VitoftheVoid

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

The Kingsley family were.... stoic. Constant. The standing stones on their crest did more than reflect the ancient alignments of their home at Avebury, it was a reflection of the desirable traits of a Kingsley. Unaffected by the chaos around them. Persisting through everything. A lone figure of calm neutrality when everyone else was losing their minds.

And, of course, just like the designs in the crest, marked with runes.

A child born of parents from two primaries stood about a half chance of being born with one or the other.
Had Aeryn Kingsley arrived back at Avebury manner sixteen years previous with a runecaster child, it would have been a little complicated, but not of much concern.

In the end, it had all come down to a matter of fate. A coin flip.

And if the result of that flip had shown anything, it was that Helena Kingsley was not a naturally lucky person.

Her life hadn't exactly been the most tragic. She'd never had to want for much materially.
And her childhood hadn't been marred by some major tragedy. Her home hadn't been burned to the ground, if she had a dead parent she had no way of knowing it, and she wasn't left with some thirst for revenge.

But matters of small chance never did seem to fall in her favour.

There probably would habe been a good chance that she'd wake up before the arrival of the other students in the common room for example. Or indeed, a good chance that she wouldn't fall asleep on the common room sofa in the first place. She'd missed both however, and blinking awake to find herself surrounded by students was a little embarrassing.

Helena had, up to that point, been lying on her front on an evidently pretty expensive sofa, ginger hair splayed out around her head like some kind of washed-up cephalopod, phone resting loosely in her hand. She was wearing brightly coloured knitted jumper, patterned with numerous hued cat faces, and the message 'Have A Mice Day' on the front.
If it had been her plan to look her best for the arrival of everyone else, then it had not gone terrible well.

Then again, it was entirely possible that Helena Kingsley would regard a rainbow cat sweater to be looking her best. She had never completely served as a paragon of style and minimalism.

As if her late and misplaced awakening was not a problem in itself, she was soon face with something else. For within a few moments of doing so, her view of the ceiling was obscured as the face of Professor Kovalenko, complete with look of avian disdain.

"What are you doing there, Kingsley?" the woman asked, clearly irritable.

It took a few moments for Helena to summon up some words.
"Sorry Professor. I...I must've fallen asleep."

"Evidently." the woman's expression did not falter in the slightest.
"Well pull yourself together or you're going to miss the briefing. And do try to stay awake for the entire duration if that at all possible."

With that she turned and walked away, leaving Helena struggling to right herself. This was not really how she'd planned to start the school year.

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Home.
It'd always seemed like a bit of an odd concept to Dinah Fox.
You attached some kind of worth to a place. A spot of earth, for having occupied it long enough it'd gotten familiar to you.
Perhaps that was because she didn't tend to get acquainted with any path of earth for all that long, but she found it her to attach that kind of sentimentality to a place.

Cyrus still had memories of the house. The grounds. All of the buildings. The tree swing and the fish pond.
The only she could remember clearly herself was the dogs. Daisy, Arrow, Mountain. Missing the dogs. Telling them they needed to go back and get the dogs.

Of course they never did go back and get the dogs.

When you start early then letting material things go became pretty easy, though there were more things that didn't ever really leave your grasp. You travelled light because of the weight of your own grudges.

It'd been a long trip to Marchand. Getting to somewhere where the bus was going to pick up was about as difficult as just getting to the place itself, so it seemed smart to cut the middle man. It was not as if she was coming from overseas.
Though, she might as well have been for all the hassle involved.

Money ran out a little after she got out of the state, and it had been mostly hitchhiking from there. Begging, borrowing and stealing her progress toward the marker on her folded roadmap and trying not to get murdered along the way...though that was never totally guaranteed.
She'd spent most of the night trying to find someone going the rest of the way to some indistinct location, and eventually hit upon a delivery driver who was easily bribed enough to let her take a seat amid the boxes and packing bags for the next four hours, until it slowed to a crawl at the end of a forested path, and she was able to hop out.

The young man wound down the window as she hooked her backpack over one shoulder, giving a rather pointed cough.

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Thanks for the help."

With one deft movement, she extended a hand to shake his, which came away with a small plastic bag of ground-up leaves sat neatly in the palm. He nodded, and without a word, the van took off and rounded the corner.

The rest of it, Dinah made on foot. She wasn't unused to walking. But it had been a long few days. Enough that when she caught sight of the building she could almost put aside her considerable misgivings about the entire thing. Almost, but not quite. She could almost imagine word for word what her brother would be saying about it.

'That isn't a place for people like us. That is another Council vanity project. You'll hate it there. And they'll probably hate it that you showed up.'

