Newcomb App
Jun. 2nd, 2024 08:58 amPlayer Name: Stareyes
Player Pronouns: She/her
Player Contact: beccastareyes@plurk
Player Age: 40
Character Name: Penric kin Jurald
Canon: World of Five Gods/Penric and Desdemona
Canon Point: After Demon Daughter
Age: Pen is 37/38; Desdemona is over 200 years old.
Species: Pen is human, Des is a demon.
Journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
learnedfool
Permissions: https://learnedfool.dreamwidth.org/1679.html
Goals: Most of the series is what I consider casefic, with the largest arc being ‘how Penric meets and proposes to his wife and gets embroiled in Cedonian politics’. Penric’s motivations are usually ‘scholarly pursuits’ and ‘fulfilling his vocation as a sorcerer and cleric of the Bastard’, with ‘family’ sliding in after his marriage. That means, a lot of times the plot starts when someone drops an interesting case that requires someone spiritually sensitive into Pen’s lap, and he goes off and solves it. His off-panel goals beyond the domestic include translating an extensive work on sorcery that Des’s riders have been working on writing for at least one lifetime. Pen, polyglot that he is, has not only done several translations, but also figured out how to speed up printing using sorcery to create the plates — this is pre-movable type, so printing exists but requires each page be carved into a plate. He is also the setting equivalent of a medical researcher, in that at one point he was doing wide scale experiments on rats to figure out the safest way to knock out a living creature using sorcery, which would allow for more extensive medical procedures.
Penric is also on a one-man mission to better educate people about sorcerers and sorcerers about their powers. He’s had several students work with him, and the people around him know when he’s about to give a lecture on how sorcery and demons work. It may be that has been because of attitudes that don’t really see demons as ‘people’ but as tools, or just general stigma against sorcerers. (Which, to be fair, someone with a demon who is untrained tends to do things like ‘set fires to everything’ when distressed, and a demon who has just enough experience with humans to overwhelm one, but not enough to logic out ‘the Temple will catch us, and then I get exorcised and die’ can ascend, leading to a possessed person.)
Speaking of, Desdemona’s goals are usually short-term and somewhat selfish. She can be very attached to individual people (which started with Penric himself, and includes their family, Pen’s apprentice, and so on), and generally likes it when she gets to experience Pen’s senses of something nice. Before Penric married, it was noted that they had a bit of trouble because Pen was pretty solidly heterosexual and Des is pansexual; Pen was willing to let her use his eyes, but this occasionally got them punched or propositioned by men who noticed the pretty blond man was eyeing them.
Morals: Pen firmly sits in the chaotic good section of the D&D alignment grid, which is what happens when you let a very smart man become the cleric of a trickster god. Pen tends to run on vibes. For instance, after he inadvertently helped an innocent man get framed for treason and blinded as punishment, he funds his ‘heal him, then get him and his sister across the nearest border’ by looting the temple offering box for prayers to the Bastard as he gets paid by the temple, but refused to touch the one for the Mother, as Pen refused to be sworn into her service as a physician. He also took it as a sign when he found the Father’s offering box full as ‘I am supposed to be correcting this miscarriage of justice, the gods say so’. (This seems to be a general problem for people brought into close contact with the gods, especially the Bastard. They remember that human law exists, but their morality tends to be shaped by encounters with the divine, and also makes things awkward within the normal Temple hierarchy. Thankfully, Penric is usually better behaved than most of the saints in the church, who get Deep Weird by virtue of being a channel through which the gods work.)
Pen has an over-inflated sense of personal responsibility, as that ‘get framed for treason’ thing ended with Pen tossed into a bottle dungeon (basically a cell with an opening at the top and a drain at the bottom) and then nearly drowned to avoid a witness, and Pen’s reaction was ‘I better make sure the man who was victimized is okay; oh, shit, he’s not but I think I could fix this if I stay in the area and heal him, while being a known wanted foreigner’. The reason Penric never became an actual physician was because he takes everything too damn personally, and it was destroying his mental health because his talents meant he was given the hardest cases.
The hard line Penric has is killing: he can do so with a bow, or a blade, but even the accidental death of a person due to sorcery is enough to doom Desdemona, so he won’t risk it. One gets the impression that both Penric and Desdemona would die for one another — if Pen dies due to violence, Des may well jump to his killer and give them a Very Bad Time until killing them also kills her, and that Des would use sorcery to keep Pen alive, even if Pen is trying to stop her because there’s no reason she should die.
Des’s morals are primarily self-interested or centered around the people she cares about. Her reasons for not doing something she might want to do is usually ‘Pen wouldn’t like it’ or ‘if I kill anyone, or if Pen kills anyone using sorcery, I get sucked back into the Bastard’s Hell and dissolve, so let’s not do that’. She likes destruction, being an embodiment of chaos, especially complicated things. She also sees no reason to be polite to people she dislikes.
Struggles: Pen and Des’s relationship is one where they don’t have a choice about being in each other’s heads, and that can be difficult to navigate when they disagree. When they encountered Otta, a six year old girl who had received a very young demon, and whose father belonged to the branch of the religion that saw demons as inherently evil rather than ‘they belong to the trickster god, so, like all of His gifts, they are double-edged’. Penric assumed the best outcome for her would be ‘we get her exorcised, and send her back to her family if they are alive’, but also didn’t seem to realize that his own tendency to promote better understanding of demons and sorcery were counter to that goal. Des, meanwhile, sees exorcisms as comparable to executions: they might be necessary, but she doesn’t like them, and in this case, the demon doesn’t deserve it (and Pen is normally on her side for this one). Eventually the two of them agree that, while it is a lot to ask a six year old to make this decision, she is the one who most has to live with the consequences.
Penric also has to deal with prejudices about sorcerers, and the fact that as someone the Bastard sees as ‘oh, I like those two, they are very helpful when I point them at problems’, most people see him as (charitably speaking) eccentric. Penric is full of lateral thinking, and has had more mystical experiences than any five other people, so he comes off as Really Really Weird and has never really hidden that.
Pen's sense of responsibility also means that he struggles a lot with guilt, to the point where he caused a mental health crisis by trying to become a physician (and his superiors deciding that Des's experience meant 'throw Pen at the hard cases' was their plan) because he could not handle losing patients. Rather than recognize this was a skill he didn't have, he blamed himself for not being able to cut it.
Position: Professor of anatomy; student of whatever you got.
Explanation: Penric is effectively a medical researcher in canon; he trained as a physician, but wasn’t psychologically suited to clinical work. He is qualified to be a professor of human anatomy, though he’d need to get up to date, as magic only covers for so much. If he is too far behind, he also works as a foreign language teacher, as he speaks a half-dozen languages that seem to be at or near European/MENA ones.
