World Traveler's Song

Let's see if I keep up with this one.

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Player Information

Name: Stareyes
Age: 38
Contact details: beccastareyes@ Plurk
Other characters: Zelgadis Greywords, Thomas Price

Character Information

Name: S’reee
Canon: Young Wizards
Canon Point: Post-Games Wizards Play
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: CRAU from Melodies of Eternity (melodiesofeternity); re-app after a drop from VoidTrekkers
Age: 7 While cross-species ages are inexact, S’reee is equivalent to a teenager.

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Connie S'reee has spoken to her a number of times. She sees her as the sort of person who may well have been a wizard in her world, so could be an ally on call.	Tidus A human who plays sports. Fond of the water. S'reee wonders if his world is similar to her own with respect to the Lone Power.
Nanamo A kind person who S'reee has chatted with, and considers a possible future colleague.

Code from bread.

2018 April 11: EVENT ; Fabula Nova Crystallis First arrival. 11: ACTION ; Tidus Deep thoughts and swimming. 11: ACTION ; Connie Omens and differences in magic and worlds. 15-30: EVENT ; World Tourists Selecting a Job. 15: ACTION ; Ganeshan Discussion of Job options. 17: NETWORK ; Tidus Learning about human aquatic sports. 22: NETWORK ; Monika Sharing what their worlds are like. 22: ACTION ; Madhuri Surprising the others as a levitating whale.	2018 May 13: NETWORK ; Sylvarie What does it mean to be an adult? 19: NETWORK ; Roxas Is Roxas from my sheaf of worlds? 30: ACTION ; Connie, Hunk, Nanamo Fight with Octo Rocko. 31: EVENT ; Once Upon a Dream Drawn into dreams in the Dream Width	2018 June 01-04: EVENT ; Once Upon a Dream Drawn into dreams in the Dream Width 03: ACTION ; Papyrus A dream from Papyrus's past. 05: EVENT ; It's Happening Again Second Introduction Log. 13-20: EVENT ; PuPu Peril Looking for PuPus. 18: ACTION ; Uendo Communications with the Pupus? 18: ACTION ; Sasami Is this a test? 18: ACTION ; Vax, Max, Komaeda The (self-proclaimed?) guardians of the PuPus 22: NETWORK ; Regis Employment tips. 23-25: EVENT ; Mysterious Fathoms Below Ka'Pandol floods during Championship. 25: ACTION ; Finn Some equipment doesn't work on whales. 25: ACTION ; Group Unlocking the Northwest Pump.
2018 July 11: ACTION ; Sasami Humans can be a bit silly about hunting. 11: MOGNET ; Nanamo Invitation of a house-warming party.

Code from deloreans

What it says in the subject line.

Player
Name: Stareyes
Age: 33
Personal Journal: beccastareyes
Contact: beccastareyes @ plurk
Other In-Game Characters: N/a

Character
Name: S'reee
Age: 5. For her species, this puts her several years older than 'has to stay with Mom' and several years younger than 'has children of her own'. The human protagonist notes that a 5 year old whale is younger, relatively speaking, than a human in her mid teens. 5 is when a female hits sexual maturity, but is still growing to her full size. Males hit sexual maturity at 7. Given that humans become sexually mature in our early to mid teens, with males developing slightly later than female, Nita's comment probably stands.
Gender: Female
Canon: Young Wizards
Canon Point: Post Games Wizards Play

History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Wizardry

S'reee's major appearance is in Deep Wizardry, the second book. In the Young Wizards universe, entropy was introduced into the universe by the Lone Power, a 'first among equals' of the Powers that Be, out of time beings that work for the Creator. The Lone One also likes to show up when a species starts gaining sentience to be part of a Choice. (For human examples, see Pandora or Eden.) Wizards are mortals gifted with the ability to use the Speech (the language the universe is built on) to slow down entropy.

S'reee presumably followed the traditional wizard's path. She was offered the Wizard's Oath by the Powers sometime after she was independent of her mother, and had to undergo some Ordeal to 'pay back' the initial rush of power. She succeeded, and was working with a more senior wizard, Ae'mhnuu, to organize a re-enactment of the Song of the Twelve, the whales' version of the Choice. The whales did that every so often to push back against the part of the Lone Power sealed at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Things went bad, Ae'mhnuu was killed by whalers, and S'reee was injured, then harassed by sharks to the point of beaching herself. A colleague saw her plight and found the nearest healer, a human named Nita. Nita saved S'reee's life, and she and her partner offer to help with the Song. The preparations are plagued with disaster upon disaster, complete with one role betraying them to the Lone Power during the ritual, but it goes off successfully.

