her name
Player Information
Name: Vee
Personal Journal: blizzardseason
Contact Info: same
Other Characters: Paderau | OC | k0kka
Character Information
Name: Fela Luisa Delmas(-Serna)
Age: 23 - The Sonando does keep her pretty young looking. I will be taking her from before she is pregnant with Andros.
Setting:*Quoted directly from mellifluently, as it is her mun's verse. Mahalia is Fela's youngest half-sister.
Some time in early 1993, magic began to appear. No one knows where it came from, if it existed previously and died out, been hidden away from the general population, or just suddenly began to take root. All that was known was that children started to display the ability to do extraordinary things, to read minds or the future, to move objects, to create ice or fire, to disappear completely. The only indication that these people were any different to anyone else, aside from the abilities themselves, was a shimmer in their blood - a sheen across the surface of the liquid, much like oil.
The abilities of these children caused a panic in the people, those who called them demons, deformities, dangers. Governments across the world attempted to control the situation as best they could while they decided what to do, but they stalled too long. Vigilante groups began to form, hunting down those with the 'glitter', cutting them as a test before slaughtering them. In defense, the then called 'witches' began to fight back. War broke out. Cities were destroyed, governments fell, chaos reigned for many years.
With the population of witches growing and the Hunters becoming a more organized front, one particularly fierce battleground stretched across France, Germany and Austria, culminating in a huge battle that changed the surface of the planet. A rift was torn in the earth and the sky, shifting continents. The Hunters retreated into the South (contains lower Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia), creating a military organization known as Prevent, spreading across the land and becoming a totalitarian regime. Forty years after this battle, and the South is a post-apocalyptic landscape, most cities destroyed and those left patrolled by soldiers, with checking gates controlling entry and exit. ID declaring yourself a non-witch is necessary for survival. Witches are hunted down ruthlessly and killed, with sympathizers, spies and rebels treated no better. The North (North American, South America, the upper half of Europe), in contrast, is witch-tolerant, ruled by a series of 'temples', priests and academics. The war is still ongoing, but has reached a stalemate due to the riftzone, and the temples nearer the rift are dedicated to training young witches to become soldiers. Refugees from the South sometimes manage to make it through to the North, but it largely soldiers crossing in from the North to fight.
The technological level of both sides has regressed slightly, with the South most effected. Most utilities, such as water and electricity are still readily available, but travel and communication are incredibly restricted, used by Prevent alone. Most people don't recognize things that we would consider commonplace, such as computers, automobiles, mobile telephones and trains. In the North, the need to rebuild after the initial war led to a focus on industry and a renewal in a sense of community, which subsequently led to less personal and working isolation and alienation by technology.
Abilities: Fela is not technically a witch, she was born with glitter in her blood, but those powers have since been smothered by the soñando. For some rare users, such as Fela, the powder gives her the ability to enter the minds and dreams of others, to shape or manipulate them, to free people from comas or trap them there forever. Viewed as holy people, dreamchasers are revered in the South and bring hope to many, but the cost of using the soñando is their memory. Fela does not remember anything for more than a week or two before it is gone, unless she finds some way to remind herself of it daily the way she does with her name and the soñando to which she is addicted.
When Fela is alone, her memory loss is fairly rapid and predictable, but when she begins to travel with her brother and eventually has her children, she essentially uses them as encyclopedias. She has a level of trust with them that she knows she is not being invasive if she uses her powers to look into their minds. She uses this to find answers on the day to day world, but also for memories of herself. This can be a double edged sword, sometimes leaving her somewhat disassociated: she sees herself from their point of view and sometimes questions what she was really feeling. She tries to leave herself notes from time to time, but she's more likely to go off the cuff.
The soñando is a powder taken from poppies, and I remember seeing in the FAQ that the snakes would be able to provide such things.
History: Fela Luisa Delmas is the eldest daughter of Acacio Serna, a wandering dreamchaser, and Oro Delmas, a tattooist. Oro and Acacio met when the dreamchaser passed through town, and were drawn together because Acacio is a handsome man but ended up together when Oro found his kindness and gentleness impossible not to nettle. A confident and playful woman with a rough and wild streak, she enjoyed teasing him about his pretty eyes and soft mouth until she ended up in bed with him. Arguably, she loved him, although her pride would never have allowed her to admit as much. Certainly not when the man might be forced to flee for his life at any moment.
