zita ❝ witching you the best. ❞ harrington. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thricefold) wrote2019-01-02 01:56 am
thricefold) wrote2019-01-02 01:56 am
( Ａ ＧＥＮＴＬＥ ＮＩＧＨＴ. ) ✨ ＡＰＰＬＩＣＡＴＩＯＮ.
CHARACTER
Name She currently goes by Zita Eriene Harrington.
Canon Original.
Age 160-years-old.
Birthright Jewel
Green Jewel. | RNG'd Result.
Dreams made flesh
Having the leylines of the Midnight Carnival work again.
Canon point After helping defeat the Sisters of the Silvered Heart coven, at the expanse of the Midnight Carnival's leylines.
Canon Powers
Personality
History
PLAYER
Name Melly!
Are you 18 or older? Yes.
Contact HMD. | PM.
Current character N/A.
Name She currently goes by Zita Eriene Harrington.
Canon Original.
Age 160-years-old.
Birthright Jewel
Green Jewel. | RNG'd Result.
Dreams made flesh
Having the leylines of the Midnight Carnival work again.
Canon point After helping defeat the Sisters of the Silvered Heart coven, at the expanse of the Midnight Carnival's leylines.
Canon Powers
GENERAL POWERS.
Zita is a witch. In her world, witches are individuals who can have intrinsic ties with magic, thus allowing them to use the Raw Magic. There are different ways witches. It can be because they were 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, as a witch, she does have her fair share of weaknesses. Witches still age like a normal human, for one thing, and are still vulnerable to sickness and poor health. Witches are granted no enhanced strengths or senses unlike vampire or shapeshifters, and can be bested by these two if one isn't prepared in advance to fight them. Learning the True Name of a witch - the name they were born - means a rival can target them with curses and spells at any time, any where.
One of the most dangerous weaknesses a witch faces is the fact they are highly susceptible to fire damage. 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.
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 speciality 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 to 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.
IMMORTALITY.
Now the most interesting ability that Zita has is her immortality. Due to a brief and disastrous dabble into the dark arts when she was younger and still part of a coven, she no longer has the ability to 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. The process slow and painful and she's aware of it every second of it. Attempts to give her pain relievers or anesthetics have proven to be useful, as her magic simply burns through these chemicals.
After she's revived from and back in her normal state, Zita is unable to use her magic and will sleep for three to four days. 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.
Due to Zita obtaining a Green Jewel, I would like for her healing abilities to be enhanced. Now when Zita makes physical contact with someone while healing them of their injuries, the process won't hurt at all.Even if it's broken bones being fixed, the person will not feel any pain or discomfort as Zita tends to them. But this only applies to her if she's doing the healing. Using potions or charms that have been imbued with her healing magic will still hurt.
Zita is a witch. In her world, witches are individuals who can have intrinsic ties with magic, thus allowing them to use the Raw Magic. There are different ways witches. It can be because they were 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, as a witch, she does have her fair share of weaknesses. Witches still age like a normal human, for one thing, and are still vulnerable to sickness and poor health. Witches are granted no enhanced strengths or senses unlike vampire or shapeshifters, and can be bested by these two if one isn't prepared in advance to fight them. Learning the True Name of a witch - the name they were born - means a rival can target them with curses and spells at any time, any where.
One of the most dangerous weaknesses a witch faces is the fact they are highly susceptible to fire damage. 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.
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 speciality 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 to 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.
IMMORTALITY.
Now the most interesting ability that Zita has is her immortality. Due to a brief and disastrous dabble into the dark arts when she was younger and still part of a coven, she no longer has the ability to 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. The process slow and painful and she's aware of it every second of it. Attempts to give her pain relievers or anesthetics have proven to be useful, as her magic simply burns through these chemicals.
After she's revived from and back in her normal state, Zita is unable to use her magic and will sleep for three to four days. 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.
Due to Zita obtaining a Green Jewel, I would like for her healing abilities to be enhanced. Now when Zita makes physical contact with someone while healing them of their injuries, the process won't hurt at all.Even if it's broken bones being fixed, the person will not feel any pain or discomfort as Zita tends to them. But this only applies to her if she's doing the healing. Using potions or charms that have been imbued with her healing magic will still hurt.
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, however. Zita isn't the type to leave someone hanging or make someone work on their own when they need help. That would be the wrong assumption to make. Take the time to observe Zita and how she interacts with others and the world around her, and you'll find one of the warmest hearts you'll ever find.
