Player Information
Name: Jorica
Nickname: Scala
E-mail: xscalax@gmail.com
IM details: lise_rolante@hotmail.com
Roleplay Experience: I’ve played on quite a lot of RP forums in the past. Currently I’m active on a Harry Potter based role play forum, and hopefully on this one soon ^^

Character Information
Naam: Virana (Felvale)
Gender: Female
Age: 24
Birthday: 21st of March 1013
Place of Birth: Auldale
Faction: Pagan (Shaman)
Family:
Father: Duncan Felvale
Mother: Arianne Felvale
Aunt: Prudence Felvale
Brother: Conner Felvale
Sister: Sarah Felvale

Virana has left her family of city dwellers, and their family name, behind. Her family now are her fellow believers and servants of the Trickster.

Physical Appearance:
Virana is in many aspects not a woman people will remember after passing her on the street. She’s of average height, standing about 5” 7’. She has a slender build, with the normal round forms where one would expect. As a child Virana has never had a chance to engage in sports or games that resulted in a lot of running and stumbling. As a result she has no scars, and her skin and hands are smooth and soft. Because pagans spend most of their time in forests and parks outside, Virana’s skin is tanned.

Virana’s face is somewhat gaunt. She has thin, red lips and a somewhat pointed nose. Her eyes are a very deep, dark green. Virana’s expression is usually cheerful and friendly. Being in the Pagan Sanctuary and amongst other creatures is a source of happiness for her, so in peaceful times she will often wear a smile upon her face.

Virana usually wears simple clothing made of linen or another simple cloth. A long skirt and a tunic or a shirt are usually all she wears, covered by a thick woollen cloak should the wind be harsh or the weather be cold. Though often walking around bare footed while at home or in one of the parks that are pagan territory, she does wear shoes when she has to travel. If the weather is warm, Virana will often wear sandals. Otherwise, she prefers soft leather boots.

Virana’s most noticeable feature is her hair. Her thick, straight, copper red hair is almost abnormally long, falling to just below her knees. If need be, she can braid her hair to make it easier to travel, but most of the time she keeps it just the way it is. Virana takes good care of her hair, brushing it several times a day (if time permits). She washes it several times a week and regularly treats it with several oils to keep it strong and healthy.

Personality:
Virana’s normal behaviour amongst her fellow pagans is kind and caring. To the new servants of the Trickster, she can be almost motherly. She is a serious woman, very dedicated both to her work for and devotion of her Woodsie Lord. Nature is sacred, and Virana tries to look out for many creatures, as the Trickster himself is a leader for various outcasts of the City’s society.

Virana easily opens up to people. She’ll often share everything she knows about a certain subject, simply because someone asks. Virana very easily shares her emotions, the downside to this is that she is hardly ever capable of hiding them when she tries. Her face and her eyes always reveal sadness, anger, happiness or any other emotion.

Though Virana is certainly not stupid, she’s not a very fast thinker. She needs time to ponder actions or plans. She can understand hints and signs given be people during a conversation, but can be slow on the uptake when someone makes a joke. Often, Virana’s serious nature makes her overlook the fact that something is meant purely to be funny, and she’ll interpret it very seriously. She does, however, have a great deal of common sense and a very good memory. All in all, Virana is probably more wise than witty.

Virana can’t exactly remember when the Pagan’s particular from of speech first started to replace the more common from of language that she had learned as a child. She does know that, after twelve years, she uses this specific dialect not only to speak, but also in her thoughts.

Like many other Pagans, Virana is repulsed by the Hammerites. This is not only because they build with stone and metal, but because they willingly and knowingly sabotage and destroy the work of the Trickster and kill his devoted servants. To Virana, the Hammerites are beyond saving, and any Hammer who wanders into Pagan territory on Virana’s watch can expect to be greeted violently.

To Virana, there are two kinds of people in the city, next to the three factions. There are city folk, hiding in their stone houses and clinging greedily to their material belongings. These are lost causes, like the Hammers. But because they do not openly oppose and work against the Pagans, Virana will mostly leave them be. There are also some amongst the city dwellers who are like Virana once was, empty inside and looking for the truth to guide them. Virana believes that these people, with the right guidance, will open their hearts to the Woodsie Lord.

Though she is repulsed by the work of the Hammerites, Virana (like many other Pagans) does not see metal itself as a terrible substance. After all, the swords Pagans use for their protection are made of it. However, metal should never be allowed to replace any function of nature, nor should it be used to much. Nature must always be the dominant factor in one’s surroundings.

