~: Application
Nov. 10th, 2012 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lioneyedCHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Thamuris
SERIES: Doctrine of Labyrinths
CANON POINT: In Corambis, after Felix removes Malkar’s rubies from the Khloidanikos
LOSS: The ability to perform pythian casting
ABOUT THE CHARACTER: While we know little of his past, Thamuris is - or was - Celebrant Celestial of the Euryganeic Covenant by the time he was in his early twenties - a position of significant rank, and thus also implying significant magical potential. The Euryganeic Covenant is one of diviners, who practice a rather dangerous but very accurate method of divination called pythian casting. In this divination, the caster speaks the pattern of the future - and in doing so, sets that particular pattern, that branch of the future, in stone. It’s implied to be physically taxing on the caster - a former acolyte of the covenant experienced nosebleeds, migraines, seizures, all trying, and failing to perform pythian casting. For Thamuris, however, it was a drug, an addiction - and it was what, as a member of the covenant, he had been raised to do and be. At one point, he tells Felix ‘Have you ever been the channel through which the future speaks? Then I cannot explain. But I understand why early pythian casters made a practice of castrating themselves. And I understand why I let it kill me’ (The Virtu, pg 192). This, perhaps, would have been acceptable if his health was good - however, at some point, he developed tuberculosis, and by the time of his actual appearance in the books, was in the later stages of the disease. His covenant had sent him to the Gardens of Nephele not to be cured, as their level of medicine possessed none, but to be kept from performing pythian casting and shortening his own life span even further.
The combination of these two leave a man, in his mid-twenties at latest, stripped of everything he was, and could have been, and who seems to have at least come to some terms with that - with the fact that he is dying by inches and there is nothing that can possibly stop it. He has a dreamy, detached demeanor much of the time, most likely due in part to the huge doses of laudanum (aka opiates, primarily morphine) he’s on for pain relief and cough suppression. He is, however, capable of showing a fairly focused, decisive side when something catches his attention strongly enough - when he realizes that the celebrants have failed to completely remove the curse on Mildmay’s leg, he stomps off to see the Garden’s celebrants immediately to demand they rectify the situation.
His friendship with Mildmay is a quiet one, formed almost more out of habit and constant contact than heart-to-heart conversation. They’re a pair of introverts, and both seem to realize it, neither one pushing the other at all. It would almost seem like no friendship at all, except that Thamuris tells Felix later that he misses Mildmay, misses his presence. His friendship with Felix is more volatile, but also provides him with something new to anchor himself to life with. Felix is most decidedly an extrovert, and pushes Thamuris without even thinking - which he finds overwhelming at times, but which does seem to genuinely open him up some. Together, they embark on a study of the Khloidanikos, and Felix manages to convince Thamuris to do more research outside of their time together, as Thamuris has both the time and the resources Felix does not. The life of a scholar is one he takes to somewhat hesitantly at first, though he seems to slowly come to enjoy it, even if he is somewhat more uncertain of his abilities here. And Felix gives him something he has, perhaps, not ever had - a friend who is also his peer in both magic and scholarship. And it’s clear he values this friendship a great deal - spending time in the Khloidanikos helps his health, but he tells Felix that it’s pointless if Felix isn’t there - spending time in the Dream of the Gardens by himself is far too lonely.
ABILITIES:
Most of Thamuris’s abilities other than pythian casting remain an enigma, as in canon, he’s too weak to be much of an active magic user, and usually appears only in the dreamspace of the Khloidanikos. It’s likely that he can perform some of the same types of spells Felix can - calling witchlights, conjuring fire/light, placing simple wards.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: He was not sure, exactly, when he had passed from dreaming into wakefulness. He had been waiting in the Khloidanikos for Felix - an effort that was starting to feel rather futile most days - and trying to push back the edges of the drug haze encroaching on his mind and threatening to pull him into dreamless slumber. Usually the Dream of the Gardens left him clear-headed - one of the increasingly rare times that was so - but he’d awoken to a bad coughing fit that morning, barely able to breathe, with the taste of his own blood and phlegm thick in the back of his throat. When the celebrant who’d come to attend him offered him a higher dose of laudanum than usual, he had accepted. He knew full-well he was dying - he didn’t need the physical indignities of his own body failing him to remind him of that.
