beyond.the.sea

Name: Porcelina Lutris

Age: 92 (appears about 25)

Sex: Female

Appearance:

Porcelina is about 6'2 long with tail. Her tail is bright electric blue, although it is run through with long jagged white scars from the violence of her capture. In human form her legs are just as heavily scarred and deformed as her tail. Also, she's tall for a woman at 5'11. She's pale, and edged with bright blue scales. In fact blue is pretty much a theme throughout all of Porcelina's appearance. There's always a weird "otherworldy" feel about Porcelina anyway, even without the gills and scales she definitely doesn't pass as normal. Her eyes are too bright and wide, her skin's too pale, and frankly she's weird. She has an odd blue tinge about her which makes her look rather ill. Or dead. Her movements are awkward and jerky when she's not swimming, and she has a tendancy to stare.

Supernatural Affinity (Species/Group): Merfolk

Supernatural Affinity (Powers):

None, other than your standard merperson set! Her siren-song isn't particularly effective, as it was never a skill she had the oppertunity to hone, and being in captivity for so long has given her some slight confidence issues with it.

Personality:

Porcelina is kind of...well... a bitch. She's bratty, stubborn, violent, haughty, and massivly arrogant. She's confident and relatively outgoing - even if her idea of a conversation is to tell you how stupid and irritating she finds you. She's been imprisoned and kept away from her people for 25 years. She's got some abandonment issues, some feelings of weakness that she hasn't been able to escape her captor, and as she was kidnapped before she was fully of age - she's not really developed within the cultural ideals of her people. She just behaves how she thinks she should behave, which is fairly agressive and...kinda regal. Porcelina is a bit of a "caged animal" and is likely to lash out if she gets pissed off or frightened. She's torn between not liking anyone or accepting kindness because she thinks she shouldn't associate with non-Merfolk, and desperately wanting someone to help her out of her forced bondage. Her sense of humour is pretty much nil (or at least, doesn't translate very well to a non-Underwater setting), and she's spent most of her time on dry land in a locked water tank - all she knows and wants is the sea. There's some childlike wonder that she tries to disguise with displays of "look how awesome I am, foolish human!" whenever she meets someone or something new. She's very, very good at putting on a "hard" front but she can also be highly inquisitive and slightly immature.

History:

Porcelina was born into massive upheaval. Her Pod's territory was in the South Pacific ocean - unfortunaterly, due to a mix up with some hammerhead sharks and a supposed insult to the virginity of someone's daughter, tension built between her family and another Pod in the area. 7 years after her birth, her Pod finally branched past being simply at odds with another family of Merfolk, and things turned into an all-out War. As such, she was raised to fight, to be fearless, and to take no crap from anyone. She was raised to think herself above other Merfolk, let alone humanity. The hostility between the rival clans raged for a long time (when you live for up to 500 years, grudges don't get forgotten easily) and Porcelina saw a lot of her family die. Her Pod shrank in size from 75 to around 30. She lost her younger brother, her mother, and a lot of her best friends. She was bitter and angry, even for a young age - and this bitterness has not improved at all considering when she was 67 (not even "of age" - pretty much still a teenager by Merfolk society standards) she was kidnapped violently by a high-level Water elemental who also happened to dabble in some pretty dark magic. He called himself "The Ringmaster". And so Porcelina found herself brutally damaged and trapped in a tank by someone who had high enough levels of craziness to refer to himself as a job desciption. Well...fuck

A few months later, after the wounds had subsided and the binding spells cast, and Porcelina contained in a tank that would keep a Great White at bay - the Ringmaster decided it was time to take the show on the road. She's been trapped ever since then, dragged around the world and gawked at. the Ringmaster is obsessed with her and thinks of her as his property, which gives her serious case of "ew gross" and much rage. She's the original "member" of the freakshow and has quite a lot of disdain for the others involved. Weirdly, she tends to think people who joined him of their own free will are less repulsive than those who get captured. I mean, don't get me wrong, she hates them too and classes them as her Jailers, but she abhors the weakness she sees in those who get captured, as much as she abhors it in herself.

Porcelina has made several escape attempts over the years. The Ringmaster is on his second construct from the time Porcelina ripped out the other one's arms and repeatedly smashed it's head against the outside of her tank. Lovely. There are few people save The Ringmaster himself who have escaped one of her violent outbursts. One of her first escape attempts actually went pretty well, until she stepped into the waves...and ran out screaming. Her skin felt like it was on fire, and she has added to the scarring of her lower legs from this little adventure. The Ringmaster had decided not to mention her new magical allergy to salt water. She was caught under 20 minutes later and dragged back to her tank. She has played sick, thrown fits, and occasionally been sneaky - but it never works. And now that she knows about the spells she is under she has kind of stopped trying so hard - although if an opportunity arises for her to get free? She will snatch it.

