Liselotte Beck (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ordinarycitizen) wrote2017-10-19 02:33 pm
ordinarycitizen) wrote2017-10-19 02:33 pm
Application for lasteden
OOC INFORMATION.
PLAYER NAME: Kira
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
narwa
CHARACTERS ALREADY IN-GAME: N/A
IC INFORMATION.
CHARACTER NAME: Liselotte Beck
CANON: Changeling: The Lost (Tabletop OCs)
CANON POINT: 2017
AGE: Louise is 43 (officially 44), Lottie is 3.
HISTORY:
Liselotte Beck was born 44 years ago in Maidstone, Kent, England. Everything was quite normal - a nuclear family with mum, dad and two older siblings - until her first birthday, when... well, she changed. Her mother felt the change the most keenly, of course, but the whole family thought so, and the family doctor was a bit worried about the sudden set-back in development. But soon enough, normal development continued, and the child quickly caught up with her peers.
Just that it wasn't the same child any more. Because you see, on the night of her first birthday, an envoy of a True Fae, Gentry, or whatever else one would name the Lords and Ladies of Arcadia, had taken the baby out of her cradle and brought her home to their Lady. In return, the Lady built a replacement out of refuse lying around her place. And since she loved nothing more than teeth and her whole realm was filled with them, the replacement for the baby was built out of what she was brought by her helpers and didn't want, or had already used: Brown and diseased teeth, malformed and modded teeth, fillings and false teeth; used dentistry tools of all ages; and dental floss.
This replacement was then carried over to the human world by the envoy and placed in the cradle moments after the baby had been taken away. Because time isn't an absolute in Arcadia as well as in the Hedge, the area that connects Arcadia with our world.
The new Liselotte grew up like any girl would, got excellent grades in school, and from an early age on was fascinated with dentistry. She went on to study it after school, graduated, and started working as a dentist while continuing to read literature on dentistry like others would read novels. She also met a nice young fellow student during uni, and having similar outlooks on and expectations of life, they got married and... didn't have children. They tried, and tried, and felt terrible about the lack of offspring, and started to fight about every little thing. It destroyed their marriage, eventually.
...And Liselotte, suddenly forcibly freed of the perfect biography, childless in her mid-thirties and divorced, relaxed a bit. She moved back to Kent, specifically Canterbury, and settled down. And then as it sometimes happens, things just fell into place. She met a local, nice fellow divorcee named Gillian with two small children who easily accepted her as their mum, they moved in together, and when equal marriage was legalized in 2014, they got married. Things were perfect.
Meanwhile, things weren't going so well for the real Liselotte. She was turned into something resembling a big woodlouse and tasked with sorting good teeth from bad teeth and carrying them to the assigned locations, and spent two years scurrying around tunnels in a realm where the buildings and everything else were made out of teeth. Very soon, she'd completely forgotten what it had been like to be a human baby in the mundane world.
Back in Kent, things went haywire. There was a niece of her wife who would sometimes babysit the children, but one day when Liselotte came to her sibling-in-law's house to pick the kids up, something was wrong. She rushed in to find everything in chaos. The niece had vanished and she couldn't make sense of what her children told her about her whereabouts. And then a group of strangers showed up and asked what had happened.
You know, some days you just need to go "I have no clue, but if you're going to get her, you have to let me tag along". Not on your most sensible days, but that wasn't a good time to think rationally.
For some reason they let her tag along.
...And then her world turned a bit upside-down and topsy-turvy, because the trip after some shenanigans ended up bringing her into the very realm that the real Liselotte was living in.
And replacement Liselotte learned who she was: A Fetch, a being made out of crap and probably without a soul, whose very identity was stolen from someone else, with fae powers and and fae issues. And she realized that her original, her Changeling, was very close by.
And no older than three. Maybe a bit younger.
When they finally returned to our side of the Hedge, they hadn't only recovered the niece but Liselotte was also carrying a baby on her hip. The logic behind tracking down the toddler and dragging her back with her went somewhere alone the lines of an acute identity crisis and existential angst spiked with lots of guilt, the stark thought that this would be the closest that she would ever get to a child of her biological own (because Fetches are infertile), and a kneejerk reaction.
And that is where the story of Louise and Lottie starts - the names were the group's idea to let both of them keep their name while still being clearly separate people.
After the motley, the group of Changelings - because that was what the group of strangers and her niece were - returned with Louise and Lottie in tow, some quick politics and dancing around issues was done, and Louise and the local Freehold - the local political body of Changelings - ended up with a situation of watchful tolerance of each other. Normally, Fetches and Changelings are (due to their nature) inherently hostile towards one another down to murder, so it was quite a feat to get all four courts to declare a truce with this one Fetch. It helped a lot that the motley and Louise had kind of befriended one another on their adventures, and they decided to vouch for her.
Lottie was first placed with a Changeling as a foster parent, but after a while she was allowed to come and live with Louise. ...Some forgery of paper later, she was a next-of-kin adoption from some distant cousin, who just happened to have the same legal name as one of her new adoptive mothers. Louise's wife and other children were surprised by the sudden addition to the family, but everything can be figured out with some excuses, forgery, and a bit of magic.
Over time, Lottie joined the Summer court, and that was also the court that Louise ended up getting along with the best. Both things influenced one another. Currently, they live a fairly regular life, except for that Louise has started to specialize some in supernatural teeth with her dentistry, and that sometimes they get pulled into court politics and general fae shenanigans.