Though the last one seemed more of a plus to her. Maybe that was the difference between her and her brother, and was why she was here and he was working as dish washer in 'Who The Hell Cares' West Virginia. If there was one thing in the world she was good at, it was digging her heels in.

Dinah walked along the drive, approaching the gates, getting a little bit of scrutiny from the gate guard as she presented her letter. It might have been the name on the letter, though she guessed it was something else.
She didn't exactly...match well with the general ambience it was giving off.
The prestigious private school vibe didn't really gel with the unkempt hair, the faded T-shirt that had clearly belonged to a male who was several sizes bigger that she was, the denim jacket with skinned elbows, and the canvas hiking boots held together by two rings of silver duct tape around each.

Scruffy seemed an understatement. She looked like a homeless person.

But she was a homeless person with an invitation, and so she proceeded with some haste into the building.

The common room looked like about five different furniture stores with wildly different clients, and possibly one hapless passing natural history museum, had all violently collided.
Even with that in mind, it was still one of the nicest places she had seen in a while.

A few students has already arrived and were evidently making the most of the networking opportunity. The young Fox was entirely unconcerned about that though.
No travel budget meant no food budget either, and the last cereal bar was a long long time ago.
So she didn't waste much time, grabbing an entire box of cereal, sticking her hand in, and biting into the entire handful.

Feral was probably quite a good word.
Terramancy really was the only primary where you could turn that into an advantage.

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Even by the standard of the students' travels, the trip over from the secluded isle of Vollr was one little short of heroic. They'd pulled away from the black volcanic sands of its coasts some three days previous. A small boat up to Svalbard, a bigger boat back down to Tromsø, a flight to London, and another to the US, chartered themselves of course, because it was hard to not attract attention, especially when your cargo included a sizeable greatsword and the skins of numerous animals.

Once they'd made it to the right country, it had still been several hours by road, and by the time the car pulled up outside Marchand Academy, Kora Mari Nørrevinter of Vollr was running on a few hours sleep, five cans of pepsi and pure adrenaline.

It was the first time in her life that the young heir had lived anywhere but the frigid island, and to say that she was excited was quite the understatement. The short trips to the mainland, and few days shadowing the Council meetings didn't really hold a candle to the prospect of living away on a permanent basis, and getting the chance to indulge in the sort of things that were in short supply at her home.

Everything the Nørrevinters acquired was brought in themselves, the result of a five-hundred year embargo from the Sterlings, the Councillors of Water and the chief traders in the mage world, a dispute stemming from either a few Sterling ships being raided and burned, or a young daughter of a Nørrevinter chieftain being seduced by Sterling son...depending on which family you asked.

Anything from the mainland was a luxury, but the gods had always provided for them. The fires of the earth had made their island bountiful, even in its place at the roof of the world, and they could cultivate and hunt what they needed. But it was hard won and nothing like what you could find elsewhere.

The grow up on Vollr was to grow up strong and hardy, but Aunt Hilda said that, like the trees on the hills, if all you do is weather storms, you end up gnarled and twisted.

Opening the door, Kora rose to her full height and took in her surroundings. An impressive height it was too. Six foot six, with a mop of red hair, and limbs that seemed a little too long for the rest of her...not to say that there was any air of fragility about Kora Nørrevinter. She definitely looked like she could punch a man's teeth out with a good swing of her fist...there was just something of an impression that her body hadn't quite accustomed itself to her height yet. She was wearing a black T-shirt that, whilst not in english, featured enough spiky script, dragons and skulls that one could only assume it was merchandise for one metal band or another. A pair of headphones that had clearly been well-used, or at least thrown against the wall a number of times, hung around her neck, alongside a pewter mjolnir on a leather thong.

Behind her rose the acting Councillor Hilda Nørrevinter, not quite as tall as her niece, though radiating enough calm authority to more than make up for it in terms of intimidation. She bore the same bright red hair as Kora did, though she wore hers long, part of it tied into plaits that curved round her head and down her back. She was wearing a coat with a collar of wolf fur.

The Nørrevinters were always great fans of furs, hides, skulls. Preferably of dangerous animals. Preferably hunted with as little equipment as possible. Everything was a chance to prove your own prowess, and everyone was a potential opponent. It ws only that much bloody-minded pride that could lend itself to fighting your own traders for centuries.

But it was also that pride that had led them to offer up their own heir to fight the cult.

One they'd paid the ultimate price for.

Hilda paused, leaning on the vehicle for a moment and watching Kora, who was bouncing eagerly on her heels, pulling several furs and what appeared to be a sizeable sword from the car.
She was so much like her father. It filled Hilda's heart with pride and tore it apart all at once.
The older woman's hand reached for the gungnir at her throat, speaking under her breath.
"Damn you Ren. You've never spoken since, but if you're out there you'd better look after her now that I can't."