That being said, Penric is going to be distracting himself from ‘being away from his family’ and ‘in a horror jamjar’ by being a student of whatever is on offer and holing up in the library. He might favor 'magic', ‘medicine’ and ‘engineering’ for things he might be able to take home with him, but if you want a man who will sit through your 12th century Chinese art history lecture, you have one. The main balance point is Desdemona’s attention span, as she is empathically not a scholar. (She likes novelty and sensations, so more inclined to pay attention in a lab/studio/PE class)
Introspective Writing Sample: https://newcombers.dreamwidth.org/280.html?thread=121880#cmt121880
Interactive Writing Sample: https://newcombers.dreamwidth.org/280.html?thread=161560#cmt161560
Player Pronouns: She/her
Player Contact: beccastareyes@plurk
Player Age: 40
Character Name: Penric kin Jurald
Canon: World of Five Gods/Penric and Desdemona
Canon Point: After Demon Daughter
Age: Pen is 37/38; Desdemona is over 200 years old.
Species: Pen is human, Des is a demon.
Journal:
learnedfoolPermissions: https://learnedfool.dreamwidth.org/1679.html
Goals: Most of the series is what I consider casefic, with the largest arc being ‘how Penric meets and proposes to his wife and gets embroiled in Cedonian politics’. Penric’s motivations are usually ‘scholarly pursuits’ and ‘fulfilling his vocation as a sorcerer and cleric of the Bastard’, with ‘family’ sliding in after his marriage. That means, a lot of times the plot starts when someone drops an interesting case that requires someone spiritually sensitive into Pen’s lap, and he goes off and solves it. His off-panel goals beyond the domestic include translating an extensive work on sorcery that Des’s riders have been working on writing for at least one lifetime. Pen, polyglot that he is, has not only done several translations, but also figured out how to speed up printing using sorcery to create the plates — this is pre-movable type, so printing exists but requires each page be carved into a plate. He is also the setting equivalent of a medical researcher, in that at one point he was doing wide scale experiments on rats to figure out the safest way to knock out a living creature using sorcery, which would allow for more extensive medical procedures.
Penric is also on a one-man mission to better educate people about sorcerers and sorcerers about their powers. He’s had several students work with him, and the people around him know when he’s about to give a lecture on how sorcery and demons work. It may be that has been because of attitudes that don’t really see demons as ‘people’ but as tools, or just general stigma against sorcerers. (Which, to be fair, someone with a demon who is untrained tends to do things like ‘set fires to everything’ when distressed, and a demon who has just enough experience with humans to overwhelm one, but not enough to logic out ‘the Temple will catch us, and then I get exorcised and die’ can ascend, leading to a possessed person.)
Speaking of, Desdemona’s goals are usually short-term and somewhat selfish. She can be very attached to individual people (which started with Penric himself, and includes their family, Pen’s apprentice, and so on), and generally likes it when she gets to experience Pen’s senses of something nice. Before Penric married, it was noted that they had a bit of trouble because Pen was pretty solidly heterosexual and Des is pansexual; Pen was willing to let her use his eyes, but this occasionally got them punched or propositioned by men who noticed the pretty blond man was eyeing them.
Morals: Pen firmly sits in the chaotic good section of the D&D alignment grid, which is what happens when you let a very smart man become the cleric of a trickster god. Pen tends to run on vibes. For instance, after he inadvertently helped an innocent man get framed for treason and blinded as punishment, he funds his ‘heal him, then get him and his sister across the nearest border’ by looting the temple offering box for prayers to the Bastard as he gets paid by the temple, but refused to touch the one for the Mother, as Pen refused to be sworn into her service as a physician. He also took it as a sign when he found the Father’s offering box full as ‘I am supposed to be correcting this miscarriage of justice, the gods say so’. (This seems to be a general problem for people brought into close contact with the gods, especially the Bastard. They remember that human law exists, but their morality tends to be shaped by encounters with the divine, and also makes things awkward within the normal Temple hierarchy. Thankfully, Penric is usually better behaved than most of the saints in the church, who get Deep Weird by virtue of being a channel through which the gods work.)
Pen has an over-inflated sense of personal responsibility, as that ‘get framed for treason’ thing ended with Pen tossed into a bottle dungeon (basically a cell with an opening at the top and a drain at the bottom) and then nearly drowned to avoid a witness, and Pen’s reaction was ‘I better make sure the man who was victimized is okay; oh, shit, he’s not but I think I could fix this if I stay in the area and heal him, while being a known wanted foreigner’. The reason Penric never became an actual physician was because he takes everything too damn personally, and it was destroying his mental health because his talents meant he was given the hardest cases.
The hard line Penric has is killing: he can do so with a bow, or a blade, but even the accidental death of a person due to sorcery is enough to doom Desdemona, so he won’t risk it. One gets the impression that both Penric and Desdemona would die for one another — if Pen dies due to violence, Des may well jump to his killer and give them a Very Bad Time until killing them also kills her, and that Des would use sorcery to keep Pen alive, even if Pen is trying to stop her because there’s no reason she should die.
Des’s morals are primarily self-interested or centered around the people she cares about. Her reasons for not doing something she might want to do is usually ‘Pen wouldn’t like it’ or ‘if I kill anyone, or if Pen kills anyone using sorcery, I get sucked back into the Bastard’s Hell and dissolve, so let’s not do that’. She likes destruction, being an embodiment of chaos, especially complicated things. She also sees no reason to be polite to people she dislikes.
Struggles: Pen and Des’s relationship is one where they don’t have a choice about being in each other’s heads, and that can be difficult to navigate when they disagree. When they encountered Otta, a six year old girl who had received a very young demon, and whose father belonged to the branch of the religion that saw demons as inherently evil rather than ‘they belong to the trickster god, so, like all of His gifts, they are double-edged’. Penric assumed the best outcome for her would be ‘we get her exorcised, and send her back to her family if they are alive’, but also didn’t seem to realize that his own tendency to promote better understanding of demons and sorcery were counter to that goal. Des, meanwhile, sees exorcisms as comparable to executions: they might be necessary, but she doesn’t like them, and in this case, the demon doesn’t deserve it (and Pen is normally on her side for this one). Eventually the two of them agree that, while it is a lot to ask a six year old to make this decision, she is the one who most has to live with the consequences.
Penric also has to deal with prejudices about sorcerers, and the fact that as someone the Bastard sees as ‘oh, I like those two, they are very helpful when I point them at problems’, most people see him as (charitably speaking) eccentric. Penric is full of lateral thinking, and has had more mystical experiences than any five other people, so he comes off as Really Really Weird and has never really hidden that.
Pen's sense of responsibility also means that he struggles a lot with guilt, to the point where he caused a mental health crisis by trying to become a physician (and his superiors deciding that Des's experience meant 'throw Pen at the hard cases' was their plan) because he could not handle losing patients. Rather than recognize this was a skill he didn't have, he blamed himself for not being able to cut it.
