Kara Samson
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"It is in our blood to love. You don’t have to learn how to be nice to people. It takes time to learn hatred. Hate is something you learn."[ 19 | 5’ 9” | White | She/Her | 197lb ]
[Loyal]
APPEARANCE
"I wasn’t trying to look pretty."She doesn’t like to stand out, so she wears a lot of muted colors. The most vibrant thing Kara wears is probably an old white jacket, no hood, and touched down to her knees. She’s had it for a few years. Kara’s got pretty pale skin and clear eyes, standing at a decent height as well makes her somewhat eye-candyish, not that she actually cares about that.
Kara likes to walk with her head held high up, like she’s letting it be known that she won’t let you walk on her, while wearing comfortable things like sweatpants and tank tops beneath her jacket. Spiraling up and down her right arm is what looks like a chalky gray vine pattern, that is her Awakened mark. It ends on her palm, in a swirl.
PSYCHOLOGY
"I don’t want to fight you, but I don’t have to like you either..."MAIN GOAL ⫻ To make it to a point in her life where conflict doesn’t matter. Is it idealistic, or a pipe dream? Probably.
WHAT THEY WANT OUT OF THE COVEN ⫻ Home. From what she knows, this place is full of people with “powers” like her own, people who have banded together for a common goal. For all Kara knows, their goals may line up with her hopes for a better life for the rest of the world.
PHILOSOPHY ⫻ To Kara, nothing is one sided, everyone has their reasons for doing one thing or another, and if her mindset is to clash with someone else’s fine. But she also believes that it doesn’t mean she can put it aside and just get along with someone instead of fighting over it. Kara’s heart bleeds for people she cares about, and the one thing she wants more than anything in this world is to be able to stop fighting, but at the same time, she also knows that if such a day ever comes, it’s sure as hell not gonna be soon, so she protects the people she cares for with near animalistic intensity. Kara is torn between the idea of burning the world down, and building a new one for the sake of her loved ones, regardless of casualties, and the idea of fixing the one she’s already in, to spare everyone in the crossfire.
SECRETS ⫻ She grew up in a bad home.
SEXUALITY ⫻ Pansexual
FEARS ⫻ Succumbing to rage above all else. Kara doesn’t want to reduce herself to the level of the pain and suffering of the world. If she lets her instincts get the better of her, she’s no different than the things she wants to change.
REPUTATION ⫻ All throughout high school, she was known by many but only friend with a select few. She kept a close knit group of very close friends, but she was on relatively good terms with most people in school, being known as the one kid who didn’t screw with people.
FLAWS ⫻ Her own nature as an angry pacifist bothers her often, she likes to build bridges instead of brew conflict, and sometimes she doesn’t know which to do. That gets to her.
BACKSTORY
"It doesn’t have to be this way. We can fix things. We just have to try..."Growing up in the suburbs of Florida wasn’t kind to Kara. For as long as she could remember, there was always some kind of unnecessary discourse in the house. It was just her and her two parents. They were always arguing, either with each other, or with Kara. As a result of this, Kara liked to spend most of her time alone in her room, particularly on the weekends. At school, she struggled to make friends for years, only having one or two friends that actually talked to her regularly. They were the only people who listened to the things she had to say, and that stuck with her.
The ignorance at home was more than just disagreements on a daily basis, her parents were more...conservative than some people would like. They were bigots, and naturally Kara tried to talk some sense into them, only to be met with heated rage from her father, and simple denial from her mother.
“You’re just a kid! You’re not gonna lecture me about marriage!”
“You don’t know the first thing about the Bible, when was the last time you actually opened one?”
Their distain of anything that wasn’t “normal” pushed Kara to distance herself from them, hiding pieces of her personality that she knew would get her in trouble. It made her think about all the people out there she knew going through the same trouble. It weighed her down, it made her want to reach out and protect them, and knowing that she couldn’t do a damn thing, even when her closest friends confided in her about their own bad home lives, drained her. It hurt knowing she could help, it burned her up inside.
Of course, Kara stopped being able to fly under the radar after a fight broke out over a friend. One of Kara’s childhood friends was getting beaten up in the hallways at school over rumors about their sexuality. It was bad. He was being wailed on by a guy twice his size while he was on the ground. Nothing in all of Kara’s life boiled her blood more than that, she almost blacked out from rage, but both her friend and the bully were so battered by the end that the school forced her friend to unlock his phone to scan for anything that would shed some light on this. As a result of this, Kara’s own sexuality was revealed, and her parents were outraged. Thankfully, she was 18 by then, so she could move out before they had time to do anything. That was the day her abstraction appeared, as a result of a long desire to protect, she needed a little push and nothing more. Throughout the fight, her arms were heavier than usual, like they were covered in bark.