PERSONALITY:
Louise
Louise wasn't born. She was created as a one year old, and while she is an exceptionally skilfully made Fetch who grew up human from a very young age, which means that in most regards she enjoyed a perfectly regular human upbringing and development, with all the up-and-downsides that that brings, she still fundamentally isn't human. For one, all the very early development from conception to a year of age, the big foundations of one's inner landscape - one's emotional constitution and mental resilience, for example - as well as some cognitive and physical capabilities (which she caught up on quickly) and last but not least early but fundamental lessons about social relationships: All that had to be learned at a later date. Secondly, she doesn't have feelings quite the same way as humans do, both the fleeting kind like 'oh I like that flower' and the deeper kind like the love of one's children. It's not that she does not have those, but they are ...less rooted in her biology and more in her personality, one might say. She learned them, observed them in her surroundings, and they took deep root within her, but she wasn't "born" with them.
An effect of this is her aversion to standing out, which in turn means that she (subconsciously!) tends to try and follow social narratives when they aren't in her way. Her biography up to her divorce is a result of this: The intelligent-girl-studies-medicine-and-has-career-while-having-a-family narrative was one that she had observed in her surroundings and had seen being deemed "normal", and had been presented to her as one that she should follow. She did. ...until it didn't work any more, and the search for a new narrative threw her into a deep hole for a while. She mostly clawed her way out of it by getting the next closest thing - the most conservative queer family in Kent. She still tends to speak of her "spouse" instead of "wife" to not stand out, not that she really realizes that. Her decision to adopt Lottie was also motivated by this - somehow integrating the existence of her 3-year-old Changeling into a regular woman's biography. In Eden this will likely mean that she'll try to integrate as much as possible into the Light society, and see no issue with trying to make Lottie integrate as well as possible, too.
Related to this is that she, if possible, just wants to live a quiet life. She isn't someone who likes to go out on adventures. There is one thing that keeps drawing her into going outside of her comfort zone in that regard, again and again: Feeling responsible for someone or something, necessities of her own survival, and Lottie (this kind of ties into both of the other options). She followed the group of Changelings into the Hedge because she felt responsible for her niece-in-law, she keeps getting involved with matters of the local Freehold and especially the Summer Court because being on their good side means that an entity that could be a powerful enemy will be on her side instead of potentially trying to kill her - and that she will be able to keep Lottie. Being in the Freehold's good book is also tantamount to creating a safe environment in which she can prosper for Lottie, whom she considers her daughter and treats as such. She will be there asap if Lottie needs help, and because Lottie has a tendency to crawl into places where she shouldn't be and talk to and befriend people who make both of them get into trouble... Well. She doesn't do more than she needs to do, but she still leads a much more exciting life than she'd rather.
Louise loves her job. She became a dentist instead of going into academia because academia didn't seem to allow for mothers when she was at that point of her life, but she still devours scholarly magazines and ever since she realized that no, not everyone can see the stranger parts of the world like she can, she became fascinated by the special challenges that supernaturals face with their teeth and jaws. At first, after gaining enough trust, she started to serve Changeling patients (and was always there with a scientific eye, keeping book and asking more questions than strictly necessary for treatment), but after a while word about her got out and members from other supernatural communities started to frequent her office as well (and then there was an incident with a few people who don't like supernaturals, and after that she was suddenly under the protection of multiple, otherwise hostile towards one another communities, and gained so many new supernatural patients that they make up the majority of her patients these days). She even managed to make some professional friends (or well, at least friendly acquaintances) with a similar tilt to their medical careers.
Lottie and her job are two important items in her life. Her wife, her step-children and Liselotte's parents are the other important people. Her connection with them might not be as essential as the one with Lottie, but Liselotte's parents raised her and she loves them like any daughter would love good parents, because she has learned to do so. Love is always not only a feeling but also a performative and generally a thing that makes one act in a certain way, after all. She visits them regularly and makes sure that Lottie spends time with them often as well, because even if she's their grandchild to them, that at least means that they will have a close relationship. Louise's relationship with her wife is a very loving and unusually (for Louise) relaxed one: Not because it is open or anything - Louise eyes the idea of open or poly relationship with rather a lot of distrust, and generally has a very conservative stance on all matters partnership and family (with obvious adaptations when it comes to things like equal marriage). It's rather because her wife is a pretty laid-back person, and because Louise spent all her high-strung expectations on her first marriage. Her step-children, she loves and regards as if they were her own. Being a Fetch, and thus infertile, she'll never truly have children of her own, and while that was a harsh reality to come to terms with, she can cope because well. She has children, right? She supports them seeing their father regularly (see above - children should have a father), but that doesn't mean that they are any less hers.
Generally, Louise tries to be a friendly and pleasant person, even when she is exhausted. ...And she fairly often ends up exhausted, which is understandable because she is stretching herself a bit thin between her mundane family, Lottie and the whole Changeling politics, and her job. But she is a very resilient person (something she shares with Lottie) and will mostly power through things. Maybe sit down and need a tea somewhere in-between. But then get up and carry on. And she does better keeping busy. She's never been one for idle hands (metaphorically speaking - she can sit perfectly still for hours if you give her an interesting scientific paper about a new approach to root channels), and will find a way to keep herself busy in a normal-life way. Preferably in her field, but if necessary any type of academical or (medical-)help oriented activity will do or at least be considered. She is also a curious person. A curious person whose common sense and wish for safety is much stronger than her curiosity, but if she considers it safe to inquire, experiment and study, she will do so.