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Helena Kingsley

Helena Alys Kingsley

Full Name: Helena Alys Kingsley

Nicknames/Aliases: Hel

Age: 16

Gender: Female

Primary: Defensive

Student

Secondaries of Interest: Blood Magic, Familiars

Description: Helena is not a terrible imposing creature, topping out at out an unintimidating 5'2. Her build is slim, with light curves on the hips and chest rather than any defined muscle and her face is heart-shaped and girlish, with a set of wide, blue-grey eyes. She has a mop of untidy, red hair, which falls for her lower back. She has very pale skin that is quite prone to burning. She has a noticeable, irregular pinky-red mark around her left eye, that continues down her face, neck and shoulder. Birthmark or scar, it's not completely clear.

People often pick Helena out on her somewhat..idiosyncratic sense of fashion. Her outfit tends to frequently consist of skirt, leggings, sheepskin boots, and some of the most hideous sweaters known to mankind, hewn in rainbow colours and emblazoned with animal designs. All are at least two sizes too big. Seeing what abomination she will wear is quickly becoming a bit of a morbid curiosity among students.


Personality: Helena is kinda of.....weird. Perhaps the fact that she'd not had a whole lot of peer interaction in her life, or perhaps inherently, she can be kind of strange. Her fashion sense is quite eccentric and she tends to both think about and react to things in quite...unconventional ways.

She tends to let her mind wander frequently, and doesn’t often commit to things, her actions and her appearance often making people assume that she is rather weak-willed, but, her outward delicacy hides a fire or great proportions. When she commits to something, she can pursue things with a dogged determination that can be quite impressive.

Helena is not too easily moved into fighting. She tends to put up with a great deal before losing her temper. That being said, when pushed too far, Hel’s temper is completely explosive in its short bursts.

Skills: Helena appears to have some low level of inherent negation, however by magical bloodline standards she is quite underpowered.

Aside from that she is a fairly talented artist and painter, though it has little practical application.

For her size, she can be impressively strong.

Weaknesses: Helena seems to have quite a weak magical ability.

On top of this she seems prone to rather peculiar behaviour, often spacing out in the middle of tasks.


Brief History: Helena's family, the Kingsleys, are an old, relatively well-known magical family, coming out of Wiltshire, Southern England. The family was held in high regard for many years,holding the Council seat for Runic Casting, however suffered a considerable lapse in its reputation after the civil war. The Kingsleys had long held a tradition of neutrality in the case of any conflict between the family, and the familial patriarch at the time, Algernon Kingsley, maintained the neutrality order, even in the face of the threat to humanity the cult posed.

As a result, once the dust cleared, the reputation of the ancient family would never be quite the same.
The Kingsleys retain their wealth and status, however the mounting pressure drove them to willingly give up their council seat in order to preserve any kind of amicable relations with some of the major players in the magical world.

Helena is the daughter of Aeryn Kingsley, the current family head after the passing of Algernon. She was also born long before Aeryn was married, during the war period. Aeryn, dissatisfied with her father's inaction, had broken away from the family with intent on changing the world, only to return, with an illegitimate baby and a general air of defeat.

This, her obvious difference in primary, and her tendency to not put on the best public face led to Helena being something of an embarrassment at formal events.
The Kingsleys didn't really like to talk about Aeryn's daughter, especially with the birth of her brother, a good, strong, appropriately-born runecaster, and for the most part, people forgot she was there.

Until, well, Marchand happened, and her name turned up on the list of mages in the age bracket.

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Kora

Kora

Full Name: Jarla Kora Mari Nørrevinter of Vollr, Firstborn of Reinhardt the Red, Bearer of the Fires of Surtr

Nicknames/Aliases: Kora to most people. Ginger, The Viking, Princess, Conan the Barbarian to some others.
Age: 17

Gender: Female

Primary:[Pyromancy

Student[/size]

Secondaries of Interest Familiar Conjuring, Weapon Infusement

Description: Kora is, shall we say,a rather distinct individual. Over six and a half feet tall, she comes across as pretty intimidating at first glance. And for many she only becomes more intimidating from there.
She has a mop of red-ginger hair that reaches above her shoulders, and pale skin that makes her a magnet for sunburn. Her eyes appear a dark, blue-tinted grey.

Kora speaks with a distinct scandinavian accent, and is able to speak in English and Norwegian, having been born off the coast of Norway. She tends to shout when annoyed, or excited, or trying to emphasize, so she's rather hard to ignore.

