Application for Save the Earth
Jun. 13th, 2013 02:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sweetasOOC Information:
Name: Pen
Are you over 15? Yes
Contact: tripwire015@yahoo.com ; Plurk:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
talkingsoup
IC Information:
Name: Reincarnated name: Candy Rodriguez
Preincarnated name: Camille
Canon: Original
Age: 28 now; was 42 (mid-twenties by her people’s standards)
Preincarnation Appearance: It would be easiest to say that she has no appearance, but it would also be accurate to say that she has all the appearances. As an amorph, her appearance is constantly in flux, and even though she has some favored shapes, she likes to tweak the details at the drop of a hat. One of her favored shapes is that of a young, twenty-something human female, usually quite thin and draped in a rather ridiculous mix of clothes. That’s about the extent of what’s static, however; her hair color, eye color, skin color and various other details constantly change. She particularly likes wandering around with wings (of varying types), tails (of varying types) and enormous paws with finger-like claws because they creep people out. She’s also prone to sprouting tentacles and assorted other appendages.
Another favored shape is that of a green-skinned aquatic creature, which is really an amalgamation of several water Folk in her world. Camille loves to swim and tends to use this form whenever she’s in the water. The creature has moss-green skin and large solid black eyes. It has a short, thick, rudder-like tail and webbed hands and feet. It looks like a cross between a kappa and Gollum and also the creature from the Black Lagoon.
Camille’s natural form is the same as every other amorph—a blob of viscous, clear goo, with an assortment of colors swirling around inside. She actually looks almost exactly like a beached jellyfish, except that she’s quite a bit more mobile, rolling around from place to place. She’s almost never in this form, except when she’s emotionally traumatized or physically hurt.
It’s worth noting that if you injure Camille in a way that should make her bleed, she will leak this very same clear goo instead of blood. Unless she’s in a very detailed form, in which case she will bleed whatever blood is appropriate, before it turns back into her clear slime.
Any differences: She’s a short, somewhat plump and very much human woman. She’s of Mexican descent through her mother, so her skin is a light brown. She has wavy black hair slightly past her shoulders that she usually ties back and dark brown, almost black eyes. Her nose is slightly crooked from being broken at a young age. She favors muted colors.
Preincarnated History: World Info: Camille comes from a very complicated world, so I’ll try to keep this short. I can provide additional details if needed.
The world has of four Planes of existence, connected by the Tree of Life. At the roots of the Tree is the Underworld, where the dead go. At the trunk of the Tree lies Gaia, also called the Mortal Plane, where humans live and technology is about current with today. At the branches of the Tree is the Whodden, also known as the Spirit Plane, where all of the mystical and magical creatures and beasts live—everything from amorphs like Camille to kitsune, to fairies, dragons and basilisks. These creatures are known as Folk. The Whodden is divided into Four Quarters, with different species ruling each Quarter. At the top of the Tree of Life is the mysterious Fourth Plane, which has no name and is completely unknown.
About two hundred years ago, war broke out in the Whodden. It was long and very complicated, and led to a mass exodus of Folk from the Whodden. Eighty years ago this war finally came to an end. Before the war ended, however, the Whodden was infected by something known as Plague. Plague is a purple-black gas that kills, sickens or mutates anything it comes into contact with. Until a short while ago, Plague was exclusively present in the Whodden. More recently, Plague and the abominations it creates—monsters known as oni-agnan--have started appearing in the Mortal Plane as well. People known as exorcists have arisen to fight them.
Species: Camille is an amorph, which is a type of shapeshifter, and in terms of raw shifting ability, the most powerful type of shapeshifters in the world. This is to say that they can turn into almost anything. They can do standard things, like transforming into a human or an animal, but they can also become inanimate objects, meld with surfaces and even combine shapes. For instance, a skilled amorph could borrow body parts from several different species or items and combine them into one functional whole. Want a canary with a blender for a head? Done.
Amorphs are so skilled at shapeshifting because their base form is essentially a gelatinous blob. They almost never use this base form, instead relying on favored shapes or shifting rapidly from one shape to another. Amorphs have very little restrictions on what they can turn into, but one major restriction is size. They can become as small as a pinhead or as large as a city bus, but anything smaller or larger is a very difficult shape to hold, and there is a limit to how much an amorph can compress or stretch itself.
One other thing about amorphs is that despite their gelatinous base form, they are very durable. This is because they don’t need blood, organs, bones or oxygen to survive. They have no brains and no hearts, so stabbing or shooting them in the right place doesn’t do much. In fact, the vast majority of amorphs go around with only the outward appearance of something, while their insides are just clear jelly of varying hardness. They are immune to poisons and most things that would kill a mortal creature. They are weak to extreme temperatures and to high pressure. In other words, an amorph could not survive being in a fire or being in a freezer, and nor would they survive at the bottom of the ocean.
Finally, the only thing amorphs really need to do to survive is eat, and they are capable of eating everything they come into contact with (except for Plague). Because they are born without eyes, ears or a nose, the senses they most rely on are taste and touch. Eating is not only how they gain nourishment, it’s also how they experience the world. Often in order to perfect a certain shape, they will eat something with that shape to understand how it looks and functions inside and out.
Preincarnated History: Like most Folk, Camille was divided (born) in the Whodden. She spent her first ten years in an amorph commune with several families including her own; they lived around a cluster of hills in the Eastern Quarter. When she was ten, however, a Plague vent opened under the hills, infecting the entire area and the amorphs who lived there. Quite a few amorphs died while others were greatly sickened. One of Camille’s own siblings died and two others became deathly ill. The commune first tried to appeal to local Folk communities for help, and when that didn’t work they appealed to the central government itself. The officials were sympathetic and sent people to try and close the vent, but they couldn’t help the sickened amorphs. With nowhere to go, the commune split, with a few families leaving to seek out new homes elsewhere in the Quarter, while the majority decided to head to the Mortal Plane and seek help there.