Lottie
Lottie is a very curious child who likes to approach people and will talk to everyone around at least once. She also doesn't have a very good sense of danger and gets bored easily, so she will at times slip away, crawl into things, address the wrong person, ...[insert shenanigans], and get herself into trouble.
Being a Changeling, she also has very specific hang-ups, and will often be completely unphased by things that would upset or delight other children her age, while reacting strongly to others that others might not care about - someone who has a mouth full of sharp teeth? She's touched a vampire's fangs and knows a guy why has literal razors for teeth. Pointy teeth are peachy. A place that is completely white? She'll absolutely freak out.
Generally, she is open, makes friends easily, and is a very good-natured child. She isn't exactly a loud or exuberant one, though, you'll rarely find her yelling while running about - she's more likely to sit and watch, peer over things and study curiously, edge towards something or someone quietly to look at it. As stated above, she doesn't have particularly good risk assessment skills, but she doesn't storm into trouble, she rather quietly, curiously pokes her head into them.
Most of her risk assessment is done by proxy - will say, she copies a trusted person's approach to the situation. Most of the time, this will be Louise - if Louise is nervous, Lottie is nervous, if Louise trusts someone, Lottie assumes she's good to go. The rest of her risk assessment is done by listening to things she's been told to do or not to. But she's significantly more ...selective about listening to those things than about copying trusted people's approaches.
Something to note about her development is that much like Louise's, but in a very different way, it was stunted in areas. Between her first and third birthday, roughly, she wasn't treated as a child or allowed to develop and grow the way a child would. All that was important was that she followed orders to carry things from A to B and sort them according to specific criteria, and during that time she mostly learned to firstly perform those tasks well enough to not get in trouble and secondly stay out of almost everyone's way when she hadn't been tasked with something. That's where her fairly quiet and watchful nature comes from.
Two things have helped her opening up and getting over the trauma of her Durance as well as catching up developmentally afterwards: One is her own inquisitive curiosity. Yes, she knows that often it is better to not be seen, and confronted with danger her reaction will be to bail the fuck out of there or hide behind someone if that's impossible. But those things, that she'd consider common sense if she knew the word, are always weighed against her curiosity, and coupled with her tendency to not recognize dangers (or rather, be unable to tell if it is or is not a danger, and when in doubt, curiosity always wins), she often approaches despite that common sense. The other thing that helped her was the stability and loving care of her new family, the best effort of multiple supernaturals to raise her into as stable as possible; the united efforts of both sides to offer her surroundings in which she can be a three year old, neither more nor less, (to the point where there is an unwritten rule about not involving her directly in court, or any kind of, politics); and the existence of Louise (and to a lesser degree the cousin-in-law) who unites both worlds, helps her integrate them, protects her from slip-ups betraying her other-ness to outsiders, and is a solid guiding figure to look for on either side of the humans-fae divide.
Even if Lottie always has to make sure if she should call her "Mum" or "Louise" right now - Mum is for being around humans, Louise is for being around Changelings. There are important lines that she should not cross, and that is one of them. Another is to not tell regular humans, or non-Changelings in general, about anything relating to her not being a regular little human child. Those are rules that she abides by whenever she can identify the line, with occasional sli-ups.
ABILITIES:
Both Lottie and Louise are fae beings. That means that they can see the real appearance of another fae creature as well as the human guise that hides them from all non-fae beings. They can also both open entrances into the Hedge: That means that they can turn any kind of passageway into a mystical opening into the Hedge, the realm between Arcadia and our reality. [As a side note: While there is some canon-inherent vagueness surrounding this, it can be assumed that neither of them has a soul - Lottie lost hers, and Louise never had one.]
Lottie
Lottie is a Changeling, which means that she has a Mask, a perfect hiding mechanism of fae magic that makes her look like a perfectly regular child and will adjust the perception of everything that she wears and touches or that touches her to support that illusion. Mask deceives all senses and sensors (a doctor could examine her and find nothing unusual). The only people who will be able to see through it are other fae creatures (this includes Louise) or people in sufficiently fairytale-y situations - virgins in the light of the first ray of the new moon, a person looking through a midsummer fire, and so on. Sometimes the fleeting impression out of the corner of one's eye before you blink might also show something being off. There are only two ways to let others see her real form: Burning all her Glamour and dropping her Mask, and the Oath of the Rose and Thorn, which allows the person who takes it to see the true form of any fae creature for a whole month.
Under her mask Lottie definitely does not look normal. Instead... Think of a woodlouse. Now take a child and replace hair, back and legs with the back segment of the woodlouse, add the antennae, give the the back segments a stone-like texture and give the proper child parts a structure that is like very soft, clammy chitin. Give everything a grey-ish colour, and you have a rough idea of what Lottie looks like. She is also heavier to those who can see through her Mask.
Being a Changeling she also can and has to harvest Glamour, which is the energy that fae creatures use for their magic. She can harvest from any emotion someone with a soul has, though supernatural Glamour can have side effects and members of her court harvest most efficiently from anger and wrath.
