Thane Mathai
Return to Lux Academy
Creator: winterwolf0100
Roleplay: Lux Academy
Nickname: Thane
Name: Thane Mathai
Age: 17
Pronouns: she/her
Appearance: Her skin is a tawny beige, with sepia brown eyes. Surrounding her eyes are what can vaguely be described as tattoos that developed when she began to mess with aura enhancement at the age of ten. The faint blackness surrounds both her eyes and branches outwards towards the far sides of her face, but the blackness is inconsistent, and even though it doesn't really move, it seems to move in intensity like fog, meaning sometimes her skin can be seen clearly in an area, and sometimes it's a deep black like ink. Thane's eyes lighten dramatically when using her affinity so she can continue to see through the fog even as it blinds others, and if she is using her affinity while manipulating other people's auras, they go completely white. When this happens, the markings around her eyes black out completely. Most of the time, they are faded and moving like fog. Her black hair is completely straight, and is cut in a shaggy tomboy style that swoops back behind her ears and ends at the base of her neck. She stands at around 5'3" and is very skinny, with muscled arms. She generally wears a dark green cloak that fastens in front of her neck with tall brown boots and a loose-fitting shirt with a simple belt.
Thematic: Darkness and silence. The sound of a pipe being played in the dark, stumbling blindly through a forest with faint growls around you, the wind slamming a door shut. Confidence born from intelligence, a silent bluntness, the calm in the eye of the storm.
Aura Color: Pitch black. When partially active, it looks like a dense fog of blackness, coming off in wisps around her but still see-through. When fully active, it solidifies in color and density, making it near impossible to see through. Tinges of dark green rolling through the fog are the only way someone knows they haven't gone blind.
Magical Abilities: Thane was accepted to the academy for her wielding and practice of symbology, specifically her ability to create and control multiple beings at a time. Her real strength however is aura enhancement and manipulating the auras of others around her.
Affiinity: Thane wields her own aura as a black fog so dense it blinds anyone she sends it towards. She can manipulate it to surround someone and leave them blind and stumbling in the dark, or spread it out to cover something. She could even use it to go into someone and suffocate them, though she never has and while the thought has occurred to her, she likely never will. It's too far a line to cross for her. While her fog essentially blinds those she's fighting, she can see through it, and people can only see through it once she is within around five feet of them. When she uses her affinity, the markings around her eyes turn completely black and her eyes glow slightly. When she is manipulating others' auras and using them to further her affinity, her eyes go completely white.
Magical Weapon: Thane has a pair of knuckle dusters with knives attached to them, which she unironitcally and completely seriously refers to as knuckle knives. They're artifaced to protect her knuckles when she uses them, so she can pack a full blow without hurting herself in the process.
Battle Style: Thane's main weapon against someone in a battle isn't her literal weapons, but her affinity. While she can see through the pitch-black fog it creates, others cannot, which leaves them swinging blind unless they can hone in on her using their other senses or their magic. The entire battle is about illusion. Once she's close enough to hit them, she can usually be seen even dimly through the fog, which is when the physical battle really starts for her.
Personality: Thane is quiet, not out of shyness, but out of not feeling the need to talk to others. She is confident in herself and often feels like some of the people around her are overlooking every important detail-- and she'll speak up to point it out too. She's extremely blunt, but won't go out of her way to hurt someone's feelings. If someone asks if she likes their outfit, she won't lie, but she won't outright say she hates it, more along the lines of "it's not my style" in an extremely dry tone. She's relatively calm in most situations unless she's extremely angry, like in a battle, in which case her aggressiveness will shine through. That extreme anger really only comes when she feels threatened somehow though, and since she's honest with herself about her abilities, she doesn't often reach that point of feeling threatened. She is extremely perfectionistic in others recognizing her abilities though, as it's a sore spot. She isn't going to seek out people's approval, but if they openly state that they think she is worse than them at something she knows herself to be better at, she is going to retaliate somehow. She doesn't particularly trust or distrust others, just thinks logically about what they're saying and decides if she agrees. She generally believes someone's word unless there's evidence to suggest otherwise, or unless she knows nothing about them.
