|
Post by umber on Sept 12, 2010 11:26:34 GMT -7
"Look past my reputation—see who I really am."
The Basics
Name: Umber Samar Nicknames/Aliases: no nicknames for herself, but others sometimes call her The Witch, or Loony (in reference to her mother) Age: Eighteen Grade: Senior Occupation: works in the stables with the pegasi Sexuality: heterosexual Olympian: Hecate Mortal Relatives: Abraham-father—killed in car accident; Emily—foster mother
Physical Statistics
Height: Five feet, nine inches Weight: 132 pounds Hair Color: black Eye Color: blue-black
Lets Get More Personal
Likes: - Experiments of any kind
- Open-minded people
- Music
- Being active, competitive, working up a sweat
- Watching people
- Playing tricks on people she dislikes
- Learning new talents or just learning anything in general
Dislikes: - People who take others’ opinions as their own, don’t think for themselves
- Weak people (more weak-minded than weak physically)
- Utter silence, although she’ll use it to her advantage if she wants to
- People who try to play tricks on her
- People who waste
Personality: While her mother’s faulty reputation may preceed her daughter, Umber isn’t a witchy person, usually. She loves to learn and to meet new people and try new things, and is a happy (or at least content) person most of the time, but worm your way onto her bad side and she’ll feel no regret in picking at your self-esteem, spiting you, playing harmless tricks on you, or just unnerving you in general. She doesn’t truly get angry, she just cools until there is no emotion on her face or in her manner—pure apathy.
For the most part, Umber gets along better with guys than she does with girls. She’s a bit stereotypical herself in how she tends to see only the snide, snarky, vain parts of most girls she meets. Guys will break each others’ nose and be fine the next day, whereas girls will hold grudges (just like she does, though she does enjoy a good fight).
As far as being a daughter of the goddess of crossroads goes, Umber will always help someone who asks her for it. Whether she loves or loaths the person who asks her does not weigh in her mind. Anyone humble and needful enough to ask for another being’s help deserves all the help that person is capable of delivering, in her opinion. As far as guidance, Umber is an exceptional choice. When other people speak, she feels through the surface words and comprehends the meanings and motives behind them, like intuition, or frighteningly accurate psychological analyses.
Umber does want to be a happy person, and she is, although outsiders might not recognize her more level temperament for contentment. She interacts well with people she knows, even smiles for them, even if she never feels quite the level of emotional high or emotional low as a normal mortal. She enjoys music as much as she can enjoy anything; she is very fond of spending time with her dogs--Abrax and Phaeton--even though she doesn't love them.
Sometimes Umber gets the sensation that she's merely drifting through her own life, striking very little affect on those around her. While logically she knows that the people who seek her out walk away in a better state of mind, whether or not they know it, the curious emotions--vague as they may be--occasionally creep up behind her and latch their tentacles onto her brain, turning her reasonable head toward speculation and doubt. Rarely does she lose herself for more than mere moments in these speculations, but they unnerve her to no end. Unused to dealing with any emotions but those of others, she would much rather remain as she is--it saves her the trouble of rediscovering her identity among the masses of people who haven't got a clue.
History: Hecate and Abraham first encountered each other at one of his college lectures. A well-respected philosopher, specializing in metaphysics, the study of existence. His favorite topic--the topic of the evening lecture--was that of reality. Is reality truly a specific phenomenon, or is it all an illusion, twisted by opinion by each individual? Hecate, often intrigued by similar questions, and waylaid by mortals to shed a shaft of light on them, was fascinated by his passionate embrace of questions. Here before her was a mortal who found his greatest satisfaction in discovering more questions, unlike most other beings, who only wanted lazy answers.
Hecate attended the next four of Abraham's philosophical lectures, highly entertained by the enthusiastic questions he posed to his raptured audience. She took the time to get to know him, and thus, begot her daughter.
Umber was born to the pre-Olympian goddess Hecate on the thirty-first of January, on a new moon, which was her mother’s most popular symbol. Hecate delivered the infant girl to her father, who named her after the color of her mother’s eyes. Umber: a reddish brown hue, very earthen. Her father willingly raised the girl just as he would any other child, and the two were a happy family throught he highs and lows until Abraham was killed in a car accident on the interstate when he was on his way to pick Umber up from school. She was in second grade. That is when she began attending Camp Half-Blood whenever she was on break from school. She spent her school year with a foster mother—Emily—in the city.
Umber didn’t go to stay with relatives because Abraham always kept her away from them. From the start, he knew that Umber would not be a normal child, and he wished to protect her from the ostracization of his family, and his family from the oddities that Umber habitually produced.
After her father died, Umber spent about a year at a private school for kids who struggled with their studies. One boy in particular had the habit of appearing in many places that she went, and seemed to see the opportunity to strike up a conversation with her as fortuitous as striking upon gold. At first she was irritated with the abnormal boy, but then she released her tensions and allowed herself to become as much a friend to him as she could. It was through this satyr--as she later learned--that she was inducted into Half-Blood Academy, when she was nine years old.
Umber was relatively well-received at the academy. Since she spent so much more of her years there than most other kids, she knew her way around quite well, and knew the counselors and students all by name, never forgetting information she was offered. Some of the kids were, and still are, wary or disdainful of her. In part because of the wrongful accusations of mortals against her mother, and in part out of disdain for the uncommon attributes she inherited from her immortal parent.
