Nic de Paramo

[Nic de Paramo]

Any information in this colour indicates information that this character, herself, does not know.

Name: Griffin (Given to her, as she had amnesia and can’t recall her true name, and had emblems of a golden griffins on her cloths). Her true name however is Nicolas de Paramo the third, named after her father, to her mother’s disapproval.

Age: She looks as if she is in her late teens. However, she is 24 years old.

Race: This is unknown to her, and thinks she is just human. Yet, she herself is a shifter and comes from a family of shifter nobility. Her specific creature is a griffin.

Height: 5 foot 8

Physical Description:
Griffin has a medium athletic build, and has a natural sun-kissed tan which help define her physic. She has dark brown hair, and when it’s not tied up rest on her shoulders. Though that doesn’t happen very often and is usually tied up in a ponytail, however her sweeping side fringe tends to fall out from time to time. She has light hazel brown eyes, that when they catch the light seem to sparkle. People would say that she isn’t a great beauty, but if you were to walk past her she would catch your eye. Her facial features are soft, but also have a strength blended into them. Underneath her clothing, on the skin of her left side of her rib cage is a griffin crest that is a bit bigger that the pam of a hand, which seems not quite birthmark not quite tattoo. Nonetheless, she took great care to make sure no one could see it, the only time someone might catch a glimpse of it either when she is getting changed or bathing.

The story behind her tattoo lays in her past, and family. When members of her family first shift into their creature, what happens is that the creature leave a mark on their skin which resembles that of the creature, in a way to declare what they are and who they are. As far as Griffin’s family was aware this only seem to happen to members of their family and bloodline.

You can usually see Griffin wearing full-length dark leather breeches that had been custom made for her, just like the rest of her clothing. Her leather boots stopped just below her knees, and fitted around her calf’s like a glove. Her greaves supported and protected bother her wrists and forearms, and had little intricate patterns on both of them. She wore a fitted men’s long sleeved shirt with stand-up-collar which was made out of fine linen. On top of that she wore a fitted leather jerkin, which is best described as a cross between a vest and a tunic. On the jerkin on the left side of the chest was a golden emblem of a rampant griffin. This griffin was also found on the sheath of her sword.

The golden griffin that is found on her clothing is a gift bestowed to her from her family as her own crest, and coat of arms. These emblems are not given out lightly, and carry great meaning to the barer. The family only give them out once they think the barer is ready, and worthy to accept it, and must be approved but the head of the family and elders.

Personality:
Post memory lose:
For a good few weeks even months after her accident happened which caused to her to lose her memory, Griffin was on the edge almost all the time. She was stressed, worried, anxious, scared almost to the state of having a break down. All due to different pressures she was incurring, she literally thought she knew nothing of the world around her, she wasn’t sure who to trust, if anyone, how would she be able to tell if people are taking advantage of her. These stresses would ease as time passed. Griffin tried her best to conceal her inner turmoil with an external façade, and would try not to speak too much as to not give away her predicament, or say something stupid.

She disliked it when people took petty on her, she would make sure she would try and even her debt, as her pride would not be otherwise satisfied. Also, she would get quite irritated if people would keep mentioning about her past, or anything to do with her memory, whether they knew of her situation or not. Mixed it with all this, she has a strong need to find her identity and the feeling of belonging and would try and go most anywhere to achieve this goal.

However, she is not all doom and gloom. When she is relaxed and comfortable and feels secure with the company she can be very outgoing and friendly, and on occasion be known to crack a joke or so. She can be fiercely loyal to her select friends, whether it is due to the fact she doesn’t what to lose any more than what she already has done, or whether it is innate she does not know. Even though it scares her, Griffin will follow her internal moral compose for the better or worse, same could be said for her heart, though she does not wear it on her sleeve.

