@ethyraia application

[angerberg]

Player;

NAME: tifa
AGE: 18+
PRONOUNS: she/they
CONTACT: protects
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: also applying for alina starkov

Character;

CHARACTER NAME: yennefer of vengerberg
AGE: 80
CANON: the witcher (netflix)
CANON POINT: end of s1
BACKGROUND/HISTORY:

An age ago, the Continent underwent a change called the Convergence of Spheres which brought elves and humans into the same plane, along with a host of monsters. Since then, they have been through a civil war that all but eliminated the elf population in an ethnic cleansing effort.

Yennefer is the bastard, disabled child of a farmer's wife living in Vengerberg, Aedirn, and an unnamed half-elf man. After she accidentally teleported herself there to avoid a sexual assault, the farmer sold her to Tissaia Devries, the sorceress headmaster from Aretuza, cheaply just to be rid of her, and her mother let him do it. At Aretuza, the school for sorceresses, Yennefer failed to manifest any remarkable talent for the magic of the Continent — a force called chaos, which is harnessed by careful control and balance. She was too angry, too bitter, to greedy and unfocused. She had great power and no control.

Despite this, Yennefer rose to the top of her class, remorselessly allowing her classmates to be turned to eels to power Aretuza and sweeping them away into the water if it meant her own ascension. The ascension ceremony rendered her infertile and immortal. She then similarly connived to steal the placement of another rising sorceress decided upon by the council, all so that she could return to Aedirn. There, she served the King and Queen for thirty years. As a sorceress, she did not age at all, counseling them, but when the King turned on his Queen for failing to produce male heirs, Yennefer tried to save the Queen's young daughter. Her failure drove her out of her business and she became a freelancer.

On her own, Yennefer began searching for ways to undo her infertility. She first tracked down a djinn, trying to trap its power in her body. Geralt saved her from this incredibly stupid idea, and wished for the two of them to be bound together
— his life to hers. They encountered one another again when she tried to hunt down a dragon so that she could use its heart for a mythical remedy for infertility. When Geralt found out, he laughed at her, and when she found out what he had done wiht his djinn wish, she spurned him.

A war escalated with the country of Nilfgard attempting to make itself an empire. They moved to invade Sodden, and Yennefer allied herself once more with the sorceresses of Aretuza, including Tissaia, to fight back against it. She nearly destroyed herself in the process because of how much chaos she summoned in the battle, finally giving up on all her efforts to control herself and merely letting her rage and pain act as a weapon against the imperial forces of Nilfgard.

PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY: N/A
PERSONALITY:

The world — her family, her peers, even her mentor Tissaia at Aretuza — despised and mistreated for her disability and her elven blood. To Yennefer, the world is a negotiation of power — beauty is a kind of power, as is money, as is magic. Those with power control and dominate those without it. To that end, Yennefer directed her greed and bitterness towards the ambitious pursuit of power, so she could protect herself from ever being mistreated again. She expected it to make up for the love she never felt, but there's no 'making up' for trauma without addressing the culmination of her resentment and pain.

Unsatisfied by power and magic, she settled for control — she initially exercised it over others, as with the spell she cast over the town where she met Geralt. But ultimately she wanted control over herself. She had thought she seized it when she ascended as a sorceress in Aretuza, but it only mutilated her body. Now she wants the power to regain her ability to bear children — not because she necessarily wants children, but because she wants to have the power to change her own destiny. Her obsession with control is ultimately at the root of her feelings of betrayal towards Geralt's use of his djinn wish to tether their lives together.

Yennefer's willingness to do whatever it takes to get it, makes her monstrous. She breezily betrays the trust of those close to her in Aretuza, and she makes ugly sacrifices in the Battle of Sodden Hill of those she'd mastered magic alongside. These things clearly get to her: she knows they're wrong. She knows that people aren't expendable, and she cares for these people. She does it anyway. Yennefer is the kind of person who believes the ends justify any means.

Yennefer's actions sometimes look selfless. However, these selfish choices are ultimately done in pursuit of feeling in control of herself and her fate. She helps fight a dragon to find a way to heal her body; she fights at Sodden Hill to give herself a legacy as a powerful, desirable, important person, the kind of legacy that seemed out of reach due to her bloodline and disability.

Yennefer's fear of her own weakness, and the subsequent self-loathing she has built up over time, prevent her from really growing away from this behavior. She hates the disabled girl she used to be as much as the people who abused her do, and she shows it by lashing out at those who are similarly weak or mistreated instead of sympathizing with them.

Despite her distemper, Yennefer is an accomplished performer, often acting cool and collected. To suit her audience, she oscillates easily between two selves: one powerful and in control, and like one an idle ornament who will blindly support the ambitions of others as it serves her own ends. This makes it hard to know when she's being sincere or when she's running a gambit.

SUITABILITY:

The matter of the game will not disturb her — Yennefer has suffered racism, a forced hysterectomy without anesthetic, and war. If there is one thing Yennefer of Vengerberg excels at, it's survival at the cost of other people. She is cutthroat, selfish, and suspicious. She will have no problem throwing others under the bus to ensure her own survival.

ABILITIES/SKILLS:

From the Witcher game glossary...

Chaos (also known as the Force, Power, or primordial Chaos) is the power which is harnessed and used by mages and sorceresses. They can extract magical energy from the four elements, transport themselves long distances and heal, as well as kill, in the blink of an eye. They have extensive scientific and political knowledge; in the latter respect, many mages are the equals of rulers. Many of them remained royal advisors, sometimes even ruling countries from behind the scenes.

Yennefer, in the show, is shown to summon fire, enchant an entire town under her will, break bones with a twist of her hand, siphon the life out of one living thing and into another, ritualistically summon a djinn, and bottle lightning, among other feats.

Chaos exists in a matter of balance — the power must come from somewhere. In the Battle of Sodden Hill, Yennefer created what looked like dragon-fire by presumably draining her own life force, fueled by rage and trauma. However, the trade-off is that she seems to be capable of doing most anything that affects the natural world as it already exists. She does not seem to be able to wholesale conjure resources.

I understand that if her magic interferes meaningfully with the setting in a major way, it will backfire and depower her (and require a plot request). I also understand that if it interferes in small ways, it may become unpredictable — even harmful.

In addition to her chaos, Yennefer appears to be handy with a short sword, and she of course has all her courtly manners and her political and tactical knowledge with which she advised kings for upwards of thirty years.

INVENTORY:

01. a little glass bottle of magic explosive prepared during the battle of sodden
02. a short sword
03. a book of the continent's history, as written by the adviser to the king of nilfgard fifty years ago
04. an empty djinn's bottle
05. a masquerade mask

Samples;

SAMPLE ONE: communicates
SAMPLE TWO: thinks (nsfw)
SAMPLE THREE: conflict