Changelings are lucid dreamers and thus capable of altering and fighting dreams, though Lottie's skill level at this is very low.
Skills more specific to Lottie include (note, some of these require Glamour to be used):
- Slither and Squirm: Lottie can get through spaces, either with her whole body or with parts of it, that should by all rights be just too narrow to get through them (think of a cat's ability to get into that tiny crack behind the fridge, or of someone who can get out of handcuffs despite them being tightly secured).
- Darkness (level 4): (1) make people very lowkey frightened and much more susceptible to being scared by something, all the way to making them more susceptible to panic; (2) enhance physical conditions that limit perception to make it harder to notice her - make the night around darker, distracting noises more distracting, smells in the surroundings strong enough to overpower her own scent, and so on; (3) all sleeping targets that she can see or hear at that time will be neigh impossible to wake; (4) she can run along any solid surface, like a ceiling or wall, and will move on slippery surfaces like ice like she would on regular ground.
- Eternal Summer (level 1): she is comfortable in all temperatures, and may even heat a whole room - and if she concentrates especially hard, the warmth will stay no matter the circumstances (so even if someone leaves a door open).
Mantle (Summer) (level 1): this one just denotes court affiliation to other Changelings. If a person stands nearby her and it is perfectly still, they'll get the impression of hearing the wind in the ears on a hot summer's day.
Iron Stomach: Lottie can eat about everything, not get sick from it and even gain nutrition from it, including things that are not food items (mouldy bread, tree roots, teeth...)
Toxin Resistance: Toxins, poisons, drugs etc have a much harder time harming her than other people. The downside to that is that desired effects of those substances (painkillers, for example) also have a much harder time impacting her.
Louise
Louise is a Fetch. Similar to Lottie, she has something like a Mien and a Mask, just that her Mien is... well. The crap that the Fae who made her had at hand when she needed a replacement-Liselotte. So she's a walking mess of bad teeth wrapped around dentistry tools, held together by floss. She does however have a power that hides this from other fae beings, too, so unless she dies (at which point she'd just become a pile of the items that she was made of) she'll likely just look like a regular human to everyone (non-fae beings could still notice that her aura etc are wrong, though, and the fae rule about nothing every being 100% applies, too). Unlike Lottie, she cannot drop her Mask.
Like Lottie, she can harvest and use Glamour, with no preference as to what emotion she takes it from, and like Lottie she has the ability to dream lucidly and thus battle inside of and slightly alter dreams.
Unlike Lottie, she isn't the original. Most Fetch abilities are dependent on Changelings, or the Changeling they were made to replace. For one, they can sense every Changeling within 50 foot, and single their own one out - so if Lottie is within 50 foot of her, Louise will know exactly where she is, if she's moving, etc. In addition to this, Louise is unusually finely attuned to Lottie and has an intuitive understanding of her actions and mindset that goes far beyond what a mother would usually have, which gives her an edge over the Changeling - if Lottie reaches for something, Louise will usually get there before she does, and such (in rulebook terms, if they draw on an action, the action goes to the Fetch, and they always use the same initiative).
Lastly, Louise can teleport via shadows. The reach of this teleportation is a maximum of 100 yards. She steps into a shadow (that she can fit through) and springs up from another shadow (same size restriction) at the desired destination. She doesn't have to see the destination, but she gets no supernatural knowledge about that place, so if there's a problem on the other end, she'll learn about it when she gets there if she can't see/etc. it from her original location. This ability requires the expenditure of Glamour.
Louise also has a very good sense of direction and unusually strong for a woman her size and build.
INVENTORY:
- Clothes on their backs
- A stroller with all the usual items that would be found in one
FACTION:
Louise would pick the faction with some input from Lottie, and both of them would immediately decide against Blood, because they aren't fighters and would do terribly there. Louise would decide against Spring because she knows jack shit about farming, and Lottie would decide against it out of confusing it with the Changeling Courts (she's Summer court herself and all Spring courtiers that she's ever met were boring). Louise would deeply distrust the secretive nature of Ice (seriously, what are they hiding, it can't be anything good. Let's stay away from that), while Lottie would be worried about the dragons.
Meanwhile, Louise would consider a safe place with good educational facilities an excellent place for her kid to grow up, and due to her own long stay in the educational system and her in-depth knowledge about dentistry, current science of the field, and her own research on supernatural teeth, she'd feel right at home in an academically inclined environment and probably would have a few things to offer herself. Lottie would not like the concept of Light, but once it was explained to her that the place isn't actually lighter or darker than the other areas, she'd be fine with the faction. As long as they have gummy bears for her.
OBJECTIVES:
For the most part, Liselotte want to just live a normal life. Louise is used to working and being the/a breadwinner of the family, and while she'd prefer to do something in her actual field she'll at least look into doing other tasks - as long as they don't downgrade her too much. Lottie, meanwhile, is three and will mostly go where Louise takes her and get sticky.
So neither of them will really push the plot. But there is one fairly simple way to get them involved with almost everything: Lottie is a very curious child and will get into things. Half the time literally. But also by talking to everyone who looks interesting, wandering around alone when she can escape, and more. And Louise, being protective of Lottie, will show up at her side as soon as Lottie is in trouble, or even before that. Or at least try to get to her.
ANYTHING ELSE: What does the preschool system in the Light faction look like/what kind of child care facilities are there?