Everyone knew the rumors of a woman in the Mortal Plane named North Stonewall. The rumors were varied, but they agreed on two things—that North had somehow helped save the Whodden decades ago, and that she could heal just about anyone or anything, even Plague victims. The amorphs immediately sought her out, traveling to Corrant City where North lived and ran a hospital for Folk and animals. North was more than happy to help, and managed to save most of the sick amorphs, including Camille’s siblings. Both of them continued to suffer from long-term effects of Plague exposure, however.
Afterwards, the clan spread out. Some chose to return to the Whodden, some chose to explore the Mortal Plane, and most decided to remain in the city. Camille’s family stayed, though some of her siblings would later return to the Whodden, and the family became long term friends with the Stonewalls. Camille in particular spent a good amount of time with Ada, North’s twenty-year-old daughter. The two were never exactly close, however, due to the difference in age and maturity.
As time went by, Camille and her family became more used to the Mortal Plane and to Corrant City. Camille came to love the city dearly and wanted to stay as long as she could, something that was unusual for amorphs. Her family and the rest of the clan began to trickle away over the years, unwilling to stay in one place for long. Camille chose to stay with some of her siblings and a handful of other clan members. Soon there were only ten members of the clan left in the city, and it was around then that Ada got married to what Camille considered to be a very boring man named Jared. They had two children, Violin and Tavin, and Camille would often babysit for them, which was occasionally a bit traumatizing for the kids.
Camille had discovered her love of human food very early after coming to the Mortal Plane. She had also taken up baking early on and had a talent for it. Finally she decided to open a café and pastry shop. It took a lot of cooking classes and a year of legal wrangling, but finally her shop opened. It became a local hit, but never did as well as it could have, as humans and Folk were both leery of eating food made by an amorph. By the time Violin was in elementary school and already pursuing her career in exorcism, Camille’s café was a permanent fixture in the city. This mildly distressed Camille’s parents; no amorph had ever really decided to open a business before. It was simply too permanent. By then most of the rest of the clan had gone, and it was only Camille’s parents and a few siblings left. Camille’s café startled her parents into realizing how long they had been in Corrant City, and they finally decided to leave, along with all but two of Camille’s siblings. The two who remained were Kori and Zayid, the ones who had been infected with the Plague. They liked the city, and were simply too weak to travel far. The trio of amorphs stuck together, with Kori and Zayid helping out at the café when they could.
Several tragedies struck the Stonewall family shortly afterward. Something strange happened to Violin, the result of which was her seeing the Fourth Plane and losing her eye. Only a few years after that, Tavin apparently went insane and killed Ada and Jared. Camille was devastated and became much closer to Violin during that time, letting Violin stay with her when she wasn’t staying at her grandmother’s. Plague vents and oni-agnan attacks were becoming much more frequent in the city, and Violin was more determined than ever to complete her exorcist training. Tavin had somehow connected himself with the oni-agnan, and it was clear that Violin wanted revenge. Camille stuck with her, helping Violin through school and through her training.
Things began changing in Camille’s life as well. After a sharp decline in his health, Zayid disappeared without a trace. Camille spent months searching for him before she concluded that he had either left the city or gone off to die, neither of which was particularly comforting. Her café became an occasional target of the Katta, an anti-Folk organization that was cropping up again for the first time in decades. By the time Violin had become an exorcist, assembled a team and began using Camille’s café as a meeting place, oni-agnan began attacking her place with some frequency. Camille fought every time there was an attack of any kind. Only a few months ago, the reason for the oni-agnan assaults was revealed: Zayid had become an oni-agna and was attacking the only family he could remember having. Camille and Violin and her team fought him, but Zayid was a high level oni-agna and managed to escape. Camille has been waiting for him to return ever since.
These days she continues to run her café and freak out her customers with her shapeshifting. Violin and her team still use the café as a frequent meeting place.
Reincarnated History: Candy Rodriguez was born to Terry Anderson, a contractor, and Samantha Rodriguez, a history teacher at a local Locke City high school. She has lived in Locke City all her life. Her mother was loving, but her father was an alcoholic and emotionally abusive toward her, Candy and her two older brothers. Growing up under her father’s shadow, Candy learned caution and silence from an early age. She also learned the value of both money and food, as there were times when they had little of both.
She did fairly in school, but like most kids, she found the whole business really boring since there were no subjects that she really liked. It was her grandmother on her mother’s side that awoke a love of baking in her. Neither of her parents had much skill with baking, so Candy ended up spending a lot of time at her grandmother’s place a few blocks away. Benita Rodriguez taught Candy everything she knew about baking, and the rest Candy learned from cookbooks.
When she was ten, her father returned home one night drunk like usual, and something caused him to snap. He started yelling and threatening his family to the point of going after his wife with an empty bottle. Candy hid in the pantry while her mother and eldest brother, Raul, fought off her father and finally kicked him out of the house. The police arrested him soon after. After that was an ugly, drawn out divorce. Samantha was a fierce woman and won custody of her children in the end, but the legal fees drained the family dry. Candy, knowing she had to help in whatever small, quiet way she could, opened a cupcake stand on their corner and started selling cupcakes to passerby. Of course the cupcake stand never really made much money, but it did make her somewhat famous in the community—her cupcakes were really quite good.
As things settled out and Candy continued to have a lackluster school career, she realized that what she wanted to do with her life was bake. Her mother was very displeased with the idea, as she wanted her daughter to get a good career and make a lot of money. It became a source of conflict with them both, but Candy knew her dream and wanted to follow it. She knew that if she didn’t aim for something both appealing and reasonable, she’d end up unhappy. She figured she’d had enough unhappiness in her life; her father was a brute and a deadbeat, and her elder brother, Paul, had quit school and become a drug dealer. Her eldest brother was smart, but he wanted to join the military, and Candy feared desperately for him.
