Young Writers Society

Name: Saturn Capella
Age: 20
Pronouns: He/him
Magic/ability: Saturn is a mirror empath, meaning he can feel who is feeling the exact opposite of his emotion. (Opposite emotion is defined through Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions.)
Motivation for going to Lyndira: Two main reasons. Number one, Saturn’s best friend is attending Lux Academy, and they have a friendly rivalry. Number two, someone told him he would never make it in, so he needed to prove that guy wrong.

Appearance: Saturn has a light Caribbean complexion with long white hair he keeps in a bubble ponytail with shaved sides. He tends to dress on both sides of the gender binary quite freely. He’s short, only 4’11” or barely 1.5 metres. (Picrew in spoiler.)
Personality: Saturn deeply cares for others and seems to always be of service somehow. He works hard to learn skills he believes are helpful and has become a jack of all trades. He hates few things more than being a burden or a disservice.
History/background: Saturn’s parents died when he was twelve, leaving him and his sibling, Neptune, to live with foster parents: Edmund and Nellie Smith. Edmund and Nellie are not “elite,” making his rejection guaranteed from the start. Still, he decided to try and find out for sure than ponder forever.
Other: At seventeen, Satun lost his hearing in a car accident. He now primarily communicates in sign language, but he can still speak.

Name: Siang Yi Novrum
Age: 19
Pronouns: she/her
Magic/ability: She can change the colour of water. The limitations are that 1. she can only change half her body mass's worth of water, that means something like 30 kg, and 2. she can only change colour, and not texture or taste or anything else.
Motivation for going to Lyndira: Learning magic! And confidence in her own ability to learn magic.

Appearance: She's tall and somewhat gangly in build, with a cold beige complexion. She has black hair in a pixie cut, and close-set brown eyes. She has a scar on her chin from an attempt to ride a bicycle once.
Personality: She's generally quiet and self-assured, as well as day-dreamy and whimsical. She has the propensity to accept challenges that are way out of her league, like trying to carry ten bicycles at once or convince a complaining kid that orange juice is actually the chocolate milk he wanted by influencing his sub-modalities with her colour-changing power. She doesn't like conflict, and is only really getting involved in this because she's confident no one will notice her at orientation and she loves the subjects offered at Lyndira.
Strengths: confident, calm, imaginative
Weaknesses: conflict-averse, overly distant, overly indirect

History/background: She comes from a modest family. Her parents run a bicycle shop. Siang Yi has never had much of a passion for bicycles, however. She spent her childhood putting on little magic shows outside the shop. Well, they were supposed to be experiments, but people like watching her use her ability because water that turns pretty colours is fun. When she turned 17, she decided to aim for going to magic school. She's received a couple of rejection letters from Lyndira already, and she's concerned she might be running out of time to get in.
Other: One of her main academic interests is how magic influences visual perception. As a result, she's particularly keen on any potions-related(Potion Crafting) and artifacts-related (Artificing) classes.
She's also trying to write a novel about a collection of sentient writing desks that live in an enchanted forest.

Name: Brynn Thefina
Age: 17
Pronouns: Any pronouns.
Magic/ability: They can mimic people's voices, but only when it's the voice of someone they don't know.
Motivation for going to Lyndira: All the bragging rights. What's cooler than going to a magical academy?

Appearance: Brynn's appearance is reasonably youthful; you could say they have a baby face. They're also not very tall for their age, which doesn't help. They have long, naturally blond hair, but it always looks tangled because they refuse to brush it. Their style fashion-wise changes every other day, and they have a wide variety of piercings.
Personality: They prefer to be on their own, but they'd never pass up an opportunity to make a good friend. They're known to be distant at times, but if they care about something, they'll defend it until people are tired of arguing with them.
History/background: They never really had any issues with their folks. It was a normal nuclear family setting. Sure, nothing about their family was elite, but it was enough. Sometimes, people just need some time away, and that's exactly what Brynn wanted.
Other: They're a bit of a pushover.

