PLAYER INFORMATION
PLAYER: Chicklet
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Yep
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: N/A
CONTACT: Aim: BardessOokami, Yahoo!: Chicklet_Royal, Plurk: ChickletLarp, ChickeltRP
CHARACTERS PLAYED:
Tiamaris, Eli, Aqua
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Rhiannon (X-Men name will be The Lorax)
CANON: The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron
CANON REFERENCE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Years_of_Merlin
http://lostyearsofmerlin.wikia.com/wiki/Rhia
http://www.funtrivia.com/en/Literature/Barron-T-A-13275.html
AGE: 12, the age at which she meets Emrys at the start of the series
GENDER: Female
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: Student
APPEARANCE
“In time, the bundle of leaves dropped lower and lower among the limbs. Finally it rolled onto the forest floor, coming to rest at last in a bed of brown needles. I gasped. From the bundle, a long leafy branch suddenly protruded. No, not a branch. An arm, wearing a sleeve of woven vines. Then another arm One leg, then another. A head, with its hair bedecked with shining leaves. Two eyes, as gray as beech with a touch of blue. The leaf-draped figure rose and laughed out loud. The laugher, full and clear, rang through the trees with the beauty of a bell. I leaned forward on my limb, trying to discern more detail. For I could tell already that this bundle of leaves was, in truth, a girl.”
“Although the light was spare, I could tell that she was about my own age. She watched me, standing as still as one of the trees. But for the touch of blue in her eyes, her garb of woven vines consisted of so much green and brown that she could almost have passed for a tree. Yet the eyes could not be missed. They flashed angrily.”
“I noticed the intricate dressing of leaves in her curly brown hair. Although I could not be sure in the dim light of the grove, it appeared that her ears were somewhat triangular in shape, pointed at the top much like my own.
PERSONALITY:
Rhia trusts the berries. Her core sense of self can be summed up as “trusting the berries”. For her, everything can be understood best by relating it to nature, and her instincts, while sharp, are always “berries” to her. “’You remind me of a big brown berry, though not a tasty one.’ She picked a plump purple berry growing in the moss by her feet and put it in her mouth. Puckering, she spat it out again. “Ecchh. No sweetness left.”” Rhia’s instincts are sharp, and usually she can see the best in people, even when her initial reaction is to see the worst. She listens to the advice of others, but she ultimately trusts her own gut and does what she will. A prime example is when Arabassa, her home, does not wish to let Emrys in, saying he is a danger to her. Rhia realizes that Arabassa is right, trusts her with her life, and invites him in anyway.
Rhia believes that every life has a voice, and that everything has life. She talks of understanding the shells on the beach, if one knows how to listen correctly. While some of that comes from having grown up on Fincaryia, some of it seems to just be core to who Rhia is. She takes the time to listen to the world around her, and to, as she puts it, trust the berries.
She is also quick to anger though, when something she loves is threatened. When Emrys first comes to Fincaryia, she sees him as an intruder and trusses him up, threatening to leave him in the grip of the trees for a few days. “you remind me of a squirrel who has stolen someone else’s nuts and gets caught. Now you want to give them back, but it’s too late. I’ll come back for you in a day or two. If I remember.”
When she isn’t dealing with new people, Rhia spends her time, most happily, in nature. She plays with the trees, and they play with her, tossing her from branch to branch. She sits and listens to their stories, and shares stories of her own. She respects the wisdom of nature, without ever loosing the fun.
She is also terribly brave and self sacrificing. She believes Emrys is going to be the one who can save the woods, so when he is captured, she slips into the sack in his place, so he could be free. Rhia is a small package that contains bravery, loyalty, love, instincts, fun, and berries.
Rhia, in the AU, is going to have had very little contact with mutants before coming to Xavier’s school, and none with humans. She will lack the social graces, but rather than being a wallflower, she will throw herself, head first, into activities, trying to drag people into games, trying to understand them, and standing up for what she thinks is right. Rhia is not one to sit quietly and let injustice pass unspoken. A great quality for a future X-man, until you realize that her concept of injustice does not always match anyone else’s. In Rhia, I think I will have the chance to play around a lot more, and post more ideas to the player plot thread.
POWERS/ABILITIES:
Rhia can speak to the trees, and they listen, and do as she asks. She can also speak to other aspects of nature.
What she CANNOT do:
She cannot grow a plant from nothing
She cannot make a plant grow beyond its normal speed/size
She cannot give plants abilities like walking, or features like eyes that they lack.
What she CAN do:
She can talk to plants in their own languages, be heard, and hear them.
She can convince plants to do her bidding, but from a personality standpoint she prefers to reason with them and argue with them rather than order them if they dislike what she asked them to do.
She can temporarily give plants she is focused on some extra flexibility. Branches can curl to entrap someone, or bounce to throw her from tree to tree. A young sapling can bent its crown to the forest floor, though an old oak never could.
“She uttered a command in a strange, rustling language, waving her hand as if to brush away a fly. Immediately, the heavy branches of a hemlock wrapped themselves around my middle, as well as my arms and legs. The branches held me tightly, and the more I struggled, the harder they squeezed. Swiftly they lifted me into the air. I hung there, suspended, unable to move.”
