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hearthwarming) wrote2021-10-31 08:52 pm
hearthwarming) wrote2021-10-31 08:52 pm
Entry tags:
application 🌙 songerein
Character: Oriphi
Canon: Original character
Age: 23 (24 after canon update)
Background Information:
Personality:
Abilities & Inventory:
Abilities
As a Druid, Oriphi has a range of spells and abilities at her disposal. These range from quick spells that she can essentially cast at will, to more powerful spells that might require more energy, time, or resources, and she can only cast so many spells at varying levels in a day. For ease of explanation, these can be roughly grouped into the following categories based on what Ori tends to use the most:
Inventory
Dreamotion abilities
Suitability & Plans:
Test Drive Sample: TDM top-level + a TDM thread for good measure!
Questions: All good on my end!
Canon: Original character
Age: 23 (24 after canon update)
Background Information:
To preface everything— Oriphi is an original character created for a homebrew setting in the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons system. Mechanically speaking, she is a tiefling druid with the Circle of Dreams subclass.
Oriphi and her younger sister Valphi were seemingly abandoned by their parents at a young age, left in a small village with little room in it for two orphans. They were taken in by a man named Gerrell Caskridge, but continued to face hardships even while under his care. Magic began to manifest in the girls, with Valphi discovering her sorcery and Oriphi experiencing visions of another realm and of people she would come to believe were their parents calling for her. Without proper knowledge and training, Valphi's sorcery eventually resulted in an incident in which others in the village were hurt. Oriphi, meanwhile, would find herself drawn into the nearby woods, searching for answers to the questions her visions posed, but always returning with little to no memory of what she had been doing or where she had gone. Eventually, the two sisters left the quiet rural village and joined a mercenary group called the Fangs of the Fox.
Valphi excelled as a mercenary - Oriphi did not, and the longer she was in the Fangs the stronger her desire grew to escape into the woods as she used to as a child and feel closer to the realm in her dreams. After some time, however, Oriphi stopped having her recurring visions and, believing this to be connected to their parents, she wanted to leave the Fangs to find them. Although Valphi had doubts as to the weight of Ori's childhood visions, the sisters agreed to part ways and do their best to keep in touch.
She wandered through forests searching for what she had eventually learned (through their travels and maybe some stolen books she came across while working for the Fangs) were Fey Crossings - and there met a druid who taught her to focus her magic to draw from and strengthen her bond with the Feywild. Unbeknownst to her, this druid had been a hag in disguise - and was in fact the very same that had taken Oriphi and Valphi's parents from them - a price to be paid for daring to be a young, happy family in the territory of a hag who reveled in the misery of others. Ori felt so close to knowing the truth behind her connection to the Feywild and her parents' disappearance while learning, but the druidic hag sent her away to "fill others' worlds with dreamy wonder as a druid in the Circle of Dreams" before she could, preferring to bide her time instead. This way, after all, whenever Oriphi might finally realize what was going on - it could be far too late for a happy family reunion, and that payoff would be incredibly satisfying.
Moving forward with seemingly new purpose, Oriphi eventually found an abandoned cottage outside the small town of Godric's Stump, and began to build a humble life of using her magic to heal its residents and weary travelers passing through, making things to fill their lives with joy... She and Valphi exchanged letters frequently, until Val stopped corresponding without warning. It was around then that adventure would find Oriphi again.
Word spread that Princess Valeria of Wyvell had gone missing. Adventurers passed through Godric's Stump in droves in search of clues where her trail had gone cold. Ori crossed paths with an old acquaintance on this same search - a bard named Colin Stylus whom she'd met during her days with the Fangs. Out of kindness towards a familiar face, Ori decided to lend Colin and the other adventurers a hand in searching for clues, and in the process they came across a mysterious mirror along with an equally mysterious magical gemstone. Inside the mirror appeared the soul of the ancient wizard Gran Karrefour, the tyrannical ruler from ages past, and they came to learn that the gemstone they found was a vestige of his power. Gran Karrefour sought to manipulate people into finding and gathering these gemstones for him so that he might return to the realm of the living. They realized then that there was much more afoot than just a missing princess and set out on a quest to find both the missing member of the royal family and the gemstones. Oriphi would have been content to part ways with Colin and the others at that point— but having learnt about the stones left a sinking feeling in her heart as she wondered if losing touch with Valphi was somehow connected to all of this, too.
Thus an adventuring group was hastily formed. Ori, a tiefling druid, found herself in the company of her acquaintance Colin, a charismatic yet put-upon half-elf bard, along with Mellon, a half-elf monk with a drinking problem, Aerie, an intelligent and aloof elven ranger, Sian, a mysterious but chaotic warlock, Cibark, a strong and forthright half-orc paladin, and eventually also Dae, an enthusiastic and self-righteous wizard. Their joint quests took them across land and sea, and also into quite a bit of trouble. By the time they had finally found and took Princess Valeria into the group and had come into the possession of two of the stones in total, they had already been disgraced and banned from at least two areas. Before long Ori found herself feeling responsible for the wellbeing of the group, trying at every turn to keep them together for the sake of the mission - a task that proved to be difficult given the party's talent for stumbling into bad situations and making them even worse.
