Valeriana Spikkle profile [incomplete]
Jan 3, 2013 20:58:42 GMT -5
Post by Otus Shortwing on Jan 3, 2013 20:58:42 GMT -5
Name: Valeriana Spikkle
Species: Hedgehog
Gender: Female
Dibbun Weapon: Ragged blue blanket, well-loved and carried often to ward off fears
Young Adult Weapon: Medicinal herbs that can be slipped into drinks and food to achieve a desired effect, such as putting the eater to sleep; and the natural defenses of her quills.
Adult Weapon: In addition to the medicinal herbs used as a young adult, Valeriana utilizes haunting chants and colored (sometimes explosive) powders; blowpipes of different lengths and widths that fire darts, sometimes tipped with irritating herbal juices or even poisons; and a staff of dark, almost black wood, with vine-like tracings all the way up, made from carving out the design and filling each line with white gold. The area where she holds the staff is wrapped in supple bark, dyed black, and held in place by bands of white gold at the top and bottom. At the top of the staff is inset a polished round moonstone, milky white in appearance with a mysterious, shimmering sheen to it. Tied through a hole drilled just below the moonstone is a braided black rope, to which is tied a small gourd, painted white and filled with aromatic herbs whose scent seeps out through pinprick holes, and a tuft of white-painted nutshells, sealed closed so they’re hollow balls that clack together as the staff is moved about. When viewed in the dark, the staff appears as ghostly white filaments on either side of Valeriana’s white paw, with a disembodied tangle of clattering nuts hovering above her head, as if held there by the power of the white stone “floating” at the top.
Appearance: Valeriana is an unusual color morph of the normal hedgehog, known as a “blonde” hedgehog. Her spikes are an overall creamy yellow with white tips and slightly darker, tan bases. Her face and front are pure white, causing her glinting black eyes to stand out, and her nose is a rosy pink. The white darkens slightly to tan around the bottom of her small, round ears, which sit behind and above her eyes at the line where her quills begin. Her paws are naturally white, but as a dibbun they were generally stained with soil and berries, and even when washed were tinted a little purplish. As an adult, her paws are stained a faint green-brown from her work with herbs and dark dyes. Her footpaws are sturdy and solid, inherited from the cellarhogs in her ancestry, and are usually tinted yellow-brown from the dirt and dust she walks through. Her tail is extremely short and often hidden beneath her clothing, but it too has a layer of short quills on the top. In her elder seasons, her eyes begin to lighten to a milky dark blue, her quills turn to silver, and the fur around her muzzle to gray.
As a dibbun, Valeriana wears a rough homespun smock of dusky blue wool, “belted” around the center with a tangled bit of white string. Her soft, half-grown spikes poke through the loose weaving but (happily for the sewing sisters) are not yet strong enough to puncture fabric. Upon her head is a round-brimmed straw hat with a domed crown, tied under her chin by a light blue ribbon that matches the ribbon around the base of the crown. Her footpaws are shod in bark sandals, though they’re often left behind in favor of going barepawed. Valeriana is a normal height and weight for a hogmaid of her age but she tends to hunch her shoulders protectively, and so appears a little smaller than she really is. Other decorations include a bracelet made of wooden beads and an amulet made of a smooth bit of wood with some mica embedded in the, hanging from her neck by a woven hemp cord. Her clothes are constantly getting dirty from mucking about in the gardens, and it’s not unusual to see her smock stained brown around the knees from kneeling in the dirt.
In her young adult years Valeriana wears a sky-blue habit of the abbey order, belted with a silky white cord, and sturdier sandals on her footpaws, but she retains the straw hat. Several pouches of herbs and powders now hang from her belt, and three bracelets now adorn her wrists, two on the right and one on the left. A new amulet hangs from her neck, carved from soapstone. In addition, she has a gold pawring and a small loop of gold through each ear.
As a full-fledged adult, Valeriana has many outfits at her disposal. She kept the blue habit from her slightly younger days but wears it only rarely. Her straw hat is gone, the last vestige of innocence and a childlike attitude, and around her head instead is a woven gold-colored band that holds an amethyst pendant in the center of her forehead. Her ears now have four piercings each, and besides her original gold loops none of the earrings match, but the six new earrings are all either made of wood and carved with a rune of protection, or contain a precious stone believed to ward off evil. She now wears a loose dress of deep navy fabric with trailing sleeves in everyday life, with a shawl of a darker shade wrapped around her shoulders and over her head like a deep hood; belted around her waist are even more pouches filled with herbs, powders, and even poisons, and her footpaws are now shod in supple, dark purple boots. Nearly a dozen bracelets adorn her arms, many sporting protection runes, stones, or secret “spells”. Her soapstone amulet still hangs from her neck, but it has been carved more extensively with a large, spindly rune that almost looks like the spines of a snowflake, and it is joined by another necklace with a tiny bell on it. For all appearances the adult Valeriana is a hedgehog seer who’s not altogether there, which earns her the nickname “Mad Madame Spikkle.”