Personal Strengths: Thane can put her trust in other people if they spend enough time around her for her to gauge where they're at. She can pack quite the punch when she wants to, and nearly incapacitate some people when fighting with her fog. She's confident and cool-headed.
Personal Weaknesses: Thane's fairly withdrawn from many social groups, not feeling the need to participate in many of them. She can be hard to read for people who don't know her-- and even those who do-- and she is blunt, though she will try to frame what she's saying in a way that won't hurt someone too much. She has a sore spot about people underestimating her and can get extremely aggressive when she feels threatened, physically or emotionally.
Backstory: Thane grew up in Arelinor, a city on the western border of Rupturia, right next to the Fracture in a lower-class family. She grew up watching people starve and fight for their place in life, and grew to view it at the norm, watching all her older brothers and sisters (four, in total) compete in underground rings and circles of magical fighters. Arelinor as a city has been overrun with anti-mage violence for several decades, but it is especially prevelant in the poorer regions, closer to the western border. Slave trades of mages, used to protect the rich and wealthy against the Fracture, festered and grew inside Arelinor, and young children being snatched off the streets began to be the daily occurrence. In retaliation, underground rings of mages began to pop up, a way to capitalize on the anti-mage hatred, but also a way for mages to learn to fight on their own terms. This is where Thane's older siblings all learned their magic, and it is where Thane learned how to fight physically, as well as where she learned aura enhancement. In the underground, everything could be learned for a price, and you taught yourself whatever you needed to, no matter how dangerous it was.
When Thane was ten, her eldest sister, twenty at the time, was killed in an underground ring after being drained completely of her aura by another mage. Less than a week later, her oldest brother, seventeen at the time, never came home from a match. Her family guessed that he'd been snatched by someone who was watching the match, but it was entirely possible he could've just as easily been killed and his body dumped by someone who hadn't liked how much betting money he'd lost them. Either way, that was when Thane knew she couldn't count on her older siblings to keep the family together-- she had to do something on her own. At the age of ten, she began to study aura enhancement and manipulation, branching away from the safer-- legal-- concept of symbology her single father had encouraged. Her older sister and brother, twins who were both fourteen at the time, helped her develop it as they threw themselves into the rings to make enough money for the family to survive. While their father tried to provide for them, all three children knew that a law-abiding job just wasn't going to make them the money they needed, and all three continued with their dangerous development of their magic. At the age of thirteen, Thane began to enter the underground child rings. Because of the "wrongness" of them, they always drew in more money, whether from fascination or guilt, and all three of the siblings pulled the strings as much as they could.
By the time she was fifteen, her older siblings were twenty and in the adult rings. They laughed when she brought up applying to Lux Academy, thinking it was a joke. They all had the magical capability, but none of them could get in using the illegal magic they practiced on the daily. They asked her why she would want to go anyway. All Thane could think of was the God Crystal-- how if she got her hands on one of those, no one would dare to kidnap another mage off the streets of Arelinor again. Not with her there. She would be the most powerful person in the city, and she could use that power to even the playing field. Why should the poor have to fight in rings for scraps when the rich sat around doing nothing and keeping mages as slaves out of fear that the Fracture would someday spread? It was her sister who finally suggested that if she really wanted the God Crystal, then she'd have to be the best applicant she possibly could-- the Lux Academy, she argued, valued family connections more than skill. If Thane wanted to get in when she lived someplace like Arelinor, she needed to be the best they'd ever seen. And so, at the age of fifteen, Thane began fighting in the adult rings. Her siblings challenged her to develop both her aura enhancement skills but also her symbology, as that was what she needed to showcase. And after two years of throwing herself into it nonstop, more than a few broken bones and concussions, and much stress on her father's part, Thane applied at the age of seventeen for Lux Academy. When she was accepted, her siblings teased-- but they weren't laughing anymore.