The girl rarely thinks too hard about clothing, (and at 6'6 can't exactly afford to be picky) so tends to just wear whatever she can get hold of and whatever happens to be easy to move round in at the time. What tends to be less negotiable is her pewter Mjölnir pendant, that she will wear as long as she is able to. An old, plain thing that retains a large amount of spiritual significance to her.

Personality: Kora is defined mostly be being quite...intense. In pretty much all ways. If she is angry she is screaming and shouting and breaking things. If she's happy she's also screaming and shouting and breaking things. Most extremes of emotion seem to manifest in destruction of some form, and when she isn't doing any of these she's often listening to far-too-loud heavy metal music or bragging about something her or her family can do. She can...grate on people a little.

Kora has a serious trouble controlling her temper, and struggles not to let small slights turn into fighting.

In addition, she is also kind of a brat. Kora has been raised to see herself as destined for greatness. The child of 100 generations of selective breeding, she feels that she is special, that she is just waiting to show the world something amazing. Whether this is justified or not, remains to be seen.

Stemming from this, Kora is a little bit elitist in regard to bloodlines. She tends to see herself around the top spot, other bloodlines below.


Skills:
-The Nørrevinter family have been preparing Kora for her destiny for years, since she was a very young child. As a result, Kora is both athletic and a very skilled pyromancer already. She demonstrates impressive power and control for her age. (And has no problems showing it off.)

- The Nørrevinter family's perfected technique, berserker rage, was taught to her at a young age by her aunt.
The technique allows a pyromancer to remove the natural 'safety limits' their own minds and bodies place on the manipulation of their element.
A berserk pyromancer's abilities vastly increase, and their own temperature skyrockets, skin starting to become searingly hot to the touch, enough to cauterize wounds shut very quickly.
They can channel huge amounts of energy in this time.

Weaknesses:- The berserker ability is extremely damaging for a pyromancer. As such, Kora has been frequently instructed to use it only in dire emergency, and it more often than not results in the death, or horrific scarring, of the user.

-The combination of selective inbreeding within the family in order to increase their pyromantic ability has resulted in many inherited defects in the family. As such many of her family die young, or suffer from poor health in later life. It is thought to e part of the reason that the Nørrevinters still stress the usage of the potentially fatal berserker technique.


Brief History: Kora was born on the small island of Vollr as the daughter of Reinhardt (or Ren) Nørrevinter, the then family head. As the named heir she was showered with attention that her siblings did not receive, and had most anything she could want.

The Nørrevinter are an ancient and very powerful pyromancer line, who have held a seat on the Council of Eight for centuries, and who have always had a loud (and often angry) voice in the political mage world. Their own folklore claiming that they have the blood of eldjötnar in their veins, the family have been warriors since their inception, and have selectively bred over generations to that end. Tall, loud, aggressive, and built like giants, to provoke the wrath of a Nørrevinter was the risk great danger for yourself and anything flammable in your general area.

This however, did little to prevent the war, and Kora's father father was killed in action when Kora was only three years old. As such, much of Kora's upbringing was seen to by her Aunt Hilda. Hilda had resolved to take over leadership of the family after the death of her brother, awaiting his heir's coming of age. In the interim time Kora was raised on the isolated scandinavian isle, and relentlessly trained in pyromancy and combat. She was only too eager to take up her place at the school. For her, it presented a chance to shine, to show what one hundred generations of preparation could do.

Dinah Fox

Full Name: Dinah Jael Fox

Nicknames/Aliases: Di, Fox, Tree Girl,

Age: 16

Gender: Female

Primary: Terramancy

Student

Secondaries of Interest: Tracking, toxin production.

Description: Dinah is a little on the tall side (albeit nowhere near as much as a Norrevinter) and built like someone not unused to exercize. She has long, unkempt-looking light brown hair. 'Rat's Nest' might be a term used by some. She doesn't brush it quite as often as she should, and it quite often contains the odd leaf or twig. She has brown eyes and a rather laissez-faire attitude towards fashion, if the faded appearance of many of her outfits is to be taken into account. Most of her appearance reflects her rather laid-back (perhaps too laid-back) attitude to life.

Skills:
Bonded with Nature Dinah's upbringing has lacked much supervision, but her rather wild background has given her a very keen sense of the flora and fauna aspects of her primary. Spending time out in the woods with just plants and animals has done wonders for her abilities.

Survival Related to this, Dinah is pretty self-sufficient,she can survive well on her own, and is perhaps rather more worldly than many of the students.

Weaknesses:
- Slacker A tearaway with little sense of discipline, Dinah is a slacker with little drive or direction, and doesn't tend to apply herself in academic studies, meaning her chances of developing secondaries are rather unlikely.

Personality:
Dinah Fox is a person who has nearly always lived by her own rules.