One of the sweetest individuals from the Midnight Carnival, Zita is famous amongst the carnival crew for her gentleness and her hospitality to others. She's soft-spoken and sweet, known for having a lovely temperament and the patience of a saint for everyone around her. 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. Zita is eager to prove them a sense of safety and security. She does her best to make others feel welcomed to the Midnight Carnival, letting them know they're welcomed to her trailer at any time, should they need it.
She keeps both her mind and her arms open for those in need, willing to hear anyone out if she believes in them and she always wants to believe in others and give them her all. So it's, perhaps, fitting for her to be a healer then, someone who can be delicate and considerate of others as she tends to their wounds and injuries to the best of her abilities. She believes in giving back to to others.
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 century ago, and she'll protect it to the best of her abilities.
Because Zita is loyal. She is an ally for life if you manage to get her backing and trust, willing to support you through anything and everything if she really does believe in you. (On the flipside, breaking her trust or giving her reason to distrust you means she will find it difficult to want to work with you again.
Earning back her trust will be an uphill battle too. Zita is not one to allow herself to be fooled twice, knowing how dangerous it can be to earn a reputation of being considered naive or gullible in the eyes of others. She takes promises and vows seriously, since that was one of the main ways she got this far, so having this being taken advantadge of, in her eyes, will not sit lightly with the witch.)
After the life she's lived, Zita has learned that being quiet and polite is the best way to get out of trouble. She's respectful and painfully aware of etiquette and manners, always wanting to repay her debt to others and making sure she's showing due deference when she needs to.
She's managed to survive a life rife with dangers and troubles and it shows, at times, with how she can look tired and distance, the years and years and years of her life starting to weigh her down. There's a sadness to her. One that she carries with her with dignity but it's a sadness all the same, a sort of world weariness to the way she speaks and acts at time. She's seen a lot of things and done a lot of things over the decades and it is exhausting.
Yet while clearly melancholic at times, 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. She refuses to let anything put her down, be it emotions or circumstances or obstacles, and tries to power through it, showing the determination and the strength that kept her alive all this time.
Zita prides herself on her work ethic and her reputation of being someone who is reliable and trustworthy. She's a hard-worker, someone willing to burn the midnight oil for task if she's given one by someone. She takes her responsibilities seriously and she will go above and beyond to exceed expectations. Not only to prove her worth, but to make others happy as well. It also helps that she likes to be productive and busy these days, always needing something to keep herself occupied to will the hours away when not at work at the booth or tending to her duties as the leyline warden.
One of Zita's greatest assets is the fact that, at the end of the day, Zita wants to live. While she may not seem special besides her immortality and her magic, Zita's desire to survive against all odds it what makes her unique. She's managed to escape death and danger time and again, using her wits and cleverness to solve a problem when all seems lost. 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.
In the Midnight Carnival, there's always something more lurking beneath its visage. During the two weeks during its stay in a town, the visitors will find something extraordinary living within the circus tents and little booths. There's a promise of life that runs through the air with every performance and a promise of a secret treasure for every worker who is more than meets the eye.
Zita happens to be one of these secret treasures of the Carnival. For good reason as well.
But one shouldn't mistake that as her being cold or callous, however. Zita isn't the type to leave someone hanging or make someone work on their own when they need help. That would be the wrong assumption to make. Take the time to observe Zita and how she interacts with others and the world around her, and you'll find one of the warmest hearts you'll ever find.
One of the sweetest individuals from the Midnight Carnival, Zita is famous amongst the carnival crew for her gentleness and her hospitality to others. She's soft-spoken and sweet, known for having a lovely temperament and the patience of a saint for everyone around her. 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. Zita is eager to prove them a sense of safety and security. She does her best to make others feel welcomed to the Midnight Carnival, letting them know they're welcomed to her trailer at any time, should they need it.
She keeps both her mind and her arms open for those in need, willing to hear anyone out if she believes in them and she always wants to believe in others and give them her all. So it's, perhaps, fitting for her to be a healer then, someone who can be delicate and considerate of others as she tends to their wounds and injuries to the best of her abilities. She believes in giving back to to others.
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 century ago, and she'll protect it to the best of her abilities.
Because Zita is loyal. She is an ally for life if you manage to get her backing and trust, willing to support you through anything and everything if she really does believe in you. (On the flipside, breaking her trust or giving her reason to distrust you means she will find it difficult to want to work with you again.
