lily decided to investigate Frances’s death and find a way to get Jessica back from La Llorona. Along the way, she became acquainted with Max Carmichael, a reporter trying to debunk the supernatural, and Herve LaMansec, a voodoo priest.
In the end, Lily discovered the truth behind Frances’s death and the children who disappeared from that neighborhood over the past 35 years. And with the help of Bronwyn’s coven and Aidan, she managed to rescue Jessica and banish La Llorona from San Francisco Bay.
A Cast-Off Coven
About a week later, Lily was asked to look into a possible haunting at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts; the students were scared and some believed the school was 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 1960s. In exchange for looking into the matter, the school’s provost promised Lily some Victorian clothes found in a sealed closet at the school. But before she found anything supernatural, Jerry Becker, a wealthy benefactor of the school, was discovered dead at the foot of the bell tower stairs. Lily initially wanted to leave finding the killer to the police but Aidan visited her the next morning and insisted she investigate the death. He revealed that Jerry was a client of his and suggested that Lily contact a psychic called Sailor for help. Lily agreed because she was obligated after receiving Aidan’s help with La Llorona.
Eventually, Lily was able to identify the demon at the school and learned that it was trying to find a host to permanently possess. She brewed at home and then returned to the school with the clothes from the closet. Outside, Bronwyn’s coven helped her burn the clothes and Lily put the ashes into her cauldron. Warning everyone else to stay outside, Lily went into the deserted school and hauled her supplies up the bell tower stairs in order to perform the actual exorcism. She succeeded despite the demon showing her illusions and two of her friends showing up. Afterwards, she had a confrontation with Jerry Becker's murderer at the top of the bell tower stairs.
With the killer in police custody, Lily returned to the school the next day and sealed 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 decided it would be best to try to finish her training and asked Aidan for help.
Hexes and Hemlines
Lily soon found herself drawn into another investigation when Inspector Romero asked 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.
She visited Aidan for a lesson and saw a vision of Malachi with snakes wrapped around his neck as if they were scarves during a scrying attempt. When Aidan learned that Malachi was murdered, he warned her to drop the investigation but refused to give a reason. Ignoring him, Lily left and returned to the shop to find Bronwyn hadn’t come in for work. Going by her friend’s apartment to see what was wrong, she found Bronwyn’s daughter Rebecca was there and upset because her husband Gregory was a suspect in Malachi’s murder. Lily thought it couldn’t just be coincidence and agreed to help. But before she could start her investigation, she was visited by a timebending witch named Doura, who also warned her off the case.
Ignoring Doura’s warning, Lily proceeded to look into the Serpentarian Society and talk to guests from the dinner party. The investigation was 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 weakened Lily’s powers.
Bronwyn eventually asked Lily to drop the case because Rebecca didn’t want to be associated with witches and she agreed at first. But then someone left a hex on Bronwyn’s doorstep and Lily decided whoever was behind it must be stopped despite her friend’s wishes. Lily got into arguments with several of her friends for her meddling and Max, who she had been dating, told her they should just be friends because he couldn’t accept that she was a witch. Feeling lonely and like an outsider, she tried to bring the case to an end with magic by casting the Living Things in You spell. It caused the murderer to believe there were snakes inside of them and give themselves away.
With the murderer apprehended and the evil coven’s plans foiled, Lily managed to smooth things over with Bronwyn and her friends although she didn’t make up with Max.
In a Witch’s Wardrobe
Accompanied by Aidan, Lily attended the Art Deco Ball at Oakland’s Paramount Theater. There, she bumped into a woman named Miriam and sensed that her vibrations were off-kilter. Later in the evening, Miriam fell unconscious in the woman’s lounge and Lily found that she was wearing a cursed corsage. After Miriam was taken to the hospital, Lily discovered the reason she wouldn’t wake up: her soul had become trapped in a mirror. Meanwhile, Aidan disappeared despite promising that he’d look into the matter. Lily tried to communicate with the woman in the mirror but Miriam’s words came out as gibberish. Unable to learn anything else, Lily went back to her apartment to look up things in her Book of Shadows and brew something to help Miriam.
The next morning, Inspector Romero showed up at the shop to once again ask Lily for help. This time, he was investigating the death of a Wiccan who went by the name of Tarragon Dark Moon. His attempts to find information about the dead woman’s friends and relationships hadn’t worked out and he wanted Lily to ask around about her. He also warned her that there had been several incidents of antiwitch vandalism by a group calling itself Defenders of Morality.
