Player Name: Kaja Contact:kajarainbow Invited by: Quinn Other Characters: None
Character Name: The Shadow Lurking Behind You Canon: OC Canon History: On an alternate Earth an extremely long time ago before even the dinosaurs, there was two powerful occult civilizations, the sea civilization (think jellyfish people) and the land civilization (think particularly adventurous horseshoe-crab-like people who decided to try out the whole air breathing thing). While they might have lacked the limbs to wield tools, practicing magic back then was absolutely simple, and anyone could reweave reality and even venture into other realms of reality such as the Dream Realm. One of the nightmare beings haunting those civilizations in dreams was The Shadow Lurking Behind You, an representations of the terror of ambush predators.
But Shadow developed an absolute fascination with those civilizations' art and while she would still terrorize people with nightmares of surprising predators much of that was more to help keep those dreamers alert and thus alive. She indulged her curiosity, learning a great deal about art, the occult, and people. Then the two civilizations had the lovely idea to destroy each other in magical wars so reality-shattering that all trace or memory of those civilizations disappears, leaving the only faintest memories in the survivors that there used to be a land civilization and a sea civilization.
As a result, Shadow bummed around in the Dream Realm until the rise of the dinosaur people. She loved this civilization, too, participating heavily in its art culture. But a particularly disgruntled dinosaur person ascended to a higher state of being and used that power to destroy the dinosaur civilization too. That angered Shadow so much she somewhat managed to figure out how to assassinate said ascended being with a bomb made out of millions of volunteering pissed off dinosaur ghosts.
It was at this point that one of the major facets of reality itself, Weave the raw force of stability and order, started cracking down because of this and other major reality upheavals across the universe, creating a stable set of physics that would not be easily altered by magic. And agencies empowered by Weave started popping up across the universe, dedicated to prevent occult people from majorly fucking things up again.
By the time humans rolled around, reality was pretty stable. Sure, there were secret occult societies around and there were even more weird rumors of strange stuff than in our real world, but overall the everyday experience of a human wasn't that different from our world.
Shadow was content lurking in dreams and popping out to pretend to be a normal human and participate in society, particularly society's art. As such, she has pretty much been just low background noise throughout human history, her main fame being in the occult art culture. A few of her alias that she used in various art movements are particularly famous. Other than that she mostly wasn't a major history maker, though she did help bail many people out of terrible circumstances like slavery and genocides.
Then the Weave-empowered agencies managed to ascend a triad that would act as guardians of reality to disallow any excessive damage to reality. This resulted in the end of those agencies' missions to suppress magic and the unveiling of magic to the public. Shortly after, a man she had been mentoring (while trolling) would ascend to become known as the Great Knower, freely providing occult knowledge to anyone interested.
Shadow was happy to no longer need to pretend to be human but overall things didn't change much for her other than being able to publicly use magic and reveal her nonhuman nature. She simply continued carrying on doing art and messing with people, just more openly.
Canon Personality: As someone who has lived through two magical apocalypses and lost countless loved ones throughout the ages, Shadow nevertheless remains able to maintain her passions and is generally friendly if rather willing to troll people. Fundamentally she has a stubborn love for life that's helped her live that long. That isn't to say that the many losses she's experiences don't sting and she has moments where she gets sentimental and sad but such moments never last long. She continues to enjoy her nature as a nightmare being, taking pleasure in scaring people, though she's updated her nightmares to reflect somewhat more modern fears. She has a sometimes strange sense of humor, like sneaking into a friend's apartment and leaving a huge hunk of delicious mammoth meat in their fridge... while stealing their yogurt (hey, it's pretty good yogurt). And she has an undying general curiosity and a passion for art.
AU History: As a child, Tyra Davis developed a rapid love for art that has stayed with her for her whole life. She was always doodling and sketching, sometimes at the detriment of her grades though her love for learning helped her maintain acceptable grades. One thing she learned was to shut up about the things she could see, though eventually she started making the occasional joke about seeing the invisible.
After graduating she went first to art school then decided to get a teaching degree so she could instill her love of art into students. She was able to get a job as an art teacher at one of the local schools, where she's been working since.
In art school, she met a guy, George, who could see the same things as her. She got along rather well with him, to the point where she ended up marrying him. They had a happy enough marriage complete with a child, Amari. But then George poked too deeply into the supernatural and his corpse was found in a reservoir, unnaturally aged.
She continued to poke into magic, but more cautiously than her deceased husband. As a result, she was able to acquire a shadowy serpent as a magical companion. This proved surprisingly popular with Amari, who would regularly play with said serpent.
Her second and third marriages had less traumatic endings, being basically amicable divorces and she's still on good terms with her ex-wife and surviving ex-husband. Still, this left her less willing to rush into marriage, if nothing else for the sake of Amari who is now in high school.
Nowadays she continues to work as an art teacher and artist while keeping in loose touch with the magical community. Her nonbinary child is doing well in school, aside from the occasional bulllying which Tyra resolved by having her shadow snake accompany them to school to scare said bullies until they stopped. Said snake's ability to hide in shadows largely prevented discovery even by those who could see magical things and the one kid who managed to discover it thought it was a cool idea.
And then Tyra got a weird app on her phone.
AU Personality Differences: The biggest difference is that Tyra hasn't experienced the sheer weight of history that Shadow has. She doesn't have nearly as many experienced tragedies, making her less prone to the occasional melancholy moment, though she does get sad when she thinks of her deceased husband. She also doesn't have the innate desire to scare people, even if she continues to be a huge troll.
Element: Shadow Purchased Powers: A medium-sized shadow spirit companion, a pitch black snake that can hide in shadows. 3 points.
