Application - Exit Void

player.
NAME/HANDLE: Luciano - Luc
PERSONAL JOURNAL: pocketprince
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: yes
CONTACT: gueyprince ; colibriprince@aim


character.
CHARACTER NAME: Katherine [Shalazar]
SERIES: The Guardians of Childhood
CANON POINT: End of Book Four: Sandman and the War of Dreams
AGE: ~16
APPEARANCE: Illustration

PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY:

Around one year at rubycity_rp.

During her year in the city, Katherine mostly spent her time helping to refurbish the city's Toy Shop. Nicholas St. North had been in the city for a few months and taught her to use her spells and ingenuity to build toys like his own. In meeting a lot of different people, Katherine became aware of the existence of other worlds and the kinds of stories they have, and also became aware of the fact that some people come to worlds like Ruby City without recalling memories of having been there before.

This also adds to the amount of time she's been away from her friends. In canon she has spent a vague amount of time (probably at least close to a half year; canon is VERY vague about it) kidnapped and locked in a nightmare. Though she was recently rescued, she only saw them for about a day or two before she was nicked back to Ruby City for a few months more, so she hasn't seen her castmates in quite a while.

PERSONALITY:

Of all the children in Santoff Claussen, there is one whose force of imagination is unmatched. Her name is Katherine, and she is a foundling-- an orphan that was found, that is.

There was something special about her from the start. When her parents died in the cold forces surrounding the forest-fortressed village of Santoff Claussen, the trees passed the grey-eyed Katherine between their branches and the squirrels banded together to carry her and eventually the reindeer themselves carried her tiny toddler frame straight to Big Root, where Ombric, the old wizard, took care of her.

Perhaps she was born with it or perhaps she was simply the most attentive student of Ombric’s, but Katherine became one of the strongest little believers in the village. You see, magic is quite real-- and the fundamental spell, the spell that can bring anything into being, is “I believe.” But in order for such a spell to work in its strongest ways, the spellcaster must have a strong imagination, and Katherine’s is rivaled only by that of her dearest friend, Nicholas St. North.

Katherine is quite the mature girl for someone who appears to be anywhere from 13-16 (and will in fact appear a little older when reappearing in Ruby City than she was when she left). She is the first among the children to suggest that, when they are tailed by the Nightmare King’s evil Nightmare Knights and Fearlings, they stay together as not to let the dark shadows catch them one by one. She is the one to see that when their bear attacks the children of Big Root it isn’t the bear at all; it is Pitch Black, possessing their bear to attempt to kill their wizard. Katherine is the one to take to Nicholas St. North, their hero against the bear and the King of Bandits, and befriend him so quickly that their friendship changes his very heart (after Ombric himself said that no magic was strong enough to turn a human heart at all.) And when Old William, the father of the Williams of the village, held up the fallen Ombric’s staff, it is Katherine who knows what will save Ombric and all of Santoff Claussen. She recites and leads them in the very first spell; “I believe, I believe, I believe.”

Raised by Ombric himself, it isn’t surprising that Katherine takes to not only magic, but bravery. She is still very much a child; when North and Ombric plan to leave Santoff Claussen to find a legendary tool to fight the Nightmare King and don’t include Katherine in their journey, she throws quite the little tantrum by ignoring North to the point he storms off on a tantrum of his own. But when North’s compass and the owls of Big Root alert Katherine to the danger her dear friend is in, Katherine does not hesitate to take up a dagger and coat and mount one of Santoff Claussen’s reindeer on a journey to save him. When she does locate him, North is in desperate danger-- and it’s Katherine’s strength of belief, not North’s own brawn (fearsome as it may be) that saves them... along with a little help from a friend named Nightlight.

Even with the danger she’s been through, Katherine stays quite strong at North’s side. She may be young, but she’s tough and resilient-- a foundling who seems to pick up foundlings of her own. To North, the lost one who was Never Found, she is perplexing, a child with a heart of gold who doesn’t fear him and whose anger with him can hurt him more than a bullet. To Ombric she is a sponge, taking in all she is taught almost as quickly as North does. She is a leader among the children of Santoff Claussen and certainly strong-hearted-- and as shown by her little tiffs with North, sometimes very opinionated.