Name: Prehnite Filosil
Age: 16
Pronouns: he/him
Magic/ability: Divination, but with severe limitations. Prehnite can draw the future whenever he relaxes enough (like when he’s daydreaming), but the problem is, he’s terrible at drawing. (Especially people. His attempts at drawing humans alternately look like lumpy triangles, stick figures, or amorphous blobs.) His parents hired art instructors, but nothing really worked– Prehnite has to focus to draw well, but his divinations only happen when he’s unfocused and relaxed.
Motivation for going to Lyndira: Prehnite’s twin sister, Epidote, was accepted to Lyndira. While their family is well off, they’re not particularly rich, so the main reason she was accepted was because of her power: anything she draws becomes real, with no limitation except her imagination. Art lessons worked on her because she has to focus for her power to work, which means she became even more powerful… Anyways, Prehnite wants to go see how his li’l sis (by like five minutes, Epidote would say) is doing. =P

Appearance: Pale green hair, medium green eyes, slightly shorter than average. Pren often dresses rather sloppily, but he’d be willing to try to wear a uniform neatly, if only Epidote would draw a uniform and acceptance letter for him so he could go to Lyndira too… But nooo, Epidote just had to be honest and honorable and flat-out refuse. Hmph.
Personality: Pren is outgoing, definitely the type to just walk up to a stranger and say, “Hey, how ya doing?” as if they’ve known each other for years. This comes in quite handy whenever he wants to get away with things like taking advantage of a friend-of-the-owner discount. But despite his talkativeness, Pren doesn’t really have any close friendships, perhaps because his family used to travel a lot when he was younger, and just when he’d find a best friend, they’d move on. Pren is quite close with his sister, though. He knows that they’ll still have each other, wherever their family decides to go.
History/background: Pren’s family used to have a bit of a nomadic lifestyle, but recently, they’ve settled down in a city near Lyndira. Pren’s parents have made quite a bit of money auctioning off various knicknacks they picked up on their travels, though of course, it’s small beans compared to the wealth that most of the elite have.
Other: Pren’s father is a rocks and minerals enthusiast, hence the names Prehnite and Epidote. =P

Prehnite:


Epidote:


Tumbled prehnite with epidote:


Prehnite (the character):

Name: Cain Heartly
Age: 19
Pronouns: He/They
Magic/ability: Blood manipulation. Think bloodbending.
Motivation for going to Lyndira: He wants to prove that he is teachable, and that his specialty is valuable.

Appearance: (drawing enspoilered below)
Personality: Just look at him man
History/background: He comes from a family where odd and creepy affinities run in the blood. The accepted and trained response to a new 'undesireable' affinity popping up is to teach the child in question to suppress it and let it die out on its own, but when his ability began to show he refused to let it fade. He wanted to be a powerful mage, a respected, revered, and knowledgeable mage in his own right, and he wanted his affinity to be at the center of his honed skillset. The challenge was finding a way to do that...ethically.

Name: Corden Malarvick
Age: 19
Pronouns: He/him
Magic/ability:His words have the ability to get people to do things... well kinda. So far only his snoring has been able to do this, and his subconscious isn't really the best area to persuade people.
Motivation for going to Lyndira: He has been telling people about his Affinity and they just won't believe him. He wants to go to Lyndira Academy to partly get some help with this, but also because he knows that this could end up being something huge, not just for him, but for a lot of people. He never really got into the mage thing before, but now he wants, and needs, to get into it fast. What better way than Lyndira?

Appearance:Corden is pretty tall and skinny and kind of unassuming. He has a fairly oval face and baby blue eyes. His skin is a dark brown, and he doesn't fuss with his hair or style all that much, but he has figured out that white is his color and he makes that very clear with his wardrobe.
Personality: Corden hides his insecurities behind humor, and makes that a large part of his personality. He's someone who goes with the flow and loves to be unbothered. What other people do, he doesn't really care unless it affects him. He's a really big person on "you stay in your lane, imma stay in mine." so his affinity definitely isn't something he takes lightly.
History/background: Corden's life growing up wasn't one that was great, but in his mind it was pretty average. He holds a lot of childhood trauma built up from living in the not great part of town in Ludus. His older brother kept him out of a lot of trouble, both in the streets and at home, so Corden grew up relatively happy, all things considered. His brother, Kayn, however, didn't have a great life. Kayn had to do a lot early on, but he did as much as he could to keep Corden out of trouble and into opportunities. Kayn always said that Corden would be the one to make something out of himself. So, when Corden started showing minor signs of magic, Kayn was overjoyed, saying this was his ticket to Lyndira. That was about five years ago. Kayn disappeared about four years ago. But, Corden tried. He really did, he gave it a good attempt to learn magic, but nothing ever came to him easily, and his attempts to get into a local academy or study on his own just ended in failure. When he turned 18, Corden's mom basically told him to get his life together or get out. So, he started really trying and eventually applied to Lyndira. A month ago, he got his first rejection. That has gone up to four, and now he's out of a home. So. Where else can he go but up? At least, that's his reasoning to try and sneak his way into Lyndira. He has nothing to lose now.
Other: Corden's subconscious has a terrible secret...