Her dream was to open up her own café, but she knew that she wasn’t going to get that kind of money anytime soon. Instead, when she was fifteen, she started a part-time job at a Starbucks, with the long-term goal of saving up enough money to open her own place someday. She ended up forgoing college, which created a huge rift between Candy and her mother. They stopped talking for quite awhile.
When Candy was twenty, after dating several boys over the course of her life and finding all of them disappointing or even abusive, Candy realized that she was a lesbian. It took her about a year to come to terms with this knowledge and become comfortable enough to start dating. She began a relationship with a young woman named Maggie and found herself romantically fulfilled for the first time. In the meantime, Candy kept going through part-time and full-time jobs at local cafes, even becoming a store manager at a Starbucks at one point.
When she was twenty-two, her brother died in Iraq. As she had always been closest with Raul, Candy was devastated. To this day she feels somewhat responsible, as she and Raul had an argument over e-mail the week before he died. This was also when she received her first Echo. At the end of that same year, Benita Rodriguez passed away from cancer. Altogether, it was the worst year of her life. She visits their graves twice a year. After their deaths, Candy and her mother started talking again, though not very often.
Candy kept working her way up within the food service industry. One day while working part-time at a local coffee shop, she met a woman named Katie. The two hit it off immediately and began dating within the week. They fell deeply in love with each other, and have been dating for about four years now.
Currently, Candy works as the main baker at a café in Locke City. With Katie’s encouragement and some of her financial assistance, Candy has just started the paperwork to finally open a café of her own. She’s hoping to open within the year.
First Echo: Her brother was killed in Iraq six years ago. The emotions surrounding the incident triggered her first Echo, which was a memory of her siblings from her previous life—specifically, Kori and Zayid. The Echo also gave her back her strange laugh.
Preincarnation Personality: The first word that comes to mind when you meet Camille is “chipper.” The second word is “creepy.”
Camille initially comes across as a weird amalgamation of chipper and creepy, cute and horrifying. She’s a very sweet person, at least to people she knows and likes. She’s caring in a very sisterly kind of way and has what is essentially a bartender degree in psychology; she likes to listen to people talk and offer them advice if they need it. And her advice is usually good. She’s been in a customer service position for about a decade now, and so has a pretty good understanding of people, both human and Folk. She’s extremely loyal to people she considers friends and is incredibly defensive of her friends, family and her café. She will also stand up for complete strangers, but only sometimes—only if she’s in the mood. She’s also very talkative and energetic, sometimes to the point of hyperactivity.
All of that is balanced with her innate creepiness. Her species is inherently creepy, and Camille knows it and plays it up. She loves creeping people out, loves watching their reactions when she mixes and matches shapes or changes right before their eyes. She likes to trick people and play practical jokes, even ones that normal people would consider hurtful—such as pretending to be someone’s lover and making out with them a bit before revealing who she really is. She finds these kinds of things funny and doesn’t care if other people do too or not. Her sense of humor is always odd, and she lives to add a bit of strangeness and awkwardness into people’s lives. In this respect she can be hilarious, obnoxious, or downright evil. And no one is safe from her sense of humor, not strangers or close friends. She does tend to be a bit more sensitive with friends, however, especially humans. She really likes humans and understands that they can be an oversensitive bunch, at least compared to amorphs. She does make an effort to understand them, particularly if someone she cares about reacts badly to a joke. With strangers she just doesn’t care.
She is absolutely vindictive with people who upset her or her friends. She has a fair few berserk buttons. Insult her café, her friends, her family or her species and she will get angry. Call her any of the numerous epithets for Folk or amorphs—like “demon,” “jelly,” “goopeople” and so on, and she will flip out. She’s not always the biggest fan of violence however—it depends on her mood and how badly someone has pissed her off. She has indeed taken part in fights against people and monsters who have attacked her and her café. However, more often than not she prefers psychological torment. She can be incredibly cruel when she wants to be. She once followed a member of a racist organization home and haunted him for a week as varying horrifying shapes, including posing as the guy’s dead mother several times. He eventually killed himself. She has an amorph’s sense of morality, which is much, much looser than that of the average human. Humans would in fact consider her borderline sociopathic at times. Amorphs sometimes eat things in order to better replicate their shapes, and Camille has indeed done this. She has even eaten people, though she likes to point out that it was only two.
Amorphs are very tactile creatures, and Camille is no different. She likes to touch everything, and likes to taste everything as well, if she can. She’s not above licking people or things whose shapes she finds particularly intriguing. She’s also a gigantic flirt and rather promiscuous, though again, it depends on her mood. Sex for amorphs is almost always recreational. They can’t reproduce until they choose to, and being so sensitive to touch and taste means that they quite enjoy the full gamut of romantic encounters. They’re good kissers and good in bed, and again, Camille is no exception. As a species they’re more likely to be in polyamorous relationships than in monogamous ones. Lately Camille has been trying out monogamy, which has been difficult since she hasn’t been romantically involved with anyone in months. Amorphs also have no genders beyond what they choose to identify with, so they have absolutely no qualms about homosexuality. They don’t even really have a word for it.
Camille loves baking, reading, talking to people, crowds, theme parks and surreal movies and art. She genuinely likes making people happy with her baking. She’s quirky beyond the oddities of her species; she has art on the walls of her café that change every week, she experiments with really weird flavors in her cooking, and she’s a little bit OCD with some random things. For instance she absolutely demands odd numbers of tables, chairs and utensils in her café, she never wears a matching pair of socks, she has a passionate hatred for fluorescent lights, and she has to have a tail when she’s cooking. She says she can’t cook without one. She’s terrified of fire and darkness. Her favorite “foods” are cupcakes, chocolate, hotdogs, rhinoceros beetles, cappuccino and grass. She can’t stand the taste of lamb or mint.
She also has a pretty annoying laugh.
Any differences: Candy is a lot like Camille, with some major differences.
