Profile

Name: Aoife (AY-fee)
Combat Class: Druid
Country: Kilia
Age: 26
Birthday: May 31 [Gemini]
Blood Type: A
Family: Mother // Laoise [deceased], Father // Suibhne [deceased], various deceased aunts, uncles, cousins.
Languages: Trade [read/write only, spoken Trade is ABYSMAL], Kilian [fluent], Old Kilian [fluent], Old High Kilian [fluent], Dentorian [read/write only], High Dentorian [read/write only], Megami [read/write only]

HISTORY

Deep in the Kilian forests, far off the winding road between Tarra and Tiranoe, there once lived a closeknit community of avid scholars, entrenched in their work recreating historical wonders. Comprised of several separate families united under the auspices of one focused project, they were led by a family of dark mages who boasted not only significant rune stacking skill, but also a prized artifact heirloom upon which the entire foundation of their research was based.

This artifact was a magical tome which, once read, drew the reader into an artificial, yet fully realized world, allowing the reader to experience the story as a present observer. More than just reading, this artifact replicated sight, sound, taste, texture, sweeping its reader through scene by scene in a series of carefully constructed and lovingly detailed illusions. Presumably the product of a marriage of talents between ancient author and dark magician, this artifact was protected and revered by all who knew of it, and its effects were staunchly studied with the intent of replicating them with modern novels.

The project was more than simply studying and replicating an artifact, however. To make the magic work, to make the final product believable, one had to know the story inside and out. One needed the imagination to fully replicate each scene in perfect detail, to memorize dialogue and description, to live and breathe the words on the page and give life to the resulting illusion.

The families set to work. Generations passed. A library of impressive size, filled with replicated artifacts of varying quality and success, was built in the manse of the leading family, who were blessed with a line that bred true for talent with dark magic far more often than not. Similarly, they collected mundane books with the intention of remaking them into additional artifacts; those in the community that were not gifted with the level of magic required to work on that aspect of the project set to work instead on collecting novels and histories for the collection, maintaining the libraries and testing the issuances of the proper mages, as well as seeing to the mundane affairs the community required.

Everyone had a place. The project hummed along without incident, progress steady.

Eventually, a schism of ideas formed within the community, as simply recreating the words became so commonplace as to be considered mundane, and younger mages in training began experimenting with more interesting possibilities -- what if a reader were given the opportunity to influence events? What if they could be seen by the characters, speak with them, touch them, direct the course of the story? What if they could become characters in the story themselves? What if words could write themselves on the pages as the reader progressed through the pages of such a story -- what then?

Tensions mounted, as the more traditional minded mages insisted upon preserving the original author's vision, using their gifts simply to teach and faithfully recreate.

Aoife's family -- the original owners of the first artifact heirloom, the very thing which made the entire project possible, and the accepted leaders of the project and community -- took the side of the innovators, and slowly, the scope of the project began to change.

Their heirloom had not been designed to do what they now set out to try, and their experiments from that point on took on a dangerous aspect. The magic was imperfect, the concept difficult to visualize, the consequences infinite and immeasurable and not fully understood by the mages even as they finalized their new artifacts and invited their friends and neighbors to subject themselves to their work.

They began to lose people.

Oh, their bodies remained, slumped in their seats and staring at nothing, but their minds -- their very selves -- were lost in the illusiary worlds within the tomes, unreachable and untouchable even by the most powerful dark mages on the project. Some returned, after weeks, months -- their bodies sustained by the magic, but their minds forever changed, forever unsatisfied with the mundane real world. They begged to return to their stories. Refused, they went mad. Others never returned at all.

The resulting crisis of conscience left some mages in the community desperate to further explore this phenomena -- could two people be sent into a story at once? Could a new reader be sent to retrieve a lost reader? Could a reader "die" within the story -- was that the fate of those that never returned? Could they be saved?

Others, of course, wished to shut down this new line of magical theory down completely and simply return to the days of faithful, safe recreation.

It ended in violence.

Aoife was only fourteen years old when the more conservative minded mages in her community rebelled against her family, desperate to steal their family heirloom -- the original artifact tome that sparked the project -- and take the project elsewhere, into more responsible hands. What began as a siege of the manor and intended theft quickly escalated into threats, and threats soon escalated into action, and slaughter.