Earning back her trust will be an uphill battle too. Zita is not one to allow herself to be fooled twice, knowing how dangerous it can be to earn a reputation of being considered naive or gullible in the eyes of others. She takes promises and vows seriously, since that was one of the main ways she got this far, so having this being taken advantadge of, in her eyes, will not sit lightly with the witch.)
After the life she's lived, Zita has learned that being quiet and polite is the best way to get out of trouble. She's respectful and painfully aware of etiquette and manners, always wanting to repay her debt to others and making sure she's showing due deference when she needs to.
She's managed to survive a life rife with dangers and troubles and it shows, at times, with how she can look tired and distance, the years and years and years of her life starting to weigh her down. There's a sadness to her. One that she carries with her with dignity but it's a sadness all the same, a sort of world weariness to the way she speaks and acts at time. She's seen a lot of things and done a lot of things over the decades and it is exhausting.
Yet while clearly melancholic at times, 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. She refuses to let anything put her down, be it emotions or circumstances or obstacles, and tries to power through it, showing the determination and the strength that kept her alive all this time.
Zita prides herself on her work ethic and her reputation of being someone who is reliable and trustworthy. She's a hard-worker, someone willing to burn the midnight oil for task if she's given one by someone. She takes her responsibilities seriously and she will go above and beyond to exceed expectations. Not only to prove her worth, but to make others happy as well. It also helps that she likes to be productive and busy these days, always needing something to keep herself occupied to will the hours away when not at work at the booth or tending to her duties as the leyline warden.
One of Zita's greatest assets is the fact that, at the end of the day, Zita wants to live. While she may not seem special besides her immortality and her magic, Zita's desire to survive against all odds it what makes her unique. She's managed to escape death and danger time and again, using her wits and cleverness to solve a problem when all seems lost. 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.
In the Midnight Carnival, there's always something more lurking beneath its visage. During the two weeks during its stay in a town, the visitors will find something extraordinary living within the circus tents and little booths. There's a promise of life that runs through the air with every performance and a promise of a secret treasure for every worker who is more than meets the eye.
Zita happens to be one of these secret treasures of the Carnival. For good reason as well.
History
WORLD HISTORY
The world where Zita from, the fantastical happens to be the reality. Earth has two worlds existing on it: The Mundane Realm and the Ethereal Realm. The Ethereal Realm is where the fae - the fair folk, the fairies, the courts of the seasons, and so on - live. The Ethereal Realm also happens to be where the source of fae's fantastical powers come from, as the Ethereal Realm is the origin of Raw Magic.
Raw Magic is a powerful and mystical force that has been around since the dawn of Earth itself. Raw Magic can transform an individual - One person can harness it (should they have the ties and means to do so) to become a witch. Another can be transformed into a vampire or a shapeshifter or a gifted, depending on their circumstances of the Turning. As a result of this, the world's supernatural and magical backdrop has been thriving since the time of humanity itself.
Knowing that humans will not take kindly to the concept of others walking among them, the supernatural community agreed to a set of laws and etiquette about how one should act to not only humans, but towards each other too.
The agreement of keeping their world a secret, and the act of doing so, is known as the Masquerade. The Masquerade is governed and dictated by a set of rules and guidelines that are known simply as the Laws. A country's Council of Elders - the governing body of the country's supernatural community, led by the recognised and definitive leaders for each supernatural species - keeps track of the community's movements and send their appointed Hunters to keep the peace should someone push the boundaries of the Laws too far. The Masquerade and its systems is meant to keep everyone safe, to keep everyone from getting hurt by both the humans and themselves.
Or that's how it should work in theory.
For the current time period of this world is the 1930s and The Great Depression is at full swing. The economic down slump has caused the fragile international relations amongst the Councils to collapse and fracture as tensions and tempers rise, and old grudges and vendettas make themselves known. Everyone is now scrambling to get by, living either day-to-day or learning how to take advantage of others to get ahead of the game.
PERSONAL HISTORY
Born around the 17th century, the most that Zita can say for certain about her circumstance is the following: That she was born during the winter season, perhaps at night, and she was from a little mountain village located in China. In this time and era, she was born to a simpler life — One where the air was cleaner and the water was clearer. One where children who lived past the age of five were considered miracles due to the bad weather that would plague Zita’s home in those days. One where everyone had their place and their role, and were expected to carry them out with no questions asked in order to keep the harmony of the village in place.
