Ivy

Player Information

Name: Quinn
Age: 33
Contact details: Quinn2win
Other characters: N/A

Character Information

Name: Ivy Wakefield
Canon: Original
Canon Point: One month after escaping her cave
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OC
Age: 14 at time of death, 214 at present

World Information:
Ivy is from a world of magic and mystery, where bands of adventurers roam the land seeking adventure and challenging ancient monster-filled ruins borne of an ancient civilization where the power of alchemy ran rampant. Technology is primitive, but modern alchemy can bring light to the dark or make ships fly in the sky. It is divided into seven realms, one for each of the seven metals of antiquity - Ivy is from the Land of Gold, a prosperous kingdom that was under seige by an evil warlord known as the Dark Lord. For the day-to-day life of ordinary people like she once was, the magic and peril and adventure is all something that happens to other people. In her era, the modern marvels of alchemy were still unheard of, so she just lived an ordinary medieval life with a merchant family.

Personal History:
Ivy was born as the only child of a middle-class family. They didn't have any obvious problems during her youth, but the world around them had a problem in the Dark Lord, who had been gradually strengthening his armies for some time. As the Dark Lord's shadow loomed over their town, rumors began to spread: The Dark Lord desired to extend his lifespan by draining the life out of the hearts of the youthful, and would spare any who could provide them. Unfortunately, Mr. Wakefield's love for Ivy proved weaker than his fear of death, so he did the unthinkable in the same of his own survival: He murdered his own daughter, cut out her heart, and sacrificed it to the king of demons.

Fortunately for Ivy, the barrier between life and death can get blurry when heightened emotions and dark magic are involved. Ivy's fear, despair, and anger at what happened, combined with the dark acts performed with her corpse, allowed her spirit to cling to the living world as a vengeful specter after death. Unfortunately for Ivy, she was only able to do so by clinging to an object that she had put lots of emotions into in life - an old doll that her father gave her as a child. Unaware that his daughter's ghost was now bound to it, the doll was eventually thrown away, picked up by someone else, and one mishap led to another, until the doll Ivy was bound to wound up forgotten in a dark, abandoned cave.

Ivy spent a lot of her early undeath overwhelmed with the emotions that led to her persistence as a ghost, but over time, she was able to calm down and return to something similar to how she was in life. Unfortunately, it would be 200 years before someone happened to pass through that cave. Being bound to the doll, she couldn't leave, so she was trapped in the dark, completely alone, for years and years. For long stretches of time, she simply shut down, floating mindlessly in place until something happened to bring her back. After 200 years of waiting, a band of adventurers finally happened to cross through, and were able to detect her presence and rescue her. One of them broke the bonds tying her to the doll, rendering her a free-floating ghost, and she followed them out as a new companion, desperate to see the world that she last saw 200 years ago - one where her murderer is long gone, the Dark Lord she was sacrificed to is also gone, and the horizon holds the promise of untold adventure.

Personality:
When she was alive, Ivy was a fountain of cheer and sunshine. She celebrated the good in the world and forgot about the bad, figuring that everything would always work out in the end. She loved meeting people, making friends, playing, and generally having fun and not doing anything important. What would become of her once she became an adult? Questions like that could wait until she actually did become an adult. She was barely even aware of the existence of the Dark Lord, let alone the prospect of her father killing her in order to avoid his wrath. This naive, optimistic view of the world was shattered all at once, when she was murdered.

The following 200 years threatened to drive Ivy mad. She didn't particularly mature during this time, because she had nobody to talk to during it - she was just alone with the same thoughts she had when she was killed, with nothing to do but stew in those emotions. The only way she was able to hold onto her sanity was by learning to switch herself off, so to speak, going catatonic for years at a time. Even after being rescued, the trauma of those long years in the dark stayed with her, threatening to send her into a panic whenever she thought back to them, or to the prospect of getting stuck again. There is nothing in the world that scares Ivy more than the idea of being back in that cave, alone with her thoughts, for another 200 years. Even the night unsettles her - not just the darkness, but all of her living friends going to sleep, leaving her as good as alone until they wake up the next morning.

Ivy as she is now is a jumble of her life and her death. Once she readjusted to life among the living, much of her old cheer and energy returned, but it's not quite the same as it was. She thinks back to her own death as something that happened so long ago that she barely feels any attachment to the incident, as if it happened to someone else. She jokes casually about her own death and undeath, partially because she genuinely isn't bothered by being dead anymore, but also to discourage the reactions people tend to have to learning that she died. Other people being distressed about her dark past makes her uncomfortable, so she deflects it with humor. She often casually wanders into mortal peril (what is it going to do, kill her again?), but if the atmosphere is ominous enough, she can also get caught up in the moment and panic about something that, realistically speaking, cannot harm her in any way.

Fundamentally, Ivy isn't the same person she was in life - she's a ghost, born of anger and despair. As a result, her emotions are much more unpredictable and volatile than they used to be. She bounces back and forth easily between friendly good cheer, indignant rage, and nervous anxiety at the drop of a hat. Her upbeat personality is carefully crafted, because she knows that the dark emotions that created her are far stronger in her heart, but she remains determined to rise above them whenever she can.

Key themes: Isolation, living cheerfully in the shadow of past trauma, horror tropes being used with a non-hostile spirit for dark comedy.

Main Motivation: To learn about and experience as much as she can of what the world is like outside of the cave she was stuck in.

Skills:
Ivy is a ghost, which comes with a few advantages and disadvantages. Being dead, she can't be killed, and she is insubstantial, allowing her to pass through other objects as if she wasn't there. She has a few specific powers, but using them requires spectral energy, which is recharged by negative emotions in the atmosphere around her. The more people are afraid, angry, or upset, the more easily she can do the following:

• Manifest: Become substantial. In this form, Ivy can interact with the physical world, but can't pass through walls.
• Possession: Take control of a living person's body. This is very difficult - the stronger a person's soul is, either through strength of personality or supernatural powers, the harder it is for her to possess them, and the less time she can keep control. The more afraid a person is, the easier they are to possess. The victim remembers the time possessed only as a vague dream.
• Haunt: At maximum power, Ivy can turn an enclosed space into something akin to a haunted house. While doing this, exits from the space can be redirected to return to each other, and she can conjure all kinds of illusions. The more fear is inside the space, the longer she can maintain it.

Ivy is visible and audible at night, but during the day, her presence is much more tenuous. On some days, she might be invisible, and on others, she might be present only as a disembodied voice. Those with supernatural abilities can sense her presence regardless.

Item: None.

Sample:
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3

Notes:
I'd like Ivy to remain dead, if that's all right. Being a ghost is a big part of the character, after all.

More character info over here.