For one thing, she’s much more shy than Camille. She’s more quiet and closed off, not wearing her heart or her emotions on her sleeve. She learned early that it was usually better and safer to keep quiet and not let people notice you, so she tries not to stand out if she can help it. She is determined and something of a free spirit, but she is very bad at speaking her mind unless she’s with people she trusts. She’s not opinionated and ignores politics for this reason (though she did vote for Obama twice). She has very little confidence in herself, except when it comes to baking. Baking is the one and only thing she knows she’s good at.
She does not have Camille’s odd sense of humor. She doesn’t poke fun at people and she barely even teases them. She doesn’t like to frighten or surprise people and doubts she even could. She never touches people without their permission, and in fact doesn’t like to be touched much herself, unless it’s someone she knows well.
She’s very rigid in her views about sex and sexuality. It took her a long time to come to terms with the fact that she is a lesbian, as she had a vaguely Catholic upbringing. In fact, she never told her grandmother about her sexuality for fear of rejection. She has had plenty of sex, with both men and women, but she is strictly a lesbian, and has always been fiercely monogamous. She finds cheating to be unforgivable.
Finally, she has a temper, but it is nothing compared to Camille’s. She only really gets angry when people insult her baking or her girlfriend, or are racist to her face. She’s usually more likely to get flustered and upset than outright angry, and she prefers talking things out to arguing and fighting. She has never wished violence on anyone and herself wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Abilities: Currently, Candy has no special abilities, but these are the ones she will regain over time:
Camille can transform into absolutely everything and anything she can see and study at least a little bit. She can replicate physical traits and vocalizations, which means she can bark like a dog or speak like a human if she cares enough to get her vocal chords right. The transformations can be accurate down to the smallest detail if she wants. She can also eat just about anything without any ill effects, except for Plague-infected things. Pie? Cyanide? Machine parts? People? She can eat them all. And she will, if she thinks it’s necessary—eating something gives her a better understanding of it, which means she can replicate its shape better. That’s about the extent of her abilities, however. She can replicate certain attributes (e.g. if she’s a cheetah she can run fast), but she won’t necessarily know how to use them. In other words, she can replicate wings, but won’t know how to fly until she’s had practice. And she can’t replicate non-physical things like psychic powers. Super strength, yes. Telekinesis, no.
She does also have an amorph’s natural durability. She’s hard to kill or even injure badly, due to the fact that she’s really just a blob of goo. She’s immune to all natural poisons. You can cut her in half and she’ll just reform. If you damage her body enough she will still die, however.
She’s also very good at baking and making coffee, and is an average user of firearms.
Like all amorphs, she has some innate weaknesses. She’s very weak to heat and cold. High temperatures will kill her much faster than cold temperatures, however, and will affect her no matter what shape she’s in. High heat—as in temperatures of 98 degrees Fahrenheit or higher—will cause her to start losing control of her shapes, light headedness, headaches, hallucinations, seizures and myriad other fun symptoms. This means that even when she is wearing a shape that has a high body temperature, such as a human or a cat, her core temperature will be much lower than the norm. If she’s using a very detailed shape however, she can occasionally replicate even body temperature, but this requires a lot of control and finesse with the shape. Cold is easier to deal with, as she can just give herself some fur or a nice fluffy coat or blanket. Cold is still a danger to her, however, starting at about 32 degrees Fahrenheit. She’s also weak to attacks of a psychic nature. Amorphs have no natural defenses against psychics; they can’t mentally guard themselves against mind-reading or mind control, and they’re highly susceptible to telekinetic blasts and such. Everything about an amorph is based on the physical, so things of a mental nature tend to be very complicated for them.
Roleplay Sample – Third Person: Candy sat cross-legged at one end of the couch, a seemingly endless supply of papers spread out before her. Katie was at the other end, tapping away on her laptop, but looking over at Candy every few seconds. Candy was looking more overwhelmed every time Katie looked.
“I don’t know,” Candy said for probably the millionth time, tucking one bare foot under her. “Maybe it’s too soon. This all just seems so complicated…I mean, I knew what it entailed, all the licenses and whatnot, but I guess I…I didn’t expect the, you know, legalese.”
She bit at her thumbnail and looked up at Katie.
“And what if I can’t pay back the loan? I mean, no one knows me outside of the south side. I don’t know if I can get business from beyond 6th Street. Everyone goes to Magnificent these days.”
Katie set her laptop on the coffee table and leaned across the couch toward Candy, careful not to disturb the mess of papers.
“Sweetie, you are the best baker on the whole south side and you know that,” she said with a huge smile. “More than that, the whole south side knows that too! You’ll get brand loyalty, is what. And that’ll attract attention, even away from downtown. And stop chewing your nails.”
Candy dropped her hands into her lap and sighed. She knew she was a good baker; she knew that, just like Katie said. This was exactly what she’d always dreamed of. Maybe that’s why she was so nervous. She was so close now, so close to owning a café of her own…she didn’t think she’d be able to live with herself if she failed.
Abuelita always said that cookies needed to go in the oven if they were going to get backed. She had a lot of silly sayings like that.
“I just…maybe it’s too early.”
“Bull.” Katie leaned across the couch to kiss Candy on the forehead, knocking a few papers to the floor in the process. “You’ve been waiting a decade. You can do it, hon.”
Candy couldn’t help but smile. Katie was her confidence, when Candy herself had none.
“Alright,” she said after a long time. “Alright. Let’s…let’s do it.”
Roleplay Sample - Network: He…llo? Oh. Oh, it’s working now! It’s working, isn’t it? Wait, this…o-oh, I, um, I didn’t intend for everyone to hear me….I…suppose it’s too late now, huh? Hu hu…
Anyway, I, ah…hello, my name is Candy. I’ve, um, well I’ve had this number in my head for a few years now, and…and it seems to be working now. This whole—this network thing, was it really here the whole time?
I…I hope someone’s willing to explain what’s going on. Things have been a bit strange lately, but I think this…network…might be the strangest.