Position: Professor of anatomy; student of whatever you got.
Explanation: Penric is effectively a medical researcher in canon; he trained as a physician, but wasn’t psychologically suited to clinical work. He is qualified to be a professor of human anatomy, though he’d need to get up to date, as magic only covers for so much. If he is too far behind, he also works as a foreign language teacher, as he speaks a half-dozen languages that seem to be at or near European/MENA ones.
That being said, Penric is going to be distracting himself from ‘being away from his family’ and ‘in a horror jamjar’ by being a student of whatever is on offer and holing up in the library. He might favor 'magic', ‘medicine’ and ‘engineering’ for things he might be able to take home with him, but if you want a man who will sit through your 12th century Chinese art history lecture, you have one. The main balance point is Desdemona’s attention span, as she is empathically not a scholar. (She likes novelty and sensations, so more inclined to pay attention in a lab/studio/PE class)
Introspective Writing Sample: https://newcombers.dreamwidth.org/280.html?thread=121880#cmt121880
Interactive Writing Sample: https://newcombers.dreamwidth.org/280.html?thread=161560#cmt161560
Updated Contact/Permissions Post
Jun. 1st, 2024 09:23 pmPLAYER
NAME: Stareyes
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
beccastareyes
ACTIVE TIMES/PACE: US Central Time
BRACKETS/PROSE: Will match; more likely to use prose.
OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS & TRIGGERS: None known.
CONTACT:
ACTIVE TIMES/PACE: US Central Time
BRACKETS/PROSE: Will match; more likely to use prose.
OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS & TRIGGERS: None known.
IN CHARACTER
PHYSICAL AFFECTION: Platonic only.
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE: Sure.
RELATIONSHIPS: Platonic only.
PSYCHIC & PSIONIC INFORMATION: Any psychic readout of Pen's mind will have the sense that you are hearing one side of a conversation. It is also canon that possession/mind control does not generally work. Someone in Pen's mind doesn't want you messing with it.
MAGICAL INFORMATION: There is a big and complex magical thing in Penric's body, which is Desdemona, visible to anyone who can see magic/souls/etc. Those sensitive to such things can tell that Penric is in control of the body, but can also see when he steps back to let Des do things like use his voice.
MEDICAL INFORMATION: Pretty normal. Penric's body is aging particularly well (as Des is now good enough that not only can she shield him from her own leaking chaos, she can block some of the normal effects of entropy).
OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS & TRIGGERS: Pen had a period of suicidal ideation in his past. He's unlikely to bring it up, but I can warn for it.
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE: Sure.
RELATIONSHIPS: Platonic only.
PSYCHIC & PSIONIC INFORMATION: Any psychic readout of Pen's mind will have the sense that you are hearing one side of a conversation. It is also canon that possession/mind control does not generally work. Someone in Pen's mind doesn't want you messing with it.
MAGICAL INFORMATION: There is a big and complex magical thing in Penric's body, which is Desdemona, visible to anyone who can see magic/souls/etc. Those sensitive to such things can tell that Penric is in control of the body, but can also see when he steps back to let Des do things like use his voice.
MEDICAL INFORMATION: Pretty normal. Penric's body is aging particularly well (as Des is now good enough that not only can she shield him from her own leaking chaos, she can block some of the normal effects of entropy).
OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS & TRIGGERS: Pen had a period of suicidal ideation in his past. He's unlikely to bring it up, but I can warn for it.
OUT OF CHARACTER
BACKTAGGING: Sure.
THREADHOPPING: Sure.
FOURTHWALLING: Sure.
NOT INTERESTED IN: Romance plots.
THREADHOPPING: Sure.
FOURTHWALLING: Sure.
NOT INTERESTED IN: Romance plots.
☆ code by kimmiserate ☆
Because the Wiki has a weak one.
Penric, age 19: events of "Penric's Demon". Penric has gotten Desdemona.
Penric, age 23: events of "Penric and the Shaman". Penric has finished seminary, and is the court sorcerer of the Princess-Archdivine of Martensbridge. (3-4 years after PD)
Penric, age 24: events of "Penric's Fox". (8 months after PatS)
(In this window, the Princess-Archdivine dies, Penric's mother also dies, and Penric attends medical training, and completes it all but the final oath. He also leaves Martensbridge for Adria)
Penric, age 29: events of "Masquerade in Lodi" (1 year before PM)
Penric, age 30: events of "Penric's Mission", "Mira's Last Dance", and "The Prisoner of Limnos" (6 years after PF). Penric meets Nikys, moves to Orbas for her, and proposes.
Penric, age 31: events of "The Orphans of Raspay" (1 year after TPoL)
Penric, age 32: events of "The Physicians of Vilnoc" (1 year after TOoR). Florina (Rina) is born a few months before this.
Penric, age 34: events of "The Assassins of Thasalon" (2 years after TPoV). Llewyn (Wyn) is born before this. Penric's brother in law returns to Cedonia and marries there.
Penric age 35: events of "Knot of Shadows" (8 months after TAoT).
Penric, age 19: events of "Penric's Demon". Penric has gotten Desdemona.
Penric, age 23: events of "Penric and the Shaman". Penric has finished seminary, and is the court sorcerer of the Princess-Archdivine of Martensbridge. (3-4 years after PD)
Penric, age 24: events of "Penric's Fox". (8 months after PatS)
(In this window, the Princess-Archdivine dies, Penric's mother also dies, and Penric attends medical training, and completes it all but the final oath. He also leaves Martensbridge for Adria)
Penric, age 29: events of "Masquerade in Lodi" (1 year before PM)
Penric, age 30: events of "Penric's Mission", "Mira's Last Dance", and "The Prisoner of Limnos" (6 years after PF). Penric meets Nikys, moves to Orbas for her, and proposes.
Penric, age 31: events of "The Orphans of Raspay" (1 year after TPoL)
Penric, age 32: events of "The Physicians of Vilnoc" (1 year after TOoR). Florina (Rina) is born a few months before this.
Penric, age 34: events of "The Assassins of Thasalon" (2 years after TPoV). Llewyn (Wyn) is born before this. Penric's brother in law returns to Cedonia and marries there.
Penric age 35: events of "Knot of Shadows" (8 months after TAoT).
Player Information
Name: Stareyes
Age: 37
Contact details: beccastareyes @ gmail.com/[Bad username or site: “beccastareyes” @ “plurk.com”]
Other characters: Zelgadis GReywords
Character Information
Name: Penric kin Jurald
Canon: World of the Five Gods
Canon Point: Post-Knot of Shadows
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: 35
World Information: https://chalion.fandom.com/wiki/Chalion_Wiki
Personal History: https://chalion.fandom.com/wiki/Penric_kin_Jurald
https://chalion.fandom.com/wiki/Desdemona
The wiki mostly links to the stories, so I’ll summarize.
