Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
----Random Tip----

----------------------

North Valentis: Winter | South Valentis: Summer
Welcome to Mythwood. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features.

Username:   Password:
Val Agellsen; Butch Pirate Captain Extraordinaire
Topic Started: Dec 13 2016, 12:43 AM (59 Views)
Scout

Name: Valerie "Val" (Valentine) Agellsen
Race: Barovian Human
Gender: Female (n.b. frequently passes as male)
Age: 26

Abilities:
Posted Image-Posted Image-Posted Image

Conjuration. Val most commonly summons skeleton (undead) sailors to crew her ship or fight her enemies, bringing them surging out of the ground. When she needs a bit of utility not found in unbreathing skeletons, she tends to bring forth other undead (such as ethereal spirits) or animals (such as eagles, sharks, and wolves).

Arcane Familiar. Val's familiar is a massive, brightly-colored parrot named Skully. Skully is primarily green, but has a patch of red on his face, and blue and yellow on his wings and tail (like a typical Military Macaw). He is about two feet long, with a four-foot wingspan, making him the size of a hawk, and much larger than any typical parrot. He speaks in a typical parrot voice, although being highly intelligent, he is capable of more than simple mimicry. Skully, despite his colorful appearance, is rather gloomy and pessimistic, sometimes voicing Val's doubts and fears--although she's trained him to do so only telepathically most of the time. He also often acts as the voice of reason for Val, trying to bring her down off of some hare-brained scheme or persuading her to flee when she's in over her head. Nevertheless, Skully is unendingly loyal to Val, and will do just about anything she asks; and in the rare situation where Val is doubtful or afraid, Skully offers an encouraging word. In this way, Skully typically acts as a foil to Val.

Tag. Val can tag an object to teleport to her. She typically has her favorite tricorner hat tagged so that she can teleport it back into place when it inevitably gets swept away in a fight or a windstorm.

Non-Magical Skills. Val knows the basics of raising crops and farm animals, and knows how to do most of the jobs required for sailing a large ship quite well. She also retains considerable strength and endurance, developed from a childhood of farmwork and years as part of a ship's crew. She is proficient in hand-to-hand combat from her days as a pirate, and is well-versed in how to use sabers, daggers, throwing knives, and crossbows.

Appearance: Val, although born a pale Barovian, is considerably tanned from years spent in the sun. She keeps her brown hair cut very short, no more than an inch from her scalp. She stands at about 5'5" (1.65 m), and her body is muscular and heavyset. Her face and body are peppered in nicks and scars from a life of hard labor and fighting. She has brown eyes and a prominent nose. She has a rather square jaw and broad shoulders, which combined with her typical attire and deep voice leads to her being frequently read as a man.

Clothing and Attire: Val dresses almost exclusively in men’s sailor’s clothing. A typical outfit for her is comprised of a pair of dark trousers or sailor’s slops; a lightly-colored tunic; a short, dark sailors’ jacket; and a pair of brown leather boots. She typically wears a solid-color neckerchief (green or blue) around her neck, and her favorite well-worn brown leather tricorner hat upon her head. She often wears a steel breastplate between her tunic and jacket, particularly when she’s expecting trouble, and a steel full helmet in place of her hat when she knows there’s a fight coming. The only item of clothing that typically distinguishes her from a regular sailor is her falconer’s gauntlet, a thick leather glove that extends up to her left elbow and provides a perch for Skully. She carries a cutlass sheathed at her waist, a set of half a dozen throwing daggers on the other side of her belt, and a concealed dagger tucked into one boot for good measure.

Alice. After surviving the death of her last crew, Val traded in her old captain’s ship for a smaller merchant vessel, which she named Alice. Alice is small enough for Val to crew with 10 summoned sailors, although it’s a bare-bones crew to be sure. It’s also too small to be a proper warship, which has limited her recent pirate activities, although it’s great for travel and exploring, and still plenty big enough to terrorize fishing vessels and other small merchant ships. It is 75 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 12 feet deep, making it quite small, but it is fully-rigged with three masts. It is equipped with four medium-sized cannons.

