Fade Rift - App

[mal_adjusted]

PLAYER

Name: Wren
Age: 39
Contact: Onestarkwren @ Plurk
Other Characters: James Norrington, Bethany Hawke-Darton, Adasse Agassi
Interests: I want to do mage plots with a mage who clearly loved her time at the Circle and isn't playing polite about it. Circle-raised, Circle-trained, and Circle-fine-with-it.

CHARACTER

Name: Mal Draco
Canon/OC: Descendants AU
Journal: mal_adjusted
Race: Human
Nationality: Nevarran
Occupation: Entropy/Storm mage mage/Necromancer premie
Division: Forces
Mage or Not: YEP
Age: 19

History

- 9:24 Dragon, Mal Draco is born to Nevarran Mortalisi Maleficent, suspected blood mage and mistress to Duke Hubert Draco. Both have children - Phillip, the full-blood son and heir, and Diablo, Maleficient's chosen heir

9:24-32 - Mal is raised in her father's house, given his name, and little to no affection or attention.

- 9:32 Dragon; Diablo starts to show faint signs of magic, and is entered in the Cumberland Circle. Mal, desperate for any sort of attention from either one of her parents, electrocutes the family dog. Hubert is horrified, Maleficient looks at her daughter for the first time. Mal is also sent to the Circle.

9:32 to 9:37 - Mal goes to study Storm, Entropy, and start on Necromancy, following her mother's footsteps.

9:37 Dragon; Maleficient avenges herself against the family of Phillip's fiancee, who slighted her years ago. She is only foiled by Mal coming forward and telling Phillip of the plan. Maleficient is executed; Diablo and Mal are sent off to different Circles. Mal ends up in Ostwick, where she meets and eventually befriends a young Carolus.

9:40 Dragon: Mal goes through her Harrowing, and passes.

9:41 Dragon: The Ostwick Circle falls in violence and chaos. Mal grabs Carlus and a few close friends, escaping the blood mages and maddened Templars. They fall in with the Rebellion, for survival's sake, but Mal keeps looking for a way to get them all back to a Circle. They find the Inquisition instead, and join there.

9:43 Dragon: Carolus disappears while Mal is out on a mission to kill demons with a group of Inquisition soldiers and mages. She leaves her group to make sure he is all right, and finds herself in Kirkwall.


Personality

Most people can say that their mind is organized into rooms, or shelves, where different feelings and thoughts are equally separated or gently blended with one another. To look into Mal Draco's mind, you would simply see a maelstrom of conflicting emotions and desires, someone who is still trying to find her own path and not the path set out for her by others.

Mal grew up in a very controlling household, where nothing that she did was good enough for either of her parents. She did not show enough of the sly brilliance that Diablo did, and her mother often found her a disappointment, saying she was too much like her father. On the other hand, Hubert wanted a perfect little princess like Aurora, his friend Duke Stefan's daughter and Phillip's fiance. This left her to constantly seek approval from either one of her parents in completely different ways, and led to some of her more self-destructive tendencies. She will often break things to get attention, because any attention is better than none at all.

Now combine this with a competitive Circle like Cumberland, where every mage there is trying to find a way to get moved to the 'Best Circles' and gain more political power. Not only was Mal's back-stabbing and destructive tendencies ignored, but they were often encouraged, making her more ruthless than most people. Trust was also not something to be given away freely.

Yet there was still just the young girl who was looking for somewhere to belong - to find a family that accepted her as her. That was why she told Philip about her mother's plan, to get some measure of acceptance from her family, some showing of love. To that end, her actions led to that in a round-about way. In Ostwick, she learned how to care for other people, and have those people care about her. She also learned what it was like to have positive reinforcement, and a safe place to be. It is one of the major reasons why she is Pro-Circle.

With the war, she finally learned about self-sacrifice, about putting herself between her friends and outside forces - the maddened Templars, the bloodthirsty Rebel mages using blood magic. With the Inquisition, she learned that self-sacrifice could often go beyond those you loved, but to the entire world.

Mal is, in the end, a work in emotional progress. She has grown in many ways, but not fully and completely. She still doubts herself, still doubts if anyone really loves her for her. She's also more likely to be confrontational than reasonable, and she has absolutely no problem about starting or getting into the middle of a fight for other people. She is a canvas that is still needs finishing, and perhaps spending more time at the new heart of the Inquisition will allow her to finally become the work of art she is meant to be.