At Half-Blood Academy, Umber spent six months in the Hermes cabin, awaiting her claim. For a little while, she felt a mild frustration that no one would 'own up' to having had her. Really, was it that big of a deal? But when Umber woke up from a dream about flying, and found a spray of feathers sticking up out of her hair, as soon as she went to the camp director, Hecate's symbol of the key appeared suspended above her feather-studded head, and the feathers slid back under her scalp.
Abilities: - Hecate is polymorphous, and through strenuous practice and esperimentation, Umber has found that she shares some of this talent. It isn’t as extensice as she suspects her mother’s is, but she’s learning and still improving. So far, when she’s successful, she can transform herself almost entirely into the form of a large black owl, with copper accents to its feathers. When she’s unsuccessful, she may fly somewhat clumsily, or you may see dark hair mixed in with her feathers, or she may be human and have feathers mixed in with her hair.
- Hecate is also known as a goddess of witchcraft, magic and curses. While Umber has tried and tried to curse various people on her hit list, she has never succeeded, not that she doesn’t continue to try. However, she does have an uncanny form of ‘luck’ when it comes to her various endeavors. Coincidences follow her around, and small things change when no one is looking. A pencil may reappear on her desk after falling to the floor, or a door might unlock itself just for her, or she may run into just the person for whom she searched, right when she needed him. Occasionally she can manipulate this ‘luck’ and these coincidences to her own desires, but she usually doesn’t bother, preferring instead to do things for herself.
Weaknesses: - Another trait of Hecate’s that Umber in herited is her distance. Hecate was often called ‘the distant one’, and while Umber doesn’t know in what context this distance was referenced, she has always found herself incapable of becoming emotionally close to any being. She appreciates her dogs very much, but she would not be able to weep when they died. She is fond of her friends and peers and teachers and her loving foster mother, but she can’t bring herself to care truly about them. This isn’t to say that she isn’t capable of empathy, but she simply cannot find it in her heart to care deeply about anything in her life.
- Hecate, as far as Umber knows, had no particular connection to blood, or to bleeding, or any of its various connotations. Black lambs were sacrificed to Hecate, but how does that relate to Umber’s most debilitating weakness? Umber is physically strong, just as she is mentally. Bruises and broken bones merit only a passing glance. But without exception, when even a drop of Umber’s own blood falls, she finds herself instantly weakened. All of her inherited ‘abilities’ leak away, and she becomes disoriented and lethargic. Nosebleed, a small cut froma knife, or a severed finger—amount does not matter. If it bleeds, she loses traction. Though void of the ability to feel strong emotions, Umber feels nearly furious that she is labeled by this disability. She prides herself immensely on her strength, and being robbed of it possibly in her times of most need is utterly devastating.
Other Information: - Recognizing her daughter’s aptitude for violence, when Umber turned fifteen, Hecate bestowed upon her a simple, black, braided leather whip, with which Umber is naturally talented. As far as she knows, there is nothing other than ordinary about it, but it is much stronger than mortal leather, and will grip the wrist of any monster.
OOC Information
Web Name: Ivy Contact: PM, please Play by: Shannon Dolling
[/font]
|
|
|
Post by Pontos on Sept 12, 2010 11:59:28 GMT -7
Bio looks really good. There are just a couple of things you need to add. First you need to include how and when Hecate claimed Umber, as well as how she came to be at the Academy. Once you get that edited, you should be good to go
|
|
|
Post by umber on Sept 12, 2010 15:36:47 GMT -7
Sure thing! .... Modified.
|
|
|
Post by eris on Sept 13, 2010 0:24:14 GMT -7
First of all , welcome to Half Blood Academy!
Your bio is great! And thank you for having made the previous changes so quickly. There are just a few more things I’m curious about:
- First of all, could you give us a few lines about how Hecate and Umber’s dad met ? Just the logistics and what made Hecate chose to have sex with him.
- There are a couple of sentences I was struggling to understand, for instance : "daughter, __ isn’t a witchy person, usually." I’m not sure what the spaces are for ?
- “Umber is exceptionally good at picking through a person’s mind and words to find the answers that said person is incapable of finding him- or herself.”
Could you elaborate a bit on this sentence? To be honest I don’t really get it. Would it involve just helping someone to find the right words, because she has a wide vocabulary? Would it be intuition? Umber is intuitive about situations and people’s feelings?
-I feel like I dont know Umber that much. Maybe you can add more to her personality? Just a couple of paragraphs?
-And can you edit the history part so that instead of saying camp and Camp Half-Blood, it says school and Half Blood Academy?
Apart from that, I have no qualms with accepting your bio. Thank you ^^
|
|
|
Post by umber on Sept 13, 2010 17:54:55 GMT -7
Psh--my bad! The __ are there because in my initial document, I didn't know what her name was yet, so I had the spaces to show where her name went.
.... Modified? Yes, I believe so. Hope so.
|
|
|
Post by Pontos on Sept 13, 2010 18:20:02 GMT -7
Welcome to Half-Blood Academy! Don't forget to sign in at the Who's Who Thread, and make sure you get your Face ClaimOnce again, Welcome and happy Role Playing!
|
|