Personality: Val is usually an optimistic, cheerful, carefree, and friendly person. She lives for thrills, adventure, and proving herself. She is typically fairly open, and dislikes keeping secrets or having to deal with complex schemes. She can be rather short-sighted and impatient. She has no qualms about robbery and murder in general, but she has a soft spot for children and the poor; on an alignment compass, she lies somewhere between Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral.

Val has an appreciation for hard work, particularly “getting your hands dirty” sort of manual labor. She feels a sense of camaraderie with farmers, sailors, and other simple laborers. Being raised in Barovia, she developed a mistrust and prejudice against magic early in life, which she has not entirely shaken even since becoming a spellcaster herself. Dark Mages especially give her the “heebie-jeebies,” and she is frequently superstitious. Given her powers originally manifested by summoning undead, she is sometimes even unsettled by her own powers, although she is gradually overcoming that anxiety.

She has a dislike of nobility, fine etiquette, and notions of “properness”; in particular, she believes that kings and lords are responsible for most of the suffering in Barovia and much of the “civilized” world. She dislikes authority in general, especially authority which she doesn’t interact with on a day-to-day basis; for example, she can sometimes tolerate obeying a ship’s captain, but an admiral or a wealthy merchant who owns the ship she typically has no respect for.

Val holds a special disdain for gender norms and rules. She is not particularly offended when she is read as a man (and frequently takes advantage of that fact), but she has a thin skin when it comes to blatant sexism or homophobia.

History: Val was born to a peasant farmer family in rural Barovia. She had several older brothers, and grew up liking things that were generally considered “boy things.” She played rough with her brothers, learned how to fight, and helped around the farm with the men’s jobs whenever given a chance. She realized at a young age that she was attracted to women; her first girlfriend was another local farm girl named Alice, and both were 14 at the time.

As she grew older and it appeared her “tomboy phase” was not a phase, her family grew less and less tolerant of her gender nonconformity. At 16, her relationship with Alice was uncovered; Val was disowned, and she left home with nothing but the clothes on her back. She fled to Strathmoor, disguised herself as a boy, and became a sailor. She traveled the world, changing from crew to crew.

At the age of 20, she found a home on a pirate ship called the Wandering Plunderer. She stayed with that ship for 5 years, becoming a proper outlaw; she murdered many merchants and plundered a lot of booty in that time. One fateful night, however, her ship was ambushed by Barovian authorities; a frantic battle broke out, and all of her crew was captured or killed. She suffered several serious wounds and fell unconscious; she was left for dead aboard the Wandering Plunderer, and the already-damaged ship was left to drift in the sea with the assumption that it would soon sink.

In a twist of fate, the Wandering Plunderer did not sink, and Val awoke many hours later to find herself alone and bleeding. For a rare instant in her life, she panicked, knowing that she could never pilot the ship alone. After spending several more hours panicking and trying to accept the fact that she would die in the middle of the ocean, a massive parrot came flying out of the sky—the first time her familiar, Skully, appeared. When the parrot began speaking, and not just mimicking phrases but passionately reassuring her that she would survive, she was sure that she had gone mad.

In her panicked and delirious mind, she summoned creatures for the first time: nearly a dozen skeletons, dressed in the clothes of her fallen shipmates. She could not believe her eyes when she saw undead sailors begin crewing the ship with great difficulty, eventually steering it back toward land. Even when she had consciously given up, her subconscious found a way, and Val survived.

Once back on dry land, Val pondered what to do. With new, unexplored powers and an intelligent parrot companion, she resolved to find a way to return to her pirate career. She sold what was left of the Wandering Plunderer (along with a cache of treasure hidden in a corner of the ship that the authorities neglected to check) and bought a smaller sloop, which she called Alice, after her first girlfriend. Capable of crewing it with only her and her summons, she set off, her own captain, ready to take on the world. Since then she’s further explored her powers, learning much about how they work from Skully, and started figuring out what she can and can’t get away with on the high seas with only her small boat and (literal) skeleton crew.
Edited by Scout, Jan 4 2017, 07:42 PM.
Offline Profile Quote ^^^
 
Classix
Member Avatar

I like this, havent read anything but the tittle for it yet.