Di is not a person to keep how she feels about anything to herself. She is outwardly affectionate to people she likes..to the point that a personal bubble doesn't seem to exist where she'd concerned. If she likes a person she'll flying tackle them and hug them to death as a greeting if she wants to. At the same time if she dislikes a person, she will not in the slightest bit hesitate about showing them the extent of that.

Possibly in a similar vein, Di could be seen as being rather...feral. She always has been that way.
She doesn't wear makeup. She was once persuaded to try wearing nail polish and ended up scraping it off with her teeth because she thought it made her nails feel odd. She had no concept of manners or formality. She eats pretty much everything with her hands...unless it's soup, then she'll just lift it up and drink it right out of the bowl. She is perfectly happy to break school rules for her own interests.

Brief History:
Dinah's own history is fairly chaotic. She and her brother spent their childhoods being bumped around to numerous relatives outside of immediate family, rarely staying long in one place before they got sent elsewhere.

What was far more notable though, at least as far as mages were concerned, was her family, specifically, her parentage.

The Fox family, once the council seat of Earth, were previously led by Morgana Fox, Dinah's mother. It was Morgana who founded the cult, splitting away from thr Council and serving as a charismatic leader with some terrible intentions. Eugenics. Genocide. The destruction of non-magical humanity and an age of magic. It was only though the war and her violent deposition, that stopped her. This fracture lost the wider family their say in political council, the removal of the Fox crest from many official archives. The extended branches of the family have, in the years since the war, remained on the periphery of the magical world, having little contact with others from that community.

As such, Dinah grew up rather aware that she had few expectations of success. Divorced from the terrible war years, but well aware of the reputation they'd gained as a family, she developed a general feeling of resentment towards the jostling and machinations of the magical bloodlines. This was to the point that she was in two minds about whether she wished to attend at all. However, after falling out with her current set of guardians after a certain incident involving crashing her brother's car, she didn't really have anywhere else to be.

Professor K

Professor Kovalenko

Full Name: Oren Dariya Kovalenko

Nicknames/Aliases: Professor K., The Robot, The Snow Queen.

Age: 36

Gender: Female

Primary: Aquamancy (Cryomancy specialist.)

Professor of Aquamancy and Shadow Magic

Secondaries[/size] Shadowstep, Blood Magic.

Description:: Oren stands at about 5'7, an angular-looking woman with blue-black hair, pale grey eyes. She has high, noticeable cheekbones and a naturally pale complexion.

She often wears black gloves and a dark blue duster, sporting a small grey band on the arm with an oval and concentric circles pattern laid in black print.

Oren is usually seen wearing black eyeliner, and a look of general humourless disdain. Unlike many of her war veteran peers, Oren appears largely free of visible scarring. She also has no tattoos.

An accomplished shadowstepper, Oren has learned how to move quickly, gracefully, and economically, and makes her way round the school with the stealthy surefootedness of a wild cat, and the pitiless piercing stare of a hunting owl.

Personality: A lot of people who know Oren have compared her to a robot. Except she is a robot programmed to hate everyone. The aquamancy professor is antisocial, unempathetic, and has very little sense of humour.

She holds everyone, including herself, to unreachable standards and is quick to express her contempt for people due to their inability to meet them. She either has no sense of tact, or has chosen never to express it, as she has no issues with insulting others, including students within her classes, and has a highly caustic mode of interaction which is sure to rub some the wrong way.

Despite this, it's clear that the woman is highly intelligent and very dedicated to her work, and puts a great deal of effort into educating the next generation...even if her methods are a little bit controversial.

The general view held in the student population is that Professor K is good at what she does, but is kind of....scary. She is quite inflexible when it comes to enforcing the school rules, has no issue meting out some kind of punishment for infraction, and to make it more intimidating is often doing so alongside Professor Byrne (something that has resulted in some slightly inappropriate graffiti about them in the ground floor bathroom.)

On top of that she rarely ever seems to sleep, as she can often be seen stepping out of the darkness in the early hours of the morning from...wherever she came from.

[Skills: -Very adept hydromancer. Oren tends to specialize particularly in cryomancy, or ice manipulation, and is experienced enough that she can form ice simply out of airborne moisture, rarely leaving her without any form of weapon.

- Oren is one of the most experienced shadowstep users on site. She is able to step in an out with near as much ease as strolling through the courtyard, and seems to be capable of appearing most anywhere. This tends to keep students on their toes and prevent them from being too quick to speak ill of the professor.

Weaknesses: - Oren has very little in the way of social skill, and tends to quite easily upset people.

-Oren cannot materialize ice or water in very dry air, meaning she will struggle round widespread fire or in very low humidity.

-She cannot stand unwarranted physical contact and is likely to lose her cool if grabbed or held for any length of time.