Opinions & Affiliations

The Chantry - Worthless bunch of religious blahblahblahers that tried to kill her and all her friends. As far as she is concerned, they are about as effective as a leaky roof in a rainstorm.

The Circles - Great, marvelous, as long as mages are able to stand on their own and not have to answer to the Chantry. There should be Circles but the Chantry should keep their noses out of them.

Templars - Useful as long as they aren't religious lapdogs and understand the benefit of a mutual relationship. Ostwick and Nevarra spoiled her in that view, and the Templars she has met since then have not impressed her.

Mages - Maker be Damned, but does she love magic, mages, and everything with that.

The Qunari/Vashoth - She really hasn't had enough experience with them to think anything about them outside of - large, horned people. However her time with the Rebel army introduced her to the Vashoth, and she learned enough to be wary of the Qun.

Dwarves - ... the shorter people who make the lyrium happen?

Elves - EH. Her mother thought they had superior magic, and Mal reluctantly has to agree. Her experiences with her elf-blooded brother have made her bitter towards elves in general, but she has nothing against them personally.

Adaptation Notes

I am AU'ing Mal from her original canon, Disney's Descendants, and her abilities in the two movies is strongly leaning towards magic (her mother is Maleficient, after all). The spells she chooses, the attitude she takes, puts her more in the mind of an entropy/storm mage than anything else.

With that in mind, I wanted to pick a country for Mal to be from that was friendly to mages, but not as friendly as Tevinter. Nevarra was the country where mages had strong ties to politics, and moved about with a great deal more freedom. To that end, that is also why Mal is interested in Necromancy -- it is her mother's specialty and studied extensively in Nevarra. To get ahead is to have a grasp on that kind of magic.

As for putting Mal in the Ostwick Circle - in Descendants, Mal and her friends are sent off to Auradon Prep after coming from the Isle of the Lost, basically a horrific prison island where the people are forced to survive off of garbage. Auradon Prep, on the other hand, is beautiful and perfect, and everyone is brought up to be kind and generous. Ostwick is characterized as a very low-key, studious Circle where everything was on the surface, peaceful and more stable than most other Circles.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

- Entropy battle magic. Mal started off her studies with entropy magic, so it makes her a good battlefield mage, someone who is able to stop enemies in their track and weaken them where it hurts.

- Storm magic, another one of her mother's specialties and one that Mal has worked on since she was a child. It was her first area of study and one of her best.

- Basic barrier magic.

- Beginning studies in necromancy, but she was sent to Ostwick before that went any further.

- Artistic talent. She is a talented painter, and creates murals and portraits on any open space that she can find with her paint.

- Determination. Mal is not someone who gives up easily. She will battle anything, right down to her knees.

- Bravery. After growing up with her mother, rarely anything truly scares Mal anymore. Living through the Mage/Templar war just gave that fearlessness an edge.

- Compassion. Through the experiences of her own childhood, and what she learned at Ostwick, Mal has a deeply ingrained sense of compassion. Which means she will go out of her way to stick up for the little guy.

Weaknesses

- Hyper-senstive. Anything that anyone points out to her as a flaw, she will immediately become defensive and insulting about all of their flaws. Even the odd compliment sets her off, makes her prickly and in turns, angry.

- Self-doubt. Mal lived most of her life being told that she was a disappointment. This sometimes cripples her when she thinks she isn't good enough - for friends, to be part of something like the Inquisition, to be anything but a complete failure.

- Anger issues. Mal has her mother's temper - and it tends to be cold and vengeful when roused. It means when she is mad about something, or at someone, she will go out of her way to make sure they are punished in a hurtful way.

Inventory

- Magister staff with a corrupting rune, that she took off the dead body of a blood mage.

- Purple and green leather battlemage armor.

- A horse named Goblin.

- A book of her mother's spells, to which Mal has added everything she has learned since then.

Motivation

She is here to find her friend Carolus and keep him from getting into trouble, which was why she joined the Inquisition in the first place. So she is just going to continue doing that from Kirkwall instead of out in the field.

SAMPLES

Sample 1

Sample 2