Application

[craftycurvo]

[Player]

Name/Handle: Jen
Age: I’m 24.
AIM/YIM/MSN/Plurk/Etc: MSN, lomion56 at hotmail dot com
Email: lomion56 at gmail dot com. Or add my dw journal, wood_elf
Current Characters: [If already in the game] None

[Character]
Character Name: Curufin

Source: The Silmarillion

Personality: I’ve included some backstory in this section as I think it’s relevant. Hope that’s OK.

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Curufin, in short, is a fairly nasty piece of work.

He looks like a handsome, charming elf, with jet-black hair, a pale complexion and delicately pointed ears. He’s polite and attentive, softly-spoken with just a slight accent, maybe a little aloof with his princely upbringing. He could easily be mistaken for a nice guy.

He’s the fifth son of a dead, mad king. He spent most of his canon life following his father, and then his brothers, in pursuit of the Silmarils (more on those below), having sworn a binding and blasphemous oath to retrieve them, and gone into exile against the will of the Powers of his world.

His oath made him utterly ruthless, perhaps more so than any of his brothers, and he was willing to lie, steal and murder to get closer to his goal. It’s not clear how much of his personality was tied up with the oath, or whether he was just like that anyway. It’s most likely to be a bit of both. Certainly Curufin was heavily influenced by his father (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%ABanor).

Examples of his less pleasant deeds include his role in the tale of Beren and Luthien – the epic love story of the Silmarillion. Guess who tried to break them up, kidnap and even attempt to murder Luthien. He gave a speech that so frightened another Elven population that they refused to help their King on a quest and from that day hid in their ravine and only fought by stealth and ambush. He’s known as Curufin the Crafty, even by his friends, and considered one of the worst of the sons of Fëanor – certainly the cruellest and the coldest.

On the more positive side, he is obsessed with his craft – again, see below. He takes a childlike joy in creation, and is also a perfectionist. Craft is his first love, and he always strives for excellence in what he does. He’s incredibly loyal to his family, to the point of clannishness, but even if he does not always see eye-to-eye with his brothers (particularly the elder, more moderate two, or the ditzy little twins) he will defend them with his life. Incidentally that’s how he died – or he’ll claim so. They were attacking another Elven kingdom after attempts to retrieve his father’s Silmarils. You could say he was very driven and determined.


History/Pull Point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curufin
I’m taking his pull point to be his death. In his universe, given his very wicked deeds, he’d probably have a considerable spell in the afterlife waiting-room to think about what he did before the Powers would consider letting him having a new body.

Or he could just show up here without having learned anything. ;)

Abilities/Special Powers/Non average skills:
Main universe-specific thing is that Elves are immortal – their bodies can be killed but they come back, after a given length of time, and are re-embodied. So Curufin is used to not ageing and being generally more physically resilient than puny mortals.

His father (and son) are both renowned jewel-crafters, being responsible for respectively the Silmarils and the Rings of Power, the same sparklies that caused hundreds of years of wars and generally horrible things happening. They have various magical properties – the Silmarils glow with light and seem to have a mesmerising, addictive effect on anyone who comes into contact with them, and the Rings of Power can enhance the wielder’s powers and have various other magical effects (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Rings). He isn’t bringing any of these items into the game, but just to give an idea what kind of magic is available in his universe (or his immediate family).

It’s never mentioned in canon whether Curufin was also a crafter but I think it’s reasonable to assume that he was, and that’s what I’m going with – he just never got to have a magnum opus of his own as he spent most of his life fighting to regain his father’s jewels. That, along with making time for intriguing, kidnapping princesses, slaying his kin etc. Like his father and son, he is specialised in gemology and jewel-crafting with some minor enchanting. He’s also a decent sword and armour smith, but would probably only look at commission work that’s a challenge for him in some way. He wouldn’t do a bog-standard breastplate, he’d want to make one inlaid with magic sapphires that grant strength or something.

He’s also dead in canon, so would hopefully be resurrected on arrival in a shiny new body entirely free of arrow-holes.


[Game Specific]

Character class: Wizard!

Why your character would be that class:

I like playing wizards.

Also the other classes I’d considered for him don’t fit quite as well. He isn’t particularly noble or good-hearted so I don’t think a Prince, even if he is one by birth, and he isn’t really such a great fighter, so have discarded Knight. Also I’ve played him in another RPG where he learned various unwholesome magical arts from the dark powers, and he had far too much fun with them. I think he’ll approach magic scientifically, binding it into his crafting, and it’ll be a good fit with his character.


Powers/skills to be gained by being that class:

Curufin’s family have a fire theme running (his father was Fëanor, the Spirit of Fire) so being able to indulge his pyro tendencies and chuck fireballs about might please him. What he’s really interested in, though, is manipulating the power of life and death – necromancy, basically, in its traditional RPG sense. Being dead himself, this is a cause close to his heart, and the idea of having obedient zombie minions appeals to him. He always seemed like someone who would be vulnerable to going over to the Dark Side, and without his family to hold him back, he’s free to dabble.

I’m not planning to have him use naughty magic a lot, though, given how it is likely to be received – fire and negative energy spells, harm, inflict curses, disease, that kind of thing. I’m happy to have some kind of limit put on magic use, such as he has to prepare them in the morning a la D&D, or can only use so much magic per day before becoming exhausted – whatever works best for game balance and avoiding super over powered wizards.

Also, language-wise – in canon he speaks Quenya, Sindarin, probably a few other in-world languages, but nothing from our world. If I may, I’d like to give him English just so communication doesn’t become a total pain.

[Samples]

Log sample: Curufin didn’t normally dream, and when he did, it was about sensible things. He could only put this image flickering into his mind down to severe blood loss, or the effect of his brother Amrod shaking him and yelling at him to stay with us - as if he wasn’t trying to do just that, and he’d much rather be staying with them than having some strange dream about one of his mother’s story books, the tickling of her copper hair against his cheek and the rustle of pages as she held it open at a particular page and read in her slow, sonorous voice – but he wasn’t listening to the words. It was the picture that had captured his attention.

The picture was of a bearded man in a robe wearing a pointy hat and wielding a staff – one of the Maiar, Curufin guessed. He wasn’t sure why they dressed like that, but it did lend a certain… mystique. But now his mother was doing it wrong, she’d shifted him onto her other knee and let the pages fall from her fingers, losing their place. He wanted to voice his displeasure and tell her to tell the story properly, but he found he had no breath to do so. Nor could he see, after that. He was floating. Perhaps they’d put him to bed.

It was a pleasant enough sleep, then, with no further dreams. When he awoke the sun was on his face, the sky was blue, white fluffy clouds scudded by and the air was filled with the voices of songbirds.

He sat up and felt his chest. Breathing was going a lot better now, and he noted that while chainmail and Feanorian tabard had been replaced with heavy robes, his body was reassuringly no longer studded with arrows. It didn’t make sense. Perhaps this was Mandos, but he felt far too corporeal to be a disembodied spirit. Still, he was warm, safe, and not being brought to account for his deeds right at that moment.

Today, he thought, looked set to be a fine day.


Orb sample:

[Curufin appears, the picture of Noldorin handsomeness, soot-smudged and with no eyebrows]

… this is… ah.

Is it usual in this place to experience random discharges of fire from your fingers?

It’s not something I’ve ever suffered from before, but perhaps it’s a side effect of this… state. Or this place. Or the composition of the air here.

I wonder if anyone may be able to shed some light?

[eyes his hands suspiciously, one of which is still faintly smoking]

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