Penric was born the seventh child in a rather poor noble family. Sincere had no interest in being a mercenary, the plan was to marry him off to a merchant’s daughter, trading social influence for money. This got derailed when he stopped to help an elderly divine (read: clergy) on the road. Learned Ruchia was a Temple sorceress — sharing her body with a demon considered tame enough to be useful — and dying. As her demon could not survive without a human host, she jumped to Penric, since ehe had volunteered to help. Penric was bundled off to Ruchia’s original destination, to let her order deal with him. Their original plan was to call a saint to exorcise Penric, which would kill the demon (who Pen had named Desdemona when he discovered she lacked a name of her own). By the time the saint got there, Penric had come to terms with having a passenger along and, knowing the exorcism would be death for Desdemona, pleaded with the saint to let him keep her. Given an exorcism involved opening a channel to the Bastard, the god whose oversight was demons (among other things), the god listened to Penric’s plea and decided to see what happened.
Penric was trained as both a divine and a sorcerer, and became the court sorcerer to the Princess Llewyn kin Stagthorne. In between various temple missions involving the supernatural, he worked on translating and refining a text on sorcery that Desdemona’s riders had been working on, and picking up pet projects — like learning how to duplicate the magic of shamans using sorcery. However, when the elderly Princess Llewyn died, the successor to her position had her own sorcerer, so Penric had to seek an alternate post. He worked for a time as a physician-sorcerer. Nominally he was a student. but Desdemona’s skill meant he was constantly given the toughest of cases. He burned out, was starting to have suicidal impulses, and Desdemona gave him an ultimatum: get a new position, or else.
Penric became the court sorcerer to the Duke of Adria, which only lasted for a short time before he was asked to be a courier for a sensitive mission to reply to a letter from a Cedonian general, Adelia Arisydia, seeking a position. The original letter was a fake to set up the general for charges of treason: Penric was immediately captured and thrown into prison as a spy for carrying a response, and the general was blinded. Penric escaped (as the locals had not known he was a sorcerer), posed as a physician to heal the general out of guilt, fell head over heals for the general’s widowed half-sister, Nikys Khatai, and then had to help the pair of them escape when the conspirators learned Adelis still had his vision. Adelis had gotten a genuine offer from the Duke of Orbas, so a smitten Penric was torn between seeking his own position in Orbas or persuading Adelis to accept the Duke of Adria’s offer so he could keep seeing Nikys. Well, if Nikys was interested in seeing him back, which was something she was uncertain about, given any relationship with Penric was effectively a threesome with Desdemona. The two did work through their issues when rescuing Nikys’s mother, who was taken as a hostage against Adelis, and Penric accepted both the Duke of Orbas’s job offer and Nikys’s proposal.
Penric currently has a position in the Bastard’s Order in VIlnoc, Orbas’s capital, two young children, and two semi-students: sorcerers with demons on their first human host. Recently, the conspirators from Cedonia had tried to kill Adelis; given they had been using untrained hedge-sorcerers, Penric got involved and witnessed the second time an exorcism was refused by divine mandate. Coming out of it, Penric got his second student, Adelis got married and a position in his home country (with the understanding that his sister and brother-in-law meant he still had ties to Orbas), and Cedonia’s regency council got a good housecleaning.
Personality:
You can get a good picture of Penric from his history. He's a compassionate person who is used to being the youngest sibling and being a sort of afterthought, enough that he just steps up and does things. He's friendly and chatty and tends to take responsibility for things that he shouldn't. Consider the situation with Adelis: he was nearly killed because of internal Cedonian politics that considered a foreign messenger traveling in disguise collateral damage, and he not only doesn’t immediately get out, but stays long enough to make sure the man actually harmed by the conspiracy was healed, even though Penric was both only unwittingly involved and incidental. This was also why he made a terrible physician; he takes things far too personally, and has no ability to detach himself. He’s also developed an affinity for making sure demons are treated right: when Cedonia realized he was a sorcerer and assumed he was unaffiliated with the temple, they sent a Temple sorcerer after him. Penric not only defeated him, but stayed long enough to lecture the man as the desperation move he tried — to use chaos magic to cause a heart attack in Penric — would have caused the demon to be stripped from him. Penric considered this both unkind (as the human had made that decision, not the demon) and a waste of what was, after all, a divine gift. When Adelis’s would-be assassin turned out to be a young mother who was receiving demons and then taught to kill with them under threat of harm to her son, Penric immediately took her as a student as soon as it was clear she was keeping her demon AND made it a priority to get her son rescued.
While he was not terribly religious when he met Desdemona, his experiences have made him devout, albeit with the sort of logic that trickster figures use (like while on the run, taking from the offering box of the Bastard, since the temple normally supports him anyway; however, he didn't feel right taking from the Mother, as he refused to take the physician's oath and be seconded to Her service). The Bastard’s area of concern are both acting as the balance when needed, and generally the parts of society that do not neatly fit by the rules. This can be overt — Desdemona warned Penric that while his mother would probably be proud that her son had become a divine, that being a divine of the Bastard was more typical for illegitimate children of nobles, rather than legitimate children — but it also includes people like Nikys who just felt like she was adrift for most of her life, as the daughter, sister and wife (and later widow) of military men. Penric’s journal name was actually from something Adelis said of him: that he often seems like a fool, or mentally ill, because he does not act in a straightforward way. He’s not entirely lacking in common sense — when facing a plague he was not the one who decided to test if it was carried by fleas by encouraging fleas to bite him (and he was horrified that his fellow physician did so). Of course, when he discovered it was the horseflies that were carrying the plague, he did get bitten by them, but that was a divine message.
Penric is also a scholar, and happiest among his books, or among his family. He grew up with a large family, and is comfortable with having a house with a library and children playing. As mentioned above, he is the sort of compassionate person who adopts strays. While he is not a good physician, he is far more temperamentally suited to medical research, and has alarmed the household with his experiments on nervous systems using rats (as rats are sacred to the Bastard, Penric considers them less theologically risky than other animals) under the idea of new ways to use medical sorcery to assist in, say, surgery. Often this also ends up having self-defense applications, and Penric is very careful to not tell his brother in law about exactly what he is capable of. Penric is generally a peaceful man who would rather talk than fight, and who has theological prohibitions against killing with sorcery (mundane means are not as theologically dicy, just the normal legal troubles), but he will defend himself.
