Application

[forging_ahead]

Player Information
Name: Hibi
Pronoun: She
E-mail: jacqueline.bowen at gmail dot com
Other Contact: N/A

Character Information
Name: Harriet Schellenberg
House: Schellenberg
Birthplace: New York City
Birthdate: October 3
Age: 16
Gender: Female

Physical Details
Hair Color: Forest green.
Eye Color: Light green
Height: 5'6"
Body Type: Twiggy
Appearance Notes: Harriet always seems a bit uncomfortable in her skin. She wears a baggy, swamp-green jacket over whatever clothes she has on at the time, and generally seems to be either straining to be taller or slouching over to disappear. When she feels self-conscious or has too much attention focused on her, her movements become stiff and her expressions become exaggerated and fake, like she wiped her face clean and tried to remake the face she thought would be most appropriate.

Life Details
Background: Harriet's father is quite old, nearing his 300th year, although his total anticipated lifespan is long enough that he still appears to be about 60 years old. Over the past several centuries, he lived out a proper life with an arranged marriage and all the duties expected of him as a Schellenberg; however, it was never the life he wanted for himself. When his wife passed away and his children were entering their own later years, he set off to start anew on his own terms, making his way to America and beginning a new marriage -- this time with someone of his own choosing.

Harriet was born to him and his new wife, a divorcee from a minor house. This bright new start was cut short when Harriet's mother died in an accident when Harriet was still very young. Depressed by the loss of his wife, Harriet's father withdrew from the world and isolated himself in a cabin in the mountains of West Virginia, taking Harriet with him. Here, he eked out a modest living as a magical blacksmith, though few sought him out in person.

Harriet knew him as a simple, taciturn man -- not particularly warm, but not unkind to her, either. Though he provided for her basic needs, he seemed scarcely to notice her, and often forgot to think of her future -- Harriet had to get her clues for what was expected of her in life from occasional trips to town, and even needed to press him for a tutor when she realized the other children her age were in school. This left her feeling resentful, counted out, and forgotten, and she was angry at him for a long while.

However, the tutor he found her was excellent, and began to nurture her magical skill as well as helping her catch up in traditional subjects. Harriet developed a ferocious love of learning and magic, and wanted to be involved in everything she'd missed. Inspired by her newfound abilities with heating and cooling things with a touch, she pestered her father into letting her help with his smithing. Not only did she have a natural aptitude for the trade, but her elemental touch allowed her to work through projects more quickly and with a greater level of detail than traditional tools could accomplish alone. The two began to mend their relationship, though she no longer trusted him to look out for her interests without prompting.

Harriet was fairly contented in her early teens -- between smithing, lessons, and reading books, her imagination was kept busy and she felt like she was accomplishing something she could be proud of. But whenever customers would pay her and her father a visit, or she and her father would go to town, she'd feel pangs of longing -- that she was missing out on the outside world. Eventually, various factors fell into place -- an errant letter from House Schellenberg -- her tutor's idle speculation about her future within the House -- and Harriet managed to find out about a gathering of Schellenbergs in Germany. Reluctantly, her father agreed to take her, and Harriet was bowled over by the glamorous alternate world that the rest of her family occupied.

From this point on, her small life wasn't anywhere near enough -- she had to rise to the top of mage society, and be noticed and respected in that larger world. She pulled out all the stops to convince her relatives that she was dedicated and worthy, and was rewarded with their assistance in admitting her to Paracelsus Academy.

House Politics: Harriet desperately wants to impress her House, although she doesn't always know quite what that would entail. Growing up, she was only dimly aware of its existence, and now idealizes her House members as her ticket to a glamorous destiny as one of the world's powerful elites. But because she was kept apart from them, and because her father had seemingly retired from the House and the world, she feels like an outsider who is beneath notice and needs to work extra hard to find a place in the spotlight.

Her loyalty stems partly from naivete -- she THINKS she would do just about anything for her House, but there's a lot of stuff she's simply assuming they'd never ask. She doesn't really realize how serious House politics can get, and that they can be a matter of life and death. She has rushed to learn their history, but a part of her mind just hasn't fully made the connection that the same people surrounding her in Paracelsus -- and the amazing rich and powerful Schellenbergs she met -- are all part of a continuing story of ongoing political turbulence.