Brief History: Oren Kovalenko was the (very much illegitimate) daughter of Emil Kovalenko, a prominent and well known hungarian aquamancer. The birth of a bastard child was a disaster for the (married) mage, and her presence was the source of rumours and ridicule. As such, the young Oren did not have the most affectionate or understanding upbringing. She was pushed very hard for intelligence and academic achievement, and had little opportunity to make friends.

It was through formal gatherings that Oren was taken to that she first met Maeve Byrne. Their initial interactions hardly pointed towards them making a very meaningful bond, but through a twist of fate, it was the red-haired aeromancer from her childhood that Oren found herself teamed up with during the hardest fights of the civil war.

The war is not something Oren talks about in detail...not if she can help it certainly. She was part of the youngest generation involved in the conflict, and because of her strong aquamancy traits was placed in the position of a frontline soldier. Despite her promising skills in her primary, Oren, and those of her age group, fund themselves wholly unprepared for the ferocity of the conflict, and the initial casualties were massive. The young woman gained her skills very quickly, as she needed to do so in order to survive. And skill was something she ended up with no shortage of, ending up as the second component of 'Storm',working her freezing abilities in conjunction with Byrne's abilities to manipulate the atmosphere to cut swathes of destruction through enemy forces.

Afterwards her place as a deadly cryomancer was set into the public consciousness, at least as far as the council were concerned. As such she found plenty of work after the end of the war for them. Despite her reputation for not being the most pleasant person to work with, she seemed surprisingly invested in the creation of an academy for young magic users, and had a hand in the setup of the location of Marchand and the installation of its facilities.

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Aaaand the Prof.

Professor K

Professor Kovalenko

Full Name: Oren Dariya Kovalenko

Nicknames/Aliases: Professor K., The Robot, The Snow Queen.

Age: 36

Gender: Female

Primary: Aquamancy (Cryomancy specialist.)

Professor of Aquamancy and Shadow Magic

Secondaries[/size] Shadowstep, Blood Magic.

Description:: Oren stands at about 5'7, an angular-looking woman with blue-black hair, pale grey eyes. She has high, noticeable cheekbones and a naturally pale complexion.

She often wears black gloves and a dark blue duster, sporting a small grey band on the arm with an oval and concentric circles pattern laid in black print.

Oren is usually seen wearing black eyeliner, and a look of general humourless disdain. Unlike many of her war veteran peers, Oren appears largely free of visible scarring. She also has no tattoos.

An accomplished shadowstepper, Oren has learned how to move quickly, gracefully, and economically, and makes her way round the school with the stealthy surefootedness of a wild cat, and the pitiless piercing stare of a hunting owl.

Personality: A lot of people who know Oren have compared her to a robot. Except she is a robot programmed to hate everyone. The aquamancy professor is antisocial, unempathetic, and has very little sense of humour.

She holds everyone, including herself, to unreachable standards and is quick to express her contempt for people due to their inability to meet them. She either has no sense of tact, or has chosen never to express it, as she has no issues with insulting others, including students within her classes, and has a highly caustic mode of interaction which is sure to rub some the wrong way.

Despite this, it's clear that the woman is highly intelligent and very dedicated to her work, and puts a great deal of effort into educating the next generation...even if her methods are a little bit controversial.

The general view held in the student population is that Professor K is good at what she does, but is kind of....scary. She is quite inflexible when it comes to enforcing the school rules, has no issue meting out some kind of punishment for infraction, and to make it more intimidating is often doing so alongside Professor Byrne (something that has resulted in some slightly inappropriate graffiti about them in the ground floor bathroom.)

On top of that she rarely ever seems to sleep, as she can often be seen stepping out of the darkness in the early hours of the morning from...wherever she came from.

[Skills: -Very adept hydromancer. Oren tends to specialize particularly in cryomancy, or ice manipulation, and is experienced enough that she can form ice simply out of airborne moisture, rarely leaving her without any form of weapon.

- Oren is one of the most experienced shadowstep users on site. She is able to step in an out with near as much ease as strolling through the courtyard, and seems to be capable of appearing most anywhere. This tends to keep students on their toes and prevent them from being too quick to speak ill of the professor.

Weaknesses: - Oren has very little in the way of social skill, and tends to quite easily upset people.

-Oren cannot materialize ice or water in very dry air, meaning she will struggle round widespread fire or in very low humidity.

-She cannot stand unwarranted physical contact and is likely to lose her cool if grabbed or held for any length of time.


Brief History: Oren Kovalenko was the (very much illegitimate) daughter of Emil Kovalenko, a prominent and well known hungarian aquamancer. The birth of a bastard child was a disaster for the (married) mage, and her presence was the source of rumours and ridicule. As such, the young Oren did not have the most affectionate or understanding upbringing. She was pushed very hard for intelligence and academic achievement, and had little opportunity to make friends.

