godsrevolver: (Default)
OOC Info:
Your Name: Gail
Your Age: 32
Contact: cacopheny on plurk
Journal Name: godsrevolver

IC Info:
Name: Santiani Asensa Basilfi
Age/Apparent Age: 378/late 30s
Species: Fay
Type: Silfay (elf)
Magic Type: Taker


Powers:
The magic of a Taker is the magic of nothingness. Santiani’s power is to eat other magics, to unmake them and turn them to nothing. After three centuries of working with it, he can work it like any other mage would work their positive magic, but the spells rarely hold for long, and only work well in fairly specific applications. The strongest applications are: hiding and concealing; farseeing, in a scrying fashion by forming it into a mirror of sorts; and catching or entrapping. It is also good for working magic in secret, since very few other mages can see it unless they are actively looking for it, and in small enough doses it is hard to notice its draining effect over the short term. Because of how his magic inhabits him, it also makes it incredibly difficult to work magic of the normal type on him.

Special Abilities:
He mixes a mean cocktail, dances like the proverbial dancing queen, and is surprisingly good at being dramatic for a normally stoic fay. Also, he speaks fluent Spanish on top of English and the fay language.

Description:
Santiani seems to covet attention, both good and bad, and dresses and acts accordingly. Fit and graceful, with strong arms, silky black hair, and a long, pointed face, Santiago is an outrageous sort of character. The hair might be done up in cornrolls, left loose and flowing, french braided, or sprayed into a mohawk, depending on his mood. The face might be done up with vibrant make-up or powdered white, and piercings come and go as he feels like it-- if you look close, you can still see the holes from some of them. With his dark eyes habitually hooded and often made up with bright colored eyeshadow, his feminine mouth turned up in a smile somehow appreciative and contemptuous at the same time, clothes that run the gambit from punk to goth to slick businessman to badass hero to even drag, he's always one who's going to stand out.

Personality:
Though in public he's quite the flashy character, quick with bright smiles and flirts, and full of drama and outrageousness to amuse and impress, it's all just an act, right down to the occasional temper tantrum. Power, experience, and wisdom he may have, but it doesn't make a happy person, nor a particularly kind one, nor even that exciting of one without putting forth some effort, or so he feels. An incredible strength of will and an actively contrary nature has kept him alive this long, between the unmagic he was born with and the active shunning of his people, but that can’t last forever. He longs for meaning and purpose, but for a long time he has been unable to find anything but disappointment and cynicism, so he just focuses on what little joys he can get, like inspiring emotions in others (whether admiration, annoyance, or anger) or experimenting with fashion. People, and life in general, have long since started to sour on him, and he's constantly after the next way to somehow get beyond it, to distract himself from the disgust he has for the world at large and, at times, himself.

Those distractions are varied: anything that gets him out of his mundane life is worth a shot. From innocent things like dancing, finding and rescuing a new piece of art, or just reading a creatively written book (though it takes something particularly creative to catch his interest), to more dangerous things like tempting dragons or infiltrating a fay community only to be run out again, Santiani is willing to try it if it will get him out of his own head for a little while. He hasn't quite gotten to the point where he straight-out wants to die, but he's not far from it at this point.

When you're as bored as he is, very little becomes off-limits. He sees himself as above most of everyone else out there, anyway, so why bother following their silly little rules or worry about their silly feelings? There are some he cares about and treats with kindness and respect, but they are few and far between, and they always seem to die on him. Usually when he’s kind, it isn't because he feels he should, it's because he likes the person he's being kind to or thinks he can get something out of it.

Like most of his people, Santiani considers the fay-- and to a lesser degree, those who share their blood-- a superior kind of creature than humanity. He looks down on such lesser beings with at best a benevolent pity, and at worst disgust, depending on how they're acting and how much he likes a given individual, personally, but since he is doomed to live among them, he does usually manage to at least be polite. He does have a bit of almost parental affection for underdogs and downtrodden, but only if they prove themselves worth his attention.


History:
For the first half century or so of his life, before his magical affinity manifested, Santiani lived in a small but ancient silfay city nestled in the mountains of Spain, only occasionally beset by neighboring humans and mostly left in peace. He had no siblings, unsurprisingly, but there were three other children near to his age that he considered friends and played with before they began magic lessons in earnest. He always stuck out a little, somewhat strange and easily distracted by things they couldn’t see, and things tended to go strangely awry around him, but fay children can’t be choosy when it comes to playmates, so his oddities were put up with.