SAMPLE.
Here we go, there are more threads with them in that mingle in case you want to see more.
PLAYER NAME: Kira
CONTACT:
CHARACTERS ALREADY IN-GAME: N/A
IC INFORMATION.
CHARACTER NAME: Liselotte Beck
CANON: Changeling: The Lost (Tabletop OCs)
CANON POINT: 2017
AGE: Louise is 43 (officially 44), Lottie is 3.
HISTORY:
Liselotte Beck was born 44 years ago in Maidstone, Kent, England. Everything was quite normal - a nuclear family with mum, dad and two older siblings - until her first birthday, when... well, she changed. Her mother felt the change the most keenly, of course, but the whole family thought so, and the family doctor was a bit worried about the sudden set-back in development. But soon enough, normal development continued, and the child quickly caught up with her peers.
Just that it wasn't the same child any more. Because you see, on the night of her first birthday, an envoy of a True Fae, Gentry, or whatever else one would name the Lords and Ladies of Arcadia, had taken the baby out of her cradle and brought her home to their Lady. In return, the Lady built a replacement out of refuse lying around her place. And since she loved nothing more than teeth and her whole realm was filled with them, the replacement for the baby was built out of what she was brought by her helpers and didn't want, or had already used: Brown and diseased teeth, malformed and modded teeth, fillings and false teeth; used dentistry tools of all ages; and dental floss.
This replacement was then carried over to the human world by the envoy and placed in the cradle moments after the baby had been taken away. Because time isn't an absolute in Arcadia as well as in the Hedge, the area that connects Arcadia with our world.
The new Liselotte grew up like any girl would, got excellent grades in school, and from an early age on was fascinated with dentistry. She went on to study it after school, graduated, and started working as a dentist while continuing to read literature on dentistry like others would read novels. She also met a nice young fellow student during uni, and having similar outlooks on and expectations of life, they got married and... didn't have children. They tried, and tried, and felt terrible about the lack of offspring, and started to fight about every little thing. It destroyed their marriage, eventually.
...And Liselotte, suddenly forcibly freed of the perfect biography, childless in her mid-thirties and divorced, relaxed a bit. She moved back to Kent, specifically Canterbury, and settled down. And then as it sometimes happens, things just fell into place. She met a local, nice fellow divorcee named Gillian with two small children who easily accepted her as their mum, they moved in together, and when equal marriage was legalized in 2014, they got married. Things were perfect.
Meanwhile, things weren't going so well for the real Liselotte. She was turned into something resembling a big woodlouse and tasked with sorting good teeth from bad teeth and carrying them to the assigned locations, and spent two years scurrying around tunnels in a realm where the buildings and everything else were made out of teeth. Very soon, she'd completely forgotten what it had been like to be a human baby in the mundane world.
Back in Kent, things went haywire. There was a niece of her wife who would sometimes babysit the children, but one day when Liselotte came to her sibling-in-law's house to pick the kids up, something was wrong. She rushed in to find everything in chaos. The niece had vanished and she couldn't make sense of what her children told her about her whereabouts. And then a group of strangers showed up and asked what had happened.
You know, some days you just need to go "I have no clue, but if you're going to get her, you have to let me tag along". Not on your most sensible days, but that wasn't a good time to think rationally.
For some reason they let her tag along.
...And then her world turned a bit upside-down and topsy-turvy, because the trip after some shenanigans ended up bringing her into the very realm that the real Liselotte was living in.
And replacement Liselotte learned who she was: A Fetch, a being made out of crap and probably without a soul, whose very identity was stolen from someone else, with fae powers and and fae issues. And she realized that her original, her Changeling, was very close by.
And no older than three. Maybe a bit younger.
When they finally returned to our side of the Hedge, they hadn't only recovered the niece but Liselotte was also carrying a baby on her hip. The logic behind tracking down the toddler and dragging her back with her went somewhere alone the lines of an acute identity crisis and existential angst spiked with lots of guilt, the stark thought that this would be the closest that she would ever get to a child of her biological own (because Fetches are infertile), and a kneejerk reaction.
And that is where the story of Louise and Lottie starts - the names were the group's idea to let both of them keep their name while still being clearly separate people.
After the motley, the group of Changelings - because that was what the group of strangers and her niece were - returned with Louise and Lottie in tow, some quick politics and dancing around issues was done, and Louise and the local Freehold - the local political body of Changelings - ended up with a situation of watchful tolerance of each other. Normally, Fetches and Changelings are (due to their nature) inherently hostile towards one another down to murder, so it was quite a feat to get all four courts to declare a truce with this one Fetch. It helped a lot that the motley and Louise had kind of befriended one another on their adventures, and they decided to vouch for her.
Lottie was first placed with a Changeling as a foster parent, but after a while she was allowed to come and live with Louise. ...Some forgery of paper later, she was a next-of-kin adoption from some distant cousin, who just happened to have the same legal name as one of her new adoptive mothers. Louise's wife and other children were surprised by the sudden addition to the family, but everything can be figured out with some excuses, forgery, and a bit of magic.
Over time, Lottie joined the Summer court, and that was also the court that Louise ended up getting along with the best. Both things influenced one another. Currently, they live a fairly regular life, except for that Louise has started to specialize some in supernatural teeth with her dentistry, and that sometimes they get pulled into court politics and general fae shenanigans.
