( APPLICATION ) ✨ REFRACT

[thricefold]

🟊 PLAYER

NAME: Melly.
AGE: +20
PRONOUNS: She/her.
CONTACT: HMD. | PM.
OTHER CHARACTERS: N/A.

🟊 CHARACTER

NAME: Zita E. Harrington.
AGE: 167-years-old.
CANON: Original.
CANON POINT: After meditating between her wards and the Hunters of the Council.

HISTORY:

Hailing a world where the supernatural community is keeping itself secret and unknown, it's the Great Depression and it feels like the end of the world.

The world is dragged into one of the worst recessions it will ever experience. The ties the magical communities had carefully built for centuries to maintain protection and secrecy suddenly falls apart as worlds, both mundane and supernatural, tries to scramble and survive the sudden lawlessness of their cities and towns and hidden covens.

Zita E. Harrington is an immortal witch who specialises in white magic, specifically the fields of healing and warding. She is part of the traveling circus Midnight Carnival and operates as both the current owner of the talismans, potions, and fortune-telling booth of Apotropaism and the secret Leyline Warden for the carnival’s leylines and wards. She is also the well-known guardian for several members of the Midnight Carnival, with Justine Lavenza being the latest individual under her care.

Born in the 17th century, Zita was accidentally bestowed immortality after a coven’s attempts to sacrifice her to dark magic failed. She's travelled around the world over the next few decades, learning from other magic practitioners and building alliances and friendships with others along the way. It's how she wound up joining the Midnight Carnival and is well-known for her loyalties towards both the carnival and those who are members of it - Especially those who were once under her case.

PERSONALITY:

Zita has been often been likened to winter, her favourite season out of all the seasons. Not only for how cool and serene she appears to be, but also for the fact there's a sort of distance to her. A cautious reservation that won't melt away, no matter who she's interacting with.

But one shouldn't mistake that as her being cold or callous. Zita is one of the kindest individuals in the Midnight Carnival, known for her gentleness and her hospitality to others. She's always the first one to volunteer to look after others if someone needs to be watched over, and she's quick to take in or care for someone new.

After living most of her life without either of those for herself, being made to travel with only the clothes on her back and with chasers at her heels, Zita wants to make sure no one else is forced to feel those fears and uncertainties she felt ever again. Not on her watch. The Midnight Carnival is her family and her home now, something she's been missing since she was forced to flee her village over a century ago, and she'll protect it to the best of her abilities.

Because of the her struggles and hardships, there's a sense of sadness to her. One that she carries with her with dignity, a world-weariness in the way she speaks and acts. She's seen a lot of things and done a lot of things over the decades and yet while clearly melancholic, she tries to keep her spirits up for others' sake. She knows others depend on her to do her job so she tries to keep going, keep living. Zita prides herself on her work ethic and her reputation of being someone who is reliable and trustworthy.

At the end of the day, Zita wants to live. When she needs to make a difficult call, from fleeing her country to using the magic of the leylines to help save her friend and the carnival, Zita will do it and not look back. She may flinch and still flinch in the long years to come, but she will not regret her actions because it keeps her alive, keeps her going.

ABILITIES:

POWER 🌕 WITCH HERITAGE.
In order to be a witch, an individual must an intrinsic tie with Raw Magic and this can be done in several ways. They can be brokered a deal and tied themselves to a spirit of raw power to gain their power. It can be because their ancestors had contact with Raw Magic itself at some point and managed to survive the first brush of it. In Zita's case, her connection with magic is due to having a distant fae lineage since fae are the most adept and connected to Raw Magic.

Because of this, Zita has the typical properties and powers of a witch from her world: She can, of course, use magic to cast spells and create items that have magical properties to them. She can sense supernatural begins and items of magical origin and, in turn, be sensed by other beings of supernatural or magical origin.

But being a witch also has its fair share of weaknesses. Witches are still human. They will continue to age and continue to be vulnerable to sickness and diseases. Witches are granted not bouts of enhanced strengths or senses, unlike vampires or shapeshifters, and only those adept in fields that will grant them such things can harness such abilities. Not only that but learning the First Breath of a witch - the secret glyphs a person, be they mortal or supernatural, possess when born to this world - means a rival can target them with curses and spells at any time, anywhere, and the potency of the magic will be three times as powerful.

Most importantly of all: One of the most dangerous weaknesses a witch face is the fact they are highly susceptible to fire damage, a consequence of their ties to Raw Magic. Injuries borne from fire - especially ones that are considered 'natural fires' that are not made from manufactured oils or such - are difficult for a witch to heal or recover from, even if their magic is used.

POWER 🌕 WHITE MAGIC.
Raw Magic is a flexible and malleable force, allowing one to be creative with their magic upon accessing Raw Magic and knowing their limits with it. A witch's specialty in a certain type of magic is known as a 'field' and Zita's field happens to be within the realm of white magic.