At forty, however, he was put into magical training and discovered to his dismay that he had no aptitude whatsoever-- and in fact, being around the others made it next to impossible for them to work with their small, burgeoning magic, as well. It took five years of confusion and study for everyone to realize what had been born among them: a Taker fay. Five years later, at what would be just barely the equivalent to a human age of sixteen, the youngest age for a fay to be alone in the world, he was cast out.

Santiani, bitter and unhappy and not quite understanding what he’d done wrong to lose his friends and family all in one fell swoop-- it wasn’t as if he’d asked to be a well of magical nothingness, after all!-- fled out among the humans, but in Europe the fay are not well received, even exiled fay forced to serve humans rather than lord above them. He almost let his own magic overtake him and let himself die-- once, at his lowest point when he didn’t even have a proper roof over his head and not a single friend-- but only once, and never since then. Instead, he managed to make his way between sheer charisma and slowly working out how to actually use his magic instead of just let it disrupt everything magical around him. His only goal, at first, was only to earn enough money to escape. His destination was be the newly revolutionized Americas, where he expected he’d have at least a slightly better reception, knowing what he knew of the history of the fay there from his own childhood lessons. He reached Boston at age seventy-nine, at nearly the human equivalent twenty.

The fay and half-blood mages there were no more accepting of him than they were in Europe, but at least he wasn’t actively scorned by the general populace just for his ears and lifespan. He settled in with his new powers, continuing to learn through stubborn willpower more than actual skill, and started quietly earning money with his skills. If he couldn’t have friends and family, at least he could have a comfortable life, and make his way among the slightly more forgiving human race, and stick one in the eye of every fay he came across. The bitter feeling of abandonment never did leave him, but he made up for it on other ways, mostly by being as outrageous as possible and earning himself attention and occasionally accolades from the unmagicked, instead. He moved about quite a bit, always looking for something new and stimulating to keep the boredom engendered by his magic’s side effects from actually doing him damage, and only rarely kept friends for long.

Many of Santiani’s jobs, using Taker magic, were not strictly legal, nor were they particularly moral. Some of them were entirely simple and could be-- and were-- claimed on tax returns, to explain his ready source of funds, but he did plenty in the service of the less than reputable. His latest spate of jobs were for an underground faction of dragons and halfbloods working as terrorists for dragon rights, but their plan fell through-- perhaps a little bit through fault of his own, once he received partial payment and got tired of their sniping at him-- leaving him at loose ends and with every wish to get out of the area before someone realized he’d helped and already worsening situation towards its end. The call for volunteers to Peridexion came at just the right time, and he bought himself restaurant space, a liquor license, and a massive collection of inventory with the last of his at liberty funds and fled for the wild lands. At the very least, he hopes it will be exciting. At the worst, it will be someplace new, which is better than nothing.

Strengths:
Willpower: Most Taker mages have faded away to nothing by this point in their lives. Through strength of will and a certain contrariness in defying expectations, Santiani has managed to last this long. So far he’s still kicking, and he can turn that strength of will to more than just staying alive if he has to.
Wealth: Taker mages are rare. Full fay Taker mages are even more rare. Because Santiani has managed to learn how to work with his power instead of letting it use him up, he’s actually amassed quite a small fortune for himself through various (and often underhanded) jobs which can use negative energy. He mostly uses it to amuse himself, rather than for anything terribly useful. He doesn’t even have that large of a house, though he does fill it with a lot of things.

Weaknesses:
Prejudice: Nearly all fay and most mixed breeds with fay blood will look down on Santiani as soon as they realize what he is-- and it doesn’t usually take them long. He can hardly hold down a job, if it doesn’t pertain directly to his abilities with negative magic or doesn’t require him to interact with the enmagicked-- thankfully, he has managed to make a way for himself using that magic, but it doesn’t make him any more accepted by his people. It definitely makes having friends difficult.
Risk-taker: Between his magic and place in fay society slowly leeching at his own emotions and mental strength, and his own sometimes-frantic attempts at keeping his own attention focused outside his self and away from both those aspects of his life, Santiani will do just about anything, no matter how dangerous, so long as it is interesting. He’s tried base jumping, he’s tried exotic drugs, and he’s even tried baiting dragons-- and he’s willing to try more.
Amoral: When you feel like no one is on your side, it’s rather difficult to be on anyone else’s side-- much less to care about their feelings. Santiani doesn’t have much in the way of compassion for others, unless they make themselves stand out, and has long since put right and wrong behind him, in order to focus on keeping himself afloat, alive, and in some semblance of comfort.
History: Because of some of the people he’s worked for and things he’s done with his Taker magic, not only could some in-depth digging turn up a less than savory past, he’s known to some less than savory people who could certainly find him if they wanted to.