But right now, the Khloidanikos wasn’t much of a respite. Sometimes he liked the solitude, to wander the paths alone. Today, though, he could have used the company - Felix’s usual enthusiasm for exploration, while occasionally overwhelming, would have been a welcome distraction. He contemplated letting the drugs take him, today, and then decided against it. He would walk for a while on his own - even without company, it was peaceful, the warm, quiet night he usually found the Garden in, and left him feeling better afterwards, even if only by fractions. He picked a direction and set off, letting his feet guide him - he had walked the paths often enough he didn’t need to think about it, much.
And then he turned a corner, and found himself somewhere other than the Gardens. The room was... expansive, to say the least, and likely would have put anywhere in Nephele to shame. It was also most certainly daylight, in contrast to the usual twilight of the Khloidanikos. For a moment he wondered if he was dreamwalking, if this was someone else’s dream - Felix’s perhaps. But then the weight of the waking world came crashing back on him in a rush - the chill of the air around him, the sudden tightness in his chest - and right behind it, the rush of laudanum and the oblivion it brought, which sent him crumpling to the ground in true unconsciousness.
FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: Thread!
INTENT: To take a character who has, in some ways, lost almost everything important to him - while he still has friendships, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s dying - and quite literally give him a new lease on life. The more modern medicine available in-setting means he can be something other than a dying invalid, and his loss strips away what he once was as completely as his illness did, leaving him an open path to chose something new for himself. I’d also like to explore his relationships with Felix and Mildmay past the somewhat unsatisfying point they are left at in canon, as well as his relationships to other, new magic users and scholars.
CHARACTER NAME: Thamuris
SERIES: Doctrine of Labyrinths
CANON POINT: In Corambis, after Felix removes Malkar’s rubies from the Khloidanikos
LOSS: The ability to perform pythian casting
ABOUT THE CHARACTER: While we know little of his past, Thamuris is - or was - Celebrant Celestial of the Euryganeic Covenant by the time he was in his early twenties - a position of significant rank, and thus also implying significant magical potential. The Euryganeic Covenant is one of diviners, who practice a rather dangerous but very accurate method of divination called pythian casting. In this divination, the caster speaks the pattern of the future - and in doing so, sets that particular pattern, that branch of the future, in stone. It’s implied to be physically taxing on the caster - a former acolyte of the covenant experienced nosebleeds, migraines, seizures, all trying, and failing to perform pythian casting. For Thamuris, however, it was a drug, an addiction - and it was what, as a member of the covenant, he had been raised to do and be. At one point, he tells Felix ‘Have you ever been the channel through which the future speaks? Then I cannot explain. But I understand why early pythian casters made a practice of castrating themselves. And I understand why I let it kill me’ (The Virtu, pg 192). This, perhaps, would have been acceptable if his health was good - however, at some point, he developed tuberculosis, and by the time of his actual appearance in the books, was in the later stages of the disease. His covenant had sent him to the Gardens of Nephele not to be cured, as their level of medicine possessed none, but to be kept from performing pythian casting and shortening his own life span even further.
The combination of these two leave a man, in his mid-twenties at latest, stripped of everything he was, and could have been, and who seems to have at least come to some terms with that - with the fact that he is dying by inches and there is nothing that can possibly stop it. He has a dreamy, detached demeanor much of the time, most likely due in part to the huge doses of laudanum (aka opiates, primarily morphine) he’s on for pain relief and cough suppression. He is, however, capable of showing a fairly focused, decisive side when something catches his attention strongly enough - when he realizes that the celebrants have failed to completely remove the curse on Mildmay’s leg, he stomps off to see the Garden’s celebrants immediately to demand they rectify the situation.
