Name: Lliira Lockwood (of the Edinburgh Lockwoods)
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Orientation: Heterosexual
Bio:
Lliira's parents are
obsessed with Success, both economic and social. So naturally it was a great disappointment when their daughter turned out to be, not a winsome debutante or even a hard-driving would-be executive, but a shy, bookish girl with a nervous stutter, whose taste in books centered on the occult, the arcane, and the strange. Her albinism was only an icing on her cake of...well, let's not say failure, that would affirm the negative, and the first step to Success is a positive mindset!
Unfortunately, no amount of positive affirmations could prevent the prep-school girls from eating Lliira alive. Nor could they prevent her from retreating ever further into her studies and meditations and...shall we say...unusual practices involving wands and candles and chalices and such? Spirituality--yes, we'll call it that, because her mother and father rarely had time to attempt to steer her toward more practical pursuits, and it wasn't as if an owl was going to show up with her invitation to Hogwarts.
The governesses she grew up with couldn't be bothered to help much in that regard. I suppose they might say they weren't paid well enough to truly
raise Lliira to become someone who mattered, rather than leaving her to her own devices as long as she was never a behavior problem they had to deal with. Besides, it's not as if a governess could be a proper model of Success now, is it?
And so, while she got nearly perfect grades in school, she never managed to have any friends or be invited to any parties. Instead, as she entered her teens she began using her spare time to study dead languages of all things: Latin, Greek, ancient Egyptian, and Sumerian, so she could read peculiar old texts in the original. For a time, her parents didn't really know what to do except indulge her interests and hope it was just a phase she was going through, one she might perhaps grow out of as soon as she started to become interested in boys. Unfortunately, prep-school boys were at least as nasty to her as prep-school girls if not worse, so Lliira never developed any crushes.
Her 16th birthday came and went with no signs of improvement. There was really only one thing her poor mother and father could think of to do: arrange for her to spend some time with her aunt Fiona in America, during the lead-up to Fiona's great New Year's Gala. Everyone who was
anyone was going to be there, and surely there could be no one better than Miss Fiona Lockwood to prepare Lliira for her high society debut.
This turned out to be something of a disaster, but for some reason, no one wanted to talk to any of the society page reporters about events at the Gala, and at least Lliira received no blame. In fact, her life went back to something approaching normal, until her prep school arranged a field trip to explore the Paris Catacombs. Trapped underground by an earthquake, she was confronted by a mysterious cult leader who seemed to want to recruit her.
This terrifying encounter only strengthened Lliira's tendency to hide away and keep to herself. But Aunt Fiona has the perfect answer to her niece's self-isolation: a great big New York-style party for that happiest and most harmless of holidays--St. Patrick's Day! What could possibly go wrong?
Weeelll, it turns out that when the hosts happened to be showing off a stolen pot of gold from a Leprechaun, quite a bit! But then, things can also go right. For one thing, Lliira got to meet an actual
Leprechaun, which isn't something that happens every day. Thanks to her familiarity with Celtic lore and the Fair Folk, she was able to prevent conflict between the Leprechaun and the party-goers from escalating.
Well, sort of. With help from Jaxob, Michael, and a handsome young man named Tholby, the party ended without any lasting harm. And, she received an invitation to their next big event, a fete for April Fool's Day and Easter. Aunt Fiona was delighted, so of course she could go.
So what will happen when the High Strangeness of the Campbells, April Fool's Day, and the celebration of springtime and fertility all end up in the same Easter basket? A possibility of romance, perhaps? Or reality being warped beyond all recognition?
Personality:
Lliira is painfully shy, and very quiet. She even moves with an eerily silent grace, so that she seems to appear and disappear like a spirit. When not forced to wear a school uniform, she wears flowing gowns and hooded cloaks (the latter shield her from sunlight, which burns her easily). She has a soft voice with a Scottish accent. All together, it is as if she is an exchange student from Middle Earth.
She
always has a book with her, usually some obscure arcane tome, like the Grimoire of Abramelin the Mage, a volume from the Vedas, or a copy of
The Corpus Hermeticum or the
Enuma Elish with interlinear translation. When she does not expect to encounter other teenagers who might maliciously take it from her, she also carries her journal, a leather-bound book containing mystic diagrams and writings in a cypher based on the Voynich script, along with blank pages remaining to be filled.
Abilities:
Lliira has never told anyone that she can see auras, and feel the presence of magical currents such as ley lines and the delineation around a consecrated space.
Her spell-casting does not always work, but when it does, it results in a synchronicity that provides her what she hoped for, or perhaps something unexpected that turns out to be better in some way. On occasion, she has been able to cause people to not notice her for a time (a challenge, given her distinctive looks), or just leave her alone.
She can see nature spirits, but has had little opportunity to try to interact with them, since anyone seeing her talking to something they couldn't see would surely regard her as insane.
Her Tarot readings can sometimes warn her of trouble ahead, or provide useful insights into herself or others. However, they are always subject to interpretation, so she is not infallible.
From time to time, she may have a dream, vision, or flash of insight, though these are not things she can conjure at will. They too are subject to interpretation, and operate according to the alien logic of the supernatural, so they do not always provide straightforward guidance.