Desdemona has built her own identity from those of her riders, as she has no memory of being unformed chaos. Even now, her most recent human riders exist as distinct facets of her personality. Desdemona likes pretty things and people, and will fuss over Pen's appearance even when he won’t. She tends to be the more pragmatic one when it comes to danger, even if she shares Pen's affinity for bending the rules and she can ask Pen to indulge in things she wants to do. They do tend to balance each other out: Desdemona's confidence is from her experiences, while Penric's is more anchored in faith and compassion and the element of surprise. Desdemona adores Penric and feels proud that she picked him out: even if she can survive his death, she'd rather he not die and gets seriously concerned when he's seriously injured. She can be vengeful: when someone seriously injured Pen, she told Pen that she'd jump into his killer and make sure his life was painful until he died, despite knowing that if the Bastard's Temple caught up with her after that, she'd be dead.
Des generally has a lot more people skills, and especially women (thanks to having lived with them for her entire pre-Penric existence). She’s usually the one who points things out regarding people’s emotional states for Penric to notice, and he trusts her judgement in such things. Penric’s insistence on treating Des as a person who is always present with him means that people used to Penric have started to ask to talk to her directly and that makes her happy. We get the impression that a lot of her prior riders were people she liked, but that she had most of her interactions under the assumption that the other person couldn’t tell if it was Desdemona or (for example) Ruchia talking. Nikys had a full conversation with her regarding what it would be like if Nikys married Penric, and that pretty much cemented Nikys’s status as ‘yes, this one Pen, and not just because I’ll have to listen to you moping for a while if you mess this up’.
Key themes: “The gods have no hands but ours”, exploring the areas of interest of a chaotic trickster god, negotiating life as two people in one body.
Main Motivation: Most of Penric’s books are stand-alone ‘casefic’ adventures. Penric normally comes into contact with the case via some element of either assignment by his Temple’ or his god putting things into his way. A reoccurring theme is Penric’s interaction both in promoting the welfare of demons under the Temple’s care and preserving knowledge of sorcery.
Des’s main motivation is Penric’s welfare and well-being.
Skills: Pen speaks multiple languages, which I tend to assume are close enough to their European counterparts since his world is clearly modeled on Europe/the Mediterranean basin. His training as a divine gives him somer history and a lot of theology, and he notes that he is trained as a physician. While this is pre-modern training, sorcery means Pen has excellent anatomical knowledge, and, while probably not familiar with drugs more sophisticated than things like willow bark or opiates, decent at surgery. He can use a bow and fish and ride.
Desdemona shares some of her skills with Pen. She's got a lot of general knowledge from previous lives: one spent as a courtesan, one as a spy, several working for the Temple. She'd advise Pen on being sneaky, but he is a quick study.
So, let's talk what mystical stuff Desdemona grants. Des can see through Pen's eyes, but also has her own vision, which is a lot more sensitive to souls. Pen can't use it for long without feeling overwhelmed. She can also enable Pen to see in the dark and has some ability to sense inside a body — for instance, she could tell that Adelis’s retinas and the backs of his eyeballs were intact, so his vision could be magically healed, and sense a tumor in an ally. Des can detect other demons, gods, ghosts (souls lingering after their body dies) and shamans/spirit warriors (who have animal souls attached to theirs). She can also detect saints (humans with powers granted by the gods), though this can be limited by how ‘open’ the connection is with their god. The common element seems to be any sort of alteration or addition to a soul. Desdemona can trigger Pen to be much faster or more coordinated than he is naturally, but only in short bursts. She can also direct magic on her own as long as Pen is conscious — for instance, she can deal with Penric having head trauma when he’s only semi-conscious but has to keep him awake for her to work.
As a chaos demon, Des can manipulate chaos, and grant Pen the ability to do so. The series describes things as 'downhill' and 'uphill', which a modern reader would phrase as the flow of entropy. Downhill magic includes accelerating a natural reaction (like rusting metal, dissolving hair dye or unravelling rope), creating heat, and disrupting normal biological processes (not always in bad ways: killing parasites is part of this). Uphill magic allows Des or Pen to create ice, do delicate manipulations like pick a lock, or heal. While downhill magic is mostly free (and a normal part of Desdemona's nature -- she is a font of chaos), uphill magic needs to be balanced by dumping stored chaos or Pen will suffer. (Long term effects include a skyrocketed risk of cancer: all of Desdemona's prior hosts prior to her entering service as a Temple demon had cancer; short term effects are hyperthermia.) Also, killing a human with sorcery is a risk on Desdemona: when the soul returns to the gods, the Bastard swoops in to retrieve His demon. Animals are considered acceptable if they are insects or other pests where they are not wanted (the Bastard considers these His animals), or going to die anyway.
Study with the shamans of the Weald allows Penric to duplicate their abilities with sorcery, though he still pays the cost in blood (often more blood than a shaman would). He can move souls around, though he’s only tried that with earthworms. In canon, such magic can not only be used to anchor another animal soul to an animal, with the goal of creating a Great Beast, but an animal soul to a human (to create a spirit warrior or shaman), or temporarily store a human soul in an object. (The latter because spirit warriors and shamans need the animal soul removed to go to the afterlife, rather than hang around as a ghost.) Penric would be extremely reluctant to experiment with actual human souls, but I mention it for completeness. The other shamanic ability Penric has shown is the weirding voice — he can give a command to an animal or person and have it obeyed. This requires at least some blood, dependent on the nature of the command and the target — telling an animal to do something it would want to do anyway is a bit of a nosebleed, while telling a human to do something (on the level of ‘You don’t need to see his identification. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. He can go about his business.’) can cause Penric to cough up enough blood to alarm everyone around him.
Item:. I’m assuming that Desdemona counts as the item, as being a separate character, who is not app-able (as she cannot exist without a body, so cannot be apped independently). If not, Penric’s sorcerer braids — a set of braided cords marking Penric as both a divine (priest) and sorcerer.
Sample: https://voidtreckerooc.dreamwidth.org/77027.html?thread=10657763#cmt10657763
Notes: See my note in items mostly. Also, I assume that Pen and Des would need to share a tether since under normal circumstances, Pen dying would mean Des would jump to another character.
Permission/Ping Post
Nov. 8th, 2021 10:39 amStandard permissions go here.
What Others See:
Anyone sensitive to telepathy/minds will get that Penric's is perfectly ordinary, except that it sounds like he's in constant telepathic rapport with someone the telepath can't make out as well. I picture this like listening to someone on the phone. You can hear their side of the conversation clearly, but the other side is muffled so you have to infer based on what you can make out and the responses. If Pen has stepped back and given Desdemona more control of his body/voice, her mind is a lot clearer.
People sensitive to souls or other supernatural things will notice that there is a chaos elemental lodged in Penric's body, and she is exceedingly powerful. In Pen's canon, other sorcerers can tell he's the one in control -- namely that he is a sorcerer, and not just some poor shlub who is possessed.
Desdemona's Sight
Desdemona herself sees more into the realm of souls than bodies, though she also gets Penric's normal human vision. If she sees anything of interest, she will share it with Pen. This seems to cover any sort of possession, humans with supernatural power from an external source, and un-bodied things such as ghosts and things like magical abilities (Des sees a sorcerer launch a bolt of chaos towards someone, for instance).