Lily went on to investigate both matters, meeting Miriam’s father at the hospital and learning that Miriam’s baby daughter hadn’t been well lately either. She didn’t have much luck getting information out of Tarragon’s coven or convincing Sailor to help her communicate with Miriam. But she did learn that Miriam belonged to the same coven as the dead woman and had been in the same botanicals training group.
Eventually, she manages to nag Sailor into breaking into the Paramount Theater in an attempt to talk to Miriam’s soul in the mirror. Their séance is cut short when they stir up other spirits in the theater and are attacked by them. Running to the foyer, they escape the ghosts but find themselves trapped because the doors to the street are locked. The security guard finds them and they’re arrested.
Appearance:
The book covers can be seen here. Lily is 5’5” and often dresses in vintage clothes and Keds. Although she is described as having long straight brown hair and dark eyes in the books, the cover artist usually gives her long wavy hair and reddish purple eyes. So, for RP purposes, I assume she has the wavy hair and purple eyes and I had my commissioned icons drawn to match the few pieces of official art.
Personality:
Before settling in San Francisco, Lily was a lonely misfit witch who had never really fit in anywhere. Her goals when she moved there were relatively simple: make friends, become part of a community, run her shop, and possibly find love. Basically, she wanted to finally have a normal life.
But while her loneliness has eased with new friends and finding her place, she’s still rather guarded. It’s difficult for her to completely 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. Even with her friend Bronwyn who 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. Although she becomes somewhat more open about being a witch as the series progresses and the number of people who know her secret grows, it’s still not something she brings up casually to new people, especially normal humans without magical powers.
Despite trying to hide that she’s 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. Even when Bronwyn and her other friends become upset with her for continuing to meddle in the Malachi Zazi case, she continues because her friends are being threatened and she won’t stand for that. She can be quite stubborn when she believes she’s in the right.
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 seems to have made friends pretty quickly—she’s already starting s shop with Bronwyn and Maya within several weeks of meeting them—and does okay in dealing with customers at her shop. But she’s still challenged when it comes to small talk and there are awkward moments which leave her friends gaping, like when Lily admits she never graduated high school. There are also other subtler signs of awkwardness. She gets nervous when she’s waiting on someone’s doorstep, hoping for admittance because she remembers how she was unwelcome as a child. 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.
Lily can 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. Yet, she realizes she can’t deny she’s a witch and eventually breaks up with him. After coming to San Francisco, making friends and gaining a familiar, she realizes how lonely she had been before. And while things have improved, she still seems a little 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.
She can be impulsive at times and isn’t the most patient person. She can get frustrated or exasperated easily, leading to bickering and sarcastic remarks. This tends to happen when she’s dealing with Aidan, who is in the habit of withholding information from her, and Sailor, who’s not always happy to help with her cases. Oscar can try her patience at times by acting like a child and she tends to take offense at negative stereotypes relating to witches. However, she generally tries to keep herself from losing her temper because it’s dangerous with her powers.
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. 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,” “nervous as a cat in a room full of rockers,” “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, which becomes more prominent when she’s upset.
Abilities:
Lily is one of the most powerful witches in San Francisco and has a lot of magic. Although her magic is versatile and can be used for many purposes (protection, healing, persuasion and exorcisms are just a few), it tends to be much subtler and take more time than magic in other canons. As Lily points out a few times, she can’t just wiggle her nose or point a wand and make magic happen.
For example, one of her main talents is brewing and it’s noted the first time she brewed in the series that it took an hour of boiling for the brew to be ready. Sometimes, the brewing itself is enough to cast the spell but other times she takes the resulting liquid and uses for purposes such as drawing magic circles or giving it to others to drink. In a similar vein, she also often puts together charms and carves protective medallions. And even makes a mandragora (a homunculus created from a mandrake root) in one case although this required burying the root for a month after it was prepared.
Lily’s other specialty is sensing vibrations from textiles about the people who wore them, usually personality and emotions. She can also do this to a lesser extent with other inanimate objects and buildings. While she can use the things she senses to make educated guesses about things that might have happened, she does not have the ability to see actual memories from this. Also in terms of sensing things normal people wouldn’t, she can try to read people’s auras.
She’s capable of summoning and has to take care not to say the names of demons for fear of accidentally summoning them. On the opposite side of the coin, she can also exorcise them.
She has a special connection with snakes, inherited from her father, and believes it saved her when the people of her hometown tried to exorcise her. She seems to be able to influence their actions and is capable of casting a spell that makes the victim think they have snakes inside of them as well as an antidote spell.