She specialises in healing and warding. Upon someone having direct physical contact with her magic, Zita's magic can heal them of their current injuries. Bruises are tended to and cuts are seen to, though Zita will warn the individual to brace themselves. Her magic cannot keep it from the healing from hurting since, in a way, she's merely speeding the healing process along.

Since the person only needs to have contact with her magic and not her herself, Zita imbues charms and potions and runes with her magical healing properties to be used at a later date. Zita's healing magic is powerful enough to mend broken bones and break minor fevers and colds, but curing longstanding illnesses and helping someone regrow a missing limb is out of the question for her.

Another thing she can do is cast warding spells, specifically leylines. These are magical ties that can be connected a certain location or item, acting as a magical barrier. Should there be danger and the witch knows ahead of time, they can activate the leylines from wherever they are and cause an impregnable shield to come up around the location or the location of the time. Nothing and no one can come in or out of the leylines unless the witch wills it to.

Zita's leylines are especially powerful due to her fae lineage, allowing her leylines to withstand magical attacks for several days, compared to an average witch's few hours. The leylines, however, are simply exhausting for her to both create and maintain. The witch who casts the leylines must continually tend to these ties, lest they wither away from neglect. Combined with her other duties and abilities, Zita rarely casts leylines and will only do so if she feels like a place truly deserves it or of it's desperate enough.

POWER 🌕 IMMORTALITY CURSE
Due to a botched attempt by a coven’s attempt to sacrifice her as part of their dark magic ritual, Zita now has a form of inflicted immortality. She no longer physically ages and has since been appeared ‘trapped’ in her looks of a woman in her late twenties to early thirties.

Not only that but she can no longer die. Instead, every time she's supposed to be dead, she finds herself being revived and brought back to full health as if nothing ever happened to her. The time it takes for her to bounce back physically usually amounts to two to five days, depending on the severity of the injuries that caused this 'death' of hers. But there is a catch: She's awake the entire time her body heals itself, suspended in a sort of locked state where she cannot communicate with others. The process is also a slow and painful one as her body slowly pulls itself back together, with her being aware of it every second of it. Attempts to give her pain relievers or anesthetics haven’t proven to be useful, as her magic simply burns through these whether made from chemicals or herbs.

After she's revived from and back in her normal state, Zita is unable to use her magic and often needs to sleep for twenty-four hours straight This is a result of exhaustion from her magic kicking in overtime to heal her and the fact she needs a few days to recuperate from the daunting experience.

POWER 🌕 BLACK MAGIC SIPHON
Upon surviving an attempt to reverse the magic that keeps her selectively immortal (see her ability Immortality for more details on this), Zita has not only tapped into the dark magic but also has, against all odds, tamed it during its unravelling, bringing the wild and dangerous magic of absorption under her learned and controlled fields of magic. This means Zita is able to do the following:

When Zita is surrounded by natural darkness — as in she’s out in the wilderness, surrounded only by the night skies without any source of light — she's able to absorb its energies and amplify the strength of her general magic abilities. Potions and spells made when she's tapping into her powers are more potent. Her warding, if attacked, will not only deflect but reflect the attack on the individual attempting to do damage to the protected place.

There are downsides to using this, of course. Zita can only do this once a month and only for during the length of the night, just before sunrise. Doing it anymore or trying to do it any longer will put her at risk of having the magic eating her from the inside out since, again, absorption is a wild and dangerous field still. Items and potions that have been imbued while Zita is using absorption will hurt a lot upon using/consuming it for the first few seconds and it will hurt like hell - Enough for someone to might not want to finish the potion or use the item, even if the item has been powerfully charmed.

Another thing to note is that when she's siphoning the darkness, she is unable to use the field of rejuvenation and, thus, heal others. Absorption and rejuvenation are opposite polarities in the fields of magic and, thus, will cancel each other out if one attempts to use one while still dabbling in the other.

ITEMS/SUMMONS:

✨ ENCHANTED DAGGER
   ❄️ ENCHANTED TO HEAT UP WHEN USED IN COMBAT, LEAVES SCARRING ON THE PERSON ATTACKED WITH IT.

✨ ENCHANTED PURSE (CAN CARRY A TOTAL OF 15 ITEMS, CANNOT EXCEED 15 LBS.)
   ❄️ A DECK OF MAGICAL TAROT CARDS. THE ILLUSTRATIONS MOVE WHEN USED IN READINGS.
   ❄️ A SCRYING NECKLACE.
   ❄️ POTIONS KIT. (HERBS, PURIFIED WATER, INCENSE, MINERALS, AND EMPTY BOTTLES.)

SAMPLES:

SPRINGWOOD TDM THREAD (3RD PERSON, +5) + TDM THREAD (NETWORK, +5).