If everything gone normally for Zita, she would have lived an ordinary life without any fuss or fanfare. She would have been allowed to have a quiet life that mostly consisted of looking after her siblings, tending to her parents’ farms and animals. She would have ended up marrying a nice boy from another family, having many children with him over their time together. She would have died quietly and peacefully, surrounded by loved ones as she passed into the other side at a ripe old age.
But her lineage wouldn’t have that.
On her sixteenth winter, Zita’s ties with Raw Magic finally made itself known when she was tending to a younger sibling of hers who was sick. By accident and touch, she accidentally healed them of their illness. At the time, the sibling’s recovery was hailed as luck and fortune from the gods, but Zita— Zita felt the magic course through her body and being channelled into the hand that was pressed against her sibling’s slick forehead. It wasn’t the gods or fortunes who helped her sibling; Zita had been the one to save them and she wasn’t sure what to do, scared of how the village would react to her.
Remembering the old Wu - a shaman who specialised in divination and fortune telling - who lived in their village, Zita went to the shaman’s hut a few nights later. She asked the Wu for guidance, wondering what was happening to her. In reply, the old Wu took the girl under her wing in secret. She taught all she knew to Zita about the supernatural and the types of magic a witch could use. The Wu encouraged Zita to enter the fields of healing and warding, noticing the girl's gifts in those fields.
When Zita was eighteen-years-old, the Wu told her to meet a coven in another village since the Wu could not teach her anything anymore. Zita went to the village by herself, under the pretence of meeting a possible suitor of hers. This coven took her in, having been informed of the Zita's arrival beforehand, but they had malicious plans for her.
Their leader, for the longest while, was trying to make a bid in immortality and finally found a ritual that required a sacrifice of a white magic practitioner and so Zita was selected for that. For almost two decades they pretended to be her friends, her sisters. They trained her and cared for her and taught her her fields, all the while planning to use her as a pawn for their own gain. Their betrayal, when it came, hurt Zita and it's the more prominent feeling she felt when she realised she was drugged one evening and found herself being tied up by her sisters. The coven took her out to where they had prepared the ceremony and began the ritual. They almost succeeded in it, too, but- Something went wrong in the process.
To this day, Zita isn't sure what had happened. Through the haze of the drugs and smoke and glossed over memories, she dimply remembers an incident occurring at the final stages of the ritual. Someone interfering? The ritual going wrong? She isn't sure but Zita remembers her heart hurting as she fled from the area, trying to put as much distance as she can between her and the witches.
Terrified that the coven would go after her family if she went back to them and now suspicious of the Wu (though she had no involvement, something Zita never found out), Zita struck out on her own and became a wanderer. It wasn't long before she realised that she wasn't ageing anymore, forever trapped in her current age and appearance. It forced Zita to be on the constant move from then on, no longer able to stay in a village or town for more than a few years before departing to avoid suspicions being raised against her.
During her travels, she continued to learn magic by herself through trial-and-error and through other supernatural should she come across them and feel like she can trust them. Sometimes it worked out for her and sometimes it didn't. It's the former that caused her to realise her immortality and the extent of it, thanks to a potions explosion when she had been alone in a secluded hut in the forests, forced to wait out the slow and painful progress of healing all alone. It's the latter that had her coming across a pack of vampires who wanted to take her in as their guaranteed lifetime. It forced her to flee overseas, now traveling through the rest of Asia and then Europe and to the U.S.
In her journey, she's met many colourful characters over her time being alive, her relations with them varying from cool indifference . Other immortal witches like her, Sir Monday and Curtis Harrington (though their immortality was by choice and something they continually had to maintain through 'deals' and rituals, respectively). Strange individuals like Blake Nite, a nomadic shapeshifter who is now a close friend of Zita's, and Aldren Modric, a vampire Hunter for the U.S.' Council of Elders who has been keeping an eye on her since she came to the U.S.