“Tentatively she returned to the grove. She stood beneath the mighty hemlock, looking up at me for some time. Then she flicked her wrist and spoke more rustling words that I could not understand. Instantly the branches unfurled.”
With effort she can help the trees to be understood by other people, but not for long.
She is strongest with trees, then vines, then grasses, then bushes, then flowing plants, then fruiting plants.
I took out the water abilities as well as animals, but she does have a knack with animals, if that is okay, the way some people do normally. She has learned to replicate some calls and whistles, and to understand what some of them mean, as well as body language. But this would only work with species that she has studied, it is not intrinsic, it is not a mutant power, but a skill and it takes work. The same way she has learned that if there was much rain there will be certain areas of a river she is familiar with will be dangerous. Personal experience and attention to the world around her.
None of her means of communication are silent, and they all rely on translation…hers. And since her view on the world is often as odd as an animal’s…. It can get interesting.
Physical mutation: She is very limber, able to bend and move, though not more so than an Olympic gymnast, and she is not double jointed. Also, she has pointed ears.
She will, down the line, develop a secondary mutation, she will grow wings, but that’s a ways down the line. In the cannon, Merlin restores the wings the Fincaryian people lost, and none take to them half so well, or so joyously, as Rhiannon, girl of the woods.
AU HISTORY:
http://i472.photobucket.com/albums/rr81/rspake2064_1999/Liberators/FC_Savage_Land.png
I used the above map as a referent.
Rhia was abandoned at birth, not having the look of the people of Shalan, lacking the wings, having pointed ears and in other subtle ways looking off… different… But the Savage Lands themselves takes care of its own, even if the peoples there in does not. The baby was brought by the wild creatures of the Savage Lands to the southern peninsula of Shalan, to the east of Mount El Avius which she could see in the distance.
The peninsula was wooded in a way that only the Savage Lands could be; an odd mix of forest and jungle, mostly surrounded by sea. Trees and tree creatures raised Rhia, and from them she learned. She came to her primary mutation early, very early. She could speak to the trees, she was able to learn the langue of the different breeds of trees, to awaken their spirits and talk to them. She became like a force of nature, a force for nature.
She learned to “read” animals by watching them, mimicking some basic calls, and observing the result. She learned to read the land, to tell by the rains when the river would flood, what the current would be, the temperature…
Rhia grew up without other humans or mutants, but a child of nature, and she loved her life. She occasionally as she got older started to spy on the other inhabitants of the Savage Lands, never leaving her forest, which she named Druma, but going to the edges and hiding in the trees.
She came to ask Arbrassa, the tree she called home, that had shaped itself into a home for her, about these odd people, feeling the longing for wings like an ache between her shoulder blades. The trees told her what they could, but their information was limited.
And then Xavier showed up. She hid in the trees as the Blackbird landed, as the X-men came out. She didn’t know who they were or what they were looking for, but they knew, and finding her was a simple matter. She clung to her branch, staring down at them. Xavier explained who he was, who the others were, and that they came to take her to a school with other mutants, where she could learn and grow.
Rhia did not want to go, adamantly did not want to go. She hid in the trees and avoided them, but the trees knew her questions about the others in the Savage Lands, and knew that these strangers were offering to help her learn. They encouraged her, pushed at her to go. Finally Arbrassa drew from her a promise. She would go and learn, but when she learned she was free to come home, come back, and if she never wanted to deal with another two-legger again, the trees would not push her.
So, reluctantly, Rhia left with Xavier and the X-men in the Blackbird. The flight was spent with them helping her with English, and trying to show her kindness. She worked, because she promised she would, and because at root she was a truly social creature. They showed her children’s programming, and she became fixated on the Lorax, fascinated by the small odd looking creature that spoke for the trees because other people could not hear them. She had never imagined anyone couldn’t hear the trees. She was determined herself to help the trees while she was in this weird place.
Given her recent acquisition of English and lack of formal education, she probably needs classes in the basics, such as one would get in kindergarten or first grade. She will learn quickly, but still does not know basic math and spelling, has never read a book, and knows no history or social studies.
Rp sample: http://xavier-institute-ooc.dreamwidth.org/25836.html?thread=1346540#cmt1346540
Network sample:
[The camera comes to life, birds' eye view on a spunky little 12 year old dressed in leafy vines, hands on her hips like Peter Pan.]
"Do not burn the plants!" she stomped one small foot into the grass, cutely. "Plants give us food, and we eat, because we have to eat to survive. So that's okay. But I saw someone who ripped up plants just to burn them and enjoy the scent of their death! Do not burn the plants."
[she made a swishing noise, and the camera swayed slightly. Vines came from off screen and wrapped around her, lifting her until she faced the camera dead on.]
"You remind me of a baby who takes and takes and does not understand what it costs to give! You may not understand the trees, but I do, and I'll speak for them," she said, thumping her chest. "I speak for the trees! So stop hurting them!"
[The camera clicked off as she was suddenly thrown, by the vines, straight up.]
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