Virana feels no lasting bond with her family. As a child she never felt very loved by her parents or siblings. As a grown pagan woman, she feels a hint of pity for those people, caught up in their materialistic lives. She feels no love for them, nor does she ever feel any longing to see them again.

History:
Virana Felvale was born in the Auldale district as the youngest child of an upper class family. Virana has one sister, Sarah, who is ten years older and a brother, Conner, who is six years older. Her parents, Duncan and Arianne, had both inherited a considerable fortune and thus lived a luxurious and comfortable life. Duncan’s sister Prudence, widowed early in her live, had moved in with her brother in his considerable mansion.

There was one ruling factor of ambition and devotion for Virana’s family: money. Money governed the Felvale’s normal day-to-day live. The friends Virana’s parents kept were selected because of their considerable fortune. Duncan was a cruel business man, who wouldn’t think twice about driving another man out of business, as long as it made him profit. For as long as Virana can remember, she and her sister were told that the most noble goal in a woman’s life was to marry a rich husband.

Sarah, who seemed to have no trouble accepting her parents’ wisdom, had been gifted with a rather pretty face. She spent most of her time making sure her looks, hair and clothing were in order. When she walked, she strolled in a dignified kind of way. All to attract the eyes of the wealthy young men in the neighbourhood. To the much younger Virana, her behaviour seemed somewhat ridiculous.

Perhaps the person most unaffected by the family’s gold fever was Virana’s older brother. Conner was a true sloth. On any given day he would rather lazy around on a couch leafing idly through some book, or just sleeping. His father’s various efforts to get the boy to do something, to study or learn for a profession that would one day make him a lot of money, were in vain. This particular subject often turned family dinners into heated battles, father and son bickering with each other from across the table.

As a child, Virana would often retreat to the garden or some quiet corner too play. She was always much more concerned with other matters than money, which for a young child is not so strange. She liked feeding the birds in the garden, playing with the dog and would often chatter the ears off one of the servants.

Her carefree childish attitude often earned Virana chiding. Her parents would remind her that the servants were below her status, that she should seek company that better fit her place in society. Sarah would often remind her little sister that men were not interested in birds, trees or dogs. They were more interested in dignified women. Though this was perhaps an interesting subject for the eighteen year old Sarah, Virana found that she could hardly care much about what men wanted. Worst of all was Virana’s aunt Prudence, who would often serve as babysitter when the young girl played in the garden. She made sure that tree climbing, running and other games were not an option.

Because Virana’s family mostly kept the company of wealthy, and older, gentlemen, the girl had very few friends to play with as a child. She met her first real friend when she was nine years old. A boy that looked a few years older than her, was crouched next to the stone wall surrounding the garden one morning, when Virana had gone outside. He seemed a little frightened when Virana ‘caught’ him, but when he noticed that she had no bad intentions he introduced himself.

The boy’s name was Phosfer and he was, as he called it himself, ‘a servant of them Woodsie Lord, from thems Order of the Vine’. Virana had heard of the Order of the Vine, they were the pagans, hauled up in the parks of the city and often frowned upon by the higher class. Her mother thought these people ‘filthy’ and ‘barbaric’.

But in truth, Virana learned these people were nothing like that. Phosfer had been hiding from a Hammerite in her family’s garden and afterwards secretly returned to chat with Virana, whom he said ‘besies my friends’. Phosfer told Virana about the Trickster and about the people that followed him. He told her about the importance of nature, of the Hammerites that opposed the Pagans and sought to destroy the ‘Woodsie Lord’.

Phosfer’s stories opened up a whole new world to Virana. Through him she found that there were groups of people with greater goals than ‘money’. Secretly she began to read books about Pagans. Mostly she found stories and legends that told of the Trickster or the Woodsie Lord. Sometimes he was depicted as an evil character, but since Phosfer had told her that the Trickster looked out for many different creatures she could hardly believe this true.

When Virana had turned twelve, the inevitable happened and her ‘secret’ friendship with Phosfer was discovered. Virana’s parents demanded that she immediately cease her contact with the ‘filthy pagan boy’, and threatened to keep her indoors if they thought she was not obeying them. The young girl, thinking that her parents were being unnecessarily cruel, pleaded that they should hear her out. She would make them see that they were wrong about the pagan people.

In the end it was Phosfer, having returned to the garden in the middle of the night, who suggested that Virana leave her family of ‘city folks’ and leave with him. He took her with him to the Pagan Sanctuary, where he lived, and introduced her to his grandmother, an elderly and wise pagan shaman.