There are also a variety of other minor powers that she can use without having to brew or create a charm that could be roughly grouped together as psychokinesis: knocking a person off their feet with an energy blast, producing light from her hand, lighting candles without touching them, causing lights to turn on or off, animating inanimate objects.
She has an inability to sink due to being a witch and normally floats like a cork.
Sex magic exists in her world but with Lily’s lack of practice with relationships, she ends up unintentionally casting a couple of times and is pretty embarrassed the next morning when she wakes up to find clothes dancing around the shop or that there were rose petals all over the room. (The scenes fade to black in canon and considering the nature of the game and how many other options Lily has for regains, it’s highly unlikely that I would ever request it as a regain or that it would come up in a significant way. Mainly, I’m just noting it here since it does exist.)
On the more mundane side of things, Lily is skilled at gardening, growing a large variety of herbs on her terrace for use in her spells. She’s very knowledgeable about botanicals and can also mix them into things like poultices even without her healing magic. She’s also a good cook, making her mother’s Cajun recipes when she feels nostalgic and baking fairly often. And due to all the laundry she does for her shop, she’s familiar with many different methods of cleaning textiles and removing stains.
Other: Lily lacks fingerprints but due to a genetic disorder rather than having to do with being a witch. Otherwise, I can’t think of much.
SAMPLES;
First Person:
[Standing in the kitchen of the house that she doesn’t remember renting and looking much like a 1950s housewife in a vintage dress she found in the closet, Lily fidgets with the cell phone, trying to figure out how to broadcast a message. She was never fond of portable electronics. They scrambled her sense of vibrations so she had resisted ever owning a cell phone back home.]
[But this seems the best way to get find what she needs. Even with the alarming fact that she can’t feel her magic anymore, she has to at least try brewing, figure out some way to get back home. Miriam is still trapped in the mirror and needs her help!]
[When she thinks the unfamiliar device is finally recording, she does her best to put on a smile—it comes out nervous—and starts to speak in her Texas twang.]
My name’s Lily Ivory and I reckon you could say I’m new in town. Are there any gardeners out there willing to share some cuttings? Herbs and things like that.
[Realizing it might seem odd as a first request from a newcomer, she quickly adds…]
…Um, because fresh ones are much better for cooking. I’m pretty good in the kitchen and I’d be happy to cook something for y’all in return. Maybe, my mama’s gumbo or jambalaya. Or I could bake for those who’d prefer cookies instead.
And is there a good kitchenware store around here? I’m looking for a bigger pot…
[A cauldron to be exact…]
Third Person:
Was it all a dream? Or in case that doesn’t work, magical types and do-it-yourself projects don’t mix.
OTHER;
Housing Request?: In 1421 with Eagle and Lion, please. I’m friends with both players.
Did you read the rules and FAQ?: Yes
Player: Lady
Age: 25+
Personal Journal:
ladyofthethreadContact Info:
Other Characters: n/a
IC INFORMATION;
Characters Name: Lily Ivory
Age: 31
Canon: The Witchcraft Mysteries
Canon Point: In a Witch’s Wardrobe (book 4), chapter 18. After being arrested for breaking into the Paramount Theater.
Species: Human
Gender: Female
Orientation: Heterosexual. Lily has had dates with three guys in the books and slept with a couple of them. There’s mention of a couple of old boyfriends from many years ago. Plus, she tends to note attractive men and get a little flustered around them. Although she does have a good number of female friends, she doesn’t show any romantic interest in women.
History:
Pre-canon
Growing up in the small west Texas town of Jarod, Lily’s childhood was troubled. Her father Declan was a male witch who walked out on his family when Lily was still a toddler. Lily’s mother was apparently a normal woman who had trouble accepting that her daughter had magical powers.
Lily learned that she was a witch when she was 8, getting into an argument with a classmate during a school campout. The classmate called her a “nasty old witch,” infuriating Lily and causing the other children to turn on her. She climbed to the top of the cliff next to the campsite, magically helped by the vines there, and cursed her classmates. All of the other children got food poisoning as a result and the people of her hometown shunned her because of her strange abilities.
After that, Lily’s mother sent her to live on the outskirts of town with Graciela, the witch who had raised Lily’s father after his parents died. With her adoptive grandmother’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. But she wasn’t completely successful with the latter two and 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 magical training. 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, a dozen people got bitten and three 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 any longer so Graciela told her to go to a witch friend of hers in Mexico.