Pre memory lost:
Before Griffins/Nic’s accident she was very outgoing with people, she was always kind and pleasant to all, not conceited like her father, talking down to people he thought below him. She was brought up to be very respectful especially to her family and elders, However she would speak out if she knew something was not right, which her grandpa loved about her, but usually caused friction with her and her father and would usually end up in some consequence. Unfortunately, her father would somehow seem to bring out the worse in her, whether making her feel like a hot head, (which would also charge her inner griffin), or making her feel like she was some kind of disappointment to him, by not being “girly enough”, or by agreeing to let him arrange a marriage for her when she was only about to turn 18.

She would be the kind of person to comfort you when you needed it, but if you needed a tough word more than she would let you know. She would usually get along quite well with her cousins and they would trade jokes, and if they were free from training, would play together. Griffin/ Nic would be very protective of her mother, grandmother, but more so for her siblings Atraiu and Sophia. She would have a slightly softer spot for Sophie, as she remembers Sophie being a bit fragile ever since she contracted a sever fever when she was a baby. Even though both Nic and Atraiu could slightly hold a note, it was little Sophia that could hold a lovely note even though she was very young, you could tell in time she might sing beautifully. This was something both Nic and Atraiu would miss when they were away training, seeing and hearing Sophia.

Powers, abilities and skills:

Strengths:
Innate fighter
Griffin does not know how or why she is a good fighter, only that it comes naturally to her and is more of a reflex then a conscious choice. She could handle fighting guardsmen if she had to on her own, and at worst come out with a few bruises. However, against an expert, in her current predicament, she would only pose as an obstacle, a tough one maybe, but an obstacle none the less. She is equally good with a sword as hand to hand combat. However, she would prefer not to fight where possible as she does not trust herself or her skills enough to rely on them. Nevertheless, when she does fight she feels something deep within her, primal even, wanting to burst out of her.

Unknown to her was that her parents, mainly her father, had inducted her and her brother Atraiu into some of the arts of combat, such as sword fighting, hand to hand, archery. Griffin had started when she was 7 years old, to her father’s demand even though her mother thought she was to young still. Her combat training intensified when she was 10 years old, as her family came under attack. The time between then and when she reached the ages of 20, were devoted to her development and enhancement of her combat skills. After this, she was allowed to merge her education with some combat duties, until she was 24 years old, and he grandfather made her one of his personal ambassadors, and lead a small company.

Connection with animals
For some reason when Griffin comes into contact with an animal, she feels a strange connection with them. She doesn’t know if the blow to her head has messed up her brain, and is the reasons for this feeling, but she swears she can sense things from them, just doesn’t know what. Or maybe it’s just that she is really fond of them.

Pre amnesia:

Shifting into a griffin
She could easily shift into a griffin and use aspects of that animal to her advantage, for example seeing better in low light environments (moonlit night), the strength and fighting power of the griffin (mainly based on the lion aspect of the griffin), and skills and talents that come with the creature.

The use of magic
Even though she hadn’t finished her magical education, she was quite accomplished with basic magic, and had an aptitude for healing which she inherited from her mother. She draws mainly from her inner griffin to use magic, so it is essentially mana based. Griffin can easily heal scrapes lumps and bumps, and she has a good understanding of how to repair muscles of varying degree of damage. However the more trauma there is, the harder it is to heal, and more mana it takes. Griffin finds it incredibly hard to heal organs, as each of them has a different structures, also she finds it hard curing poison, as she had only a very basic understanding of it.

Weaknesses:

Lack of memory
Due to her amnesia, Griffin cannot recall anything about herself, where she came from, her family, her friends, and her foes. She didn’t know what place to call home, which deeply saddened her almost as much as not knowing her true name. She desperately wanted to know where she belonged in the world. Also, because she has lost her memories, she would be in further danger not knowing if was being hunted, or who to trust if anyone. Similarly she didn’t know what her strengths were, or if she had any talents or skills for sure, only through trial and era did she know for sure.

No currency
Griffin has not a bishan to her name, which places her in a very serious predicament. Without any money she cannot buy food, pay for shelter, pay for medicine or even find out who she is. Without a bishan, she could be seen as a peasant, and she didn’t want to know what that would mean.

