Monster Academy RP Profile
Monster Academy
This is a roleplay profile for my latest writing venture, which is actually my first one in some number of years. It's for a roleplay called "Monster Academy," something I stumbled upon practically by accident, but it's been a great creative release for me.
This is just a rough draft / idea of my character I came up with before we really started writing in the roleplay itself. Therefore, parts of it might be rough or ultimately changed at some point through gameplay. Also, other bits will likely be expanded upon, particularly through the prequel series.
1. Here is the Main Roleplay I'm contributing to as part of a group effort.
2. Here is the Prequel I'm writing as a side project.
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Alys Donovan
Click to viewTheme Song/Opening Song: "Gasoline" by Halsey
Nickname: May/Mayflower
Age: 15 (age appearance) 17 (actual age)
Race: Dark Dryad
Grade: 9th
Personality: Sullen, Withdrawn, Quiet, Calculating; Has a Sense of Humor, but doesn't always show it. Prefers solitude to having company. Likes to hang out on rooftops, primarily because it allows her to sunbathe away from prying eyes, but also because it reminds her of being in an especially tall tree. Loves listening to music, dancing, and singing more than she does talking; her favorite bands at the moment are "The Birthday Massacre," "The Pretty Reckless," and "Evanescence." Dislikes the smell of cooked meat and fire in general, possibly to the point of phobia; has an unhealthy obsession with sharp objects. Favorite Weather: a monsoon.
Power: Tree Teleportation - She can use trees as a form of teleportation, presuming there's a tree at her destination. Once she makes it into a tree, she can shift to another tree; for now, her range is limited to shifting a quarter mile per tree. She can take others with her as long as they are touching her. If she lets go of them or they of her mid-transport, the non-dryad individual will get stuck in the tree and die. This is a handy way to cause death or dismemberment in others, though fortunately dryads aren't normally dark enough to think of tree transportation as an offensive battle tactic. Additionally, Alys can transport herself and others touching her to the Nightmare Realm via tree teleportation. (Mastered) {Future Note: Dryads are normally bound to a particular forest, but can travel to any other tree on Earth and stay there temporarily for a 24-hour period before needing to return home, thanks to the combined forest magic of all the dryads that live in that particular glade. They can also transport others through these means; non-dryads are not bound to the 24-hour rule, unless they were expecting a ride home from the dryad who helped transport them in the first place.}
Abilities:
1. Minor Healing and Self-Rejuvenation - Able to regenerate from life-threatening injuries if she can make it into a live tree; it would take six hours to fully recover. Because her own surviving tree is just a sprout, she can only heal minor cuts/bruises (animals/humans) and other minor injuries/burns (trees/plants). (Not Mastered)
2. Plant Control - Plants will do what she wants them to do, including sacrifice themselves for her if necessary. However, she can't yet control more than one plant at a time, due to the immaturity of her power. (Not Mastered)
3. Plant Growth - Can help plant life grow at an accelerated pace. Due to her inexperience, this is very limited at the moment, but has the potential to grow with time and practice. (Not Mastered)
4. Animal Kinship - Animals are more inclined to do what she wishes, particularly species normally found in forests. This is extremely unreliable, however, as it is an untrained power. (Not Mastered)
5. Dryad Form - In her dryad form, she has a higher tolerance to cold than the average human; it would be impossible for her to go hypothermic on a cold night without a fire, for instance. However, on the flip side, she's also more flammable than an average human, particularly when dry; in this way, her skin mimics wood, though it's obviously more pliable than real wood. Her Dryad Form is more hardy than her Human Form in that it could theoretically withstand falls of up to 60 feet (although the delicate tree sprout she must stay within 25 feet of would be another matter...). Also, she can tolerate strong impacts (such as from a car or a fist) that average humans couldn't. In general, a Dryad Form can withstand the elements much like a tree and therefore much better at surviving the great outdoors than an average human being. She also has short, sharp non-retractable claws and elven ears. She can shift only parts of her at a time at will, such as if she wants to display elven ears or use her claws. There are psychological reasons why she avoids going Full Dryad and why it's unstable whenever she tries to (it reminds her of her past trauma of the forest burning and her people screaming in her head as they died). As a result, Full Dryad has a time limit of about sixty seconds. (Not Mastered)
Flaws:
1. Tree-Bound - Must always carry her tree sprout with her or stay within a 25-foot radius of it; normal humans see this as her "emotional support plant," but the monsters know the truth. If this gets destroyed, she also dies. Any trauma the sprout experiences, she feels, too, and thus she prefers people not to touch her sprout, since she'll feel it, too. If she exits the 25-foot radius, she'll begin to feel light-headed and weakened; the longer she's out of range of her tree sprout, the more it will start to ache and cause her real pain, until her eventual death.