Her family fought back, like-minded peers beside them, desperate to protect more than their lives, but their research, their expansive libraries, their notes and several generations' worth of knowledge and progress. Aoife's father stood at the forefront; her clearest memory of her father is of him standing over a bannister, shouting defiant taunts at people Aoife had known her whole life as friends and near family, themselves.

Aoife doesn't know who it was that set fire to the manse and condemned a hundred years of research to ashes.

Aoife doesn't know if anyone survived. She has no idea if the people of her old community sifted through the ruins and found enough to continue on, to reform the project and conduct their research -- their safe, boring research -- somewhere now far beyond her reach.

What she does know is that they never got their hands on her family's heirloom. What she does know is that she and her mother escaped carrying as many essential tomes and papers and written rune formulae as they could. She recalls stumbling through the misted forests, terrified, legs like lead and her heart racing, near fit to burst. She recalls bursting into tears at the sight of the road, the blessed road, and the long stumbling walk to the city from there. The mistrustful looks of those that passed them on the road, the gentle yet determined encouragement from her mother, the promise of safety, the swearing of revenge, the resolution that their research would continue when they found their feet again.

The city of Tarra, however, was overwhelming for a pair of women who had lived their entire lives as the self-styled nobility of a small forest community, and Aoife's mother never truly found her feet again, despite all her encouragement and all her promises. They settled in a tiny home at the edge of the city and hid the research they had salvaged from their lost home, terrified to call attention to themselves. Laoise took ill some few years later, when Aoife was sixteen, and never recovered.

Aoife, for her part, persevered. She and her mother had salvaged enough that not all was lost, and Aoife's talents with dark magic had been significant enough to have earned her a place as a researcher in her own right -- she had been the rightful heir of the project, in fact -- and most importantly of all, she had the artifact. She had her father's artifacts. She had her mother's formulae and her grandfather's theories and her great-grandfather's thesis, and she had her mind.

Her head for books, attention for detail, and formidable magical ability earned her a place working in the libraries of Tarra. Eventually, she worked her way from assistant to staff to second to head librarian, and eventually, she began a library of her very own. It was small, piddling, really, but it served her needs.

On the surface, it's a cheerful, eccentric place, stocked with novels and histories of all types, with a noticeable focus on wild fantasy and fable. It's known and accepted -- but rarely spoken of -- that Aoife conducts strange experiments; books with moving pictures, books that read themselves aloud and turn their own pages, books that play music, books that self-illuminate to be read more easily in the dark.

It's more a curiosity than a respected library, but if Aoife is a little bit eccentric, she's certainly harmless, so far as the city is concerned.

What no one knows, of course, is that beneath the cheery front, Aoife keeps her family's research alive in secret, and she's nearly ready to begin taking readers once again.


PERSONALITY

Aoife is widely known as an eccentric but sunny woman, always pleasant to chat with and quite animated on the subject of books and literature. She's protective of her library and proud of her magical charms, always ready and willing to discuss theories and ideas with fellow mages interested in such innovations. She can be somewhat temperamental and a little bit unpredictable -- when her research isn't going well, she tends to be moody and distant, for instance -- and she's been known to toss people caught abusing her merchandise out into the streets. Rumour states that she once conjoured a swarm of illusary bees to chase one particularly egregious offender through the streets of Tarra, but that's probably just a rumour -- probably.

She's not shy about her interest in magical artifacts, or her skill with dark magic; a part of her hopes to draw out the surviving members of her old community, to face them after all these years and avenge the loss of her family, her legacy, and so much knowledge.

She has a little bit of trouble focusing on the here and now -- she's prone to wandering off midsentence and cutting people off mid-thought, flitting from one task to another in restless fashion. She's only ever truly focused when she's working in the hidden chambers beneath the library on the only research she considers truly important, and truly worth her talents.


APPEARANCE

Aoife is slightly taller than average with a thin build, with long blonde hair and eccentric fashion sense. She loves to recreate historical costumes from the novels in her collection -- she redecorates the library itself in this way often, too -- and always presents herself as just a little bit (or a lot) over the top. She delights in her regulars guessing what fantasy or fable she's living out today.