The Powers that Be were apparently impressed with her organization of the Song, as, during a crisis when all of Earth's adult wizards lost their powers, S'reee was put in charge of all of Earth's oceans, one step below Earth's Planetary Wizard, leaving her to mitigate damage on a world where everyone was getting more and more paranoid. Since the major crisis seemed to be 'humans are paranoid and some of them have nukes', her actions may have been more support. In between crises, S'reee continued working with Nita and learning more about humans while coping with local problems (pollution, noise cancelation, testing magic items that let non-whales turn into whales). She also is dating a non-wizard whale who does food blogging of a sort.

Personality: We know a few things tend to be true of wizards in general. While the ability is genetic, it is only offered to people the Powers think can make a difference: those who notice that the world isn't what it should be, and they want to make it better. Having been in practice for several years, and experienced several crises, S'reee isn't going to try to make the world better all at once. She's usually the wizard keeping everyone on task and not tackling the next problem while still trying to make progress on the first. When Kit notices that humans have left unexploded ordinance dumped at the bottom of the harbor from WWII, S'reee is the one who reminds them that they need to test their current spell (for pollution) first. S'reee is the one who brings extra air on their trip to the bottom of the sea for the Song of the Twelve, because, be prepared.

S'reee keeps a cool head under pressure -- while seriously wounded, her first concern was making sure the sharks trying to finish the job weren't harmed by the rescue party, as she'd need their goodwill later. Wizards are supposed to be cautious in their use of lethal force against any being, especially the more intelligent ones. While being a carnivore living in the ocean meant some compromise was allowed -- the natural cycles of predator and prey were considered unavoidable parts of the universe, and apparently the Lone Power thought mutating giant squid for funsies was a good way to stop undersea rituals -- the wizard's oath makes if clear that taking a life is only an option to prevent suffering. Don't increase entropy more than necessary, children.

We also know a bit about S'reee from her role in the Song of the Twelve, which is not just based on her species, but her personality. The Singer is the role she sings, but she does note that she would have taken the Silent One if Nita hadn't volunteered. What we know about the Singer is that she was offered mastery of song which could carry the emotion to break any heart that hears it, but was able to decline this gift for fear of its cost. That suggests that S'reee herself might also idolize the art and feeling of song, not just its use as communication (unusual in a female humpback, which aren't the singers that males are). She is the kind of person who wants to care about others, but also have them care about her.

The Silent One, meanwhile, is explicitly a young person who hasn't yet developed an adult's relationships and bitterly regrets it, but that isn't going to stop her martyrdom to fight the Lone Power. This fits S'reee's general attitude towards her duty: when it comes down on it, she can do it, but doesn't see why she has to pretend she's not making a sacrifice. She is vocal about complaining when given authority, but she then shuts up and gets the job done to the best of her ability. She is not a formal person -- any formal language required by wizardry (and as the Art is heavily language based, there is some, albeit with many local variations) can get S'reee complaining, and the two times she is given A Senior position in canon, she makes it clear that she can't wait to get rid of it and is very happy when she does. One of the bits of banter Nita and S'reee have is when Nita uses her former titles, and S'reee is all 'thank the Sea I got rid of that'.

Given that Nita was the one who ended up with the Silent One role, that made S'reee feel guilty for not being completely certain the human knew what she was volunteering for -- not just that it was Important and an Honor, but that it required the singer's death at the climax of the ritual. S'reee was feeling sufficiently overwhelmed by both being the Senior Wizard coordinating everything, singing a role herself (which was dangerous, even if not certain death), that she didn't ask questions she should have when someone else offered to take the Most Important Role. This could have easily driven S'reee and Nita apart, but they ended up bonding over their similar temperaments once Nita unexpectedly survived the ritual. Both could learn from each other's reactions to duty -- Nita in not trying to carry it alone, and S'reee learning a bit of empathy and perspective as she realized that a human wouldn't get the celebration and remembrance that a whale would for this duty, as few humans even knew of the Song of the Twelve. S'reee already had shared the experience of her injury with Nita as the latter healed her, but this deepened S'reee's bond with the human wizard. As far as S'reee is concerned, Nita is her sister in all but birth. On a lighter note, it also taught S'reee (and Nita) the value of having someone with a vastly different set of problems in their personal lives (beyond both being social species in between childhood and full adulthood) but a common set of professional problems.