But Lily disobeyed and went looking for her father instead. After about a year, she finally tracked him down in a remote Bavarian town. The reunion was a negative experience with her father rejecting her and sending her away although he later claimed it was to protect her from a demon he had become beholden to.
Afterwards, she spent over a decade wandering the world alone, visiting many countries but never staying anywhere for long. 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
Shortly before the start of the first book, Lily moved to San Francisco in hopes of finally making friends and living a normal life. She opened a vintage clothing store called “Aunt Cora’s Closet,” sharing the space with her new Wiccan friend Bronwyn who ran a herbal stand in a corner. However, she was soon visited by Aidan Rhodes, a powerful male witch who knew her father and who claimed to be in charge of the city’s witches. Against her protests, he presented her with a familiar, a half goblin/half gargoyle that could transform into a potbellied pig; she got stuck with him when Aidan left while her back was turned and named him Oscar.
In search of inventory for the shop, Lily’s assistant Maya brought her to Frances Potts’ house. There they met Jessica, a little girl who lived nearby. Shortly after the girl left, Lily and Frances heard the scream of the child-abducting demon La Llorona and learned that Jessica had disappeared. Concerned because normal humans wouldn’t hear a demon’s wail unless they’re marked for death, Lily decided to cast a protection spell for Frances without the other’s knowledge.
The next morning, she received a visit from Inspectors Romero and Nordstrom of the SFPD, who had learned of her late night visit to Frances’s house from a surveillance camera. They questioned her and informed her that Frances was found dead in a pentagram. Disturbed that her spell had failed, Lily decided to investigate Frances’s death and find a way to get Jessica back from La Llorona. Along the way, she became acquainted with Max Carmichael, a reporter trying to debunk the supernatural, and Herve LaMansec, a voodoo priest.
In the end, Lily discovered the truth behind Frances’s death and the children who disappeared from that neighborhood over the past 35 years. And with the help of Bronwyn’s coven and Aidan, she managed to rescue Jessica and banish La Llorona from San Francisco Bay.
A Cast-Off Coven
About a week later, Lily was asked to look into a possible haunting at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts; the students were scared and some believed the school was 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 1960s. In exchange for looking into the matter, the school’s provost promised Lily some Victorian clothes found in a sealed closet at the school. But before she found anything supernatural, Jerry Becker, a wealthy benefactor of the school, was discovered dead at the foot of the bell tower stairs. Lily initially wanted to leave finding the killer to the police but Aidan visited her the next morning and insisted she investigate the death. He revealed that Jerry was a client of his and suggested that Lily contact a psychic called Sailor for help. Lily agreed because she was obligated after receiving Aidan’s help with La Llorona.
Eventually, Lily was able to identify the demon at the school and learned that it was trying to find a host to permanently possess. She brewed at home and then returned to the school with the clothes from the closet. Outside, Bronwyn’s coven helped her burn the clothes and Lily put the ashes into her cauldron. Warning everyone else to stay outside, Lily went into the deserted school and hauled her supplies up the bell tower stairs in order to perform the actual exorcism. She succeeded despite the demon showing her illusions and two of her friends showing up. Afterwards, she had a confrontation with Jerry Becker's murderer at the top of the bell tower stairs.
With the killer in police custody, Lily returned to the school the next day and sealed 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 decided it would be best to try to finish her training and asked Aidan for help.
Hexes and Hemlines
Lily soon found herself drawn into another investigation when Inspector Romero asked 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.
She visited Aidan for a lesson and saw a vision of Malachi with snakes wrapped around his neck as if they were scarves during a scrying attempt. When Aidan learned that Malachi was murdered, he warned her to drop the investigation but refused to give a reason. Ignoring him, Lily left and returned to the shop to find Bronwyn hadn’t come in for work. Going by her friend’s apartment to see what was wrong, she found Bronwyn’s daughter Rebecca was there and upset because her husband Gregory was a suspect in Malachi’s murder. Lily thought it couldn’t just be coincidence and agreed to help. But before she could start her investigation, she was visited by a timebending witch named Doura, who also warned her off the case.
Ignoring Doura’s warning, Lily proceeded to look into the Serpentarian Society and talk to guests from the dinner party. The investigation was 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 weakened Lily’s powers.