The canon is human only when it comes to mortals, and all supernatural power comes from interaction with spirits and gods, so I'm willing to say that Desdemona can't sense that someone is, say, a wizard (but could pick up on a D&D-style cleric who has actual power invested in them). I'm willing to punt on characters that are mortal but not human: the more human-like (especially in being mundane without inherent supernatural power), the less likely Des will be able to tell them from humans without practice.
Also, Pen will pick up right away if a god is present and manifesting power, as Des does the mental equivalent of going to hide in a corner and hope she's not seen. (Generally speaking gods in this world have to work through humans, so don't have bodies of their own.)
Examples from Canon:
What Others See:
Anyone sensitive to telepathy/minds will get that Penric's is perfectly ordinary, except that it sounds like he's in constant telepathic rapport with someone the telepath can't make out as well. I picture this like listening to someone on the phone. You can hear their side of the conversation clearly, but the other side is muffled so you have to infer based on what you can make out and the responses. If Pen has stepped back and given Desdemona more control of his body/voice, her mind is a lot clearer.
People sensitive to souls or other supernatural things will notice that there is a chaos elemental lodged in Penric's body, and she is exceedingly powerful. In Pen's canon, other sorcerers can tell he's the one in control -- namely that he is a sorcerer, and not just some poor shlub who is possessed.
Desdemona's Sight
Desdemona herself sees more into the realm of souls than bodies, though she also gets Penric's normal human vision. If she sees anything of interest, she will share it with Pen. This seems to cover any sort of possession, humans with supernatural power from an external source, and un-bodied things such as ghosts and things like magical abilities (Des sees a sorcerer launch a bolt of chaos towards someone, for instance).
The canon is human only when it comes to mortals, and all supernatural power comes from interaction with spirits and gods, so I'm willing to say that Desdemona can't sense that someone is, say, a wizard (but could pick up on a D&D-style cleric who has actual power invested in them). I'm willing to punt on characters that are mortal but not human: the more human-like (especially in being mundane without inherent supernatural power), the less likely Des will be able to tell them from humans without practice.
Also, Pen will pick up right away if a god is present and manifesting power, as Des does the mental equivalent of going to hide in a corner and hope she's not seen. (Generally speaking gods in this world have to work through humans, so don't have bodies of their own.)
Examples from Canon:
- Saints are people who have a channel directly to the divine. We mostly see saints of the Bastard, because those are the people called out to deal with errant demons. The degree to which Des can sense them depends on how close the human is to their god; she can always pick up when their god is working through them, but it can be a lot more low-key if the saint is out and about. HSe still can sense them, and which god they align with.
- The Weald has a tradition of spirit warriors and shamans. Spirit warriors basically graft an animal's soul to their own to gain traits of the animal. Shamans use a great-souled animal: an animal that has been specially soul-grafted over generations to others of its kind to create something with more metaphysical umph. Des can spot not only that someone is one of these, but which animal's soul they have.
- Demons are chaos elementals that escape from the Bastard's Hell and possess animals. Every time their host dies, the demon jumps to whatever it considers the most powerful being nearby. While almost always the demon is in control of an animal, a human with a demon may have either in control. (Temple theology says the one in control is the rider, and the other one is ridden.) Demons accumulate knowledge from living with their hosts. In some sense, they carry copies of their hosts, and after a while start to get their own distinct gestalt personality: that is, Desdemona can call up a prior rider to get their take on things, but she exists as a being separate from any of them. A demon in its first human host is a lot like half pet and half toddler, and another sorcerer can usually tell what the demon's prior animal host was.
App in Progress for Phantasmal Rift
Feb. 4th, 2018 08:50 pmIC Information
Character name: Penric kin Jurald
Character canon: Penric and Desdemona
Canon point: Shortly before Penric's Mission
Physical Description: Penric is a tall, skinny man with straight blond hair he normally wears long. He is 31, but others comment that he looks to be in his early 20s. He's considered to have more 'pretty' than 'handsome' features.
About the Character:
Let's get this all down, then edit later.)
So, Penric's world is sort of a medieval Europe with the serial numbers filed off, and with the Europe-analog in the southern hemisphere. The main difference is that the world's five gods provably exist, and various magic relating to gods, demons and souls can be practiced.
Penric grew up in an area called the cantons, an area of mountainous city-states. He was the youngest son of a local noble. Given the poverty of the estate, the plan was to have Penric marry a merchant's daughter who had money, but no title. He was on his way to meet the young lady when he crossed the party of an elderly divine (priestess) on the road, who had collapsed and whose attendants were desperate to get a cart to take her to town. The divine, Learned Ruchia, served the Bastard (the trickster god of the pantheon) and was a Temple sorceress.
The Bastard got his name as he came from the Mother and a demon lord who had sworn himself to Her service, rather than the Father (who fathered the Son and Daughter with the Mother). The Bastard's portfolio, in addition to untimely disasters, people who don't fit neatly into society, and generally putting a finger on the cosmic scale to re-balance it when needed, also included demons, sorts of elemental chaos spirits who occasionally got into the mortal world attached to animals or people. Sorcerers were those people who possessed (or were possessed by) demons, and had access to their abilities to manipulate chaos. Needless to say, the Bastard's priesthood allowed sorcerers to either work for them, or be exorcised of their demons.
Both Ruchia and her demon knew Ruchia was dying, and the demon needed a new host or she would dissolve back into chaos, and the demon decided that the nice young man who had offered to help, after all, the demon had lived through ten human lifetimes and had learned the balance between cooperating enough to not be exorcised and expressing what she wanted to do. Ruchia herself was not the rider the demon was supposed to have jumped into last time, but she had spent two lifetimes as a physician and was sick of it, so picked the person who was not medically trained. Penric was also a break in custom: normally the temple assigned trained divines to take on demons AND always made the transfer between riders of the same sex.
Anyway, Pen wakes up in town, in the hospice run by divines of the Mother, and discovers everyone is freaked out by him. His marriage is off, and the divines want to bundle him off to Ruchia's destination in Martensbridge, in the Weald, and that sometimes his mouth says things of its own accord because the demon that now lives in his head is still getting the hang of talking to him. Penric ended up naming the demon Desdemona, as he wanted something to call her other than 'Demon', and offered her the name as a present. That convinced Desdemona that she made the right choice here, as no one had ever gotten her a present.
In Martensbridge after some adventures, it was decided that Desdemona was too dangerous in a lay rider and a saint of the Bastard was called in to exorcise her back to the realm of the gods (which would be lethal). Penric pleaded her case, to the point where both Desdemona and the Saint got a clear message from their divine Master that He wanted her to stay with Penric.