Personality: Harriet does not quite trust the world. She never entirely recovered from the humiliation of her father forgetting to send her to school, and is always looking out for the next thing she doesn't know she doesn't know. She's highly driven not just to catch up with other students, but to surpass them, which trumps just about everything else for her. No matter how much she likes someone, in the end, SHE WILL DESTROY THEM.

But only in an academic way!!

In fact, despite the fact that she happily forged weapons for several years, she's kind of naive about how much of mage life is about fighting and backstabbing. This is probably exactly the kind of information she thinks she's on guard to avoid being blindsided by -- but since she doesn't particularly want it to be true, it'll take a while for her to absorb it.

A world filled with people is both dazzling and difficult for her to navigate. Her old life didn't have a lot of moving parts, and the social demands on her were close to zero. She's not really especially charming or good at expressing herself, although as a bookworm she has a lot of pent-up WORDS she wanted to get out and finally has people to talk to, so there's a good and bad side to it. She always felt disliked and excluded when she interacted with kids in town, and she sort of expects to be treated the same way at Paracelsus and puts up walls accordingly.

When she's nervous, which is often, (especially when boys are involved) she stumbles over her words and gets tense and easily overwhelmed. She's also prone to become frustrated easily when she perceives a potential misfortune headed her way, and has a lot of bubbling emotions from her uncertainty and the seeming precariousness and high stakes of her presence at the school. She simultaneously wants to be noticed and wants to blend in, leading to a lot of whiplash in how she responds to the way people treat her. One minute she'll be boiling over with anger that she's not being acknowledged -- the next shrinking in embarrassment that everyone is looking at her and she doesn't know what to do with that.

Harriet is extremely driven, and wants to learn everything there is to know, get the best grades, and impress students and teachers alike. As such, she pushes herself incredibly hard, getting little sleep and attempting to participate in extracurriculars she has no interest or aptitude in simply for bragging rights, positive attention, and novelty. Even for all this effort, she is not an exceptional student -- or at least not right out of the gate. It's her first year and she has plenty of time to find her footing, but of course she's already panicking that she's going to be expelled at the first sign of falling behind.

Flaws: Harriet thinks life is pass/fail, and reacts to every minor setback as if the world has just exploded. She is not ready for serious problems and lacks practical experience with dealing with other people.

She has a tendency to be negative, building uncharitable narratives about people and how they are treating her in her head. These can easily burst like bubbles when someone reassures her about how they feel toward her, but sooner or later she'll be building up worried fantasies and harsh judgments again.

Magic and Skill Details
Magic and Skills:

1) Channeling (Elemental touch)
Harriet is able to channel various elements into objects through touch. She specializes in heating and cooling -- able to melt metal or freeze an object solid, and various lesser extremes as well. She has some ability in the other elements as well, such as passing an electric charge through an object by touching it.

The element she summons does not come directly from her fingers, although it appears to. Really, she just summons it into the air just barely beyond them. As a result, she requires magic gloves to protect her from the effects of her own magic, since extreme heat and cold would be as damaging to her as they are to the materials she's working with.

2) Imbuing
Harriet is an artificer, specializing in highly ritualized long-term enchantments that use various magical ingredients assembled, mixed, and chanted over to activate their latent power. Because extensive time and preparation goes into these spells, their effects can be quite far-reaching, and include combat applications as well as more basic spells of convenience. These generally require expensive resources Harriet lacks, so she is accustomed to making these to order for paying customers rather than her own use, and will be unable to make any of her own until she turns a profit or otherwise obtains the resources from other students.

She is theoretically capable of on-the-fly imbuing, but any such spells would be picked up in-game, as she came to Paracelsus without having had any cause to attempt this.

3) Smithing
Harriet's mundane ability is smithing, and she is experienced in metalworking to produce jewelry, accessories, weapons, armor, and other objects suited for enchantment. Her powers allow her to act as her own forge, but she still supplements her work with traditional tools as needed. Based on her tutelage from her father, her creations have traditionally had simple, timeless designs, but since her exposure to the riches of House Schellenberg, she has started experimenting with showier, more lavish pieces, and is showing an early aptitude for artistry in her work.