Any Questions? Nope!
Name: Pen
Are you over 15? Yes
Contact: tripwire015@yahoo.com ; Plurk:
IC Information:
Name: Reincarnated name: Candy Rodriguez
Preincarnated name: Camille
Canon: Original
Age: 28 now; was 42 (mid-twenties by her people’s standards)
Preincarnation Appearance: It would be easiest to say that she has no appearance, but it would also be accurate to say that she has all the appearances. As an amorph, her appearance is constantly in flux, and even though she has some favored shapes, she likes to tweak the details at the drop of a hat. One of her favored shapes is that of a young, twenty-something human female, usually quite thin and draped in a rather ridiculous mix of clothes. That’s about the extent of what’s static, however; her hair color, eye color, skin color and various other details constantly change. She particularly likes wandering around with wings (of varying types), tails (of varying types) and enormous paws with finger-like claws because they creep people out. She’s also prone to sprouting tentacles and assorted other appendages.
Another favored shape is that of a green-skinned aquatic creature, which is really an amalgamation of several water Folk in her world. Camille loves to swim and tends to use this form whenever she’s in the water. The creature has moss-green skin and large solid black eyes. It has a short, thick, rudder-like tail and webbed hands and feet. It looks like a cross between a kappa and Gollum and also the creature from the Black Lagoon.
Camille’s natural form is the same as every other amorph—a blob of viscous, clear goo, with an assortment of colors swirling around inside. She actually looks almost exactly like a beached jellyfish, except that she’s quite a bit more mobile, rolling around from place to place. She’s almost never in this form, except when she’s emotionally traumatized or physically hurt.
It’s worth noting that if you injure Camille in a way that should make her bleed, she will leak this very same clear goo instead of blood. Unless she’s in a very detailed form, in which case she will bleed whatever blood is appropriate, before it turns back into her clear slime.
Any differences: She’s a short, somewhat plump and very much human woman. She’s of Mexican descent through her mother, so her skin is a light brown. She has wavy black hair slightly past her shoulders that she usually ties back and dark brown, almost black eyes. Her nose is slightly crooked from being broken at a young age. She favors muted colors.
Preincarnated History: World Info: Camille comes from a very complicated world, so I’ll try to keep this short. I can provide additional details if needed.
The world has of four Planes of existence, connected by the Tree of Life. At the roots of the Tree is the Underworld, where the dead go. At the trunk of the Tree lies Gaia, also called the Mortal Plane, where humans live and technology is about current with today. At the branches of the Tree is the Whodden, also known as the Spirit Plane, where all of the mystical and magical creatures and beasts live—everything from amorphs like Camille to kitsune, to fairies, dragons and basilisks. These creatures are known as Folk. The Whodden is divided into Four Quarters, with different species ruling each Quarter. At the top of the Tree of Life is the mysterious Fourth Plane, which has no name and is completely unknown.
About two hundred years ago, war broke out in the Whodden. It was long and very complicated, and led to a mass exodus of Folk from the Whodden. Eighty years ago this war finally came to an end. Before the war ended, however, the Whodden was infected by something known as Plague. Plague is a purple-black gas that kills, sickens or mutates anything it comes into contact with. Until a short while ago, Plague was exclusively present in the Whodden. More recently, Plague and the abominations it creates—monsters known as oni-agnan--have started appearing in the Mortal Plane as well. People known as exorcists have arisen to fight them.
Species: Camille is an amorph, which is a type of shapeshifter, and in terms of raw shifting ability, the most powerful type of shapeshifters in the world. This is to say that they can turn into almost anything. They can do standard things, like transforming into a human or an animal, but they can also become inanimate objects, meld with surfaces and even combine shapes. For instance, a skilled amorph could borrow body parts from several different species or items and combine them into one functional whole. Want a canary with a blender for a head? Done.
Amorphs are so skilled at shapeshifting because their base form is essentially a gelatinous blob. They almost never use this base form, instead relying on favored shapes or shifting rapidly from one shape to another. Amorphs have very little restrictions on what they can turn into, but one major restriction is size. They can become as small as a pinhead or as large as a city bus, but anything smaller or larger is a very difficult shape to hold, and there is a limit to how much an amorph can compress or stretch itself.
One other thing about amorphs is that despite their gelatinous base form, they are very durable. This is because they don’t need blood, organs, bones or oxygen to survive. They have no brains and no hearts, so stabbing or shooting them in the right place doesn’t do much. In fact, the vast majority of amorphs go around with only the outward appearance of something, while their insides are just clear jelly of varying hardness. They are immune to poisons and most things that would kill a mortal creature. They are weak to extreme temperatures and to high pressure. In other words, an amorph could not survive being in a fire or being in a freezer, and nor would they survive at the bottom of the ocean.
Finally, the only thing amorphs really need to do to survive is eat, and they are capable of eating everything they come into contact with (except for Plague). Because they are born without eyes, ears or a nose, the senses they most rely on are taste and touch. Eating is not only how they gain nourishment, it’s also how they experience the world. Often in order to perfect a certain shape, they will eat something with that shape to understand how it looks and functions inside and out.
Preincarnated History: Like most Folk, Camille was divided (born) in the Whodden. She spent her first ten years in an amorph commune with several families including her own; they lived around a cluster of hills in the Eastern Quarter. When she was ten, however, a Plague vent opened under the hills, infecting the entire area and the amorphs who lived there. Quite a few amorphs died while others were greatly sickened. One of Camille’s own siblings died and two others became deathly ill. The commune first tried to appeal to local Folk communities for help, and when that didn’t work they appealed to the central government itself. The officials were sympathetic and sent people to try and close the vent, but they couldn’t help the sickened amorphs. With nowhere to go, the commune split, with a few families leaving to seek out new homes elsewhere in the Quarter, while the majority decided to head to the Mortal Plane and seek help there.
