Post by Ophelia Devereux on Jun 21, 2010 5:27:40 GMT
Name: Ophelia Lisette Devereux
Age: 21
Sex: Female
Class: Witch / Seamstress
Appearance: Ophelia is tall, standing at 5’ 9”, her figure slender, with a soft, feminine silhouette. Her face is a diamond in shape, with high, wide cheekbones, and a tapered jaw, delicate and beautiful. Waist-length hair falls in sun-kissed waves down to her waist, while rich verdant eyes are complimented by the coppery hues intermingled with gilded locks. She takes great pride in her appearance, staining pout lips with burgundy carmine and lining her eyes with soft, smoky kohl. She dresses well, beyond her status, hand-making her own garments from the left-over fabrics from her work. Her favored colors are deep, evergreens, dark burgundy wine, and deep plum colors, and her fabric of choice are plush velvets.
Character: Ophelia is quiet, slow to speak. To many, it is believed she is mute and is typically regarded with pity. But, if one could hear her thoughts, a different picture would be painted. Ophelia is cold, calculating, with a stoic disposition rivaled only by stone. She cares very little for frivolities, and she never engages in the idle chit-chat her fellow woman is famed for.
She’s constantly analyzing situations, people, and her goals. She regards men with disdain, and she regards other women with disgust. She finds man-kind in general to be petty and without anymore worth than the dogs at their feet. She views the nobility, the king, and the peasants as equals, neither better than the other, and she cares little for them all equally. When she meets someone, she will typically categorize them as animals, taking in their characteristics and giving them an animal name in her mind: a shrew, a bear, a rat, a dog, a cat, etc. Of course, she never voices such labels, but merely they remain in thought, with a mona lisa smile on her lips.
She blames mankind’s nature for the loss of her sisters, as well as her own mother, and she views Camelot not as a beacon of hope, but as the epitome of human depravity. A cesspool. A wasteland that enables the most vicious of mankind to survive in peace and tranquility that they don’t deserve. She would sooner see it in flames.
She’s very eccentric in her habits, sneaking off at night, swimming in bodies of water unclothed, wandering around forests alone, and dancing around fires. She prefers the solace of her loom, spindle and needle and thread, and when she isn’t engaging in her other pastimes, she’s always sewing, weaving or spinning. She’s exceptionally artistic. Her attention to detail is impeccable, and all of her work exemplifies this fact.
Strengths and Weaknesses:
Strengths -
Needlework: Sewing, weaving, spinning and embroidery.
Fortune Telling: cards, tea leaves, oracle bones and candle wax.
Character assessment: Reading other people via their body language, appearance, and demeanor.
Introspection: Awareness of the inner-self and the workings there-in.
Music: Singing and the Harp
Weaknesses -
Coldness: An inner apathy for her fellow man and woman.
Eccentricities: Obscure and always engages in activities she feels, whether or not it’s becoming of a woman.
Distant: Seems out of her head.
Silence: Quicker to walk away than say what she truly thinks.
Magic: Black Magic. Ophelia is a witch. She learned basic magic at a young age. She uses her loom to cast spells, lying in the realms of illusion and dreams. She can weave illusions and dreams upon her loom, cast spells while spinning, and curse while sewing, sliding her needle in and out of fabrics while chanting their name again and again. She’s prone to trances, falling in and out of a trance-like state, and losing herself to convulsions and premonitions, small little glimpses of events to come. She may be able to work magic without the assistance of her loom, spindle and needle in the future, but for now, they are necessity, considering she's had no formal training other than her mother, a learned witch.
Weaponry Skills: N/a
Character History:
Ophelia was one of three sisters, born to Charlotte Devereux and Thomas Montrose. Her mother was a foreigner, and a practicing witch and sorceress, who had recently come from another country. She seduced Thomas with bewitchment and snared him into marriage, where she was gifted with three daughters and three still-born sons. The daughters were Octavia, Ophelia and Odette respectively, with Ophelia being the middle child.
They lived modestly in a forest in Cenred by a quaint little village, where her father traded goods, and her mother worked as a seamstress. Charlotte’s work was known for its precision and beauty, and she received orders for clothing from various prestigious figures. On the side, she practiced witchcraft, and she was known as the woman to go to for problems. A potion, a charm, etc. men and women from the village flocked to her with their problems, trying their luck with magic to obtain greater fortune. She kept her workings discrete. It was something that was known without being explicitly stated.
Ophelia and her sisters were taught magic at a young age, most specifically, her mother’s favored craft, black magic. Charlotte educated them thoroughly, teaching them how to use magic while weaving cloth, spinning thread, and sewing stitches. She taught them brews, potions, charms, all the little things to give them the tools necessary to make a living without the need of a man.