Reading and writing
She had problems with both just as equally, the reading half the time she felt as if she was trying to decipher a second language in her head. The writing was hard for griffin, she mixed different letters up, and would end up writing the completely wrong word. All this frustrated her so much, and she felt so ashamed of it that she didn’t like to do it around other people. However, maps she understood, if you showed her on the map where something was she could follow it, even figure out how many streets she would have to walk before getting to there, and yet if you just told her the name of the street, and district it would take her half an hour more.

Headaches
Griffin sometimes had headaches that would come and go, she thought this was the result of her amnesia. The severity and the duration of the headache would vary, it sometimes correlated with her learning something, or relearning something from her past, almost like a flash back even. However, it was not always. Very little would help Griffin with the pain of her headaches when they were sever, at best things could only take the ages off.

Nightmares
She gets really anxious when it comes to her trying to fall asleep as she has terrible nightmares and wakes up feeling like she has a fever. Also, after waking up not knowing who she is, she does not what to go through that experience again.
However, what she doesn’t realise is that some of her nightmares are graphic flashbacks when she didn’t have amnesia. She had flashbacks from when some of her family went hunting and bandits try to kill them, to when she was trying to ward of enemies with some soldiers.

History:

Pre-amnesia
Griffin’s true name was Nicolas de Paramo the third, after her father, which her mother strongly disagreed with and would call her Nikki instead. Everyone else would usually call her Nic, unless her father was around and then they would have to use her noble name. Which she loathed, and thought to herself would it have made much difference to call her Nicole or Nicola instead of Nicolas, but her father would not change is stance on it.

Nic, (Griffin) came from a long bloodline of shifters, which her father was always so proud about. He would always tell her and her brother and sister about their heritage. How their bloodline is special and more potent than normal shifters, which is why they are nobility. That normal shifters just turn into normal animals, and that we the great house of Paramo are more than that. That we are stronger and better which is why we can transform in to mythical creatures, “master beasts”, and have them as part of us, like a spirit animal. Stuff like that made her father look so arrogant and conceited, which made her feel so frustrated and ashamed that her father was that way and was forcing her and her siblings to think in the same way. However, her grandmother Effera and her Mother Astraya would counter balance it by telling her stories of long ago, about how people where measure on their acts and deeds they did, and not solely on the creature you turned into. Nic knew by now that these stories where most likely made up, but she still liked to believe in the essence of the stories.

Nic and her family came from an estate, which was some distance from a city to the South-East of Thar Shaddin in the sooqui plains. She lived there with her mother Astraya, father Nicolas, grandma Effera, and her Younger siblings, brother Atraiu, and sister Sophia. It was one of the happiest times of her life living there. She could recall running and playing amongst the flower beds and small woods, going swimming in the streams, playing hide and seek in the house when it was pouring with rain outside, and sometimes grandma and her mum joining in. Her father was often not there, “as he is busy keeping us safe” is what she remembers hearing a lot. Yet, it was not all fun and games, Nic and her brother Atraiu both had a rigors education, from the usual maths, language to the combat education that her father insisted in. Nic had one on one tutoring on each aspect, some she enjoyed more than others, like horse riding.

However, this did not last forever when Nic was 10 years old, enemies of the family tried to wipe out her family and allies, this force the younger members of the family and nobility to go into hiding were they grew and developed their skills and talents. Pressure and focus were placed upon Nic aged 10, her brother Atraiu aged 8, and their close cousins Ariana, aged 14, Luna aged 11, Severus aged 9, Hector aged 13, and Omir aged 15, (her sister Sophia was 4, and too young to start training at this point). The reason for this was due to depending on whose parents inherited the leadership, would mean eventually it would pass down to one of them. Each of them could transform into what they called a master beast (their way of saying mythical creature). These master beast could only come from “noble blood” as her father kept preaching, but not everyone from “noble blood” could be or would be master beasts. An experienced and accomplished master beast can have great power and control, so much so that animals can feel it in a primal state. The power of the individual are not subjected to only being able to use them in a creature form, however each individual will have their own strengths and skills and talents depending on their master beast. Nic’s family do not transform in to the same creature, this is due to the fact that different people bring in to the family different genes, and just because one of your parents is a hydra doesn’t mean you will be a hydra. Which is considered unusual for shifters. Along with this, they have the same genetic make-up of the elves when it comes to aging, after they hit adolescents.