His friendship with Mildmay is a quiet one, formed almost more out of habit and constant contact than heart-to-heart conversation. They’re a pair of introverts, and both seem to realize it, neither one pushing the other at all. It would almost seem like no friendship at all, except that Thamuris tells Felix later that he misses Mildmay, misses his presence. His friendship with Felix is more volatile, but also provides him with something new to anchor himself to life with. Felix is most decidedly an extrovert, and pushes Thamuris without even thinking - which he finds overwhelming at times, but which does seem to genuinely open him up some. Together, they embark on a study of the Khloidanikos, and Felix manages to convince Thamuris to do more research outside of their time together, as Thamuris has both the time and the resources Felix does not. The life of a scholar is one he takes to somewhat hesitantly at first, though he seems to slowly come to enjoy it, even if he is somewhat more uncertain of his abilities here. And Felix gives him something he has, perhaps, not ever had - a friend who is also his peer in both magic and scholarship. And it’s clear he values this friendship a great deal - spending time in the Khloidanikos helps his health, but he tells Felix that it’s pointless if Felix isn’t there - spending time in the Dream of the Gardens by himself is far too lonely.
ABILITIES:
Most of Thamuris’s abilities other than pythian casting remain an enigma, as in canon, he’s too weak to be much of an active magic user, and usually appears only in the dreamspace of the Khloidanikos. It’s likely that he can perform some of the same types of spells Felix can - calling witchlights, conjuring fire/light, placing simple wards.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: He was not sure, exactly, when he had passed from dreaming into wakefulness. He had been waiting in the Khloidanikos for Felix - an effort that was starting to feel rather futile most days - and trying to push back the edges of the drug haze encroaching on his mind and threatening to pull him into dreamless slumber. Usually the Dream of the Gardens left him clear-headed - one of the increasingly rare times that was so - but he’d awoken to a bad coughing fit that morning, barely able to breathe, with the taste of his own blood and phlegm thick in the back of his throat. When the celebrant who’d come to attend him offered him a higher dose of laudanum than usual, he had accepted. He knew full-well he was dying - he didn’t need the physical indignities of his own body failing him to remind him of that.
But right now, the Khloidanikos wasn’t much of a respite. Sometimes he liked the solitude, to wander the paths alone. Today, though, he could have used the company - Felix’s usual enthusiasm for exploration, while occasionally overwhelming, would have been a welcome distraction. He contemplated letting the drugs take him, today, and then decided against it. He would walk for a while on his own - even without company, it was peaceful, the warm, quiet night he usually found the Garden in, and left him feeling better afterwards, even if only by fractions. He picked a direction and set off, letting his feet guide him - he had walked the paths often enough he didn’t need to think about it, much.
And then he turned a corner, and found himself somewhere other than the Gardens. The room was... expansive, to say the least, and likely would have put anywhere in Nephele to shame. It was also most certainly daylight, in contrast to the usual twilight of the Khloidanikos. For a moment he wondered if he was dreamwalking, if this was someone else’s dream - Felix’s perhaps. But then the weight of the waking world came crashing back on him in a rush - the chill of the air around him, the sudden tightness in his chest - and right behind it, the rush of laudanum and the oblivion it brought, which sent him crumpling to the ground in true unconsciousness.
FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: Thread!
INTENT: To take a character who has, in some ways, lost almost everything important to him - while he still has friendships, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s dying - and quite literally give him a new lease on life. The more modern medicine available in-setting means he can be something other than a dying invalid, and his loss strips away what he once was as completely as his illness did, leaving him an open path to chose something new for himself. I’d also like to explore his relationships with Felix and Mildmay past the somewhat unsatisfying point they are left at in canon, as well as his relationships to other, new magic users and scholars.