Thomas, her father, died when she was very young, barely seven, leaving her mother a widow. But Charlotte supported them well-enough with her dual profession, and she progressed, until she was fifteen, and her mother died. A traveler came to the cottage, and Charlotte allowed him to stay the evening. That night, he raped and killed her mother, and when he went after the three girls, Octavia, the eldest, shoved a pair of sewing shears into his neck. They buried him outside the cottage, and they kept it a secret. Ophelia went silent, then. She spoke only to her sisters, but to the rest of the world, she became mute, refusing to utter a single word to any villager or otherwise.
With her mother gone, the sisters were all alone, and they began their careers as seamstresses and the village witches. Octavia spun the thread, Ophelia wove it into fabric, and Odette sewed. That is how they worked both in their trade, and in their magic, with the three working together. They also abandoned their father’s name for their mother’s, Devereux.
Octavia was exceptionally vain, obsessed with being more beautiful than any other, and she began to explore the realm of ‘beauty snatching’ in her black arts. Ophelia, who was ever quiet, went along with it. And Odette, she was just as interested as Octavia. So, the sisters began to experiment, brews, potions, animal sacrifice. They would take the blood from bats, foxes, dogs, sheep, and other forest and farm animals for their ‘beauty’ potions, seeing how the liquid of life could effect the skin. Ophelia never directly engaged in these practices, but she leant an obedient, helping hand, and when the drained corpses of animals began to appear in the forest, the sisters were regarded with fear and suspicion from the villagers.
One day, a young boy wandered out into the woods. He had been the son of one of the leaders of the village. What exactly happened to him in the forest is unknown, but when the boy failed to return home, his family became anxious, and soon enough, a mob was formed, and the finger was thrown in the direction of the three witches. The mob assaulted the cottage, and in a fury, they dragged the three Montrose sisters from their home, and they tied them all three to a pyre. All three, strapped around one stake, Octavia and Odette worked to free Ophelia’s bindings, and as the flames and smoke began to rise, Ophelia didn’t have enough time to return the favor, and she was urged to leave by her two sisters, and she managed to escape.
Shortly after, she returned to the burning remains, and she collected what she could from the abandoned cottage, and she left. Only sixteen, she tried her best to survive, lingering in the forests alone, and when she was twenty, she found her way to Camelot, where she has since set herself up as a dress-maker and seamstress.
Additional Information:
Sample Roleplay:
Taken from another RPG of I'm in:
The night was darker than usual, the moon waning to a small sliver and being selfish with her moonlight, as she rained down the most minute of milky rays upon the hollowed earth of St. Pancras cemetery. To most, it was a place of peace and fear, where the dead slept, souls long since past and moved on to the various planes of the other side. Heaven, hell, reincarnation, the creeds varied, but the general consensus was, that whatever life-force was once retaining the living had now passed from the corpses six feet under. Then, there were those who saw this as a treasure box, a field of goodies just needing to be dug up and discovered. Rings, necklaces, gold, silver, and precious gems embellishing clean skeletons and cold, rotting skins. Morgause saw it as neither. A means to an end. Dead flesh might as well have been lifeless stone. Why would the spirits linger, where their bodies melted? Sewn with decay, she saw the cemetery as a silly custom, a desolate blanket of stone ornaments, signaling that a life that once was, was no more. And there, one was safe, far safer with the dead than the living, as she liked to say.
She skirted the bars of the black, iron fence, sharp rods decorated with ominous spikes, tracing the plots to protect the dead… or maybe to protect the living. Regardless, it depended on the superstition or sensibility of the individual as to the meaning. Ultimately, for Morgause, a fence was an obstacle, to be simply and concisely put, and obstacles could either be removed or surpassed.
She stopped at a portion of fence, and the hood of her black, velvety cloak lowered, where gloved fingers slithered around cold bars, a prisoner on the outside looking in. How to do it? She’d never had to worry about the fence before, but that was back when Pierre Legrand was the keeper of the grounds. After sunset, only gravediggers were allowed to visit the tombs, where they slaved with their shovels and topped the plots with earth. When Pierre was keeper, his French heritage allowed Morgause passage without any papers at all, just a bottle of fine wine and some fresh cigarettes did the trick just nicely, but now, some staunch Englishman with a sense of vain honor kept the grounds, and she had no desire to press a bribe. Poor Pierre. He’d been buried with a plain wooden cross, and how she missed him. Now, she was reduced to this: hopping fences, like a servant escaping an angry mistress wielding a hot poker.
Morgause looked up, eying the spikes aiming toward the heavens, and she twisted her lips with distaste at the idea of attempting the climb and then the jump. She tossed a crowbar over the fence, and it hit the other side with a weak sound of metal on grass, and then she hung her lantern handle over the bar, toward the opposite side, for easy access once she was over. She hesitated, and her eyes lowered as she heaved a sigh, then! Salvation! The bars were just above the ground, raised just enough for a child to slip through, or in her case, a lady with a delicate waist.