As Valeriana ages into an elderly spinster, some of her jewelry begins to come off. First to go are the jeweled headband and the earrings, though she retains her original gold loops. Her bracelets, all but the one made of wooden beads from her dibbunhood, soon follow. She dresses in a warmer navy blue dress belted with her white cord and generally piles several shawls upon herself, all in different shades of blue or purple. She still wears purple shoes, but they are much softer than her boots and are lined with fluffy wool; no longer does she intend to walk any distance in them.
Personality: Born with a naturally timid personality to her older brother’s teasing nature, Valeriana never failed to give the desired reaction to any pranks or fear tactics he used on her. Her father, Mordecai, was also fond of ghost stories, which his wife Kwili reinforced. From both nature and nurture, Valeriana grew up fearful and prone to panic attacks. She believed anything told her—including her parents’ ghost stories. As a dibbun, she lived by every superstition in the book—stepping on cracks was to be avoided, mirrors should not be broken, and she absolutely refused to walk under ladders. She also had a morbid fear of the dark, particularly in the cellars. During her winters in Redwall Abbey, some dibbuns would make fun of her, others tried to be kind, and more than a few joined her older brother in playing yet more pranks that preyed on her deepest fears (I’m lookin’ at you, Otus).
Valeriana opened up to very few, and to the rest of DAB she acted, at best, reclusive, but more often resentful. She became a vindictive tattle-tail, reveling in the punishments dealt out even to dibbuns who never hurt her. She even, when feeling particularly vengeful, would tattle for deeds never committed at all--grownbeasts tended to view her as a sweet, if timid, hogbabe, and as such, believed her word over the troublemakers from DAB. The unjustly accused would usually retaliate by attacking her fears again, beginning the cycle anew.
Val grew into a rather smug hogmaid, but retained all her superstitions. She became an acolyte training under the infirmary sisters, and was intrigued by the tales of herbs and spells that could ward off evil. She took to carrying pouches of supposedly magic herbs and items on her person.
As payback for her dibbunhood, Valeriana began to turn the fear tactics back on her peers. She would predict what was going to happen to them, and if their own fears of the future didn’t turn them into self-fulfilling prophecies, she gave them a little push in the right direction.
The hogmaid’s curiosity got the better of her in her mid-teen seasons when, on a research spree in the gatehouse, she discovered a book of grimoire, a book of magic, left behind by a traveling seer many seasons ago and long-forgotten in the dusty gatehouse annals. She read it in secret. She began to grow and harvest the herbs used in the spells. Her entire demeanor changed. Superstitions still ran rampant in her life, but now her superstitions were power. She was the puppet master of fears. She toyed with the phobias of less-educated abbeybeasts, used the unexplained mysteries of nature and weather to her advantage. She observed her intended targets secretly before “helpfully” telling them their fortunes—she was almost always correct. Fear of her grew, as did her pride.
After her exile from Redwall residency, Valeriana set up shop in the base of a gnarled oak tree a half-day’s journey into Mossflower Woods. She grew hardened and bitter, but that spark of pride in the power she had obtained never failed. The hogmaid existed in a state somewhere between believing her own mumbo-jumbo, and using every trick in the book to pull the wool over otherbeasts’ eyes. Witch, seer, soothsayer, fortune teller—she accepted all these titles, and more. Young adventurers from the abbey and surrounding woods would stop by on occasion to have their fortunes read. Mothers with sick babes would bring them to her when the abbey healers could do nothing…and she could sometimes save them. She always exacted a payment from her customers; food, trinkets, herbs, and once, the rights to raid the graves of the dead.
As the seasons went on, “Madame Spikkle” became increasingly entrenched in her own practices. The pride, the anger, the bitterness were never dealt with, so they only grew. Her capture by the superstitious Bloodflower Clan strengthened her own belief in her work, to the point where she imagined herself untouchable. Fear, her old enemy, worked now as her servant, biting her weasel captors around every corner and making her mistress over the whole clan—except for Sacrige, the leader. He tolerated her practices but believed in none of them. A grudging respect for his level-headedness developed in Valeriana. In exchange for her life and the lives of the young abbeybeasts captured with her, Sacrige used Val’s supposed powers to his advantage, and she helped him manipulate the clan and keep them under his leadership.
An equally begrudged soft spot began to develop for the two abbeymaids and the otterkit captured with her. Her prickly exterior never lessened, but she at least began to try to make things easier on them. And then alkdfjaldkfjl I’ll finish this later what even is character development.