When Nic and her cousin Hector were both babies they were able to shift into their master beast form, to the surprise and dismay of their family as it caught them off-guard both times. The rest of the group were randomly dispersed between the ages of 4 and 8. As gathered by this point Nic’s master beast was a griffin, Kings of the land and sky. She was gifted in healing aspects of magic (her mum always said she inherited those traits from her), along with other magical traits and skills. The natural dispositions she inherited from her fathers’ side allowed her to master aspects of combat and she excelled in hand-to-hand combat and swordsmanship almost mastering them early on in her training, so much so it was like second nature to her. Nic could quite happily take on people her on age, and even a few years older, She had to as her classes encompassed in some form, everyone at the training ground, not just her cousins, but other nobility as well. Nic and her cousin Omir where usually at the top of the class when it came to swordsmanship training. However, Nic did not excel in archery or cooking. Archery, she didn’t find it hard to do, but she found it a bit tedious at times, just standing round, but her brother Atraiu loved it, and was really good at it too. When it came to cooking, however, she was not the only one that seem to have one setting to cook, Crispy, but Nic didn’t mind it as much as her cousins Ariana and Hector.

When she became ready, and of age her grandfather made her into one of his ambassadors which was a great honour to have, and set her the task of crossing borders and countries to find and form new alliances that would help them. Which is what she was trying to do when she and her small company got ambushed at night, she tried to escape by riding away on her horse discarding anything that might slow her and the horse down like bags, satchels, her cape. However this was no good and the assailants still somehow managed to catch up to her. As soon as she saw out of the corner of her eye one of the assailants preparing to strike at her head with their blade, she just managed to cover her head with her shield, as the sword hit the shield it slammed it into Nic’s head so hard that it knocked her out and she fell of her horse, down the embankment in to the darkness, the assailants rod off quickly and left her for dead.

Unbeknown to Nic / Griffin the blow to her head was so severe it had damaged her connection to her griffin entity. However the part of the brain which controls her rehearsed motor-skills was not damaged, which means that if Nic / Griffin doesn’t remember what to do, her body still does and will seem to her more of a reflex than a conscious choice.

About Griffin’s / Nic’s amnesia:
The blow to the head that Nic received caused blunt force trauma to her brain. This in turn resulted in organic traumatic retrograde amnesia, which lead to Nic in essence not remember events that had occurred before the trauma, but remembering things that happened after it normally. Along with this people like Nic will find it hard to imagine the future, because the construction of future scenarios are closely linked to the recollection of the past experiences. So, as she slowly starts to recover and begins to remember, this will change her perspective on the future.

The ability to recollect events and experiences is a very complex brain process, where memory function engages many different parts of the brain simultaneously. There for damage to brain structures (however mild) that form the limbic system (controls emotion and memories), the hippocampus and thalamus, can lead to amnesia. There are other kinds of memories called procedural memories, these memories relate to performance and motor skills and also may be called implicit memories. When a person has amnesia, they retain their procedural memories, intelligence, sometimes personality and identity can be affected, which in this case have been. These memories are started in the cerebellum, and are not affected by brain damage or trauma to the cortex, where episodic memories or long-term memories are stored.

In brief over view, only memories that are explicit and accessible are affected. These are sometimes called declarative memories, since we can bring them to mind as propositions or images. Declarative memories includes the facts, events, faces, and routes of everyday life. Nondeclarative, or implicit, memoires can be expressed only in performance. These include motor and perceptual skills and are not affected by amnesia. Thus, a person with severe amnesia still knows how to tie a pair of shoes, even if they cannot remember buying them the day before.