S'reee's position as a whale wizard who works with human coworkers on problems caused by humans means she's had to learn subtlety. While most non-human species of wizard on Earth (and off-world) are open with other members of their species, for various reasons, humans are considered under interdict and all wizards keep wizardry and the knowledge of other intelligent species out of the human public eye. Consequently, S'reee's home territory (around Long Island Sound) has her trouble-shooting things while having to work with more subtlety than she had to in the open ocean. This is not something she thinks about too much any more, but it may take a moment to adjust to being on another world. While wizards can leave the planet (or planetary system, or even galaxy on rare occasions), most of S'reee's work seems to have kept her in her home oceans. Her few trips off-world were in the company of humans, or humans and other Earth species (as cats run the intersystem transport network). Her size also means that most wizards she works with come to her: while it is theoretically possible that S'reee could use wizardry to take human form and go walk around a human city, as far as we know, she's never tried that. It could be that S'reee isn't willing to be discomforted by being so out of her element (literally and figuratively). Or it simply is too much power in a spell for no gain, and a lot of confusion if S'reee causes a problem or needs to do an emergency abort. Moving in a setting where land-dwellers are the dominant set of species will be odd: it will be easier to treat the humanoids who live here as not quite the same thing as Earth humans, as it lets S'reee set aside the normal prohibitions she has.

But her duty and the common saying among wizards that 'there are no accidents' (meaning: if you find yourself in an unusual situation, it's probably because the Powers that Be need you to be there to do something) means that she'll be out and about doing things, even thought she continues her focus on the oceans. There may still be a bit of childish whining, especially if she trusts that she doesn't have to be the serious Dignified Sometimes-Senior wizard around you.

Development in MoE: S'reee has adjusted to novel concepts like employment and having a fixed place to sleep, and has found she enjoys the company of other beings enough to rely on her Job's abilities to stay out of the water. The reveal that the eidolon Bahamut was approaching the world and out to cause trouble made S'reee quite insistent that this was why she was summoned. She's going to be quite put out having been trapped in the Dream Width for months, and she may suspect the Lone Power of her world (the personification of Entropy and Death) of causing it. She's also got a long list of correspondents with the world's mythology and her own, and it's really hard to dissuade her.

S'reee also is deeply disappointed that there are none of her sort of wizard here.

Current Samples:
https://melodiesofeternity.dreamwidth.org/9436.html?thread=3413468#cmt3413468
https://melodiesofeternity.dreamwidth.org/8228.html?thread=3691300#cmt3691300

Original Samples:
https://memesofeternity.dreamwidth.org/355.html?thread=40291#cmt40291
https://memesofeternity.dreamwidth.org/355.html?thread=45667#cmt45667

S'reee had been moving around (or being moved before she got her Illusionist Asterisk) for some time to do all the things that the locals of this world had recommended. But she eventually had called a halt to it until she found the nearest coast and went for a swim. Kupoki had remained on shore.

What was she doing here? As far as the Powers that Be's methods went this was... not unprecedented, even if the Sea normally let one know that one would be on assignment. But this could hardly be a usual assignment; she couldn't hear the Sea at all, and her words in the Speech were just worlds. S'reee sang a mournful single note, the whale equivalent of a sigh. There were no accidents, as it was said, so she was meant to be here, but the question was for what reason.

Also why they hadn't sent one of the literally hundreds of thousands of land-based wizards on Earth alone. Well, perhaps that was because a whale was needed, even if she had to become a very small whale indeed.

"Right," S'reee said to herself, swimming farther from shore. She could feel how things opened up: not just that she was no longer in the buildings that these people, like humans, liked to live in, but that the echo suddenly sounded right. "What do we know is causing a problem, that requires a wizard from so far away?" So far, the world didn't seem any worse than what she knew of her own, save for its lack of what S'reee considered wizards and wizardry. Which... well, that was the sort of problem that S'reee had no clue where to start.

She would have to spend time learning as much as she could about this place, to find why the Powers had called her here. And to think Nshe'd teased Nita about making her wizardry her only hobby: at this point, S'reee didn't know what would jump out at her, so she'd have to keep alert all the time for the ripples that preceded the quake, so to speak.

But first she was going to swim over to that school of small fishes she felt in her sonar, and make sure she remembered the taste to tell Hwii'sh.

Vaikuntha
Moogle Name: Kupoki
Moogle Gender: Female

First Job: Illusionist
Second Job: Red Mage

Melody: Leitmotif of the Singer
S'reee was one of the celebrants of the Song of the Twelve and that leaves a mark on a wizard. Without the other celebrants (and the sacrifice), she is crafting her own independent spell, but within the ethos of the ritual.

The spell has a chance (rising with level of the Melody) of inflicting multiple status effects on the target: Silence, Blind, Slow, and Paralyze. The probabilities are independent of one another, so a target may have all four conditions. Furthermore, S'reee loses any status effect inflicted on her by an enemy, as she declines the gift of the Lone Power.