-----

looks good. No complaints here.
Edited by Classix, Dec 13 2016, 08:24 AM.
Offline Profile Quote ^^^
 
Kilik
Member Avatar
Keep it short, but embellish
Like Classix... I do like this. I like it alot... Short answer I'd label it as Complete.

But... get ready, I can tell you don't like to do histories or that you burned out by the time you got there. So here I have a couple of complaints about this and it'll be the biggest difference between complete and Renowned so dont take offense

Your characters name is Valerie yet almost every single paragraph you start off with Val. Seriously look at the first word of every paragraph. Not counting the header words. Excuse the harshness here... Just because its her nickname and the more predominately used version of her name, Doesn't mean to always use it. It creates monotony and deters us the readers. Switch it up every now and then, use every iteration of her name.

An example i have with my own Kia'Dae. Sometimes I use the pronouns, Half-elf, Sand-elf, Ghi'Naari, Kia and Kia'Dae. Sometimes just She, Her or even 'the thief' are acceptable. This is where fancy titles can be abused. It breaks up the monotony and helps keep the reader involved. You can even use a version of her name as exposition, telling us that some sort of thing is going to happen without ever telling us prior to the event.

Your actual history breaks this up so my complaint feels a little null here but do keep it in mind.

Val has four brothers. Sharing a memory or two and naming these four brothers is the difference between complete and renowned. Details no matter how minor can make a huge difference.

The only real history in your history section of any value is the last few paragraphs with the arrival of Skully. This here shows some actual character and is far less vague than the family history behind it.

Look at it from my perspective and in how i took it in.

person had poor family.
- they don't matter

Person differed in sexual preference.
-this is a no-no. Family that doesn't matter disproves and eventually disowns

Alice whom is of the most importance here.
-nothing else to say. main character named a boat after her

Became a sailor
-with who? Why sailor work? Did she learn to do sailor stuff or just deckhand the whole thing

Became a pirate
-did pirate things. on what ship?
-The only event in 5 years that mattered is that barovians sacked the ship and killed everyone.

Lone survivor
-Actually details here happen.

You can see why it'd be a little unfulfilling here to read after such an elaborate and rather detailed start.

In my opinion, if you improve on the history you'd have a very strong everything else to go with that fantastically detailed profile. Solid, great start, needs improvement.
Edited by Kilik, Dec 14 2016, 01:21 AM.
Offline Profile Quote ^^^
 
Scout

Feedback appreciated, Kilik.

I use Val exclusively because Val refers to herself as Val almost exclusively. It's how she introduces herself, typically. She only uses Valerie in the rare circumstance that she's treating a formal circumstance seriously or requires it for some reason (or Valentine for when she's passing). I suppose that's a detail to include in the profile once I go through another edit... hah. I did use pronouns. I strongly dislike the use of random titles like "the thief" in writing; it's really only predominate in RP or fanfic and it quickly leads to the silliness of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome.

edit: as for starting off paragraphs with "Val", there is some repeated sentence structure here to blame for that. However, since most of the setions of the profile are closer to a detailed list than a narrative, I figured that wasn't a big deal. The history is the one section where that's not true, and you'll note I vary it up more for what I do have in history.

The rest of your criticism is justified and well-received. I'm not aiming for renowned at this level, and most of what you mentioned are details I'll hack out later (probably after playing her a bit). I can always update the profile and go for renowned later.
Edited by Scout, Dec 14 2016, 02:04 AM.
Offline Profile Quote ^^^
 
Kilik
Member Avatar
Keep it short, but embellish
that's the spirit we like to see. Also while I do agree with you, sometimes the change up is needed especially here on the forums.

Contact Davina, Luthe or Gunslinger (in order of who best to contact first) and tell her you feel you are ready to have this moved to the appropriate section. Send her the link to make her life just a little bit easier. :p

Run now brother. There's RPing to be had
Edited by Kilik, Dec 14 2016, 02:29 AM.
Offline Profile Quote ^^^
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · Character Profiles · Next Topic »

Misty Woods created by Helena & Cory of ZNR