Since then, she’s secretly been messing with her abstraction to learn about it, and she researched to find the coven. She made contact with them, knowing they all had similar experiences, and they established a connection. She will meet someone from the coven soon to discuss things further.
SKILLS & TALENTS
"You’re assuming everyone thinks like you, let me tell you why that’s wrong."Empathy ⫻ Okay, maybe calling it a talent isn’t the right word, but it’s something Kara’s had engrained in her for a while. Growing up in a sad life, she knows how to tell if something isn’t right with others, it’s just another layer of her bleeding heart.
Social Advocate ⫻ Kara is good at talking to people about things that they’re ignorant about. She is good at teaching people about things that make people different. Things like different cultures and beliefs. She understands these things better than some, and it helps her connect to people better. This has gotten her through a lot of things, and has made her some good friends.
Violence ⫻ This, unfortunately, has also gotten Kara through a lot of things. When all else fails, bear your teeth and bang knuckles with someone. Kara isn’t a very well trained fight, she doesn’t know any kind of proper martial arts, but she can swing a mean fist when it’s time for it. Usually she regrets resorting to anger after the fight is over, and genuinely tries to fix it before and after, but it comes just as natural to her as peace, although in a more instinctual way.
ABSTRACTION
"How could something so quiet be so destructive..."TYPE ⫻ Awakened
ABSTRACTION ⫻ Ten Thousand Branches | Manifestation and control of wood, trees, and bark of all manners.
ABSTRACTION DESCRIPTION ⫻ ABSTRACTION DESCRIPTION ⫻ This abstraction gives its user an array of manipulative abilities surrounding wood. The wood is almost always the same appearance, having muddy brown, and oddly flexible bark. No matter how deeply a piece of the wood is cut, no sap will be found. It is possible for the appearance to be changed, for example instead of branch shaped strands of emerging from Kara’s body, she could simply stomp the ground a have a wooden pillar shoot out of the ground, being perfectly cylindrical and smooth like waxed plywood. Most of the power of wood manipulation is geared toward defensive fighting, if any kind of fighting.
Ten Thousand Branches is a great defensive abstraction, since having the power to produce large, flexible bark from almost anywhere makes you a tough target to touch. Visually, the trees or branches flow out of Kara’s palms or body like water before gardening if they don’t grow on her skin, like armor. Almost all applications of the wood is done with physical contact in some way or another. It is connected to Kara’s body, or Kara physically interacts with something to activate her abstraction. Under more stressful situations, the otherwise healthy looking wood takes in a slightly reddish tint, as if it was ever so slightly painted with someone’s blood. This happens during moments of rage, or general distress.
Because it is wood, it could burn, or it could rot, if the conditions were right. Kara can shape the branches and trees to some degree. For example, she can mold a large stick of wood to seep out of her hands into the form of a very sharp spear, and skewer something with it. Or she could form a wooden block around her hands and sharpen it like a sword. That’s about the only things she can think of to do in terms of actual weapons, but she could also shape wood from the ground to form structures, they wouldn’t be strong enough to survive something like a bomb, since they’re just wood, but most things couldn’t get past a shield made of Kara’s abstraction. These are the kind of things Ten Thousand Branches is better for, since it stemmed from a protective desire, but because it is Kara’s abstraction, there will always be violence just waiting to spring from it’s hiding place to hurt somebody.
(Go in-depth with how the ability functions normally. Explain everything I need to know.)
AURA SENSING ⫻ (Optional. What auras can your character see, how far, and under what circumstance?)
LIMITS ⫻ Kara can only grow wood in a very short radius - basically off of herself or where ever she can touch (and it'd have to be in the ground). The little thing called Emotional-Fields prevents her from creating wood on people's bodies or inside of them. She'll have to indirectly use it to attack. If she, by chance, gets too far away from her wood constructs or it's separated from her for any reason; it'll wither away and die, reduce itself to ash. Kara can't instantly create wood, she'll need some time to create it, especially for the more dramatic constructs. It'll also take time for her to shape and create it, but she generally has an easier time growing it off her body. She can create about a large tree at most before she gets tired.
WEAKNESSES ⫻ Creating the wood off her body weighs her down greatly... and she probably doesn't have the strength to carry all of that wood around. The wood is still affected by anything that would normally affect wood (fire, water/rotting, etc).
OTHER
"When trees die, the seeds will spread. When they do. Another tree will take the place. One way or another, this world will get better, and we’ll stop tearing each other apart. All I can hope for is to see it happen..."