Able to use her own client base in conjunction with the resistance network, Oro was able to do some things to help Acacio find work as a dreamchaser, to keep tabs on rumors, and to find the sonando wherever it was being sold in the city. She was perfectly aware she was pregnant when it was finally time for Acacio to leave and remained behind regardless. Beaten and interrogated, but not killed, Oro left the city not long after him to find somewhere new to raise their child.
Fela Luisa Delmas was born a healthy baby girl with bright green eyes. Like all of the siblings that would follow her, she was born with a strong glitter that gave her not only preternatural awareness, but many other unforeseen talents. Her mother was quick to teach her to hide those skills, a lesson that was not difficult to learn with witches being executed in the streets every day. Despite the fear and violence, however, Oro taught her daughter how to enjoy the world around her, how to love music when she found it, how to savor food when she had it, how to love the sun on her face rather than spite its heat. Oro's philosophy was to let all the bad shit roll right off your back, but to never stand for an insult.
Because Oro's profession as a tattoo artist was such a social and personable one, Fela was able to learn many lessons from her mother's clients, be it how to curse or how to shoot a gun--(later in life some of these lessons linger in her subconscious despite not remembering them directly.) Like her mother, Fela developed a friendly personality, not a shy girl in the least, and began blooming into a confident young woman.
Danger lurked around every corner, however, and when Fela was ten she got her first taste of sonando from an older girl who could not have predicted Fela's dreamchaser heritage or the rapidity of the addiction she would cultivate. Had Oro stopped her daughter then, she would have remained enthralled by the dust, but not enslaved to it. However, the dreamchasers are a holy people and it seemed right to let Fela follow her father. Allowing this development put Oro and Fela at an even greater risk, but Oro was willing to take it. She was a little thick-headed like that. The sonando quickly turned Fela's bright green eyes a deep opium brown.
Oro had no way to help train Fela in her abilities, but she kept her daughter safe while she learned and on Fela's thirteenth birthday, she was forced to tattoo her daughter's wrist with the name 'Fela Luisa Delmas' so she would not forget it. This is the greatest gift anyone will ever give to Fela, and it was the last she received from her mother. That summer, Oro was shot and killed during a Prevent sweep, and while Fela escaped, she was completely alone. Over time she steadily forgot that it was ever any other way.
She lived day to day, as she was taught. She encountered many people, some friend and some foe, but she does not remember any of them.
Unbeknown to Fela, she has a number of younger siblings spread out across both the North and the South. Each are born with the same abilities that she was, though some lose it to the sonando just as she has. She is not brought into contact with any of her siblings until tragedy has struck her. When Fela is twenty-three, she is beaten and raped by a vicious Northern witch, a soldier. She is pregnant and alone after the encounter and so the oldest of her brothers, Benito, comes to find her. She stays with him through the pregnancy, and even after her son, Andros, is born, Benito remains with them. It would not be a safe thing to leave Fela and Andros alone until the boy is old enough to look after himself and his mother.
The three continue to wander the South as Andros grows, they are a happy little family despite the tragedy of Andros's conception. Most days, that memory is completely lost to Fela: Benito is careful to keep it from her, though even if he hadn't Fela would have remained her same cheerful and indomitable self.
Andros is five years old the first time his mother introduces him to Gauvain Crowe. Gauvain is a young witch, a jumper, who has had the misfortune to fall in love with the tempestuous Fela, though he does not acknowledge this. She finds him to be an acceptable lover, but a bit of a coward: she does not want him as a permanent fixture in her life. They part ways regularly, she forgets him easily, but he continues to return for her. He is nineteen and she twenty-nine when their daughter, Delilah is born.
Benito is forced to hunt the errant father down in order to inform him of this, and while Gauvain is not forced to take responsibility, he chooses to and wins himself a tenuous place within the family. He is a very good father to Delilah, and does what he can for Andros--(though the boy turns very sullen and quiet when his uncle eventually tells him about his conception)--but he is never a good enough man for Fela. The two fight often, and while he falls more in love with her, he remains entirely uncertain about her feelings for him.
Benito watches all of this with a bemused smirk and thinks they should stop pretending and get married already. It is Gauvain's dream to move her and the children to the North, if not marry her, but Fela is determined to remain as long as there is work for her to do as a dreamchaser.
Personality: Fela is a joyful woman. Her name means 'Lucky' and this is the word by which she lives. Although she loses her memories to the sonando, the lessons she received from her mother as a child are hard printed into her personality. She is confident in herself as a woman. She has faith in her strength, her wit, her intelligence and her character and earnestly believes that she has whatever it takes to make it through to the next sunrise. Considering that she is alive to this day despite the war-torn world that she lives in, it seems she hasn't been wrong on that account yet: or perhaps she's just been very lucky.