Weaknesses:

Mute: Pretty standard fare for Merfolk, but Porcelina can't talk out of water when she's using her "land legs", and even when she's in water Mermish isn't exactly widely spoken in her social circle. She's spent a lot of time around people who speak English so she understands it perfectly well, but when she's in Merform and can actually talk she'll still revert to a slightly Pidgin-y version. She can be understood but still sounds rather off. Her literacy skills are a touch sketchy, she reads and writes about as well as a 10 year old, and her spelling is horrible.

Spellbound: A strong binding spell has been placed on Porcelina. She cannot abandon her master - if she is further than 3 miles away she will start to suffer from intense pain, which will increase as time goes on. She could probably stay away from him for about 24 hours before it became too much to bear and she blacks out. After 30-35 hours she would probably die. Also, she's been hexed to be allergic to saltwater, so unless someone breaks this charm there's no way she can return home. Salt water is like acid on her flesh - so stepping into the Ocean is going to peel her skin off. Even her own tears sting slightly (not that she cries a lot). The third part of the spell is that she is physically unable to attack the warlock who keeps her. She can scream, rail, throw things, ask other people to harm him, and plot as much as she likes - but when it comes to laying hands or weaponary upon him? She won't be able to move. The binding and the attack barrier is in the form of a locket (http://www.siouxeagle.com/PDO/PDO%20Lockets/DSCN0591.JPG ) with some of her tailfins in it that the warlock keeps on his person. If someone else should take this locket, she would be bound to them instead, and if it is destroyed the spell is broken. The saltwater hex is a ritual which must be performed every month over Porcelina to keep it active. If the caster dies before the ritual expires or is lifted, she will be stuck with it permenantly.
Of course, due to the nature of black magic, each of these spells is also true for the mage who cast them. He cannot abandon Porcelina without pain and he cannot attack her - however, being such a high level water elemental gives the saltwater hex a slightly different twist for him. If the salt is dissolved in water it is okay, but pure dry salt is caustic to him. She doesn't know these things though - she's pretty uneducated when it comes to magic. Her Pod never had much time for it.

Fish Out of Water: While she's technically been on dry land for 25 years, she's spent a huge proportion of that time kept in an oversized fishtank. Sometimes she's allowed to wander around the camp and the surrounding village, but honestly, she's had no education of dry land. She doesn't understands how people think up here. She doesn't trust "breathers" even though she's kind of intrigued by them. She can't really talk to people, the Warlock's attempts to teach her to read and write have been sketchy at best, none of her cultural references are even remotely relevant and she is living amongst people who (mostly) used to be seen as an expensive foodstuff to her. She's a stranger in a strange land and no-one is taking steps to fix it.

Really, Really Pissed Off: Trapped in a box for 25 years? Check. Member of a proud and easily offended warrior race? Check. Combine these with an inability to communicate, a serious case of culture shock, an attitude problem the size of Kentucky and the fear she'll never be able to return home? You got yourself one pissy Mermaid. She does try to keep it in check, but it's not rare for her temper to get the better of her - and with someone in her predicament that can be dangerous.

Superiority/Inferiority Complex: Porcelina is better than you. Although she's a terrible, terrible Merperson because she got captured. And she hasn't been rescued, which must mean her entire Pod? Probably didn't care about her. But whatever, shut up, she's still better than you. She's of a superior race! That she's not worthy of...
The whole thing is an emotional clusterfuck and it makes Porcelina very difficult to deal with. Externally she's a haughy and uptight and superior, while internally she's struggling with how much everything sucks and how much she hates herself - yeah, she's yet to outgrow her teenage angst, and this leads her to be even MORE egotistical on the outside to disguise how much turmoil she's in. It's a vicious cycle of mess.

Monster: Merpeople aren't exactly well loved by the people who know about them and their culture. They're not funny finned people who want to be "Part of Your World" - They eat humans, for goodness sake. And yeah, Porcelina was raised to be of that school of thought, and yeah, being held captive and gawked at for the past 25 years hasn't exactly increased her warm and fuzzy feelings. She probably wouldn't actively kill a human for food unless she had intense feelings of hatred towards them, but if someone else did the deed, or if someone was already dead? She won't complain. Porcelina isn't the best about covering up who she is and as such, if there were any uh, prejudiced people around, say a Hunter, they might not hesitate to make sushi out of her. Even without that, if regular humans found out she was actually a mermaid and not just a really good faker? There would probably be talks of experimentation and/or SeaWorld.

Strengths:

Warrior Princess: Porcelina is strong. Far stronger than your average human. She's a capable fighter, and she's good at just getting on with things. She'll struggle through most anything and she can be pretty brave. She doesn't scare easily.

Down To Earth..ish: Once you get past the general jerkery and the massive cultural differences, Porcelina's actually pretty straightforward. She doesn't take bullshit from anyone, she's very well grounded, and she's relatively (uh, very relatively) uncrazy. She doesn't do paranoia or talking to herself or any of that foolishness. Just don't make her angry and try to ignore how insulting she can be, and you're probably going to discover that she's pretty rational in her own fish-logic way.

PB: Amy Acker (Illyria)