It was through formal gatherings that Oren was taken to that she first met Maeve Byrne. Their initial interactions hardly pointed towards them making a very meaningful bond, but through a twist of fate, it was the red-haired aeromancer from her childhood that Oren found herself teamed up with during the hardest fights of the civil war.

The war is not something Oren talks about in detail...not if she can help it certainly. She was part of the youngest generation involved in the conflict, and because of her strong aquamancy traits was placed in the position of a frontline soldier. Despite her promising skills in her primary, Oren, and those of her age group, fund themselves wholly unprepared for the ferocity of the conflict, and the initial casualties were massive. The young woman gained her skills very quickly, as she needed to do so in order to survive. And skill was something she ended up with no shortage of, ending up as the second component of 'Storm',working her freezing abilities in conjunction with Byrne's abilities to manipulate the atmosphere to cut swathes of destruction through enemy forces.

Afterwards her place as a deadly cryomancer was set into the public consciousness, at least as far as the council were concerned. As such she found plenty of work after the end of the war for them. Despite her reputation for not being the most pleasant person to work with, she seemed surprisingly invested in the creation of an academy for young magic users, and had a hand in the setup of the location of Marchand and the installation of its facilities.

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Aaand my little child of the Cult.

Dinah Fox

Full Name: Dinah Jael Fox

Nicknames/Aliases: Di, Fox, Tree Girl,

Age: 16

Gender: Female

Primary: Terramancy

Student

Secondaries of Interest: Tracking, toxin production.

Description: Dinah is a little on the tall side (albeit nowhere near as much as a Norrevinter) and built like someone not unused to exercize. She has long, unkempt-looking light brown hair. 'Rat's Nest' might be a term used by some. She doesn't brush it quite as often as she should, and it quite often contains the odd leaf or twig. She has brown eyes and a rather laissez-faire attitude towards fashion, if the faded appearance of many of her outfits is to be taken into account. Most of her appearance reflects her rather laid-back (perhaps too laid-back) attitude to life.

Skills:
Bonded with Nature Dinah's upbringing has lacked much supervision, but her rather wild background has given her a very keen sense of the flora and fauna aspects of her primary. Spending time out in the woods with just plants and animals has done wonders for her abilities.

Survival Related to this, Dinah is pretty self-sufficient,she can survive well on her own, and is perhaps rather more worldly than many of the students.

Weaknesses:
- Slacker A tearaway with little sense of discipline, Dinah is a slacker with little drive or direction, and doesn't tend to apply herself in academic studies, meaning her chances of developing secondaries are rather unlikely.

Personality:
Dinah Fox is a person who has nearly always lived by her own rules.

Di is not a person to keep how she feels about anything to herself. She is outwardly affectionate to people she likes..to the point that a personal bubble doesn't seem to exist where she'd concerned. If she likes a person she'll flying tackle them and hug them to death as a greeting if she wants to. At the same time if she dislikes a person, she will not in the slightest bit hesitate about showing them the extent of that.

Possibly in a similar vein, Di could be seen as being rather...feral. She always has been that way.
She doesn't wear makeup. She was once persuaded to try wearing nail polish and ended up scraping it off with her teeth because she thought it made her nails feel odd. She had no concept of manners or formality. She eats pretty much everything with her hands...unless it's soup, then she'll just lift it up and drink it right out of the bowl. She is perfectly happy to break school rules for her own interests.

Brief History:
Dinah's own history is fairly chaotic. She and her brother spent their childhoods being bumped around to numerous relatives outside of immediate family, rarely staying long in one place before they got sent elsewhere.

What was far more notable though, at least as far as mages were concerned, was her family, specifically, her parentage.

The Fox family, once the council seat of Earth, were previously led by Morgana Fox, Dinah's mother. It was Morgana who founded the cult, splitting away from thr Council and serving as a charismatic leader with some terrible intentions. Eugenics. Genocide. The destruction of non-magical humanity and an age of magic. It was only though the war and her violent deposition, that stopped her. This fracture lost the wider family their say in political council, the removal of the Fox crest from many official archives. The extended branches of the family have, in the years since the war, remained on the periphery of the magical world, having little contact with others from that community.

As such, Dinah grew up rather aware that she had few expectations of success. Divorced from the terrible war years, but well aware of the reputation they'd gained as a family, she developed a general feeling of resentment towards the jostling and machinations of the magical bloodlines. This was to the point that she was in two minds about whether she wished to attend at all. However, after falling out with her current set of guardians after a certain incident involving crashing her brother's car, she didn't really have anywhere else to be.