Name: Serafina Gianova
Age: 17
Pronouns: she/her
Magic/ability: Serafina has the ability to magically link lifeforms to one another so that when you do something to one of the lifeforms the same happens to the other. It would be powerful if it wasn't for the unfortunate fact that whatever happens to those linked life forms happen to her as well.
Motivation for going to Lyndira: Her ability if she doesn't master it properly has a very high probability of being rather dangerous to her. Given she doesn't have many other means to learn anything, this is her only way to make her own magic not be the cause of demise.

Appearance: Serafina is fairly tall, coming in just around six feet. She's rather thin, and its the sort of thin that comes from not having quite enough to eat. Despite that she's still stronger than she looks, although naturally she isn't that strong. She is pretty fast however. She's got fairly long midnight black hair, which has a slight natural curl to it. Her eyes are a vivid emerald green. She's usually weary very worn out trousers with some sort of shirt. Its not a surprise to see her barefoot too although she might find some sort of shoes to blend in better.
Personality: She's somewhat guarded. Having spent the better part of her teens on the streets she's learnt the hard way to be weary of people, especially ones that appear to be friendly. She's not necessarily standoffish or rude, just very neutral in her interactions with everyone until they earn her trust. Not having too many friends though she does tend to care quite a lot about the ones that do prove themselves to her. She also tends to think a lot and sometimes even talk to herself out loud, a habit of being alone a lot. This does sometimes lead to a bit of overthinking too to things that should otherwise be simple.
History/background: Serafina grew up in a fairly poor family on the outskirts of town. Her life was a pretty simple one up until she was around thirteen. She and her little sister didn't have a lot, but it was a happy childhood and they learnt to do a lot with the little they had.

Just about two months after her thirteenth birthday their house burnt down. Serafina was outside when it happened with her father. Her father immediately ran in to save her sister and mother. He managed to bring her sister out but neither he nor her mother ever made it out.

Since then, they've had to make do with what they can. Their relatives gave what they could, but it wasn't like too many of them were that much better of than they were. With her sister proving to be a rather powerful budding mage, Serafina set about working on the streets, doing what she could here and there, sometimes dipping into things that were of questionable legality all so she could get enough to add to what she got from her relatives to send her sister through a decent school while she had to pretty much teach herself everything she knew.

The one thing she allowed for herself was to get into Lyndira, knowing it could make a big difference. Unfortunately all the effort she went to ended up being wasted in rejection, not once but twice.

Now, going back into the streets to get enough to try again seems like more risk than maybe just sneaking into Lyndira and seeing what happens.
Other: As always Serafina is also about as straight as a circle.

There are five different kinds of magic in this world. First are specialties, which are unique magic abilities that everyone has (see the flying example above). There are also potions, artifacts, spoken spells, and gestured spells. Lyndira teaches all five! (However, students usually only learn specialties and two other areas.)

Specialties: the magic/ability from your character sheet. Lyndira teaches students how to maximize the potential of their abilities. However, mastery of one’s ability can also be done on one’s own through practice and reflection. (See Affinities)
Potions: mixtures of ingredients like herbs, hair, etc. Modern recipes are often adapted from those in ancient tomes (a couple centuries ago, potions were all the rage). (See Potion Crafting)
Artifacts: physical objects with magical properties. Magic can be imbued into artifacts through certain rituals. (See Artificing)
Spoken spells: spells that rely on the spoken word. Often must be spoken with feeling, determination, and/or flair. (See Spellcrafting
Gestured spells: spells that rely on gestures. Motions are recommended to be as precise as possible, although flair could help as well. (See Primal Sense, Sigilweaving, and Symbology)

While Lyndira offers a formal education in the magical arts, spells/potion recipes/etc. can be learned outside of Lyndira as well. It’s just harder because Lyndira hoards most of the books relating to magic.