At the behest of another wizard named Philostenes, they continued to search for Gran Karrefour's gemstones. Philostenes revealed that the gemstones had been distributed to each of the kingdoms and nations on the continent, though there were two more whose whereabouts have since been lost. He sent the group to various places to retrieve them, although being guided by the wizard did not necessarily prevent the group from getting into trouble. As they forged on, they often found themselves irreversibly changing the places they went to in the process of negotiating ownership of the various gemstones from various powerful leaders. As their quest continued, the group was made to face their fears in one way or another, at one point or another; Ori especially so, when her fears were proven to be true upon the discovery that the Fangs of the Fox were not only hired to dispense with the group that had seemingly abducted Princess Valeria, but had also joined forces with those who sought to bring Gran Karrefour back, all led by his descendant and the current ruler of Kaelan, with Valphi as their right hand.
With only the two gemstones whose whereabouts were uknown remaining, the group prepared to confront the coalition that formed around restoring Kaelan to its former glory - and Ori prepared to face her sister, hoping above all that her sister was under some kind of influence either by Kaelani magic or by the power of one of the stones itself, and that her younger sister could still be saved.
Canon update info here.
Personality:
Oriphi is someone who is incredibly kind and caring towards others— to a fault, as she tends to put pretty much anyone else's needs before her own, be it a stranger or someone she's close to. She is someone who is so selfless that she is almost quite literally selfless - in that her sense of self is so deeply tied to her idea of how 'useful' she is to other people and those around her. She tries to avoid having any attention paid to her, which sometimes proves to be difficult given her appearance as a tiefling in some places like Duskvale, where the party had traveled to. In times such as that, Ori tries to make herself as small as possible, to the point that when given the opportunity she would likely choose to use her druidic Wild Shape ability to take on the form of an animal, rather than as herself. She has, for instance, forgone attending formal or official functions as her own self, instead appearing as an animal companion to one of her friends.
As such, she also tends to fall into a more supportive role in any encounter or confrontation. As a mercenary in the Fangs of the Fox, Oriphi would hang back and make sure the party - especially her younger sister Valphi - had the support they needed, preferring not to directly in close quarters with any enemies or hurt anyone unless absolutely needed. This shifts slightly after she leaves the Fangs, learns how to harness more of her druidic talents, and begins to travel with a different adventuring group. This is due in large part to the fact that begins to feel quite protective of the others in that party and knew that she could better defend her new friends by being up front in battle.
It's not until she's spent more time traveling with this new group that she starts to come into her more of her own personality. She lacked Valphi's ambition while she was in the Fangs and was in a way overshadowed by her sister and the other mercenaries - only made worse by the fact that Oriphi didn't really want to be in the Fangs in the first place, having only joined out of a lack of any other option at the time, and out of concern for Valphi. But with a group she had chosen to adventure with - albeit with the very vague purpose of 'saving the world from Gran Karrefour' - she turns out to be a bit of a late bloomer. With plenty of encouragement from friends that she comes to trust, she slowly begins to become more talkative, comfortable in her own skin, and confident in her own abilities. Of course, it's all a work of progress, but it's through this that other facets of Oriphi's personality begin to show.
It is also through her time with them that Oriphi begins to slowly understand what it means to have something like a family and true friendship. She begins to understand what Gerrell Caskridge had tried his hardest to provide for her and Valphi as children, and in a way what Valphi tried to sustain when they were both in the Fangs - and in this Ori realizes that because of her wanting to learn more about her visions and the Feywild, she was never really present for Valphi, especially in the later years of her being in the Fangs. It's out of this guilt that Ori realizes she had embarked on this new adventure - maybe, if she could find Val again, she could try to start over.
But Oriphi is also someone who carries a lot of fear - fear of being left behind like her parents had done to her and Val, of being rejected, of not being enough. This is brought to light when Colin, the one Ori trusts the most in the party, leaves the group without so much as a goodbye. Ori immediately assumes and fears the worst - that she must have done something to make him hate her, that she wasn't enough for him to stay or even at least say goodbye to, all of which was only made worse by her harboring unrequited feelings for him. Her fears are highlighted even more, and forcibly so, when Oriphi is made to undergo a "Trial of the Heart" in the Kingdom of Ocelovu when the party was in search of the Skull Sapphire. In this trial, she faces a mirror which showed her her deepest fears - and hers take on the form of her own sister pushing her away, full of hate, materializing all of Oriphi's fears of having failed Valphi as a sister and leaving her feeling alone even in the party when she experiences this after the one preson she thought would stay had left.