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Oooaky, fire heir at your service.

Kora

Kora

Full Name: Jarla Kora Mari Nørrevinter of Vollr, Firstborn of Reinhardt the Red, Bearer of the Fires of Surtr

Nicknames/Aliases: Kora to most people. Ginger, The Viking, Princess, Conan the Barbarian to some others.
Age: 17

Gender: Female

Primary:[Pyromancy

Student[/size]

Secondaries of Interest Familiar Conjuring, Weapon Infusement

Description: Kora is, shall we say,a rather distinct individual. Over six and a half feet tall, she comes across as pretty intimidating at first glance. And for many she only becomes more intimidating from there.
She has a mop of red-ginger hair that reaches above her shoulders, and pale skin that makes her a magnet for sunburn. Her eyes appear a dark, blue-tinted grey.

Kora speaks with a distinct scandinavian accent, and is able to speak in English and Norwegian, having been born off the coast of Norway. She tends to shout when annoyed, or excited, or trying to emphasize, so she's rather hard to ignore.

The girl rarely thinks too hard about clothing, (and at 6'6 can't exactly afford to be picky) so tends to just wear whatever she can get hold of and whatever happens to be easy to move round in at the time. What tends to be less negotiable is her pewter Mjölnir pendant, that she will wear as long as she is able to. An old, plain thing that retains a large amount of spiritual significance to her.

Personality: Kora is defined mostly be being quite...intense. In pretty much all ways. If she is angry she is screaming and shouting and breaking things. If she's happy she's also screaming and shouting and breaking things. Most extremes of emotion seem to manifest in destruction of some form, and when she isn't doing any of these she's often listening to far-too-loud heavy metal music or bragging about something her or her family can do. She can...grate on people a little.

Kora has a serious trouble controlling her temper, and struggles not to let small slights turn into fighting.

In addition, she is also kind of a brat. Kora has been raised to see herself as destined for greatness. The child of 100 generations of selective breeding, she feels that she is special, that she is just waiting to show the world something amazing. Whether this is justified or not, remains to be seen.

Stemming from this, Kora is a little bit elitist in regard to bloodlines. She tends to see herself around the top spot, other bloodlines below.


Skills:
-The Nørrevinter family have been preparing Kora for her destiny for years, since she was a very young child. As a result, Kora is both athletic and a very skilled pyromancer already. She demonstrates impressive power and control for her age. (And has no problems showing it off.)

- The Nørrevinter family's perfected technique, berserker rage, was taught to her at a young age by her aunt.
The technique allows a pyromancer to remove the natural 'safety limits' their own minds and bodies place on the manipulation of their element.
A berserk pyromancer's abilities vastly increase, and their own temperature skyrockets, skin starting to become searingly hot to the touch, enough to cauterize wounds shut very quickly.
They can channel huge amounts of energy in this time.

Weaknesses:- The berserker ability is extremely damaging for a pyromancer. As such, Kora has been frequently instructed to use it only in dire emergency, and it more often than not results in the death, or horrific scarring, of the user.

-The combination of selective inbreeding within the family in order to increase their pyromantic ability has resulted in many inherited defects in the family. As such many of her family die young, or suffer from poor health in later life. It is thought to e part of the reason that the Nørrevinters still stress the usage of the potentially fatal berserker technique.


Brief History: Kora was born on the small island of Vollr as the daughter of Reinhardt (or Ren) Nørrevinter, the then family head. As the named heir she was showered with attention that her siblings did not receive, and had most anything she could want.

The Nørrevinter are an ancient and very powerful pyromancer line, who have held a seat on the Council of Eight for centuries, and who have always had a loud (and often angry) voice in the political mage world. Their own folklore claiming that they have the blood of eldjötnar in their veins, the family have been warriors since their inception, and have selectively bred over generations to that end. Tall, loud, aggressive, and built like giants, to provoke the wrath of a Nørrevinter was the risk great danger for yourself and anything flammable in your general area.

This however, did little to prevent the war, and Kora's father father was killed in action when Kora was only three years old. As such, much of Kora's upbringing was seen to by her Aunt Hilda. Hilda had resolved to take over leadership of the family after the death of her brother, awaiting his heir's coming of age. In the interim time Kora was raised on the isolated scandinavian isle, and relentlessly trained in pyromancy and combat. She was only too eager to take up her place at the school. For her, it presented a chance to shine, to show what one hundred generations of preparation could do.

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

Cheers! I'll get some apps up at some point soon.

The Marchand Academy of Sorcery

(Heyy, I'd like to snag Professor of Aquamancy and Shadowstep, and also the heir to the pyromancy seat if possible.)