Everyone knew the rumors of a woman in the Mortal Plane named North Stonewall. The rumors were varied, but they agreed on two things—that North had somehow helped save the Whodden decades ago, and that she could heal just about anyone or anything, even Plague victims. The amorphs immediately sought her out, traveling to Corrant City where North lived and ran a hospital for Folk and animals. North was more than happy to help, and managed to save most of the sick amorphs, including Camille’s siblings. Both of them continued to suffer from long-term effects of Plague exposure, however.
Afterwards, the clan spread out. Some chose to return to the Whodden, some chose to explore the Mortal Plane, and most decided to remain in the city. Camille’s family stayed, though some of her siblings would later return to the Whodden, and the family became long term friends with the Stonewalls. Camille in particular spent a good amount of time with Ada, North’s twenty-year-old daughter. The two were never exactly close, however, due to the difference in age and maturity.
As time went by, Camille and her family became more used to the Mortal Plane and to Corrant City. Camille came to love the city dearly and wanted to stay as long as she could, something that was unusual for amorphs. Her family and the rest of the clan began to trickle away over the years, unwilling to stay in one place for long. Camille chose to stay with some of her siblings and a handful of other clan members. Soon there were only ten members of the clan left in the city, and it was around then that Ada got married to what Camille considered to be a very boring man named Jared. They had two children, Violin and Tavin, and Camille would often babysit for them, which was occasionally a bit traumatizing for the kids.
Camille had discovered her love of human food very early after coming to the Mortal Plane. She had also taken up baking early on and had a talent for it. Finally she decided to open a café and pastry shop. It took a lot of cooking classes and a year of legal wrangling, but finally her shop opened. It became a local hit, but never did as well as it could have, as humans and Folk were both leery of eating food made by an amorph. By the time Violin was in elementary school and already pursuing her career in exorcism, Camille’s café was a permanent fixture in the city. This mildly distressed Camille’s parents; no amorph had ever really decided to open a business before. It was simply too permanent. By then most of the rest of the clan had gone, and it was only Camille’s parents and a few siblings left. Camille’s café startled her parents into realizing how long they had been in Corrant City, and they finally decided to leave, along with all but two of Camille’s siblings. The two who remained were Kori and Zayid, the ones who had been infected with the Plague. They liked the city, and were simply too weak to travel far. The trio of amorphs stuck together, with Kori and Zayid helping out at the café when they could.
Several tragedies struck the Stonewall family shortly afterward. Something strange happened to Violin, the result of which was her seeing the Fourth Plane and losing her eye. Only a few years after that, Tavin apparently went insane and killed Ada and Jared. Camille was devastated and became much closer to Violin during that time, letting Violin stay with her when she wasn’t staying at her grandmother’s. Plague vents and oni-agnan attacks were becoming much more frequent in the city, and Violin was more determined than ever to complete her exorcist training. Tavin had somehow connected himself with the oni-agnan, and it was clear that Violin wanted revenge. Camille stuck with her, helping Violin through school and through her training.
Things began changing in Camille’s life as well. After a sharp decline in his health, Zayid disappeared without a trace. Camille spent months searching for him before she concluded that he had either left the city or gone off to die, neither of which was particularly comforting. Her café became an occasional target of the Katta, an anti-Folk organization that was cropping up again for the first time in decades. By the time Violin had become an exorcist, assembled a team and began using Camille’s café as a meeting place, oni-agnan began attacking her place with some frequency. Camille fought every time there was an attack of any kind. Only a few months ago, the reason for the oni-agnan assaults was revealed: Zayid had become an oni-agna and was attacking the only family he could remember having. Camille and Violin and her team fought him, but Zayid was a high level oni-agna and managed to escape. Camille has been waiting for him to return ever since.
These days she continues to run her café and freak out her customers with her shapeshifting. Violin and her team still use the café as a frequent meeting place.
Reincarnated History: Candy Rodriguez was born to Terry Anderson, a contractor, and Samantha Rodriguez, a history teacher at a local Locke City high school. She has lived in Locke City all her life. Her mother was loving, but her father was an alcoholic and emotionally abusive toward her, Candy and her two older brothers. Growing up under her father’s shadow, Candy learned caution and silence from an early age. She also learned the value of both money and food, as there were times when they had little of both.
She did fairly in school, but like most kids, she found the whole business really boring since there were no subjects that she really liked. It was her grandmother on her mother’s side that awoke a love of baking in her. Neither of her parents had much skill with baking, so Candy ended up spending a lot of time at her grandmother’s place a few blocks away. Benita Rodriguez taught Candy everything she knew about baking, and the rest Candy learned from cookbooks.
When she was ten, her father returned home one night drunk like usual, and something caused him to snap. He started yelling and threatening his family to the point of going after his wife with an empty bottle. Candy hid in the pantry while her mother and eldest brother, Raul, fought off her father and finally kicked him out of the house. The police arrested him soon after. After that was an ugly, drawn out divorce. Samantha was a fierce woman and won custody of her children in the end, but the legal fees drained the family dry. Candy, knowing she had to help in whatever small, quiet way she could, opened a cupcake stand on their corner and started selling cupcakes to passerby. Of course the cupcake stand never really made much money, but it did make her somewhat famous in the community—her cupcakes were really quite good.
As things settled out and Candy continued to have a lackluster school career, she realized that what she wanted to do with her life was bake. Her mother was very displeased with the idea, as she wanted her daughter to get a good career and make a lot of money. It became a source of conflict with them both, but Candy knew her dream and wanted to follow it. She knew that if she didn’t aim for something both appealing and reasonable, she’d end up unhappy. She figured she’d had enough unhappiness in her life; her father was a brute and a deadbeat, and her elder brother, Paul, had quit school and become a drug dealer. Her eldest brother was smart, but he wanted to join the military, and Candy feared desperately for him.
