Your Name: Lynn
Your Livejournal: notlynn
Timezone: EST
Other Characters Played: Edgar Holloway
Character Name: Luck (Full human name Lucille Dompierre, true spirit name Tuktuaitut)
Fandom: OC
Canon Point: Present day
Species: Intangible wish-granting spirit from (original / made up) inuit folklore trapped in a human body.
Age: been in existence since 1742, so she's about 268 years old technically. Been living in human bodies for most of that (hopping to new ones every so often). Been in the current body for about ten-ish years, and the body was about 25 years old when it was taken.
Appearance: 25 year old chick, PB Pania Rose. She's slim, with long brown hair and freckles all over her face.
POWERS/ABILITIESWish-granting: Basically, you can say "I wish..." and she can grant it. That is, if she feels like it, and if she can "see" the wish well enough. The smaller the wish and the more you mean it, the easier it is for her to grant it without aid. The stronger the connection to Sila (the air, from which all souls are borrowed), the better she can "see" the wish. Fire, heat, energy, and electricity are all sources of strong Sila - shamans once used fire and chanting to summon the attention of wishgivers, so singing helps as well. In the presence of strong enough Sila she can "see" even wishes that are only being thought. If she's granting a wish over a flame (for example) the flame will often go out or shrink/flicker, as she's drawing energy from it. Therefore wishes done without a source of outside Sila will usually be drawn from the person asking, resulting in sudden coldness or (in the case of large wishes) fainting.
A
side effect of her wish-granting abilities + her corruption = she can create
unluckiness (misfortune). She doesn't really do it consciously, it just happens when she's mad. It can range from stubbing a toe to bad weather to whatever you want. It won't affect the soulless, only people who have a soul and are not spirits (basically, only normal & enhanced humans).
Soul Vision Goggles (tm): The presence of strong Sila also spurs her to "see" in terms of souls and life force (like a regular wishgiver, rather than light like a normal person), at which point her eyes cloud over white and she looks blind. Even when she isn't "blind" and in soul-vision mode, she's at a half-way point between light-sight and soul-sight, so in a way she can't really "see" the soulless (or it will take a good deal more to get her attention).
Body-hopping: When she was wished into humanlike existence, what happened is that she gained the ability to have a body-soul (which is what makes animals/people/plants individual beings capable of consciousness and physical reality). But she can hop between bodies, she isn't anchored. Basically she displaces the soul of whoever's body she's overtaking, which then wanders and disintegrates over time (returning to Sila to be reborn, eventually). When she leaves a body, the body still functions like a person, but it's a soulless, confused shell of its former self, and accumulates fractions of broken souls over time, eventually driving it into madness. She doesn't do this willy-nilly, so your characters (probably) don't have to worry.
Apparitions: She can turn into a deer/elk, which is her kindred animal. She can attempt to mimic any other natural animal but it will be weird and flawed, i.e. a dog with deer hooves. She can also create such apparitions in things like smoke.
Intuition: Because of the intangible nature of wishes, Luck has an aptitude for understanding the basic meaning of words (and wordless wishes) regardless of the language. Names, in particular, ring very clearly for her, and she takes the meanings very seriously in her judgment of a person's character. She can't just magically speak any language she hears once, but given the above, it's no surprise that she picks up language quite quickly.
Not really a power but: Speaking her true name (or thinking it over a flame/Sila), Tuktuaitut, is basically like grabbing her by the soul for attention. That's why she most likely won't tell it to you.
Also she's totally not really a chick. She's a genderless spirit, but happens to be in a female body at the moment.
And as an aside, because she carries the namespirit of her Philippe, she's actually about as physically strong as he was. C'est-a-dire, she's not superhuman but she's about as strong as a male hunter, despite how she looks. She usually fakes weakness anyway.
REALITYDisclaimer: I took a lot of mythology from general sum-ups of Inuit culture/beliefs, but 90% of the details I invented, including the whole tribe thing and the wishspirits, etc.
the Ataninnuaq and the soulBefore European influence, the Ataninnuaq Inuit people were spread in the northmost tip of what is now Labrador, Canada. Like all Arctic peoples, the extremely volatile, harsh conditions of their reality left them at the mercy of the spirits governing the world around them. The Ataninnuaq beliefs therefore rarely separate human existence from the 'spirit world' or afterlife, because they believed it to be taking place all around them.
Each human and animal possesses three components of what the Europeans would call 'the soul': there is the life force, the body-soul, and the namespirit. The namespirit is what it sounds like: given the name of something/someone (a deceased relative, an animal, etc), you are both yourself as well as fractionally that entity; their strengths and wisdoms live in you. The body-soul is both soul and physical form, and makes one an individual capable of consciousness. The body-soul is 'borrowed' from the air, Sila (personified in some ways but not an individual entity - it's a unified body of continuous, connected souls that encompasses nature). In death, the body-soul returns to Sila to be reborn, the namespirit continues in namesakes, and the life force passes on to the sea where it may eventually re-enter the soil. Everything is a cycle.
The Aitut (Wishgiver)Translated directly as "gift," an aitut is an intangible spirit-entity, attached to each believing family.
( Read more...Collapse )Corrupted WishgiversOutsiders (particularly European settlers) are treated with wariness. A lack of belief kills wishgivers, and so the union of a believer and nonbeliever is flawed.
( Read more...Collapse )HISTORYThe Character: TuktuaitutAnyu was a tribeswoman, and the man was a French traveller during the colonization of the New World (mid 18th century).
( Read more...Collapse )The Nineteenth and Twentieth CenturyAt seventy years old, Philippe served in the war of 1812 still appearing to be around thirty; he owed a good deal of his luck and, undoubtedly, his life, to the powers of the wishgiver that had his back from the sidelines. Unfortunately, Tuktuaitut's anti-aging effect did not last forever.
( Read more...Collapse )By the late twentieth century, Tuktuaitut had acquired a taste for living one life at a time, but was bored of the original thrill of secrecy, and of restraining itself to the human characteristics of life. Each time it restarted was like playing a new game of the Sims: this time I'm going to cheat, this time I'm going to make it challenging for myself, this time I want kids, this time I want to mess with people, etc.
Present DayBy the twenty-first century, the phase of Sims-game-reality had begun to worn off. Present-day, it occupies a woman's body and calls itself Lucille Dompierre. If you ask, though, it'll say
Luck, because it thinks that's really clever and likes to laugh at its own jokes.