Bronwyn eventually asked Lily to drop the case because Rebecca didn’t want to be associated with witches and she agreed at first. But then someone left a hex on Bronwyn’s doorstep and Lily decided whoever was behind it must be stopped despite her friend’s wishes. Lily got into arguments with several of her friends for her meddling and Max, who she had been dating, told her they should just be friends because he couldn’t accept that she was a witch. Feeling lonely and like an outsider, she tried to bring the case to an end with magic by casting the Living Things in You spell. It caused the murderer to believe there were snakes inside of them and give themselves away.
With the murderer apprehended and the evil coven’s plans foiled, Lily managed to smooth things over with Bronwyn and her friends although she didn’t make up with Max.
In a Witch’s Wardrobe
Accompanied by Aidan, Lily attended the Art Deco Ball at Oakland’s Paramount Theater. There, she bumped into a woman named Miriam and sensed that her vibrations were off-kilter. Later in the evening, Miriam fell unconscious in the woman’s lounge and Lily found that she was wearing a cursed corsage. After Miriam was taken to the hospital, Lily discovered the reason she wouldn’t wake up: her soul had become trapped in a mirror. Meanwhile, Aidan disappeared despite promising that he’d look into the matter. Lily tried to communicate with the woman in the mirror but Miriam’s words came out as gibberish. Unable to learn anything else, Lily went back to her apartment to look up things in her Book of Shadows and brew something to help Miriam.
The next morning, Inspector Romero showed up at the shop to once again ask Lily for help. This time, he was investigating the death of a Wiccan who went by the name of Tarragon Dark Moon. His attempts to find information about the dead woman’s friends and relationships hadn’t worked out and he wanted Lily to ask around about her. He also warned her that there had been several incidents of antiwitch vandalism by a group calling itself Defenders of Morality.
Lily went on to investigate both matters, meeting Miriam’s father at the hospital and learning that Miriam’s baby daughter hadn’t been well lately either. She didn’t have much luck getting information out of Tarragon’s coven or convincing Sailor to help her communicate with Miriam. But she did learn that Miriam belonged to the same coven as the dead woman and had been in the same botanicals training group.
Eventually, she manages to nag Sailor into breaking into the Paramount Theater in an attempt to talk to Miriam’s soul in the mirror. Their séance is cut short when they stir up other spirits in the theater and are attacked by them. Running to the foyer, they escape the ghosts but find themselves trapped because the doors to the street are locked. The security guard finds them and they’re arrested.
Appearance:
The book covers can be seen here. Lily is 5’5” and often dresses in vintage clothes and Keds. Although she is described as having long straight brown hair and dark eyes in the books, the cover artist usually gives her long wavy hair and reddish purple eyes. So, for RP purposes, I assume she has the wavy hair and purple eyes and I had my commissioned icons drawn to match the few pieces of official art.
Personality:
Before settling in San Francisco, Lily was a lonely misfit witch who had never really fit in anywhere. Her goals when she moved there were relatively simple: make friends, become part of a community, run her shop, and possibly find love. Basically, she wanted to finally have a normal life.
But while her loneliness has eased with new friends and finding her place, she’s still rather guarded. It’s difficult for her to completely 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. Even with her friend Bronwyn who 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. Although she becomes somewhat more open about being a witch as the series progresses and the number of people who know her secret grows, it’s still not something she brings up casually to new people, especially normal humans without magical powers.
Despite trying to hide that she’s 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. Even when Bronwyn and her other friends become upset with her for continuing to meddle in the Malachi Zazi case, she continues because her friends are being threatened and she won’t stand for that. She can be quite stubborn when she believes she’s in the right.
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 seems to have made friends pretty quickly—she’s already starting s shop with Bronwyn and Maya within several weeks of meeting them—and does okay in dealing with customers at her shop. But she’s still challenged when it comes to small talk and there are awkward moments which leave her friends gaping, like when Lily admits she never graduated high school. There are also other subtler signs of awkwardness. She gets nervous when she’s waiting on someone’s doorstep, hoping for admittance because she remembers how she was unwelcome as a child. 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.
Lily can 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. Yet, she realizes she can’t deny she’s a witch and eventually breaks up with him. After coming to San Francisco, making friends and gaining a familiar, she realizes how lonely she had been before. And while things have improved, she still seems a little 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.
She can be impulsive at times and isn’t the most patient person. She can get frustrated or exasperated easily, leading to bickering and sarcastic remarks. This tends to happen when she’s dealing with Aidan, who is in the habit of withholding information from her, and Sailor, who’s not always happy to help with her cases. Oscar can try her patience at times by acting like a child and she tends to take offense at negative stereotypes relating to witches. However, she generally tries to keep herself from losing her temper because it’s dangerous with her powers.