Her dream was to open up her own café, but she knew that she wasn’t going to get that kind of money anytime soon. Instead, when she was fifteen, she started a part-time job at a Starbucks, with the long-term goal of saving up enough money to open her own place someday. She ended up forgoing college, which created a huge rift between Candy and her mother. They stopped talking for quite awhile.
When Candy was twenty, after dating several boys over the course of her life and finding all of them disappointing or even abusive, Candy realized that she was a lesbian. It took her about a year to come to terms with this knowledge and become comfortable enough to start dating. She began a relationship with a young woman named Maggie and found herself romantically fulfilled for the first time. In the meantime, Candy kept going through part-time and full-time jobs at local cafes, even becoming a store manager at a Starbucks at one point.
When she was twenty-two, her brother died in Iraq. As she had always been closest with Raul, Candy was devastated. To this day she feels somewhat responsible, as she and Raul had an argument over e-mail the week before he died. This was also when she received her first Echo. At the end of that same year, Benita Rodriguez passed away from cancer. Altogether, it was the worst year of her life. She visits their graves twice a year. After their deaths, Candy and her mother started talking again, though not very often.
Candy kept working her way up within the food service industry. One day while working part-time at a local coffee shop, she met a woman named Katie. The two hit it off immediately and began dating within the week. They fell deeply in love with each other, and have been dating for about four years now.
Currently, Candy works as the main baker at a café in Locke City. With Katie’s encouragement and some of her financial assistance, Candy has just started the paperwork to finally open a café of her own. She’s hoping to open within the year.
First Echo: Her brother was killed in Iraq six years ago. The emotions surrounding the incident triggered her first Echo, which was a memory of her siblings from her previous life—specifically, Kori and Zayid. The Echo also gave her back her strange laugh.
Preincarnation Personality: The first word that comes to mind when you meet Camille is “chipper.” The second word is “creepy.”
Camille initially comes across as a weird amalgamation of chipper and creepy, cute and horrifying. She’s a very sweet person, at least to people she knows and likes. She’s caring in a very sisterly kind of way and has what is essentially a bartender degree in psychology; she likes to listen to people talk and offer them advice if they need it. And her advice is usually good. She’s been in a customer service position for about a decade now, and so has a pretty good understanding of people, both human and Folk. She’s extremely loyal to people she considers friends and is incredibly defensive of her friends, family and her café. She will also stand up for complete strangers, but only sometimes—only if she’s in the mood. She’s also very talkative and energetic, sometimes to the point of hyperactivity.
All of that is balanced with her innate creepiness. Her species is inherently creepy, and Camille knows it and plays it up. She loves creeping people out, loves watching their reactions when she mixes and matches shapes or changes right before their eyes. She likes to trick people and play practical jokes, even ones that normal people would consider hurtful—such as pretending to be someone’s lover and making out with them a bit before revealing who she really is. She finds these kinds of things funny and doesn’t care if other people do too or not. Her sense of humor is always odd, and she lives to add a bit of strangeness and awkwardness into people’s lives. In this respect she can be hilarious, obnoxious, or downright evil. And no one is safe from her sense of humor, not strangers or close friends. She does tend to be a bit more sensitive with friends, however, especially humans. She really likes humans and understands that they can be an oversensitive bunch, at least compared to amorphs. She does make an effort to understand them, particularly if someone she cares about reacts badly to a joke. With strangers she just doesn’t care.
She is absolutely vindictive with people who upset her or her friends. She has a fair few berserk buttons. Insult her café, her friends, her family or her species and she will get angry. Call her any of the numerous epithets for Folk or amorphs—like “demon,” “jelly,” “goopeople” and so on, and she will flip out. She’s not always the biggest fan of violence however—it depends on her mood and how badly someone has pissed her off. She has indeed taken part in fights against people and monsters who have attacked her and her café. However, more often than not she prefers psychological torment. She can be incredibly cruel when she wants to be. She once followed a member of a racist organization home and haunted him for a week as varying horrifying shapes, including posing as the guy’s dead mother several times. He eventually killed himself. She has an amorph’s sense of morality, which is much, much looser than that of the average human. Humans would in fact consider her borderline sociopathic at times. Amorphs sometimes eat things in order to better replicate their shapes, and Camille has indeed done this. She has even eaten people, though she likes to point out that it was only two.
Amorphs are very tactile creatures, and Camille is no different. She likes to touch everything, and likes to taste everything as well, if she can. She’s not above licking people or things whose shapes she finds particularly intriguing. She’s also a gigantic flirt and rather promiscuous, though again, it depends on her mood. Sex for amorphs is almost always recreational. They can’t reproduce until they choose to, and being so sensitive to touch and taste means that they quite enjoy the full gamut of romantic encounters. They’re good kissers and good in bed, and again, Camille is no exception. As a species they’re more likely to be in polyamorous relationships than in monogamous ones. Lately Camille has been trying out monogamy, which has been difficult since she hasn’t been romantically involved with anyone in months. Amorphs also have no genders beyond what they choose to identify with, so they have absolutely no qualms about homosexuality. They don’t even really have a word for it.
Camille loves baking, reading, talking to people, crowds, theme parks and surreal movies and art. She genuinely likes making people happy with her baking. She’s quirky beyond the oddities of her species; she has art on the walls of her café that change every week, she experiments with really weird flavors in her cooking, and she’s a little bit OCD with some random things. For instance she absolutely demands odd numbers of tables, chairs and utensils in her café, she never wears a matching pair of socks, she has a passionate hatred for fluorescent lights, and she has to have a tail when she’s cooking. She says she can’t cook without one. She’s terrified of fire and darkness. Her favorite “foods” are cupcakes, chocolate, hotdogs, rhinoceros beetles, cappuccino and grass. She can’t stand the taste of lamb or mint.
She also has a pretty annoying laugh.
Any differences: Candy is a lot like Camille, with some major differences.