Post-amnesia

Nic woke up next to a river bed face-up, with a head splitting headache which caused her eyes to be blurry for the first few seconds when she first opened them. She looked turning her neck really slowly from left to right in order to see her surroundings. There was nothing around her, and the only possessions she had were the cloths on her back and the sword she could feel at her hip. As she slowly sat-up, she was able to notice what she was wearing a bit more. Even though her cloths were a bit muddy and dirty she could still tell that her cloths must have been expensive, just alone from the quality of the materials and the detailing. She almost over looked the griffin on her chest, until sun light caught it and glimmered. She didn’t know what it meant or stood for, and suddenly like a tsunami of emotion, she realised she had no clue who she was! Or anything at all for that matter! She started to feel dizzy and light headed again. She felt as if she was drowning in her own pain, confusion and worry, which in turn caused her to start crying. Nic made herself stop crying soon after, since it was not going to help anyone.

As far as she could see, she was in a pretty big ditch, and lucky for her there was only a stream flowing through it. The ditch she found herself in was lush with vegetation, all the way up the embankment, and was covered with trees at the top of it, giving cover. When she finally felt brave enough, and her headache subsided a little Nic decided to take a drink from the water before deciding what to do next. Once she had steadied herself and had drunk enough water, she climbed out of the ditch slowly, and found herself on a dirt road. There were no signs of life either way, so she decided to follow the road to the right, as it had more shade and cover. Griffin travelled for what seemed several hours before she came across another soul. When she did it, she was greeted by an old couple picking herbs by the side of the road. Griffin felt like a baby dear caught between headlights, and was unsteady when she spoke. She felt that she could tell this old couple her story, and if they tried anything, well she would see how well she was with the sword at her hip.

To her amazement, the couple invited her to stay the night at their home which was not far from where they were. Their kindness went further as the old man promised that if she was well enough the following day, that he would take her in to the city and they could try and find someone that might be able to help her. Nic was not sure if this was a trap to catch her off guard, or if this couple were truly this kind, but she would make her mind up as they went to the house. Just before they left the old man asked her if she could remember her name, and she replied she could not. So he decided to call her Griffin since she had a gold one on her clothing.
Once they all arrived back to the old couple’s cottage, the old woman, called Ivy, said she would make a bath for Griffin to clean herself up with, before she was allowed to eat. When Griffin had finally was washed herself and was drying off she spotted herself in the mirror, and was ogling at herself for a good few minutes taking her face in, then she started to look at her body in the mirror, and their on her side she spotted something. Shock came running across her face, as there was an image on her side. She moved and positioned herself in the mirror to get a better look, and their reflecting back at her was yet another image of a griffin. She started to become worried again, as she put some clean cloths Ivy had left her whilst she was washing her cloths, things started to race through her head, was she in a cult? Has she been branded by some one? Did she run away from those people, and that’s why she was in a ditch? These thoughts kept going around in her head, even when she went to sleep, and her nightmare begun. She was suddenly awoken up by an eagle screech.

A few days past, and Griffin was still at the cottage with the old couple, Ivy and James. Griffin didn’t feel right about leaving them without repaying them back for their kindness. So she tried to help them with their chores and anything else she could do. However, Griffin did want to get moving, she couldn’t explain it but she felt she wanted to do something. Plus, she couldn’t carry on living here, she would have to find some way of supporting herself. James had mentioned a city where she might be able to find work of some kind, so Griffin had asked him to take her to the city as soon as he could. She hated the idea of leaving something that has just started to become familiar, for the unknown, but she knew she would have to do it sooner or later.

Note: Any advice on how I can improve my character would be welcome, as this is my first character. Also, if you think I should edit certon parts of it, or scrap it please let me know. Thank you.

[Niabi]

I'm going to change your blue to a slightly lighter shade as right now it is very hard for me to read it.

[Nic de Paramo]

Hi,
sorry for not replying faster, I've been away. Thank you for making it easier to read, it looks a lot better now,

thanks again,

[Saruna]

Heeeey there, thanks for being so patient!

Description

The griffin within her also gives her traits such as loyalty, which she is and will be to her family and once she considers someone a friend. This also means that she will protect the people that she cares for, and will do anything for them.

Am I reading this right in that if she was not a shifter she would not have this trait? It's something being forced on her that's not otherwise natural to her personality?