Reason for Applying to Lux Academy: Thane already feels confident in her own abilities, and isn't here to learn from the professors-- she feels the old by-the-book method of magic is not adaptive enough for modern times, and has learned and taught herself how to control her magic on her own in far more dangerous ways and settings. She applied to Lux Academy for one reason only: to get a God Crystal. If she hadn't been accepted, she would've found a way to steal one herself.
Connections to Lux Academy: She's the first in her family to attend Lux Academy, and most tease her about it, given that near everyone in her family has magic and, like her, learned to control it through less conventional and more hazardous methods.
Personal Goal: She's here to get a God Crystal and have enough power to address the anti-mage violence and underground market of mages being kidnapped and sold that's been terrorizing her home city. She doesn't trust the authorities to actually address the issue since it's been happening for decades and nothing has been done. She isn't wasting time making allies who will help her-- she's getting a God Crystal, and she's doing it on her own.
Personal Secret: Her biggest personal secret is her training and experience in aura enhancement and manipulation.
Personal Fear: She's scared of never making an impact or helping anyone. She isn't social with many people, but that doesn't mean she doesn't care about her community and the injustices happening there.
Other: I don't know her sexuality yet-- I'm pretty sure she doesn't know her sexuality yet. Oh well, we'll figure it out eventually.
Thoughts on Thane
Railyn: I feel like Railyn is going to see Thane as blunt and harsh as a first impression, and that's definitely gonna rub him the wrong way. Buuut, Railyn's a fixer, so yeah, he will find himself interested in her.
Cyra: Thane and Cyra's a wildcard. It depend entirely on their first interaction. If Thane critiques Cyra, rivals. at least for a while. If they agree with something, they might not necessarily be friends, but Cyra will tolerate her. This pretty much tracks. They would have the most volatile relationship ever. They're frenemies that switch from respecting each other and training together to hating each other for weeks at a time. Lol yeah. Although Thane's energy isn't so much hatred as it is "you're not doing anything to improve anything in my life so there's literally no reason for you to be here" One-sided hatred from Cyra. LOL I think that's so much funnier. Thane: I don't care. Cyra: Well, I DO!
Edalyn: Eda and Thane will definitely have a difficult time connecting. Eda's brash streak and Thane's quietness, along with their nearly opposite upbringings, there's a lot of dissonance. Eda, innitially at least, doesn't have any ill wishes against her. If/when she discovers Thane's ability to manipulate and enhance auras, Eda will do whatever she can to learn from Thane (maybe a bonding moment for the two, Zuko and Aang style? - this likely wouldn't happen for a good while, though)
Euphemia: I feel like she would respect Thane, but it would be from afar. She might be a little intimidated by her? Thane wants little to do with Euphemia anyway, and I think she would realize that. She might attempt to interact with her a few times to test the waters, but I can't really see them past acquaintances/not on horrible terms.
Kynina: After picking up on Thane's resentment towards her, Kynina would be curious about learning why. Once she knows, it'd become important to her to mediate that. She's fighting for people like her, and not only does she think she could learn a lot from Thane, she would believe they could help each other out. She'd be respectful and understanding of why Thane thinks of her that way, and have the hope they can sort it out.
Safiana: Thane is going to be a breath of fresh air to Safiana. After dealing with years of thinly veiled insults from people, someone who's blunt about it and tries to give some sort of actually helpful critisicm as opposed to just trying to belittle her is going to be a very new thing that she will very much like. She might back off a bit on the befriending front if its clear Thane doesn't want her around but she'd likely respect her a lot and value her opinion all the time. If she ends up getting a lot of disapproval though there's a chance Thane is going to unknowindly contribute to her think she's not good enough a bit too.
Ezra:
Aapeli: Thane and Pel would likely bond over not really fitting into social groups. Thane's quietness and bluntness would feel reassuring to Pel, because he could just exist next to her without having to think too much about saying something. Aapeli could also definitely learn from Thane's experience with magic and using it in creative ways, and although he might be taken aback by the idea of underground rings at first, he would accept it as just another piece of information and not view Thane as better or worse for it.