Magical Belongings:
None. His magical nature eats them.

Position:
Entrepreneur. Owner of a bar named Dark Heart.

Played By:
Davey Havok

Writing Sample:

=> Prompt 2: Taking the dragon transport! This can be the more exhilarating but exhausting dragon-back transportation, or in the more stable carriage model, where a pair of dragons fly people in a slightly more comfortable carrying room. Is it your character’s first time flying? Or do they do this every day?

Santiani couldn’t resist. When he saw the two options for his trip out west, he had to pick the one that was most likely to cause trouble. It was far more exciting, and far more potentially amusing, and he had no idea whether it would even work, but he had to at least try.

When he showed up at the landing platform with his collection of bags-- those he hadn’t shipped ahead of himself, that is-- he strode with them right up the stairs to the line for the dragon-back travel. He sat down on his largest case, chin propped up on one hand and one knee crossed over the other, posed to perfection to wait.

He didn’t have to wait long. The first of the transport dragons, a dust-colored Arroyo Glider, dropped down to land on the platform designed for it, then immediately reared back with a hiss when its yellow gaze landed on the first person in line to board. “What is that doing here?” it demanded of its rider, who looked around in confusion, apparently not seeing the trouble. “That!” the dragon, a male from the sound of its voice, hissed. “That, that! The fay sitting there, as if it expects to ride me!”

Like the rest of the fay, Santiani had no love lost for dragons-- big, brutish things, usually, with as many prejudices as his own people-- but he wasn’t quite as violent in his hatred as many. After all, they were the one creature out there his magic had absolutely no effect on, and that made them moderately interesting. That didn’t mean, though, that he didn’t mind nettling them when he could. So he stood languidly and answered, even though he wasn’t the one being addressed: “I do expect to ride you. I signed up and paid for the trip, after all.”

The dragon’s wings mantled and teeth all came to bare, head lowered down close to Santiani’s level. Santiani watched with his best unimpressed expression. He’d faced down larger beasts before-- though not generally quite so close. He refused to step back, however, meeting the angry glare with a lofty stare, of his own. You didn’t show weakness to these things, after all.

“Oh, come on,” the rider coaxed, patting the dragon’s neck soothingly. She at least looked less confused, though now she looked somewhat unhappy and no little embarrassed, and she shot Santiani a little put-upon glare of her own for upsetting the beast. “It isn’t like he can hurt you-- or me. He’s just trying to get to Peridexion, like everybody else here.”

“Exactly,” Santiani agreed loftily, chin out firmly, as the other passengers coming to join the line stared nervously. “You certainly wouldn’t want to delay the entire journey just for one passenger, would you?”

“I could just knock you off the platform, and then be done with you,” the dragon suggested, sounding very much like he liked the idea.

“There some kind of trouble here?” the landing platform manager, a gruff-looking and -sounding gentleman with what looked like no magical blood at all, demanded, coming to see what all the fussing was for. The glider just continued to growl, despite his rider’s continued assurances. The manager looked between dragon and fay with narrowed eyes, then huffed: “Should I be calling another dragon for the fare? I’ve got several more waiting and eager.” Not that, Santiani guessed, that would make much of a difference. He had yet to meet many dragons who could put up with interacting with a fay, much less carrying one.

This one must have been desperate for the fare, though, because that did get through to the him, though he didn’t stop growling. His rider murmured something Santiani wasn’t close enough to hear, and he finally subsided into a glare and a tense crouch. Definitely in need of the fare, then. This was probably going to get him a hefty fee, given the distance.

Without further ado, Santiani hefted up one of his bags and let the rest be stowed in the netted compartments attached to the dragon’s belly by a platform, and climbed aboard to strap himself in. He could feel the angry rumbling beneath him, but the dragon didn’t try to toss him off, which was more than he’d had any right to expect. The rest of the passengers-- four more, in total-- crept aboard with far less decorum and confidence.

Santiani was pleased. What a thrill: a fay, riding dragonback! At least this was something he could say he’d never done before! Of course, the ride was far bumpier than it could have been, but he could live with that. Every jostle was a source of amused satisfaction… even if he did wind up sore and a little ill when they finally landed. It was worth it to make a dragon carry a fay halfway across the country.

And the view hadn’t been half bad, either.
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October 2014

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