What may be her biggest struggle in Ruby City is her strong voice; if she knows a truth, Katherine will not be quiet about it. Small as she may be, her words have stopped even Pitch. She is also trusting, which may not be to her advantage, though she appears to be a good judge of character. Not only had she stopped Pitch, but she was also the only one of the Guardians to show him pity.

By the end of Book Four, Katherine has only strengthened her ways. After battling months locked in a nightmare, she's become wiser and stronger and even a bit of a leader to the other guardians despite her young age. A quote from the book best describes her both before the book and at its end;

"This lost girl may have been the youngest of their troop, but in many ways she was its oldest soul. She was orphaned, as all the Guardians had been, and like them, she had found a path out of that sorrow. Unlike them, however, her path was not through daring deeds or the study of magic or the use of miraculous powers. She had been gifted with something almost as rare: an open and eager mind. She had the gift of watching and listening, the gift of taking all the hurts and happenings of others' lives and understanding their purpose.

Katherine's heart and mind would take their adventures and reimagine them, sometimes exactly as they had occurred or-- most miraculously of all-- as new stories. She had become the historian of what had happened and what should have happened. No one could tell a story better than Katherine. No one could understand what needed to be as well as she. This was a singular and important power in the ranks of the guardians."

Katherine’s greatest strength is, as mentioned before, her imagination. It’s not all in one’s head, however; Katherine can literally bring stories to life. She is an excellent artist armed with charcoal and can make her stories and words move across paper simply by believing in them and giving them the power to move and relay messages so far as sound and interaction. Katherine is one of the greatest storytellers-- and no wonder, when she is destined to become Mother Goose.

ABILITIES:

Katherine is a very talented artist.
Magic is just as common as science in her world, and thus, she knows quite a few spells-- including ones that help her create moving drawings. While she can make them move, she can't transfer them between books the way she could with Mr. Qwerty's help.

North taught her the spells to create toys and robots the way he can while they were in Ruby City. She wasn't as quick or proficient as him, but she does learn quickly. With him, she built a robotic goose named Nanda Devi, and after he left, she created an unfolding Music Box Piano for Machi Tobaye.

POSSESSIONS:

At the canon point from whence I am pulling her, Katherine is not carrying any of her possessions. She wears only the outfit she is seen wearing in the image linked above, though her hair is longer and she seems older at the time.

samples.
INTERACTION SAMPLE:

4/13: Conversing with August and Rabbit
7/13: Revealing Nanda Devi to Dirk
1/14: Returning to the city and meeting Jason Todd again

INTROSPECTION SAMPLE:

[For Katherine, finding herself in the city again certainly is a bit jarring.

Back in her own world, she hadn't remembered a single thing about the city. It had shared no part of her waking mind, nor any part of her dreams or even a part of the seemingly endless nightmare from which Nightlight had awakened her. Upon standing outside the train, however, a flood of memories rushes to her and Katherine recalls nearly every moment she'd spent in the city.

It's almost overwhelming, and as she stood in the station, she can't help but want to cry a little. She knows very well that she'd return to her friends as though nothing had happened, but after having been locked away in a nightmare for months and finally being pulled free, it's hard to let her friends go. Katherine'd just been reunited with her beloved Kailash and North and the Guardians--

And with her Nightlight.

Nightlight had saved her not only from the nightmare in which Pitch had trapped her, but from falling out of the sky to her death. And that was the second time he'd done so.
He'd freed her from her sleepy torment with a good night's kiss and reunited her with the Guardians and had held her hand all the way. Katherine had missed him dearly, her closest friend who always made her feel safe-- and now, he was gone again.

She is going to miss him terribly.

Still, she knows that this is not a permanent arrangement and that she'll see him again soon. So, wiping her tears, Katherine begins to laugh a little. Out of one prison and into another, it seems, and it's time to reunite herself with the prisonmates she'd left behind.

Opening her watch, she smiles at its screen. Katherine is older now, if only by a little, and it showed on her face and in her eyes (and in the few inches she's gotten taller). It's a good kind of older; a more knowing older, and a confident older. She doesn't miss a beat turning on the video function and grinning into its interface.]

Good evening, Ruby City.

It's been a long time, hasn't it? I'm back now. If anyone is still around-- Jason? Adam?

Kariya?

It'd be nice to see you again.

[After all, alone is the last thing she wants to be in that moment.]