2. Vegetarian/Paleo - adheres to a vegetarian version of the paleo diet, which restricts her mainly to unprocessed foods and a whole lot of salads and water. She can consume the occasional small processed treat or a bite or two of animal-derived food, but if a food's too processed or animal-based, it'll make her ill, possibly to the point of violent vomiting.
3. Unsociable - She has a difficult time obeying others' authority. Additionally, she sees little use for verbal communication as plants and animals tend to understand what she wants via her kinship/telepathy with them. However, she's aware she needs to work on her "people skills," so she will randomly make awkward efforts at conversation.
4. Albino Appearance - though her eyes are a very dark green, she has ashen white hair and skin, to the point where humans assume she's an albino. This can make them question why she never burns in the sun or otherwise treat her like a freak. Normally, a dryad can appear as an ordinary human, but her forest burned down and she just barely survived it, so she's not at peak human approximation ability.
5. Mild Claustrophobia and Enochlophobia - fears of being trapped, tight spaces, and crowds, because she's used to the wide open country estate with only David for company or the wide open forests.
Strengths:
1. Requires only four hours of regeneration inside a tree instead of the usual eight hours of sleep a normal human requires to be fully rested. If forced to sleep in a bed, she'll need about ten hours to get adequate rest. Otherwise, you've got a cranky dryad on your hands.
2. In the absence of food, she can survive for days on sunlight alone. This can be extended to weeks if water is available. However, her tree sprout must also be cared for during this period of time. She can use her plant-healing abilities to care for her tree and keep it healthy as long as she gets adequate sunlight and water herself, thus displaying a symbiotic relationship with her tree sprout.
3, Agile - Possesses keen athletic ability/coordination, provided she's adequately rested and fed. Unfortunately, one can't exactly take a tree sprout onto a basketball court, so this has limited her participation in athletic activities. She's on the school Gymnastics team - which, due to the close-quarters nature of the stunts required, is only occasionally hindered by the 25-foot tree sprout distance limit. Dance, her true passion, would require a lot more travel and possibly larger staging areas that could violate the 25-foot rule, so for now she's sticking to just Gymnastics.
4. Hardy Form - See "Dryad Form" ability for more info.
Short Background Bio:
At the human equivalent age of nine, Alys psychically experienced the deaths of her people as the magical glade where they lived burned down, leaving only one tiny tree sprout of her own tree. The fire was caused by a conflict originating within a log cabin that belonged to the family of David Donovan.
David fought the incursion of corrupted werewolves from the Nightmare Realm and, in the process of his fight, the fire spread to the surrounding woods; the battle also claimed the life of his wife of one year, Julia. Horrified and traumatized, David decided to dedicate his life to the study of the supernatural, pledging himself as a first line of defense against the villainous residents of the Nightmare Realm.
There was one very significant complication, however: the ash-white-skinned little girl left behind the burnt woods. At first, David had no idea who she was or why she insisted on digging up the tiny sprout in the ground in front of her before leaving the forest with him. He did have the sense that she was no ordinary girl, however, which is why he couldn't just turn her over to Child Services.
Eventually, as his understanding of the supernatural deepened, he came to realize just how special she was. She was so deeply traumatized, however, that it took her four years to even speak to him; until then, he'd taken to calling her "Mayflower" or "May," choosing the month that he first met her as his name for the silent little girl.
David home-schooled Alys during their time together, keeping her existence secret even from local law enforcement. Without the proper papers, it could've meant big trouble for the both of them, so he was eventually able to get forged papers claiming her as his adoptive daughter. She's learned English, math, basic human history, etc. from David.
For these eight years since "the incident in the woods" that left David a widower and Alys an orphan, they healed the holes in each other's hearts, though some scars never fully heal. For a time, it seemed things were good and perhaps David could even let go of his anger and give up his crusade against the evil that lurks in the night. Perhaps they could spend forever in the country house he inherited from Julia's wealthy side of the family and forget the troubles of the outside world...
However, it was not meant to be. David began to notice that over the last two years, neither Alys nor her sprout have grown an inch, making him realize he has to find more of her own kind and ask for their help. After eight years of supernatural study and travel in the U.S., David is going abroad to Europe to hopefully find some older, more powerful magic to help his little girl. He's left his "Mayflower" in the care of the Henderson Academy, where he's heard there's a secret school for monsters, hoping also that perhaps someone there will be able to help his adoptive daughter.