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Contact:
Invited by: Quinn
Other Characters: None
Character Name: The Shadow Lurking Behind You
Canon: OC
Canon History:
On an alternate Earth an extremely long time ago before even the dinosaurs, there was two powerful occult civilizations, the sea civilization (think jellyfish people) and the land civilization (think particularly adventurous horseshoe-crab-like people who decided to try out the whole air breathing thing). While they might have lacked the limbs to wield tools, practicing magic back then was absolutely simple, and anyone could reweave reality and even venture into other realms of reality such as the Dream Realm. One of the nightmare beings haunting those civilizations in dreams was The Shadow Lurking Behind You, an representations of the terror of ambush predators.
But Shadow developed an absolute fascination with those civilizations' art and while she would still terrorize people with nightmares of surprising predators much of that was more to help keep those dreamers alert and thus alive. She indulged her curiosity, learning a great deal about art, the occult, and people. Then the two civilizations had the lovely idea to destroy each other in magical wars so reality-shattering that all trace or memory of those civilizations disappears, leaving the only faintest memories in the survivors that there used to be a land civilization and a sea civilization.
As a result, Shadow bummed around in the Dream Realm until the rise of the dinosaur people. She loved this civilization, too, participating heavily in its art culture. But a particularly disgruntled dinosaur person ascended to a higher state of being and used that power to destroy the dinosaur civilization too. That angered Shadow so much she somewhat managed to figure out how to assassinate said ascended being with a bomb made out of millions of volunteering pissed off dinosaur ghosts.
It was at this point that one of the major facets of reality itself, Weave the raw force of stability and order, started cracking down because of this and other major reality upheavals across the universe, creating a stable set of physics that would not be easily altered by magic. And agencies empowered by Weave started popping up across the universe, dedicated to prevent occult people from majorly fucking things up again.
By the time humans rolled around, reality was pretty stable. Sure, there were secret occult societies around and there were even more weird rumors of strange stuff than in our real world, but overall the everyday experience of a human wasn't that different from our world.
Shadow was content lurking in dreams and popping out to pretend to be a normal human and participate in society, particularly society's art. As such, she has pretty much been just low background noise throughout human history, her main fame being in the occult art culture. A few of her alias that she used in various art movements are particularly famous. Other than that she mostly wasn't a major history maker, though she did help bail many people out of terrible circumstances like slavery and genocides.
Then the Weave-empowered agencies managed to ascend a triad that would act as guardians of reality to disallow any excessive damage to reality. This resulted in the end of those agencies' missions to suppress magic and the unveiling of magic to the public. Shortly after, a man she had been mentoring (while trolling) would ascend to become known as the Great Knower, freely providing occult knowledge to anyone interested.
Shadow was happy to no longer need to pretend to be human but overall things didn't change much for her other than being able to publicly use magic and reveal her nonhuman nature. She simply continued carrying on doing art and messing with people, just more openly.
Canon Personality:
As someone who has lived through two magical apocalypses and lost countless loved ones throughout the ages, Shadow nevertheless remains able to maintain her passions and is generally friendly if rather willing to troll people. Fundamentally she has a stubborn love for life that's helped her live that long. That isn't to say that the many losses she's experiences don't sting and she has moments where she gets sentimental and sad but such moments never last long. She continues to enjoy her nature as a nightmare being, taking pleasure in scaring people, though she's updated her nightmares to reflect somewhat more modern fears. She has a sometimes strange sense of humor, like sneaking into a friend's apartment and leaving a huge hunk of delicious mammoth meat in their fridge... while stealing their yogurt (hey, it's pretty good yogurt). And she has an undying general curiosity and a passion for art.
AU History:
As a child, Tyra Davis developed a rapid love for art that has stayed with her for her whole life. She was always doodling and sketching, sometimes at the detriment of her grades though her love for learning helped her maintain acceptable grades. One thing she learned was to shut up about the things she could see, though eventually she started making the occasional joke about seeing the invisible.
After graduating she went first to art school then decided to get a teaching degree so she could instill her love of art into students. She was able to get a job as an art teacher at one of the local schools, where she's been working since.
In art school, she met a guy, George, who could see the same things as her. She got along rather well with him, to the point where she ended up marrying him. They had a happy enough marriage complete with a child, Amari. But then George poked too deeply into the supernatural and his corpse was found in a reservoir, unnaturally aged.
She continued to poke into magic, but more cautiously than her deceased husband. As a result, she was able to acquire a shadowy serpent as a magical companion. This proved surprisingly popular with Amari, who would regularly play with said serpent.
Her second and third marriages had less traumatic endings, being basically amicable divorces and she's still on good terms with her ex-wife and surviving ex-husband. Still, this left her less willing to rush into marriage, if nothing else for the sake of Amari who is now in high school.
Nowadays she continues to work as an art teacher and artist while keeping in loose touch with the magical community. Her nonbinary child is doing well in school, aside from the occasional bulllying which Tyra resolved by having her shadow snake accompany them to school to scare said bullies until they stopped. Said snake's ability to hide in shadows largely prevented discovery even by those who could see magical things and the one kid who managed to discover it thought it was a cool idea.
And then Tyra got a weird app on her phone.
AU Personality Differences:
The biggest difference is that Tyra hasn't experienced the sheer weight of history that Shadow has. She doesn't have nearly as many experienced tragedies, making her less prone to the occasional melancholy moment, though she does get sad when she thinks of her deceased husband. She also doesn't have the innate desire to scare people, even if she continues to be a huge troll.
Element: Shadow
Purchased Powers: A medium-sized shadow spirit companion, a pitch black snake that can hide in shadows. 3 points.