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. 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,” “nervous as a cat in a room full of rockers,” “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, which becomes more prominent when she’s upset.
Abilities:
Lily is one of the most powerful witches in San Francisco and has a lot of magic. Although her magic is versatile and can be used for many purposes (protection, healing, persuasion and exorcisms are just a few), it tends to be much subtler and take more time than magic in other canons. As Lily points out a few times, she can’t just wiggle her nose or point a wand and make magic happen.
For example, one of her main talents is brewing and it’s noted the first time she brewed in the series that it took an hour of boiling for the brew to be ready. Sometimes, the brewing itself is enough to cast the spell but other times she takes the resulting liquid and uses for purposes such as drawing magic circles or giving it to others to drink. In a similar vein, she also often puts together charms and carves protective medallions. And even makes a mandragora (a homunculus created from a mandrake root) in one case although this required burying the root for a month after it was prepared.
Lily’s other specialty is sensing vibrations from textiles about the people who wore them, usually personality and emotions. She can also do this to a lesser extent with other inanimate objects and buildings. While she can use the things she senses to make educated guesses about things that might have happened, she does not have the ability to see actual memories from this. Also in terms of sensing things normal people wouldn’t, she can try to read people’s auras.
She’s capable of summoning and has to take care not to say the names of demons for fear of accidentally summoning them. On the opposite side of the coin, she can also exorcise them.
She has a special connection with snakes, inherited from her father, and believes it saved her when the people of her hometown tried to exorcise her. She seems to be able to influence their actions and is capable of casting a spell that makes the victim think they have snakes inside of them as well as an antidote spell.
There are also a variety of other minor powers that she can use without having to brew or create a charm that could be roughly grouped together as psychokinesis: knocking a person off their feet with an energy blast, producing light from her hand, lighting candles without touching them, causing lights to turn on or off, animating inanimate objects.
She has an inability to sink due to being a witch and normally floats like a cork.
Sex magic exists in her world but with Lily’s lack of practice with relationships, she ends up unintentionally casting a couple of times and is pretty embarrassed the next morning when she wakes up to find clothes dancing around the shop or that there were rose petals all over the room. (The scenes fade to black in canon and considering the nature of the game and how many other options Lily has for regains, it’s highly unlikely that I would ever request it as a regain or that it would come up in a significant way. Mainly, I’m just noting it here since it does exist.)
On the more mundane side of things, Lily is skilled at gardening, growing a large variety of herbs on her terrace for use in her spells. She’s very knowledgeable about botanicals and can also mix them into things like poultices even without her healing magic. She’s also a good cook, making her mother’s Cajun recipes when she feels nostalgic and baking fairly often. And due to all the laundry she does for her shop, she’s familiar with many different methods of cleaning textiles and removing stains.
Other: Lily lacks fingerprints but due to a genetic disorder rather than having to do with being a witch. Otherwise, I can’t think of much.
SAMPLES;
First Person:
[Standing in the kitchen of the house that she doesn’t remember renting and looking much like a 1950s housewife in a vintage dress she found in the closet, Lily fidgets with the cell phone, trying to figure out how to broadcast a message. She was never fond of portable electronics. They scrambled her sense of vibrations so she had resisted ever owning a cell phone back home.]
[But this seems the best way to get find what she needs. Even with the alarming fact that she can’t feel her magic anymore, she has to at least try brewing, figure out some way to get back home. Miriam is still trapped in the mirror and needs her help!]
[When she thinks the unfamiliar device is finally recording, she does her best to put on a smile—it comes out nervous—and starts to speak in her Texas twang.]
My name’s Lily Ivory and I reckon you could say I’m new in town. Are there any gardeners out there willing to share some cuttings? Herbs and things like that.
[Realizing it might seem odd as a first request from a newcomer, she quickly adds…]
…Um, because fresh ones are much better for cooking. I’m pretty good in the kitchen and I’d be happy to cook something for y’all in return. Maybe, my mama’s gumbo or jambalaya. Or I could bake for those who’d prefer cookies instead.
And is there a good kitchenware store around here? I’m looking for a bigger pot…
[A cauldron to be exact…]
Third Person:
Was it all a dream? Or in case that doesn’t work, magical types and do-it-yourself projects don’t mix.
OTHER;
Housing Request?: In 1421 with Eagle and Lion, please. I’m friends with both players.
Did you read the rules and FAQ?: Yes