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Name: Lady Catherine Marler Archibald
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Origin: Negation/Deprivation
Appearance:
(except the clothes obviously)
Catherine is an attractive woman with long blonde hair and vivid blue eyes. She dresses in a stylish modern women's suit, usually with a black coat and black gloves. On a busy street, she would be indistinguishable from any other modern businesswoman.
Theme:
Personality
Like many Magi of the Archibald lineage, Catherine is immensely arrogant. This is not to say she is over-confident: she believes that she is better than everyone, but also recognizes that even inferior people can pose a threat. It was a lesson she learned from the humiliating death and defeat of her older brother, Kayneth, during the 4th Grail War. While Kayneth was an openly vain and cruel man, Catherine is more cautious. She attempts to take a pragmatic view of the world, and understands the importance of subtlety. She is extremely polite, though distant, in person and strongly believes in order and obedience. This is somewhat ironic, since her Origin of negation makes it extremely difficult for her to obey anyone. Beneath her civil exterior, Catherine is a rebellious soul, full of hatred, jealousy, and ambition.
Abilities
Catherine is a talented magus who is affiliated with the elements of wind and water. Her preferred element is wind, and she is highly specialized in manipulation of air, forces, energy, movement and her special favorite, lightning. Many of her spells also incorporate her origin, permitting them to negate different forces. This means she can use them defensively to drain the energy/force from an enemy and their attack, be it physical, magical, or something else.
Catherine is also a trained fencer, and is moderately talented with a sword, though she doesn't have very much actual combat experience with sword fighting.
Strengths
Catherine is a powerful magus, capable of using her magic to deal with a variety of situations.
Weaknesses:
The element of Earth opposes the Wind element, so Catherine is vulnerable to Earth-aligned magic. Her greater weakness, however, is her jealousy. Catherine has difficulty controlling that particular emotion, and she can become irrational and careless when she loses control of her feelings.
Equipment
Bounded Hydragyrum: Catherine possesses a Volumen Hydragyrum similar to the one her brother used, composed of 7 litres of special prana-treated Mercury. Her Water elemental affinity allows her to manipulate it very well, but unlike Kayneth, fluid manipulation is not her personal strongpoint. Kayneth displayed an amazing control over his Volumen Hydragyrum: he could shape it into any pattern; send out hundreds of different projections and control each of them individually; and even detect a human heartbeat through it. Catherine can control it well enough to move it, make simple shapes with it, and maintain a dozen or so projections at once. However, Catherine uses her Volumen Hydragyrum as a support mechanism, rather than her primary offensive/defensive tool. Catherine used her family’s alchemy knowledge to permanently imprint the foundations for 2 bounded fields into the mercury. All she has to do is set the mercury in a flat ring around her and run a stream of prana through it. This will activate both bounded fields, one inside the other. Since the bounded field uses the mercury as a base, Catherine can move the mercury, effectively letting her create mobile bounded fields. True mobile bounded fields are extremely rare and potentially very powerful, but Catherine’s solution is still very effective. The third part of the setup is an electrical current that she runs through both the mercury and the bounded fields. Anything that intrudes on the bounded fields is deprived of its energy or prana, due to Catherine’s Origin. If the object is a physical one, for example a thrown knife or a bullet, the field robs it of its momentum, and the object falls out of the air. If it is a spell or other magical item, the field negates its prana, dissipating the spell and drawing on the prana to continue sustaining the field. This defensive process is automatic, and requires no active command from Catherine. There is also an offensive process to the system, where Catherine stabs at opponents with electrified spear-like tendrils of the Volumen Hydragyrum, both physically harming the target and electrocuting them. There are limits to the system of course; the bounded field is only capable of negating so much energy, and high power spells and attacks can likely get through. Additionally, enough normal attacks will also overwhelm the bounded fields eventually, forcing Catherine to either take the time to reset them, or enclose herself in the shell of the Volumen. Catherine can also split the whole system into two and protect a secondary target. However, it is far more useful to send second part of the Volumen to surround an opponent and then activate the bounded fields, preventing them from casting spells. This ability is what has made Catherine such an effective Enforcer, as it is an extremely effective method for capturing magi alive. Obviously, the defensive capabilities of the system are significantly reduced if Catherine splits it in two, but that is often a necessary sacrifice.