PERSONALITY:
Louise
Louise wasn't born. She was created as a one year old, and while she is an exceptionally skilfully made Fetch who grew up human from a very young age, which means that in most regards she enjoyed a perfectly regular human upbringing and development, with all the up-and-downsides that that brings, she still fundamentally isn't human. For one, all the very early development from conception to a year of age, the big foundations of one's inner landscape - one's emotional constitution and mental resilience, for example - as well as some cognitive and physical capabilities (which she caught up on quickly) and last but not least early but fundamental lessons about social relationships: All that had to be learned at a later date. Secondly, she doesn't have feelings quite the same way as humans do, both the fleeting kind like 'oh I like that flower' and the deeper kind like the love of one's children. It's not that she does not have those, but they are ...less rooted in her biology and more in her personality, one might say. She learned them, observed them in her surroundings, and they took deep root within her, but she wasn't "born" with them.
An effect of this is her aversion to standing out, which in turn means that she (subconsciously!) tends to try and follow social narratives when they aren't in her way. Her biography up to her divorce is a result of this: The intelligent-girl-studies-medicine-and-has-career-while-having-a-family narrative was one that she had observed in her surroundings and had seen being deemed "normal", and had been presented to her as one that she should follow. She did. ...until it didn't work any more, and the search for a new narrative threw her into a deep hole for a while. She mostly clawed her way out of it by getting the next closest thing - the most conservative queer family in Kent. She still tends to speak of her "spouse" instead of "wife" to not stand out, not that she really realizes that. Her decision to adopt Lottie was also motivated by this - somehow integrating the existence of her 3-year-old Changeling into a regular woman's biography. In Eden this will likely mean that she'll try to integrate as much as possible into the Light society, and see no issue with trying to make Lottie integrate as well as possible, too.
Related to this is that she, if possible, just wants to live a quiet life. She isn't someone who likes to go out on adventures. There is one thing that keeps drawing her into going outside of her comfort zone in that regard, again and again: Feeling responsible for someone or something, necessities of her own survival, and Lottie (this kind of ties into both of the other options). She followed the group of Changelings into the Hedge because she felt responsible for her niece-in-law, she keeps getting involved with matters of the local Freehold and especially the Summer Court because being on their good side means that an entity that could be a powerful enemy will be on her side instead of potentially trying to kill her - and that she will be able to keep Lottie. Being in the Freehold's good book is also tantamount to creating a safe environment in which she can prosper for Lottie, whom she considers her daughter and treats as such. She will be there asap if Lottie needs help, and because Lottie has a tendency to crawl into places where she shouldn't be and talk to and befriend people who make both of them get into trouble... Well. She doesn't do more than she needs to do, but she still leads a much more exciting life than she'd rather.
Louise loves her job. She became a dentist instead of going into academia because academia didn't seem to allow for mothers when she was at that point of her life, but she still devours scholarly magazines and ever since she realized that no, not everyone can see the stranger parts of the world like she can, she became fascinated by the special challenges that supernaturals face with their teeth and jaws. At first, after gaining enough trust, she started to serve Changeling patients (and was always there with a scientific eye, keeping book and asking more questions than strictly necessary for treatment), but after a while word about her got out and members from other supernatural communities started to frequent her office as well (and then there was an incident with a few people who don't like supernaturals, and after that she was suddenly under the protection of multiple, otherwise hostile towards one another communities, and gained so many new supernatural patients that they make up the majority of her patients these days). She even managed to make some professional friends (or well, at least friendly acquaintances) with a similar tilt to their medical careers.
Lottie and her job are two important items in her life. Her wife, her step-children and Liselotte's parents are the other important people. Her connection with them might not be as essential as the one with Lottie, but Liselotte's parents raised her and she loves them like any daughter would love good parents, because she has learned to do so. Love is always not only a feeling but also a performative and generally a thing that makes one act in a certain way, after all. She visits them regularly and makes sure that Lottie spends time with them often as well, because even if she's their grandchild to them, that at least means that they will have a close relationship. Louise's relationship with her wife is a very loving and unusually (for Louise) relaxed one: Not because it is open or anything - Louise eyes the idea of open or poly relationship with rather a lot of distrust, and generally has a very conservative stance on all matters partnership and family (with obvious adaptations when it comes to things like equal marriage). It's rather because her wife is a pretty laid-back person, and because Louise spent all her high-strung expectations on her first marriage. Her step-children, she loves and regards as if they were her own. Being a Fetch, and thus infertile, she'll never truly have children of her own, and while that was a harsh reality to come to terms with, she can cope because well. She has children, right? She supports them seeing their father regularly (see above - children should have a father), but that doesn't mean that they are any less hers.
Generally, Louise tries to be a friendly and pleasant person, even when she is exhausted. ...And she fairly often ends up exhausted, which is understandable because she is stretching herself a bit thin between her mundane family, Lottie and the whole Changeling politics, and her job. But she is a very resilient person (something she shares with Lottie) and will mostly power through things. Maybe sit down and need a tea somewhere in-between. But then get up and carry on. And she does better keeping busy. She's never been one for idle hands (metaphorically speaking - she can sit perfectly still for hours if you give her an interesting scientific paper about a new approach to root channels), and will find a way to keep herself busy in a normal-life way. Preferably in her field, but if necessary any type of academical or (medical-)help oriented activity will do or at least be considered. She is also a curious person. A curious person whose common sense and wish for safety is much stronger than her curiosity, but if she considers it safe to inquire, experiment and study, she will do so.