So, Penric spent the next twelve years learning sorcery and being ordained as a divine of the Bastard, servicing as court sorcerer of the archdivine of Martensbridge, being a scholar, learning how to apply Desdemona's medical knowledge better, occasional assignments from the temple when they needed someone of his power-set. He briefly studied with the shamans of the Weald to trade magical tips, as he found their different magical abilities (granted by an animal soul grafted to theirs) fascinating.
When the elderly archdivine died, and her successor had a sorcerer already, Penric moved to work at the hospital in Martensbridge. Given Desdemona was the oldest demon, she and Penric often served as the last resort for difficult cases. This demonstrated a major flaw of Penric's that made him unsuited for medical work: he was too damn agreeable and took losses personally. He and Desdemona argued about this, as Desdemona has no problems being selfish and prioritizing their well being over strangers, and Penric was used to doing what others wanted of him. It got to the point where Penric was self-harming, Desdemona was healing him which stressed her, and that was finally enough to persuade Penric to stand up and ask for a new assignment, for his demon's sake. And that's where Penric's canonpoint sets him: as being newly transferred out of Martensbridge.
You can get a good picture of Penric from his history. He's a compassionate person who is used to being the youngest sibling and being a sort of afterthought, enough that he just steps up and does things. He's friendly and chatty and tends to take responsibility for things that he shouldn't. Right after his canonpoint, he discovers someone used him as a dupe to get a general convicted of treason and blinded, and Pen insists on staying in the town he is wanted as an enemy agent so he can heal the man (as the damage is bad enough it is permanent, but not so unsalvageable that Pen can't make a difference). While he was not terribly religious when he met Desdemona, his experiences have made him devout, albeit with the sort of logic that trickster figures use (like while on the run, taking from the offering box of the Bastard, since the temple normally supports him anyway; however, he didn't feel right taking from the Mother, as he refused to take the physician's oath and be seconded to Her service). He's a scholar and more a fan of subtlety than brute force, and the titles he's earned over the ones he has by noble birth.
Desdemona has built her own identity from those of her riders, as she has no memory of being unformed chaos. Even now, her most recent human riders exist as distinct facets of her personality. Desdemona likes pretty things and people, and will fuss over Pen's appearance even when he won't. She tends to be the more pragmatic one when it comes to danger, even if she shares Pen's affinity for bending the rules and she can ask Pen to indulge in things she wants to do. They do tend to balance each other out: Desdemona's confidence is from her experiences, while Penric's is more anchored in faith and compassion and the element of surprise. Desdemona adores Penric and feels proud that she picked him out: even if she can survive his death, she'd rather he not die and gets seriously concerned when he's seriously injured. She can be vengeful: when someone seriously injured Pen, she told Pen that she'd jump into his killer and make sure his life was painful until he died, despite knowing that if the Bastard's Temple caught up with her after that, she'd be dead. She does like people, but doesn't get much of a chance to interact with others directly, as most people find sorcerers worrying and prefer to ignore that Penric has a demon living with him.
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Character abilities: Pen speaks 6 languages (all exclusive to his world; he could probably learn ones from Earth quickly, especially European languages as ones that are related to the ones he knows). His training as a divine gives him somer history and a lot of theology, and he notes that he is trained as a physician. While this is pre-modern training, sorcery means Pen has some good anatomical knowledge, and, while probably not up on drugs, decent at surgery. He can use a bow and fish and ride.
Desdemona shares some of her skills with Pen. She's got a lot of general knowledge from previous lives: one spent as a courtesan, one as a spy, several working for the Temple. She'd advise Pen on being sneaky, but he is a quick study.
So, let's talk what mystical stuff Desdemona grants. Des can see through Pen's eyes, but also has her own vision, which is a lot more sensitive to souls. Pen can't use it for long without feeling overwhelmed. She can also enable Pen to see in the dark. Des can detect other demons, gods, ghosts (souls lingering after their body dies) and shamans/spirit warriors (who have animal souls attached to theirs). Based on other characters with this sense from the series, she can also detect saints (humans with powers granted by the gods). The common element seems to be any sort of alteration or addition to a soul. Desdemona can trigger Pen to be much faster or more coordinated than he is naturally, but only in short bursts.
As a chaos demon, Des can manipulate chaos, and grant Pen the ability to do so. The series describes things as 'downhill' and 'uphill', which a modern reader would phrase as the flow of entropy. Downhill magic includes accelerating a natural reaction (like rusting metal or dissolving hair dye), creating heat, and disrupting normal biological processes (not always in bad ways: killing parasites is part of this). Uphill magic allows Des or Pen to create ice, do delicate manipulations like pick a lock, or heal. While downhill magic is free (and a normal part of Desdemona's nature -- she is a font of chaos), uphill magic needs to be balanced by dumping stored chaos or Pen will suffer. (Long term effects include a skyrocketed risk of cancer: all of Desdemona's prior hosts prior to her entering service as a Temple demon died of cancer; short term effects are hyperthermia.) Also, killing a human with sorcery is a risk on Desdemona: when the soul returns to the gods, the Bastard can swoop in to retrieve His demon. Animals are considered acceptable if they are insects or other pests where they are not wanted (the Bastard considers these His animals), or going to die anyway.
Inventory: [What's on your character's person when they arrive, magically or otherwise?]
Samples: [Threads from the test drive are strongly preferred, but any thread of at least eight comments from your character will do.]
Character name: Penric kin Jurald
Character canon: Penric and Desdemona
Canon point: Shortly before Penric's Mission
Physical Description: Penric is a tall, skinny man with straight blond hair he normally wears long. He is 31, but others comment that he looks to be in his early 20s. He's considered to have more 'pretty' than 'handsome' features.
About the Character:
Let's get this all down, then edit later.)
So, Penric's world is sort of a medieval Europe with the serial numbers filed off, and with the Europe-analog in the southern hemisphere. The main difference is that the world's five gods provably exist, and various magic relating to gods, demons and souls can be practiced.
Penric grew up in an area called the cantons, an area of mountainous city-states. He was the youngest son of a local noble. Given the poverty of the estate, the plan was to have Penric marry a merchant's daughter who had money, but no title. He was on his way to meet the young lady when he crossed the party of an elderly divine (priestess) on the road, who had collapsed and whose attendants were desperate to get a cart to take her to town. The divine, Learned Ruchia, served the Bastard (the trickster god of the pantheon) and was a Temple sorceress.
The Bastard got his name as he came from the Mother and a demon lord who had sworn himself to Her service, rather than the Father (who fathered the Son and Daughter with the Mother). The Bastard's portfolio, in addition to untimely disasters, people who don't fit neatly into society, and generally putting a finger on the cosmic scale to re-balance it when needed, also included demons, sorts of elemental chaos spirits who occasionally got into the mortal world attached to animals or people. Sorcerers were those people who possessed (or were possessed by) demons, and had access to their abilities to manipulate chaos. Needless to say, the Bastard's priesthood allowed sorcerers to either work for them, or be exorcised of their demons.