It is Curtis Harrington who she meets again in the 1920s, crossing paths with him once more in America. Curtis and her have been close friends since coming across each other during their travels, with Curtis willingly offering Zita the protection of his storied family name so she can travel more easily, and Zita tending to Curtis' wounds if he ends up hurting himself. This time, he has a companion with him, a vampire named Henry Holton, and all three get along with each other well enough. The first meeting between Henry and Zita is enough of a success for Curtis to offer a proposal for Zita:
Both he and Henry were approached by the management of a special circus, as they've been looking for a new General Manager and Groundskeeper for a while now. Henry has been tapped to be the General Manager and Curtis to be the Groundskeeper. The two are willing to take the job, but Curtis is more than happy to recommend Zita for a position too. Provided she be interested in the idea, of course.
Seeing the wisdom for joining a group that allowed her to continue moving from place to place, Zita agreed and the management of the circus were eager to have Zita join them when they learned about her warding.
Thus she joined the Midnight Carnival, a travelling circus that is primarily made up of supernatural individuals ranging from vampire to shapeshifters, from the gifted to the magical practitioners. The circus relies heavily on the Law of observing Guest Rites when they arrive at a new location for their business, expecting the hosts to do them no harm while they, the guests, abided to the rules of the town and show respect. Even then the carnival knew better than to push their luck, only staying in a location for two weeks before heading back out to the road again.
Zita's position in the Midnight Carnival is supposedly a simple one. She claims to be a vendor for the charms and potions and fortunes booth known as Apotropaism, but, in reality, she's also the Midnight Carnival's leyline warden. Her speciality in warding has her becoming the guardian of the circus' wards, keeping it (and its residents) safe from outside danger by laying down leylines and keeping the magic within them maintained at all times, despite how exhausting it is for her to do so.
This has been Zita's life for the last ten years or so. Zita’s place in the Midnight Carnival is secure — She’s considered one of the oldest members of the carnival and is seen as the den mother of the carnival family. Zita has a reputation for being one who is always willing to look after little ones or youngsters, the one who is quick to take anyone under her wing so she can help educate them and protect them, determined to provide them a sense of safety and security that she had been denied for so long.
Lately, the Midnight Carnival got into a fight with a coven of dark magic practitioners from the last town they were visiting. Having felt slighted by some members of the circus due to poor miscommunication and an act of misconduct on the carnival members' side, the witches retaliated with attempts to cause sabotage to the carnival and harm to its residents. It escalated to the point that members of management had to step in, with Curtis challenging the Mother of the coven to a duel to try and settle matters once and for all.
But Curtis was exhausted from his earlier attempts to undo the dark curses the witches had set onto the circus members. Herny and Zita knew their friend needed help for this fight and they both made a call: With Henry's permission, Zita ends up sacrificing the power she uses to maintain the leylines of the circus and passes it along Curtis so he had the strength he needed to take on the Mother.
In the end Curtis won the fight and the Midnight Carnival parted ways from the coven, leaving the town earlier than usual to keep things from boiling over again. The state the circus left was less than desirable: There were still members of the circus who were hurt and needed treat. The leylines of the carnival were gone. Curtis himself, the seemingly unshakeable Groundskeeper, was forced to take bedrest to recover from the brutal fight. Management was calling Henry and making it clear they expected better results in the next town. Or else.
But even as the days grow more uncertain and the travels is starting to become more perilous for them, Zita holds her head high and continues to man the booth, heal others, and watch after the Midnight Carnival in her own way. She's the one others turn to if they want a sympathetic ear. She takes her role seriously, always smiling and always trying her best to soothe the fears and worries of others.
The show must go on, after all.
The world where Zita from, the fantastical happens to be the reality. Earth has two worlds existing on it: The Mundane Realm and the Ethereal Realm. The Ethereal Realm is where the fae - the fair folk, the fairies, the courts of the seasons, and so on - live. The Ethereal Realm also happens to be where the source of fae's fantastical powers come from, as the Ethereal Realm is the origin of Raw Magic.
Raw Magic is a powerful and mystical force that has been around since the dawn of Earth itself. Raw Magic can transform an individual - One person can harness it (should they have the ties and means to do so) to become a witch. Another can be transformed into a vampire or a shapeshifter or a gifted, depending on their circumstances of the Turning. As a result of this, the world's supernatural and magical backdrop has been thriving since the time of humanity itself.
Knowing that humans will not take kindly to the concept of others walking among them, the supernatural community agreed to a set of laws and etiquette about how one should act to not only humans, but towards each other too.