Lottie
Lottie is a very curious child who likes to approach people and will talk to everyone around at least once. She also doesn't have a very good sense of danger and gets bored easily, so she will at times slip away, crawl into things, address the wrong person, ...[insert shenanigans], and get herself into trouble.
Being a Changeling, she also has very specific hang-ups, and will often be completely unphased by things that would upset or delight other children her age, while reacting strongly to others that others might not care about - someone who has a mouth full of sharp teeth? She's touched a vampire's fangs and knows a guy why has literal razors for teeth. Pointy teeth are peachy. A place that is completely white? She'll absolutely freak out.
Generally, she is open, makes friends easily, and is a very good-natured child. She isn't exactly a loud or exuberant one, though, you'll rarely find her yelling while running about - she's more likely to sit and watch, peer over things and study curiously, edge towards something or someone quietly to look at it. As stated above, she doesn't have particularly good risk assessment skills, but she doesn't storm into trouble, she rather quietly, curiously pokes her head into them.
Most of her risk assessment is done by proxy - will say, she copies a trusted person's approach to the situation. Most of the time, this will be Louise - if Louise is nervous, Lottie is nervous, if Louise trusts someone, Lottie assumes she's good to go. The rest of her risk assessment is done by listening to things she's been told to do or not to. But she's significantly more ...selective about listening to those things than about copying trusted people's approaches.
Something to note about her development is that much like Louise's, but in a very different way, it was stunted in areas. Between her first and third birthday, roughly, she wasn't treated as a child or allowed to develop and grow the way a child would. All that was important was that she followed orders to carry things from A to B and sort them according to specific criteria, and during that time she mostly learned to firstly perform those tasks well enough to not get in trouble and secondly stay out of almost everyone's way when she hadn't been tasked with something. That's where her fairly quiet and watchful nature comes from.
Two things have helped her opening up and getting over the trauma of her Durance as well as catching up developmentally afterwards: One is her own inquisitive curiosity. Yes, she knows that often it is better to not be seen, and confronted with danger her reaction will be to bail the fuck out of there or hide behind someone if that's impossible. But those things, that she'd consider common sense if she knew the word, are always weighed against her curiosity, and coupled with her tendency to not recognize dangers (or rather, be unable to tell if it is or is not a danger, and when in doubt, curiosity always wins), she often approaches despite that common sense. The other thing that helped her was the stability and loving care of her new family, the best effort of multiple supernaturals to raise her into as stable as possible; the united efforts of both sides to offer her surroundings in which she can be a three year old, neither more nor less, (to the point where there is an unwritten rule about not involving her directly in court, or any kind of, politics); and the existence of Louise (and to a lesser degree the cousin-in-law) who unites both worlds, helps her integrate them, protects her from slip-ups betraying her other-ness to outsiders, and is a solid guiding figure to look for on either side of the humans-fae divide.
Even if Lottie always has to make sure if she should call her "Mum" or "Louise" right now - Mum is for being around humans, Louise is for being around Changelings. There are important lines that she should not cross, and that is one of them. Another is to not tell regular humans, or non-Changelings in general, about anything relating to her not being a regular little human child. Those are rules that she abides by whenever she can identify the line, with occasional sli-ups.
ABILITIES:
Both Lottie and Louise are fae beings. That means that they can see the real appearance of another fae creature as well as the human guise that hides them from all non-fae beings. They can also both open entrances into the Hedge: That means that they can turn any kind of passageway into a mystical opening into the Hedge, the realm between Arcadia and our reality. [As a side note: While there is some canon-inherent vagueness surrounding this, it can be assumed that neither of them has a soul - Lottie lost hers, and Louise never had one.]
Lottie
Lottie is a Changeling, which means that she has a Mask, a perfect hiding mechanism of fae magic that makes her look like a perfectly regular child and will adjust the perception of everything that she wears and touches or that touches her to support that illusion. Mask deceives all senses and sensors (a doctor could examine her and find nothing unusual). The only people who will be able to see through it are other fae creatures (this includes Louise) or people in sufficiently fairytale-y situations - virgins in the light of the first ray of the new moon, a person looking through a midsummer fire, and so on. Sometimes the fleeting impression out of the corner of one's eye before you blink might also show something being off. There are only two ways to let others see her real form: Burning all her Glamour and dropping her Mask, and the Oath of the Rose and Thorn, which allows the person who takes it to see the true form of any fae creature for a whole month.
Under her mask Lottie definitely does not look normal. Instead... Think of a woodlouse. Now take a child and replace hair, back and legs with the back segment of the woodlouse, add the antennae, give the the back segments a stone-like texture and give the proper child parts a structure that is like very soft, clammy chitin. Give everything a grey-ish colour, and you have a rough idea of what Lottie looks like. She is also heavier to those who can see through her Mask.
Being a Changeling she also can and has to harvest Glamour, which is the energy that fae creatures use for their magic. She can harvest from any emotion someone with a soul has, though supernatural Glamour can have side effects and members of her court harvest most efficiently from anger and wrath.
Changelings are lucid dreamers and thus capable of altering and fighting dreams, though Lottie's skill level at this is very low.