Species: Hedgehog
Gender: Female
Dibbun Weapon: Ragged blue blanket, well-loved and carried often to ward off fears
Young Adult Weapon: Medicinal herbs that can be slipped into drinks and food to achieve a desired effect, such as putting the eater to sleep; and the natural defenses of her quills.
Adult Weapon: In addition to the medicinal herbs used as a young adult, Valeriana utilizes haunting chants and colored (sometimes explosive) powders; blowpipes of different lengths and widths that fire darts, sometimes tipped with irritating herbal juices or even poisons; and a staff of dark, almost black wood, with vine-like tracings all the way up, made from carving out the design and filling each line with white gold. The area where she holds the staff is wrapped in supple bark, dyed black, and held in place by bands of white gold at the top and bottom. At the top of the staff is inset a polished round moonstone, milky white in appearance with a mysterious, shimmering sheen to it. Tied through a hole drilled just below the moonstone is a braided black rope, to which is tied a small gourd, painted white and filled with aromatic herbs whose scent seeps out through pinprick holes, and a tuft of white-painted nutshells, sealed closed so they’re hollow balls that clack together as the staff is moved about. When viewed in the dark, the staff appears as ghostly white filaments on either side of Valeriana’s white paw, with a disembodied tangle of clattering nuts hovering above her head, as if held there by the power of the white stone “floating” at the top.
Appearance: Valeriana is an unusual color morph of the normal hedgehog, known as a “blonde” hedgehog. Her spikes are an overall creamy yellow with white tips and slightly darker, tan bases. Her face and front are pure white, causing her glinting black eyes to stand out, and her nose is a rosy pink. The white darkens slightly to tan around the bottom of her small, round ears, which sit behind and above her eyes at the line where her quills begin. Her paws are naturally white, but as a dibbun they were generally stained with soil and berries, and even when washed were tinted a little purplish. As an adult, her paws are stained a faint green-brown from her work with herbs and dark dyes. Her footpaws are sturdy and solid, inherited from the cellarhogs in her ancestry, and are usually tinted yellow-brown from the dirt and dust she walks through. Her tail is extremely short and often hidden beneath her clothing, but it too has a layer of short quills on the top. In her elder seasons, her eyes begin to lighten to a milky dark blue, her quills turn to silver, and the fur around her muzzle to gray.
As a dibbun, Valeriana wears a rough homespun smock of dusky blue wool, “belted” around the center with a tangled bit of white string. Her soft, half-grown spikes poke through the loose weaving but (happily for the sewing sisters) are not yet strong enough to puncture fabric. Upon her head is a round-brimmed straw hat with a domed crown, tied under her chin by a light blue ribbon that matches the ribbon around the base of the crown. Her footpaws are shod in bark sandals, though they’re often left behind in favor of going barepawed. Valeriana is a normal height and weight for a hogmaid of her age but she tends to hunch her shoulders protectively, and so appears a little smaller than she really is. Other decorations include a bracelet made of wooden beads and an amulet made of a smooth bit of wood with some mica embedded in the, hanging from her neck by a woven hemp cord. Her clothes are constantly getting dirty from mucking about in the gardens, and it’s not unusual to see her smock stained brown around the knees from kneeling in the dirt.
In her young adult years Valeriana wears a sky-blue habit of the abbey order, belted with a silky white cord, and sturdier sandals on her footpaws, but she retains the straw hat. Several pouches of herbs and powders now hang from her belt, and three bracelets now adorn her wrists, two on the right and one on the left. A new amulet hangs from her neck, carved from soapstone. In addition, she has a gold pawring and a small loop of gold through each ear.
As a full-fledged adult, Valeriana has many outfits at her disposal. She kept the blue habit from her slightly younger days but wears it only rarely. Her straw hat is gone, the last vestige of innocence and a childlike attitude, and around her head instead is a woven gold-colored band that holds an amethyst pendant in the center of her forehead. Her ears now have four piercings each, and besides her original gold loops none of the earrings match, but the six new earrings are all either made of wood and carved with a rune of protection, or contain a precious stone believed to ward off evil. She now wears a loose dress of deep navy fabric with trailing sleeves in everyday life, with a shawl of a darker shade wrapped around her shoulders and over her head like a deep hood; belted around her waist are even more pouches filled with herbs, powders, and even poisons, and her footpaws are now shod in supple, dark purple boots. Nearly a dozen bracelets adorn her arms, many sporting protection runes, stones, or secret “spells”. Her soapstone amulet still hangs from her neck, but it has been carved more extensively with a large, spindly rune that almost looks like the spines of a snowflake, and it is joined by another necklace with a tiny bell on it. For all appearances the adult Valeriana is a hedgehog seer who’s not altogether there, which earns her the nickname “Mad Madame Spikkle.”