For one thing, she’s much more shy than Camille. She’s more quiet and closed off, not wearing her heart or her emotions on her sleeve. She learned early that it was usually better and safer to keep quiet and not let people notice you, so she tries not to stand out if she can help it. She is determined and something of a free spirit, but she is very bad at speaking her mind unless she’s with people she trusts. She’s not opinionated and ignores politics for this reason (though she did vote for Obama twice). She has very little confidence in herself, except when it comes to baking. Baking is the one and only thing she knows she’s good at.
She does not have Camille’s odd sense of humor. She doesn’t poke fun at people and she barely even teases them. She doesn’t like to frighten or surprise people and doubts she even could. She never touches people without their permission, and in fact doesn’t like to be touched much herself, unless it’s someone she knows well.
She’s very rigid in her views about sex and sexuality. It took her a long time to come to terms with the fact that she is a lesbian, as she had a vaguely Catholic upbringing. In fact, she never told her grandmother about her sexuality for fear of rejection. She has had plenty of sex, with both men and women, but she is strictly a lesbian, and has always been fiercely monogamous. She finds cheating to be unforgivable.
Finally, she has a temper, but it is nothing compared to Camille’s. She only really gets angry when people insult her baking or her girlfriend, or are racist to her face. She’s usually more likely to get flustered and upset than outright angry, and she prefers talking things out to arguing and fighting. She has never wished violence on anyone and herself wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Abilities: Currently, Candy has no special abilities, but these are the ones she will regain over time:
Camille can transform into absolutely everything and anything she can see and study at least a little bit. She can replicate physical traits and vocalizations, which means she can bark like a dog or speak like a human if she cares enough to get her vocal chords right. The transformations can be accurate down to the smallest detail if she wants. She can also eat just about anything without any ill effects, except for Plague-infected things. Pie? Cyanide? Machine parts? People? She can eat them all. And she will, if she thinks it’s necessary—eating something gives her a better understanding of it, which means she can replicate its shape better. That’s about the extent of her abilities, however. She can replicate certain attributes (e.g. if she’s a cheetah she can run fast), but she won’t necessarily know how to use them. In other words, she can replicate wings, but won’t know how to fly until she’s had practice. And she can’t replicate non-physical things like psychic powers. Super strength, yes. Telekinesis, no.
She does also have an amorph’s natural durability. She’s hard to kill or even injure badly, due to the fact that she’s really just a blob of goo. She’s immune to all natural poisons. You can cut her in half and she’ll just reform. If you damage her body enough she will still die, however.
She’s also very good at baking and making coffee, and is an average user of firearms.
Like all amorphs, she has some innate weaknesses. She’s very weak to heat and cold. High temperatures will kill her much faster than cold temperatures, however, and will affect her no matter what shape she’s in. High heat—as in temperatures of 98 degrees Fahrenheit or higher—will cause her to start losing control of her shapes, light headedness, headaches, hallucinations, seizures and myriad other fun symptoms. This means that even when she is wearing a shape that has a high body temperature, such as a human or a cat, her core temperature will be much lower than the norm. If she’s using a very detailed shape however, she can occasionally replicate even body temperature, but this requires a lot of control and finesse with the shape. Cold is easier to deal with, as she can just give herself some fur or a nice fluffy coat or blanket. Cold is still a danger to her, however, starting at about 32 degrees Fahrenheit. She’s also weak to attacks of a psychic nature. Amorphs have no natural defenses against psychics; they can’t mentally guard themselves against mind-reading or mind control, and they’re highly susceptible to telekinetic blasts and such. Everything about an amorph is based on the physical, so things of a mental nature tend to be very complicated for them.
Roleplay Sample – Third Person: Candy sat cross-legged at one end of the couch, a seemingly endless supply of papers spread out before her. Katie was at the other end, tapping away on her laptop, but looking over at Candy every few seconds. Candy was looking more overwhelmed every time Katie looked.
“I don’t know,” Candy said for probably the millionth time, tucking one bare foot under her. “Maybe it’s too soon. This all just seems so complicated…I mean, I knew what it entailed, all the licenses and whatnot, but I guess I…I didn’t expect the, you know, legalese.”
She bit at her thumbnail and looked up at Katie.
“And what if I can’t pay back the loan? I mean, no one knows me outside of the south side. I don’t know if I can get business from beyond 6th Street. Everyone goes to Magnificent these days.”
Katie set her laptop on the coffee table and leaned across the couch toward Candy, careful not to disturb the mess of papers.
“Sweetie, you are the best baker on the whole south side and you know that,” she said with a huge smile. “More than that, the whole south side knows that too! You’ll get brand loyalty, is what. And that’ll attract attention, even away from downtown. And stop chewing your nails.”
Candy dropped her hands into her lap and sighed. She knew she was a good baker; she knew that, just like Katie said. This was exactly what she’d always dreamed of. Maybe that’s why she was so nervous. She was so close now, so close to owning a café of her own…she didn’t think she’d be able to live with herself if she failed.
Abuelita always said that cookies needed to go in the oven if they were going to get backed. She had a lot of silly sayings like that.
“I just…maybe it’s too early.”
“Bull.” Katie leaned across the couch to kiss Candy on the forehead, knocking a few papers to the floor in the process. “You’ve been waiting a decade. You can do it, hon.”
Candy couldn’t help but smile. Katie was her confidence, when Candy herself had none.
“Alright,” she said after a long time. “Alright. Let’s…let’s do it.”
Roleplay Sample - Network: He…llo? Oh. Oh, it’s working now! It’s working, isn’t it? Wait, this…o-oh, I, um, I didn’t intend for everyone to hear me….I…suppose it’s too late now, huh? Hu hu…
Anyway, I, ah…hello, my name is Candy. I’ve, um, well I’ve had this number in my head for a few years now, and…and it seems to be working now. This whole—this network thing, was it really here the whole time?
I…I hope someone’s willing to explain what’s going on. Things have been a bit strange lately, but I think this…network…might be the strangest.
Any Questions? Nope!