The agreement of keeping their world a secret, and the act of doing so, is known as the Masquerade. The Masquerade is governed and dictated by a set of rules and guidelines that are known simply as the Laws. A country's Council of Elders - the governing body of the country's supernatural community, led by the recognised and definitive leaders for each supernatural species - keeps track of the community's movements and send their appointed Hunters to keep the peace should someone push the boundaries of the Laws too far. The Masquerade and its systems is meant to keep everyone safe, to keep everyone from getting hurt by both the humans and themselves.
Or that's how it should work in theory.
For the current time period of this world is the 1930s and The Great Depression is at full swing. The economic down slump has caused the fragile international relations amongst the Councils to collapse and fracture as tensions and tempers rise, and old grudges and vendettas make themselves known. Everyone is now scrambling to get by, living either day-to-day or learning how to take advantage of others to get ahead of the game.
PERSONAL HISTORY
Born around the 17th century, the most that Zita can say for certain about her circumstance is the following: That she was born during the winter season, perhaps at night, and she was from a little mountain village located in China. In this time and era, she was born to a simpler life — One where the air was cleaner and the water was clearer. One where children who lived past the age of five were considered miracles due to the bad weather that would plague Zita’s home in those days. One where everyone had their place and their role, and were expected to carry them out with no questions asked in order to keep the harmony of the village in place.
If everything gone normally for Zita, she would have lived an ordinary life without any fuss or fanfare. She would have been allowed to have a quiet life that mostly consisted of looking after her siblings, tending to her parents’ farms and animals. She would have ended up marrying a nice boy from another family, having many children with him over their time together. She would have died quietly and peacefully, surrounded by loved ones as she passed into the other side at a ripe old age.
But her lineage wouldn’t have that.
On her sixteenth winter, Zita’s ties with Raw Magic finally made itself known when she was tending to a younger sibling of hers who was sick. By accident and touch, she accidentally healed them of their illness. At the time, the sibling’s recovery was hailed as luck and fortune from the gods, but Zita— Zita felt the magic course through her body and being channelled into the hand that was pressed against her sibling’s slick forehead. It wasn’t the gods or fortunes who helped her sibling; Zita had been the one to save them and she wasn’t sure what to do, scared of how the village would react to her.
Remembering the old Wu - a shaman who specialised in divination and fortune telling - who lived in their village, Zita went to the shaman’s hut a few nights later. She asked the Wu for guidance, wondering what was happening to her. In reply, the old Wu took the girl under her wing in secret. She taught all she knew to Zita about the supernatural and the types of magic a witch could use. The Wu encouraged Zita to enter the fields of healing and warding, noticing the girl's gifts in those fields.
When Zita was eighteen-years-old, the Wu told her to meet a coven in another village since the Wu could not teach her anything anymore. Zita went to the village by herself, under the pretence of meeting a possible suitor of hers. This coven took her in, having been informed of the Zita's arrival beforehand, but they had malicious plans for her.
Their leader, for the longest while, was trying to make a bid in immortality and finally found a ritual that required a sacrifice of a white magic practitioner and so Zita was selected for that. For almost two decades they pretended to be her friends, her sisters. They trained her and cared for her and taught her her fields, all the while planning to use her as a pawn for their own gain. Their betrayal, when it came, hurt Zita and it's the more prominent feeling she felt when she realised she was drugged one evening and found herself being tied up by her sisters. The coven took her out to where they had prepared the ceremony and began the ritual. They almost succeeded in it, too, but- Something went wrong in the process.
To this day, Zita isn't sure what had happened. Through the haze of the drugs and smoke and glossed over memories, she dimply remembers an incident occurring at the final stages of the ritual. Someone interfering? The ritual going wrong? She isn't sure but Zita remembers her heart hurting as she fled from the area, trying to put as much distance as she can between her and the witches.
Terrified that the coven would go after her family if she went back to them and now suspicious of the Wu (though she had no involvement, something Zita never found out), Zita struck out on her own and became a wanderer. It wasn't long before she realised that she wasn't ageing anymore, forever trapped in her current age and appearance. It forced Zita to be on the constant move from then on, no longer able to stay in a village or town for more than a few years before departing to avoid suspicions being raised against her.
During her travels, she continued to learn magic by herself through trial-and-error and through other supernatural should she come across them and feel like she can trust them. Sometimes it worked out for her and sometimes it didn't. It's the former that caused her to realise her immortality and the extent of it, thanks to a potions explosion when she had been alone in a secluded hut in the forests, forced to wait out the slow and painful progress of healing all alone. It's the latter that had her coming across a pack of vampires who wanted to take her in as their guaranteed lifetime. It forced her to flee overseas, now traveling through the rest of Asia and then Europe and to the U.S.