She glanced to her left, then to her right, before slipping the cloak off of her bare shoulders, torso tightly bound in a black overbust corset, with engorged décolleté and a ruby necklace webbed around her neck. She threw the cloak over to accompany her crow bar, then grabbed at her skirts, raising them up with peaks of legs coated in silk, black striped stockings and mary-jane heels. She fell to her knees, with leisure ease, dirtying the knees with soft dirt, and she used her skirts as cushioning for her hands, as she began to squirm underneath the bottom spikes of the fence. She wiggled like a garden snake about to lose its head, awkwardly contorting her firm, restricted torso and flailing her endless legs shamelessly, until finally, she was through, without a single knick on the flesh of her exposed back. Her necklace however, sparkling precious rubies, had been a victim of the fence and had fallen with a heavy clink onto the ground. She wasn’t one to leave tracks, and she noted the weight gone from her neck. She snatched up the necklace swiftly and stuffed it into her cleavage, but in her haste to stand and regain her composure, she didn’t even notice that one of the rubies encrusted in gold had fallen out and now laid upon the loose dirt, where she’d slithered under. And there she left it, skipping away with her crowbar and lantern, once more cloaked, searching for the grave she so desired.
It was a crypt belonging to a Duchess. Judy Gaunt. One of her former, richer clientel, before passing on a mere weeks prior. Judy’s dear son, Richard, was an absolutely detestable man, who shunned and rebuked the de Barbarac sisters, insisting they were nothing more than a pair of fraudulent con-artists, looking to enhance their dying wealth with the money of aristocratic fools, looking to make peace with departed family and friends. Morgause had resented him from day one, when Judy had brought him to one of their séances in the conjuring of her dear mother. He had been unattractive to her, right from the start, small and slight of frame, a weak chin, and a haughty, intellectual demeanor, with that dull, droning voice. It was a wonder to her that any family had ever paid a dowry for him to wed their daughter, and the recent Lady Rosaline Gaunt had been even worse than Richard, weak and passive, with a kindly, sickly sweet smile, and a quiet, meek voice. Morgause could’ve tossed the pair of them off the London bridge before they had the chance to infect the world with their terrible offspring, and if she’d had the opportunity, she would not have hesitated.
Now, dear Richard wished to move forward with his accusations, and with a faux innocence, requested a séance for his mother, the late Judy. He’d taken to liberty of inviting certain members of the academy of science to observe, as well as other nobility, and Morgause had charged him extra for the additional seats, double the usual cost and obtained a small fortune. It served him right, but the thought of being discredited and made a mockery of didn’t suit her, money or not, so she opted for theatrics, and now, she needed a special, particular prop. So, off to the old family crypt she went.
The dim light of the lantern guided her through the headstones to the Gaunt crypt, stone chiseled with the coat of arms upon the lintel. She let the crowbar fall from her hand to the earth, and she knelt down, before the lock. She pulled the silver pin from her hair, letting it loose from its tailored bun, falling freely in auburn waves down her back, as she pressed the pin into the lock and began to mess with the bars within, until finally, the door clicked, and she pushed it open with a creak of un-oiled hinges. The noise bothered her, in the quiet peace of the cemetery, causing eyes to shut softly, as ears listened for any disturbances that might have resulted from the unnecessary noise, but when none came, she stood, crowbar in hand, and entered the darkness, turning to scarce shadow when the light of her lantern illuminated.
In the crypt, the tombs were like a bunk bed, stacked atop each other, the lids engraved with the fallen’s name. And then, she found it, the tomb of the lady Judy Gaunt. She smiled victoriously, a crease in her merlot colored lips, and she set her lantern atop the lid of the tomb. “How are things with you these days, dear Judy? Is dear mummy being kind? After all the terrible things you did, sending her off to an asylum for hysteria in her old age, to die alone, hopeless and forgotten.”
She wedged the crowbar in the crack of the tomb, and she strained, up and down with her delicate hands, trying to pry the lid with all her might. She jumped up and down like a child during a temper tantrum, uttering soft curses underneath her breath, while bust heaved shallow breaths against the fabric wall of corset, tightened around her waist. Then, she wrapped her leg over the side of the crowbar, using her body-weight as leverage, light, yet enough to twist the tomb’s lid so that it lay diagonally across.
“Sante Marie…” she breathed with a sigh, looking into the depths of the coffin, where rested the rotting remains of Lady Gaunt. "…You’re far more trouble than you’re worth, mi’dear. You and that despicable son of yours.” Her emerald hues gazed over the corpse, and her hand gracefully followed the shape of her arm, decaying beneath silk sleeves, until she found the Lady’s hand, with a beautiful ring, encrusted with a gleaming sapphire with accompanying diamonds, creating a flower of gold filigree and gems.
She snatched up the ring from the bony finger, and she promptly stuffed it into the groove of her cleavage to accompany the necklace, already pressed between her fleshy mounds. “Thank you, mi’lady. I’m much obliged.” She smirked, victoriously, now, all she had to do was return the lid to its former position and head off.
[Optional] OOC Section:
Name: Alex
Location: United States
How long have you been RPing for: 7 years
Any other characters on the site?: No.