The next few months of Virana’s life passed incredibly fast. There was much to learn for a city girl who sought to be a member of the Order of the Vine. Virana’s parents had never come looking for her, and Virana had returned to her home. At first, she had felt guilty about leaving them without saying goodbye. Later, she realised that she had never felt at home or loved when she had lived with her family. She had never felt homesick after she had left. Embraced by her new friends and ‘family’, Virana left her old live behind her.

The many aspects of pagan life, work and religion fit Virana like a second skin. Though it took her quite a while to learn and understand everything in the pagan’s rich culture of traditions, rituals and religion, she found the people kind and patient enough. Phosfer and his grandmother, Mea, led her through most of her learning process. Virana learned how the Trickster was the centre of natural growth and prosperity, how living things evolved around him.

Mea, seeing certain potential in the girl, starting teaching her about the magic pagans use to aid them as they serve the Trickster. Phosfer had been named a Guardian at this time, and as he had been asked to aid the Pagans in the Auldale Park, he was not often at home. Virana studied the magic that Mae showed her. She eventually began to understand more about how and why plants grew, about the deeper structures of natural cycles of growth and decay. She began to understand even more how the Woodsie Lord could be the centre of so many tiny miracles.

Meanwhile, Virana started to make more friends amongst the Pagans. Every so often, Mae would take her to another on of the ‘Pagan territories’ in the city and show her around. By now Virana felt very much at home, and had slowly adopted the particular kind of speech that pagans use. She had, on several occasions, met the High Priestesses, and felt the deepest respect for the consorts of the Leaf-Lord. All the while, Virana retained a close friendship with Phosfer, to whom she is still deeply grateful.

Virana’s eagerness to adapt, her mastering of the arts of magic and her apparently heightened understanding of the Woodsie Lord and his works eventually led her to be in a position where the High Priestesses of the Order no longer viewed her as a simple servant. In a ritual ceremony, Virana was promoted to Shaman. For her, this marks all that she has worked for and achieved in her live.

Virana now lives in a small hut in the Sanctuary. She lives there with a small companion. About a year ago, Phosfer had found an abandoned litter of kittens near the Auldale Park. Thinking that some uncaring, cruel hearted person must have left them there, he took the kittens home with him and left them in Virana’s care. Of the three weakened creatures, only a black female survived. Virana named the cat Anisa, and raised her. She’s adorable enough company and mostly feeds herself with mice and the like that live in the forest.

Miscellaneous: Virana has a black cat called Anisa.

Sample:
“Goodsie mornings!” Virana exclaimed at the shadow of a black cat rushing past her. The beast was wholly occupied with chasing a small grey mouse. The poor creature was running for it’s life, yet Virana pondered it was only trying to outrun the inevitable. After all, it was the course of nature that cats ate mice. These creatures where all part of the cycle. Before gathering her own breakfast, of berries and nuts and bread, Virana kneeled and buried a small piece of bread at the root of the tree that towered over her small hut. She poured water from a stone pitcher over the spot where she had buried the bread. “I thanksie yous, Woodsie Lord, for them foodsies that them trees and them plants bes providing. Them Woodsie Lord feeders us, and wes bes serving thems Woodsie Lords.”

She sat on the grass and ate her breakfast, in the soft light of the morning sun. Spring was always a peaceful time for a pagan. Plants grew, and animals had tiny little offspring.
“Goodsie Mornings!” Virana’s neighbour, an elderly man called Noll, shouted. He walked up to Virana. “It’s beesing goodsie weathers.” He stated.

“It bees, indeed.” Virana said, standing up after finishing her breakfast. “Goods for thems birds to builders them nests.” In fact, as she spoke, Virana could see a small bird eagerly flying small twigs and straws into the branches of the tree above, making itself a nest. Today would be a busy day, as tonight would bring traditional spring festivities. Virana and a number of her fellow Shamans where to prepare for this.

“I shouds be going to thems meeting place.” She said to Noll, excusing herself. After saying goodbye, she made her way over the winding path that led from her house, crossing the wooden bridge over the brook that ran there. The deeper she passed into the forest, the taller the trees around her became. Ancient giants, watching over the people that had build their homes amongst their roots and branches.
When she arrived at the meeting place, Virana found several of her fellow shamans already waiting. They were engrossed in conversation about the developments this Spring, the pagans in the Auldale Park, and the latest Hammerite activity. “Goodsie Mornings!” Virana greeted them, joining them in waiting for the rest of their numbers to arrive.