Powers/Strengths

Griffin does not know how or why she is a good fighter, only that it comes naturally to her and is more of a reflex then a conscious choice.

Please be a little more specific with how good she is at fighting. How would she hold against someone who has been training for 10 years? Against an expert? Well trained guardsmen? Also do note that mastering a skill -- especially one that requires development of muscle -- will take some time. Your body is constantly changing when you're young, so while you might be exceptional for your age, you're not going to truly master something until you've been at it (constant, every day practice) for a decade or two.

Please detail what type of healing magic she is able to do, even if she is not presently able to do it.

Weaknesses:

A small aside -- the singular of bishani is bishan. Took me like seven months or more on the site before someone told me. D:

I would like to see a weakness that correlates to her fighting ability in some way. Perhaps related to the amnesia?

History:

It looks like Nic grew up in Eyropa. We're still trying to make the setting easy to digest for new players, and this is one of those things that can be easy to miss. Eyropa is an empire split into several provinces (which aren't wholly developed!). Each province has representatives who report to the emperor. So any nobility within the individual provinces would still be subject to the empire itself, and while it's fine to have a shifter community with its own hierarchy in Eyropa, please be aware of that.

If though you want it to be its own thing separate from the empire, just stick it somewhere in the sooqui plains, that big brownish area between Eyropa and Tian Xia, or even in Sethankos.


General stuff:

What has she been able to piece together given the expensive quality of her gear and the marks on her body?

Just a general sort of heads up -- there are many strains and cultures of shifters, from specific species to the one offs who were turned and don't live with or know any other shifters. While having animals recognize that she can communicate with them isn't a bad idea, having them sorta naturally respond to her as if she is deserving of respect would only make sense for those animals who, perhaps, were from her general area. The world is wide and varied, and not all animals across the world would necessarily recognize her at all.


I have to admit to some curiosity as to why you chose to have her suffer from amnesia. Please understand I am not trying to be critical, but right now it's sorta reading like you're wanting her to have an adventure for a Chosen One, and so you've built her in order to accomplish that rather than just an interesting character. Right now who she is is essentially a blank slate. I feel like you don't really have a good idea in your head of who you want her to be besides a normal girl who in reality is someone amazing. I'm not telling you this to tell you to scrap the character, but instead to take a critical look at what you're building. She feels a bit like a stock character right now, and I'm betting you can make her a whole lot more interesting. Don't you?

That said, I love the idea of a griffin shifter and the general idea that she's capable of more than she knows.

Please do not hesitate to hop into chat, pm me, or leave a reply to this thread if you want to ask questions, comment, or brainstorm stuff. Please leave a reply in this thread should you make changes to anything so we know to come back in and look at it. I look forward to working with you on this character!

[Nic de Paramo]

Hi again,

I have tried to edit it, and made some changes to the app. I have tried to use the points you have raised,
If you could help me out in developing this character that would be great, (if you don't mind)
I would like to write with this character, but if you don't think its going to work, or you think something is better suited to it,
please don't hesitate to tell me ,

Sorry, its also a lot longer :S.

Thank you.

[Saruna]

Hey nic, I would like you to scale down her fighting ability a little bit so she doesn't stand a chance against an expert (less related to the character and more to our requirements regarding new player characters).

Is she presently able to shift into a griffin and use magic or will this remain blocked until after she regains her memories?

Why doesn't she sell her gear for money? Is she attached to it? Has she tried using it to get a lead on who she is?

I love the additions about amnesia and how hers works. If by chance you pulled the information from somewhere (as a quote or paraphrase), however, please do credit the source.


Kinda as another aside note -- not something you need to add to the app, but please do think a bit more about who Nic is as a person, post amnesia. She still feels a bit flat, and I think it's due to a lack of negative qualities or traits. Interesting people, and interesting characters, are usually formed of both positive traits and negative ones. Right now she's overwhelmingly positive, the sort of girl next door who doesn't get a second look. Combined with her amnesia and noble heritage, it makes her feel a bit cliche. Again, this isn't stuff you need to add to the app, but just food for thought as we near approval on the app.