Both Ruchia and her demon knew Ruchia was dying, and the demon needed a new host or she would dissolve back into chaos, and the demon decided that the nice young man who had offered to help, after all, the demon had lived through ten human lifetimes and had learned the balance between cooperating enough to not be exorcised and expressing what she wanted to do. Ruchia herself was not the rider the demon was supposed to have jumped into last time, but she had spent two lifetimes as a physician and was sick of it, so picked the person who was not medically trained. Penric was also a break in custom: normally the temple assigned trained divines to take on demons AND always made the transfer between riders of the same sex.
Anyway, Pen wakes up in town, in the hospice run by divines of the Mother, and discovers everyone is freaked out by him. His marriage is off, and the divines want to bundle him off to Ruchia's destination in Martensbridge, in the Weald, and that sometimes his mouth says things of its own accord because the demon that now lives in his head is still getting the hang of talking to him. Penric ended up naming the demon Desdemona, as he wanted something to call her other than 'Demon', and offered her the name as a present. That convinced Desdemona that she made the right choice here, as no one had ever gotten her a present.
In Martensbridge after some adventures, it was decided that Desdemona was too dangerous in a lay rider and a saint of the Bastard was called in to exorcise her back to the realm of the gods (which would be lethal). Penric pleaded her case, to the point where both Desdemona and the Saint got a clear message from their divine Master that He wanted her to stay with Penric.
So, Penric spent the next twelve years learning sorcery and being ordained as a divine of the Bastard, servicing as court sorcerer of the archdivine of Martensbridge, being a scholar, learning how to apply Desdemona's medical knowledge better, occasional assignments from the temple when they needed someone of his power-set. He briefly studied with the shamans of the Weald to trade magical tips, as he found their different magical abilities (granted by an animal soul grafted to theirs) fascinating.
When the elderly archdivine died, and her successor had a sorcerer already, Penric moved to work at the hospital in Martensbridge. Given Desdemona was the oldest demon, she and Penric often served as the last resort for difficult cases. This demonstrated a major flaw of Penric's that made him unsuited for medical work: he was too damn agreeable and took losses personally. He and Desdemona argued about this, as Desdemona has no problems being selfish and prioritizing their well being over strangers, and Penric was used to doing what others wanted of him. It got to the point where Penric was self-harming, Desdemona was healing him which stressed her, and that was finally enough to persuade Penric to stand up and ask for a new assignment, for his demon's sake. And that's where Penric's canonpoint sets him: as being newly transferred out of Martensbridge.
You can get a good picture of Penric from his history. He's a compassionate person who is used to being the youngest sibling and being a sort of afterthought, enough that he just steps up and does things. He's friendly and chatty and tends to take responsibility for things that he shouldn't. Right after his canonpoint, he discovers someone used him as a dupe to get a general convicted of treason and blinded, and Pen insists on staying in the town he is wanted as an enemy agent so he can heal the man (as the damage is bad enough it is permanent, but not so unsalvageable that Pen can't make a difference). While he was not terribly religious when he met Desdemona, his experiences have made him devout, albeit with the sort of logic that trickster figures use (like while on the run, taking from the offering box of the Bastard, since the temple normally supports him anyway; however, he didn't feel right taking from the Mother, as he refused to take the physician's oath and be seconded to Her service). He's a scholar and more a fan of subtlety than brute force, and the titles he's earned over the ones he has by noble birth.
Desdemona has built her own identity from those of her riders, as she has no memory of being unformed chaos. Even now, her most recent human riders exist as distinct facets of her personality. Desdemona likes pretty things and people, and will fuss over Pen's appearance even when he won't. She tends to be the more pragmatic one when it comes to danger, even if she shares Pen's affinity for bending the rules and she can ask Pen to indulge in things she wants to do. They do tend to balance each other out: Desdemona's confidence is from her experiences, while Penric's is more anchored in faith and compassion and the element of surprise. Desdemona adores Penric and feels proud that she picked him out: even if she can survive his death, she'd rather he not die and gets seriously concerned when he's seriously injured. She can be vengeful: when someone seriously injured Pen, she told Pen that she'd jump into his killer and make sure his life was painful until he died, despite knowing that if the Bastard's Temple caught up with her after that, she'd be dead. She does like people, but doesn't get much of a chance to interact with others directly, as most people find sorcerers worrying and prefer to ignore that Penric has a demon living with him.
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Character abilities: Pen speaks 6 languages (all exclusive to his world; he could probably learn ones from Earth quickly, especially European languages as ones that are related to the ones he knows). His training as a divine gives him somer history and a lot of theology, and he notes that he is trained as a physician. While this is pre-modern training, sorcery means Pen has some good anatomical knowledge, and, while probably not up on drugs, decent at surgery. He can use a bow and fish and ride.
Desdemona shares some of her skills with Pen. She's got a lot of general knowledge from previous lives: one spent as a courtesan, one as a spy, several working for the Temple. She'd advise Pen on being sneaky, but he is a quick study.
So, let's talk what mystical stuff Desdemona grants. Des can see through Pen's eyes, but also has her own vision, which is a lot more sensitive to souls. Pen can't use it for long without feeling overwhelmed. She can also enable Pen to see in the dark. Des can detect other demons, gods, ghosts (souls lingering after their body dies) and shamans/spirit warriors (who have animal souls attached to theirs). Based on other characters with this sense from the series, she can also detect saints (humans with powers granted by the gods). The common element seems to be any sort of alteration or addition to a soul. Desdemona can trigger Pen to be much faster or more coordinated than he is naturally, but only in short bursts.
As a chaos demon, Des can manipulate chaos, and grant Pen the ability to do so. The series describes things as 'downhill' and 'uphill', which a modern reader would phrase as the flow of entropy. Downhill magic includes accelerating a natural reaction (like rusting metal or dissolving hair dye), creating heat, and disrupting normal biological processes (not always in bad ways: killing parasites is part of this). Uphill magic allows Des or Pen to create ice, do delicate manipulations like pick a lock, or heal. While downhill magic is free (and a normal part of Desdemona's nature -- she is a font of chaos), uphill magic needs to be balanced by dumping stored chaos or Pen will suffer. (Long term effects include a skyrocketed risk of cancer: all of Desdemona's prior hosts prior to her entering service as a Temple demon died of cancer; short term effects are hyperthermia.) Also, killing a human with sorcery is a risk on Desdemona: when the soul returns to the gods, the Bastard can swoop in to retrieve His demon. Animals are considered acceptable if they are insects or other pests where they are not wanted (the Bastard considers these His animals), or going to die anyway.
Inventory: [What's on your character's person when they arrive, magically or otherwise?]
Samples: [Threads from the test drive are strongly preferred, but any thread of at least eight comments from your character will do.]