It is definitely not fair to attribute her survival only to luck. Despite being a bit capricious, she is undoubtedly cautious. She has strength written into her bones, but with no memories to always put that strong character into context, she is a keen observer. She does not take actions unless she has surveyed the situation closely. Strangers are spoken to openly and in a friendly manner, as friendliness comes to her easily, but she does not disclose much about herself or where she has come from. The nature of a dreamchaser is like that of the sonando smoke: unfettered and impossible to catch hold of. As such, Fela does not make any connections that might hold her down should she have to flee. Because of her memory loss and the nature of her powers, she thrives on instinct. Andros's father calls all of dreamchaser kind 'rabbits' for this reason, running on instinct without ever truly remembering what is chasing them.
Fela's caution can, however, come into conflict with her pride. The same strength that might otherwise see her using her quick mind to escape a dangerous situation can also see her choosing fight over flight when insulted. Her temper is notorious to those who know her. She does not appreciate being viewed as weak or being objectified. She is not afraid to punch someone if they are rude enough to her.
Fela's moral alignment is definitely that of Neutral Good meaning:
Neutral Good is known as the "Benefactor" alignment. A Neutral Good character is guided by his conscience and typically acts altruistically, without regard for or against Lawful precepts such as rules or tradition. A Neutral Good character has no problems with co-operating with lawful officials, but does not feel beholden to them. In the event that doing the right thing requires the bending or breaking of rules, they do not suffer the same inner conflict that a Lawful Good character would.
She may steal (and even enjoy the thrill of it) or whore for survival, but she doesn't feel like a lesser human for it. What Fela is incapable of morally is victimizing another person, taking their life from their hands, making them worthless. She values life and potential and the most loathsome are those who squander it. In Fela's opinion, anyone who wantonly kills, as Prevent has, has forfeited their right to their own life by wasting so many innocents. She has killed Prevent soldiers in self-defense before and found it both satisfying and heart-rending, she was not as cold-hearted to the experience as she thought she would be. She does not remember this.
Fela's personal moral code is of importance because she holds herself fairly rigidly to those tenets, and expects even greater scruples from those she loves. In her mind, if she loves them then they must be worthy of her, because she has no contextual memories, these expectations can honestly become larger than life. She still gets angry when those expectations are disappointed and is not afraid to show it. Gauvain often receives the greatest brunt of this. Because of her memory loss, she sometimes has trouble expressing herself well on these points, unable to draw up past experiences to justify her feelings. Her morals, however, are something that always stay with her despite the sonando, making them immeasurably important to her irregardless.
She is quite free with her emotions, and is more often happy than anything else. She has a playful streak that she learned from her mother, she loves to tease and flirt, doesn't mind tipping a little bit on the wrong side of propriety in the name of fun, so long as there is no ultimate lack of respect. Life is a gift in her eyes and should be enjoyed, people are unique and should be loved and appreciated. Her powers as a dreamchaser are also a gift, the greatest she could ever have asked for. She truly loves her ability to see inside the secret, magical worlds that dreamers build. She is absolutely humbled by their beauty and their majesty and she takes her duties as a dreamchaser very seriously. She would sacrifice herself in a heartbeat to save one of her dreamers. She is a giving benefactor with the best of intentions.
It is her enthusiasm for the world of dreams that feeds her overall lust for life. She can find worth and adventure in any person or situation, perhaps because she has no memories to taint her with cynicism. She actively fosters confidence and strength in those around her, to the best of her abilities. When she inevitably becomes a mother, her strength and nurturing is given to them fully. She adores both of her children, keeps them safe like her mother did before her. Her son Andros hates himself desperately for the pain that his birth caused her, she is baffled and hurt by his inability to love himself and nothing sets her to tears quite like hearing him say he doesn't think he deserves to be loved.
Sample: *Samples are written at a point when Fela has her family around her.
http://community.livejournal.com/mothdeath/81920.html?thread=12844288#t12844288
http://community.livejournal.com/mothdeath/85091.html?thread=13215587#t13225571
http://community.livejournal.com/mothdeath/85091.html?thread=13205347#t13205347
*This is also just... a side thing, I guess? Just an extra example of Fela, but also extrapolating on other dynamics within the family.
http://c-zacatechichi.livejournal.com/1424.html