As Valeriana ages into an elderly spinster, some of her jewelry begins to come off. First to go are the jeweled headband and the earrings, though she retains her original gold loops. Her bracelets, all but the one made of wooden beads from her dibbunhood, soon follow. She dresses in a warmer navy blue dress belted with her white cord and generally piles several shawls upon herself, all in different shades of blue or purple. She still wears purple shoes, but they are much softer than her boots and are lined with fluffy wool; no longer does she intend to walk any distance in them.
Personality: Born with a naturally timid personality to her older brother’s teasing nature, Valeriana never failed to give the desired reaction to any pranks or fear tactics he used on her. Her father, Mordecai, was also fond of ghost stories, which his wife Kwili reinforced. From both nature and nurture, Valeriana grew up fearful and prone to panic attacks. She believed anything told her—including her parents’ ghost stories. As a dibbun, she lived by every superstition in the book—stepping on cracks was to be avoided, mirrors should not be broken, and she absolutely refused to walk under ladders. She also had a morbid fear of the dark, particularly in the cellars. During her winters in Redwall Abbey, some dibbuns would make fun of her, others tried to be kind, and more than a few joined her older brother in playing yet more pranks that preyed on her deepest fears (I’m lookin’ at you, Otus).
Valeriana opened up to very few, and to the rest of DAB she acted, at best, reclusive, but more often resentful. She became a vindictive tattle-tail, reveling in the punishments dealt out even to dibbuns who never hurt her. She even, when feeling particularly vengeful, would tattle for deeds never committed at all--grownbeasts tended to view her as a sweet, if timid, hogbabe, and as such, believed her word over the troublemakers from DAB. The unjustly accused would usually retaliate by attacking her fears again, beginning the cycle anew.
Val grew into a rather smug hogmaid, but retained all her superstitions. She became an acolyte training under the infirmary sisters, and was intrigued by the tales of herbs and spells that could ward off evil. She took to carrying pouches of supposedly magic herbs and items on her person.
As payback for her dibbunhood, Valeriana began to turn the fear tactics back on her peers. She would predict what was going to happen to them, and if their own fears of the future didn’t turn them into self-fulfilling prophecies, she gave them a little push in the right direction.
The hogmaid’s curiosity got the better of her in her mid-teen seasons when, on a research spree in the gatehouse, she discovered a book of grimoire, a book of magic, left behind by a traveling seer many seasons ago and long-forgotten in the dusty gatehouse annals. She read it in secret. She began to grow and harvest the herbs used in the spells. Her entire demeanor changed. Superstitions still ran rampant in her life, but now her superstitions were power. She was the puppet master of fears. She toyed with the phobias of less-educated abbeybeasts, used the unexplained mysteries of nature and weather to her advantage. She observed her intended targets secretly before “helpfully” telling them their fortunes—she was almost always correct. Fear of her grew, as did her pride.
After her exile from Redwall residency, Valeriana set up shop in the base of a gnarled oak tree a half-day’s journey into Mossflower Woods. She grew hardened and bitter, but that spark of pride in the power she had obtained never failed. The hogmaid existed in a state somewhere between believing her own mumbo-jumbo, and using every trick in the book to pull the wool over otherbeasts’ eyes. Witch, seer, soothsayer, fortune teller—she accepted all these titles, and more. Young adventurers from the abbey and surrounding woods would stop by on occasion to have their fortunes read. Mothers with sick babes would bring them to her when the abbey healers could do nothing…and she could sometimes save them. She always exacted a payment from her customers; food, trinkets, herbs, and once, the rights to raid the graves of the dead.
As the seasons went on, “Madame Spikkle” became increasingly entrenched in her own practices. The pride, the anger, the bitterness were never dealt with, so they only grew. Her capture by the superstitious Bloodflower Clan strengthened her own belief in her work, to the point where she imagined herself untouchable. Fear, her old enemy, worked now as her servant, biting her weasel captors around every corner and making her mistress over the whole clan—except for Sacrige, the leader. He tolerated her practices but believed in none of them. A grudging respect for his level-headedness developed in Valeriana. In exchange for her life and the lives of the young abbeybeasts captured with her, Sacrige used Val’s supposed powers to his advantage, and she helped him manipulate the clan and keep them under his leadership.
An equally begrudged soft spot began to develop for the two abbeymaids and the otterkit captured with her. Her prickly exterior never lessened, but she at least began to try to make things easier on them. And then alkdfjaldkfjl I’ll finish this later what even is character development.