She is also one to act on her emotions above all else; between the two sisters, she certainly is the one who is more prone to acting impulsively on certain occasions, but she's also the type to worry so much about what could happen that she can be incredibly indecisive - there isn't much of an in-between, and that's something of a pattern with how Ori acts in many aspects. She's either quiet and careful or talks endlessly without a thought, always either fussing over others wholeheartedly or completely isolating herself.
Naturally, she's also quite an open book when it comes to her emotions. Even when she tries her best to conceal her concerns and worries from those around her, she's easily read and easily persuaded into expressing her feelings, even if she might have a hard time really describing said feelings, and even though she'll likely apologize repeatedly for having said feelings in the first place. This expressiveness also makes her an awful liar, but at the heart of it all is someone who's incredibly genuine, even if a little clumsy or awkward at times.
Last but not least, if there's one thing that Oriphi knows about herself, it's that everything she tries to do, she does out of love. Whether it's love for the natural world, or people as a whole, or her friends, or her sister - she would do everything in her power to help and come to their aid. (And, while rare, Ori can be scary when provoked into anger - and usually this only happens when someone she loves is threatened in some fashion.)
Abilities & Inventory:
Abilities
As a Druid, Oriphi has a range of spells and abilities at her disposal. These range from quick spells that she can essentially cast at will, to more powerful spells that might require more energy, time, or resources, and she can only cast so many spells at varying levels in a day. For ease of explanation, these can be roughly grouped into the following categories based on what Ori tends to use the most:
🐻 Wild Shape
Druids have the ability to take on the shape of an animal they have seen. They do not completely become said animal, but rather take their shape, retaining their intellect and wits about them when they do so. They cannot, however, speak as they would as a person while in this form. For the most part, Ori turns into small animals such as mice, cats, or rabbits, but also has the ability to turn into larger ones such as a bear, panther, or giant owl. She can also turn into a dinosaur because they saw a dinosaur race while traveling once but she tends to save that form for when she feels particularly eager to protect her friends by chomping on enemies.
🩸 Healing
Ori can cast spells that heal wounds, or summon fey spirits that heal wounds, to varying levels of energy and effort. She can also cure ailments or conditions with greater effort.
🌱 Primal magic
Druids have access to spells that let them manipulate elements by harnessing the primal force of nature; for example, they can produce flames, or conjure waves of water, or spike growth in plant material. Oriphi, for the most part, leans into spells that manipulate plants. A deep connection with nature also allows druids to communicate with plants or animals. Ori can also create temporary portals through trees that she has seen and touched.
☁️ Circle of Dreams
Ori's druid subclass also grants her abilities that harness the power of the Feywild to essentially create safe havens for people. This grants her additional healing abilities and allows her to create protective barriers around something like a campsite for an evening, and also allows her to travel through 'hidden paths,' as a Fey creature wouuld - aka teleport over short distances.
Inventory
Adventuring pack with:
🌰 Cooking utensils
🌿 Herbalism kit
🏺 Healing potions
📖 Her own little makeshift journal with pressed flowers, herbs, and notes
🧭 Camping gear
Weapons/other items:
⚕️ Wooden quarterstaff entwined in willow branches
⚪ Silver mirror for scrying
🎵 Lyre
Dreamotion abilities
Oriphi will not be gaining anything new from her dreamotion abilities, per se, but her basic spells might manifest more closely and correspondingly with her emotions. For example, druidcraft is a cantrip spell that manifests a minor effect in the environment, such as a flower blooming, at her will. With dreamotion in play, though, it might accidentally make flowers bloom or wilt based on how she's feeling. Another example would be the thaumaturgy cantrip; with dreamotion involved Oriphi might accidentally cause her voice to get three times as loud if she's upset.
Suitability & Plans:
Because of her character's backstory and her background as a Circle of Dreams druid, Oriphi already has an interesting dynamic with regard to dreams, visions, and dreamlike realms. Even though she's learned a bit about the Feywild and actually traveled into it a few times as a child (although she has no memory of it), she's never actually traveled into it consciously, and so she would be interested to learn if perhaps Songerein is either the same thing as the Feywild, or at least something very similar to it. And because she has been so focused on the quest she and her friends had been put on, she hasn't had a chance in her 'canon' (the D&D campaign from which she's being taken) to really explore the meaning behind her visions and connection to the Feywild, and she would want to see if she can make more sense of this through the setting.
Additionally, even though she was in the process of developing this before she was once again swept away into another adventure to find the gemstones, Oriphi has never really felt like she's belonged or felt at home anywhere. Understanding that this is a dream world and that dreams also hold hopes - she would try to see what it's like to actually build and have a home and meet folks and make friends in a more organic way than "we've all been thrown into this quest to save the world together."
And on the day-by-day, Ori had been slowly building a rapport with the townsfolk of Godric's Stump by running errands and using her druidic abilities to help them and travelers passing through, and she certainly would be eager to do the same for the people of this dream realm.
Test Drive Sample: TDM top-level + a TDM thread for good measure!
Questions: All good on my end!
canon update | may 2022