Wellington's Sabre: A prized family heirloom that Catherine "borrowed" upon leaving, the saber is a useful tool. A set of gems on the hilt can be used to store prana, while runes along the blade amplify spells that Catherine casts using the saber. She is also quite skilled at using it as an actual weapon, and magical enhancements make sure it never breaks.
Assorted other mystic codes: Catherine brought along a small number of minorly useful magical devices she has acquired over the years, such as a monocle that lets her see traces of prana left in the air when someone has used magecraft nearby. Another is a small compass that will point her towards a target she has tagged with her magic.
Background
Catherine is of one of the oldest and most prestigious bloodlines of the Mages Association and England itself: the noble house of Archibald. Being the much younger sister of Kayneth Archibald, the head of the family and the Lord El-Melloi, Catherine was almost not taught magecraft at all. By the time she was born, Kayneth was already a 14 year old prodigy, and the obvious choice for the next head of the family. The family believed that making Catherine a magus as well would only cause competition and conflict. However, it was discovered that Catherine had an exceptional number of Magic Circuits, and the family couldn’t bear the thought of wasting that potential, so they decided to train her anyways.
Catherine grew up hating her brother and everything that he had. He was the favorite child, and while everyone praised and applauded every little thing he did, Catherine never received anything but criticism. Her teachers berated and belittled her for never being as smart as Kayneth, or as fast, or powerful. Her parents never ceased comparing her to her older brother: apparently Kayneth was more polite, more genteel, more refined and more honorable, while Catherine was a disobedient embarrassment to the family.
She was admitted to the Clock Tower at age 16, as the Mages Association was eager to have another prodigal Archibald in their ranks. However, the Association was disappointed: Catherine was extremely talented and much more powerful than many of her peers, but she paled in comparison to Kayneth.
When the Command Seal appeared on Kayneth’s hand, signalling that the Grail had selected him as a Master for the 4th Grail War, Catherine’s hatred and jealousy only grew. Catherine realized her Origin the day she learned of Kayneth’s death. She had never felt so good in her life. She knew that she would not receive his Crest or his titles or the admiration of her family, but she didn’t care. It was enough that Kayneth simply did not have any of those things. From this feeling and from her past, she deduced that her Origin must be negation: she does not want anything for herself, but she desperately wants others to NOT get what they want. Her family wanted to quietly marry her off into another Magi bloodline, while the Association was pressuring her to leave the Clock Tower and spend her life quietly doing research. She refused both of those desires, and instead joined the ranks of the Enforcers: the Association’s mage hunters.
Catherine turned out to be an extremely effective Enforcer, proving herself exceedingly capable at hunting down rogue mages. It was mostly because of her Origin. While Catherine might have said she hunted down rogues to keep the secret of magecraft from the world, in truth she did it because she was jealous of their freedom and wanted to take that away from them. This meant that her commitment to the job was unshakable. Additionally, Catherine’s magecraft began to align itself with her Origin, meaning that she became capable of performing spells that could negate energy, including prana flows. This made her very effective at actually capturing or killing rogue mages, as well as other threats to the secrecy of the Association.
When Liam Marland's information reached the Church, Catherine was sent by the Mage's Association to "assist in the investigation and demonstrate the continued cooperation between the Association and the Holy Church." There is probably not a single member of either group who believes that story. The Association obviously has some interest in Latham, and Catherine is here to protect that interest. Like many magi, she doesn't trust the Executors, and the feeling is certainly mutual.
Music
Spoiler
Originally Posted by Xiga