In her journey, she's met many colourful characters over her time being alive, her relations with them varying from cool indifference . Other immortal witches like her, Sir Monday and Curtis Harrington (though their immortality was by choice and something they continually had to maintain through 'deals' and rituals, respectively). Strange individuals like Blake Nite, a nomadic shapeshifter who is now a close friend of Zita's, and Aldren Modric, a vampire Hunter for the U.S.' Council of Elders who has been keeping an eye on her since she came to the U.S.
It is Curtis Harrington who she meets again in the 1920s, crossing paths with him once more in America. Curtis and her have been close friends since coming across each other during their travels, with Curtis willingly offering Zita the protection of his storied family name so she can travel more easily, and Zita tending to Curtis' wounds if he ends up hurting himself. This time, he has a companion with him, a vampire named Henry Holton, and all three get along with each other well enough. The first meeting between Henry and Zita is enough of a success for Curtis to offer a proposal for Zita:
Both he and Henry were approached by the management of a special circus, as they've been looking for a new General Manager and Groundskeeper for a while now. Henry has been tapped to be the General Manager and Curtis to be the Groundskeeper. The two are willing to take the job, but Curtis is more than happy to recommend Zita for a position too. Provided she be interested in the idea, of course.
Seeing the wisdom for joining a group that allowed her to continue moving from place to place, Zita agreed and the management of the circus were eager to have Zita join them when they learned about her warding.
Thus she joined the Midnight Carnival, a travelling circus that is primarily made up of supernatural individuals ranging from vampire to shapeshifters, from the gifted to the magical practitioners. The circus relies heavily on the Law of observing Guest Rites when they arrive at a new location for their business, expecting the hosts to do them no harm while they, the guests, abided to the rules of the town and show respect. Even then the carnival knew better than to push their luck, only staying in a location for two weeks before heading back out to the road again.
Zita's position in the Midnight Carnival is supposedly a simple one. She claims to be a vendor for the charms and potions and fortunes booth known as Apotropaism, but, in reality, she's also the Midnight Carnival's leyline warden. Her speciality in warding has her becoming the guardian of the circus' wards, keeping it (and its residents) safe from outside danger by laying down leylines and keeping the magic within them maintained at all times, despite how exhausting it is for her to do so.
This has been Zita's life for the last ten years or so. Zita’s place in the Midnight Carnival is secure — She’s considered one of the oldest members of the carnival and is seen as the den mother of the carnival family. Zita has a reputation for being one who is always willing to look after little ones or youngsters, the one who is quick to take anyone under her wing so she can help educate them and protect them, determined to provide them a sense of safety and security that she had been denied for so long.
Lately, the Midnight Carnival got into a fight with a coven of dark magic practitioners from the last town they were visiting. Having felt slighted by some members of the circus due to poor miscommunication and an act of misconduct on the carnival members' side, the witches retaliated with attempts to cause sabotage to the carnival and harm to its residents. It escalated to the point that members of management had to step in, with Curtis challenging the Mother of the coven to a duel to try and settle matters once and for all.
But Curtis was exhausted from his earlier attempts to undo the dark curses the witches had set onto the circus members. Herny and Zita knew their friend needed help for this fight and they both made a call: With Henry's permission, Zita ends up sacrificing the power she uses to maintain the leylines of the circus and passes it along Curtis so he had the strength he needed to take on the Mother.
In the end Curtis won the fight and the Midnight Carnival parted ways from the coven, leaving the town earlier than usual to keep things from boiling over again. The state the circus left was less than desirable: There were still members of the circus who were hurt and needed treat. The leylines of the carnival were gone. Curtis himself, the seemingly unshakeable Groundskeeper, was forced to take bedrest to recover from the brutal fight. Management was calling Henry and making it clear they expected better results in the next town. Or else.
But even as the days grow more uncertain and the travels is starting to become more perilous for them, Zita holds her head high and continues to man the booth, heal others, and watch after the Midnight Carnival in her own way. She's the one others turn to if they want a sympathetic ear. She takes her role seriously, always smiling and always trying her best to soothe the fears and worries of others.
The show must go on, after all.
PLAYER
Name Melly!
Are you 18 or older? Yes.
Contact HMD. | PM.
Current character N/A.