Skills more specific to Lottie include (note, some of these require Glamour to be used):
- Slither and Squirm: Lottie can get through spaces, either with her whole body or with parts of it, that should by all rights be just too narrow to get through them (think of a cat's ability to get into that tiny crack behind the fridge, or of someone who can get out of handcuffs despite them being tightly secured).
- Darkness (level 4): (1) make people very lowkey frightened and much more susceptible to being scared by something, all the way to making them more susceptible to panic; (2) enhance physical conditions that limit perception to make it harder to notice her - make the night around darker, distracting noises more distracting, smells in the surroundings strong enough to overpower her own scent, and so on; (3) all sleeping targets that she can see or hear at that time will be neigh impossible to wake; (4) she can run along any solid surface, like a ceiling or wall, and will move on slippery surfaces like ice like she would on regular ground.
- Eternal Summer (level 1): she is comfortable in all temperatures, and may even heat a whole room - and if she concentrates especially hard, the warmth will stay no matter the circumstances (so even if someone leaves a door open).
Mantle (Summer) (level 1): this one just denotes court affiliation to other Changelings. If a person stands nearby her and it is perfectly still, they'll get the impression of hearing the wind in the ears on a hot summer's day.
Iron Stomach: Lottie can eat about everything, not get sick from it and even gain nutrition from it, including things that are not food items (mouldy bread, tree roots, teeth...)
Toxin Resistance: Toxins, poisons, drugs etc have a much harder time harming her than other people. The downside to that is that desired effects of those substances (painkillers, for example) also have a much harder time impacting her.
Louise
Louise is a Fetch. Similar to Lottie, she has something like a Mien and a Mask, just that her Mien is... well. The crap that the Fae who made her had at hand when she needed a replacement-Liselotte. So she's a walking mess of bad teeth wrapped around dentistry tools, held together by floss. She does however have a power that hides this from other fae beings, too, so unless she dies (at which point she'd just become a pile of the items that she was made of) she'll likely just look like a regular human to everyone (non-fae beings could still notice that her aura etc are wrong, though, and the fae rule about nothing every being 100% applies, too). Unlike Lottie, she cannot drop her Mask.
Like Lottie, she can harvest and use Glamour, with no preference as to what emotion she takes it from, and like Lottie she has the ability to dream lucidly and thus battle inside of and slightly alter dreams.
Unlike Lottie, she isn't the original. Most Fetch abilities are dependent on Changelings, or the Changeling they were made to replace. For one, they can sense every Changeling within 50 foot, and single their own one out - so if Lottie is within 50 foot of her, Louise will know exactly where she is, if she's moving, etc. In addition to this, Louise is unusually finely attuned to Lottie and has an intuitive understanding of her actions and mindset that goes far beyond what a mother would usually have, which gives her an edge over the Changeling - if Lottie reaches for something, Louise will usually get there before she does, and such (in rulebook terms, if they draw on an action, the action goes to the Fetch, and they always use the same initiative).
Lastly, Louise can teleport via shadows. The reach of this teleportation is a maximum of 100 yards. She steps into a shadow (that she can fit through) and springs up from another shadow (same size restriction) at the desired destination. She doesn't have to see the destination, but she gets no supernatural knowledge about that place, so if there's a problem on the other end, she'll learn about it when she gets there if she can't see/etc. it from her original location. This ability requires the expenditure of Glamour.
Louise also has a very good sense of direction and unusually strong for a woman her size and build.
INVENTORY:
- Clothes on their backs
- A stroller with all the usual items that would be found in one
FACTION:
Louise would pick the faction with some input from Lottie, and both of them would immediately decide against Blood, because they aren't fighters and would do terribly there. Louise would decide against Spring because she knows jack shit about farming, and Lottie would decide against it out of confusing it with the Changeling Courts (she's Summer court herself and all Spring courtiers that she's ever met were boring). Louise would deeply distrust the secretive nature of Ice (seriously, what are they hiding, it can't be anything good. Let's stay away from that), while Lottie would be worried about the dragons.
Meanwhile, Louise would consider a safe place with good educational facilities an excellent place for her kid to grow up, and due to her own long stay in the educational system and her in-depth knowledge about dentistry, current science of the field, and her own research on supernatural teeth, she'd feel right at home in an academically inclined environment and probably would have a few things to offer herself. Lottie would not like the concept of Light, but once it was explained to her that the place isn't actually lighter or darker than the other areas, she'd be fine with the faction. As long as they have gummy bears for her.
OBJECTIVES:
For the most part, Liselotte want to just live a normal life. Louise is used to working and being the/a breadwinner of the family, and while she'd prefer to do something in her actual field she'll at least look into doing other tasks - as long as they don't downgrade her too much. Lottie, meanwhile, is three and will mostly go where Louise takes her and get sticky.
So neither of them will really push the plot. But there is one fairly simple way to get them involved with almost everything: Lottie is a very curious child and will get into things. Half the time literally. But also by talking to everyone who looks interesting, wandering around alone when she can escape, and more. And Louise, being protective of Lottie, will show up at her side as soon as Lottie is in trouble, or even before that. Or at least try to get to her.
ANYTHING ELSE: What does the preschool system in the Light faction look like/what kind of child care facilities are there?
SAMPLE.
Here we go, there are more threads with them in that mingle in case you want to see more.