-Ares: (soulbound servant, resident in the body of her boyfriend)
-Laurie (childhood friend, former friend?)
-Jonathan ((former?) friend)
-Liam ((former?) friend)
Name: unpronounceable mess
Alias(es): Ares
Age: thousands of years
Height: In his current Vessel, 6'3"; in his usual state, quite variable
Gender: Male
Birth Place: Hell
Current Home(s): with Janice
Former Home(s): Hell, several other hosts
Connections:
-Janice: (soulbound master, host's former girlfriend)
-Laurie (host's former friend)
-Jonathan (host's former friend)
-Liam (host's former friend)
Originally, Ares and Janice were a couple, albeit an extremely poor one, living in the general Seattle area. However, Janice, stressed to breaking point on a nearly daily basis by their financial situation, began to dabble in the occult after a while, somehow convinced that if she could summon a demon and bind it to herself, she could use its powers and abilities to get what she and Ares wanted out of life as well as make any foreseeable problems in the future basically disappear. After a while's study and preparation (carefully kept a secret from Ares, it's to be noted) she managed to summon one and bind it to her soul. This meant that when she died and lost control of the demon, it would be sucked back into hell, and the link between them would take her soul with it.
Unfortunately, this demon needed a vessel of sorts to exist for any length of time on the physical plain, let alone have any actual effect on anything here. And entirely out of spite towards the one who was going to force him to serve her for a human lifetime, from the available humans nearby the couple's apartment, the demon chose Ares. And in taking him as a vessel, he kicked the original soul inhabiting the body out, in essence killing Ares to make more room for himself in his new living space. It was at this point, when the demon showed up and showed her that he'd killed her boyfriend, that Janice realised that she'd not only caused the death of her boyfriend and the damnation of her own soul, but that she'd summoned the wrong class of demon altogether. This one was a chaos demon (more specifically, one that specializes in timestream shenanigans), but she was going for something more in the realm of a crossroads demon or similar with the specific ability to grant wishes and desires.
Janice was then faced with the decision to either be stuck with the demon wearing her boyfriend's skin for the rest of her life, release the demon from her binding and save her soul but unleash him on the world with free reign, or kill herself and send herself and the demon both to hell. She chose the foremost option, opting to make the most of whatever time she has left with her newfound servant to do some good in the world where she can in the hopes that she could potentially redeem her soul or at the very least, gain a level of personal peace in the matter before dying.
She's forced to call the thing wearing her boyfriend's skin by his name as well, as not only is his true name is a garbled, unpronounceable mess, but she would rather not have their friends and family realize what she did.
Lucille is a tree spirit, by which it's meant that she's literally a tree that decided one day to pull up roots and stop being a tree because she wanted to live like the people she saw walking through her forest. As she is a tree, her arms and legs are just branches and roots respectively intertwined to form recognizable and useable appendages, and she gets nutrition by wiggling her "toes" into the soil and taking what she can get. In a pinch, taking her nutrients from water works alright as well. She used to be a willow tree that grew in the lower levels of an already-established forest, so she's rather runty for a tree, clocking in at only 6'4" despite her age of 68. The switch from tree to girl was also relatively recent, happening only about five years or so ago.
Her 'hair' is comprised of sticks, twigs, and thin, whippety branches and reflects the passage of the seasons in her home forest (so were she to leave and travel past the equator, it would be different from her current environment). During summer, her hair is covered in its full greenery. During autumn, it's all reds and golds and browns. If you catch her in the winter, she's got snow, and during spring her hair is bare for the most part. She rather likes taking the time to find fabric for and create her own outfits to go with her seasonal hair changes, despite the fact that, as a tree, she has nothing to cover up. (On that note, for her female pronouns are merely a matter of preference and she would be equally happy being referred to as 'they')
Lucille is also incredibly kind and gentle, but she's cripplingly shy of other beings as a whole, made worse by the fact that the other, older trees of her forest don't approve of trees ripping up their roots and walking and as such convinced her that anyone she finds will be utterly horrified to meet a walking, talking tree. Because of this, rather than introducing herself or even making her presence known when she spots people in her home, she just hides amongst the other trees and watches, occasionally returning the odd lost pet to its owner's car before they return and leave it behind.
She spends the majority of her days doing this, as well as simply relaxing with the other creatures living in her home, the only other living beings she's comfortable with. Her nights are spent sleeping curled up on the sides of various hills, every now and again with her toes planted firmly in the ground.
Former Home(s): London, The Daedalus, The Redwater
Connections:
-Dane Jaimeson (father)
-Laura Jaimeson (mother)
-Admiral Jacks (mentor, former captain)
-Eustace Timmons (first mate, closest friend)
-The crew of The Nightingale and the inhabitants of The Black Isle
Born in 1843 to a well-off naval captain, Dane Jaimeson, and his wife, Laura, as a child she very much idolized her father as a hero for his career path, even though it kept him away from home most of the time. When Margaret was seven years old, she disguised herself as a boy and signed up to crew for her father's boat in the navy under the name Henry Smith. Though her disguise was anything but thick, her own father didn't recognize her for the entire two years she worked as a cabin boy on his vessel, The Redwater, probably a result of his long leaves of absence from the Jaimesons' London home. Eventually, it was her difficulty urinating standing up that did Margaret in and got her discovered by a fellow cabin boy. Her father was humiliated by his daughter 'parading around in men's clothes and trying to do a man's job' and sent her home with a harsh reprimand to her angy and worried mother. Margaret was sent away to a strict boarding school immediately afterwards to learn to be a 'proper lady'.
She took her punishment in stride and excelled at her schooling until the invention of the aether-powered airship sparked the desire to travel in her once again. She held off on this until she was sixteen and completed her education, however, only succumbing to the desire when her mother began to look at prospective suitors for her (as she believed) now-proper daughter. Of course, rather than risk discovery by rejoining the crew on her father's boat (which had been converted for air use), the now sixteen-year-old was smart enough to sign on somewhere else, under the command of an admiral at port by the name of Jacks on his flagship, The Daedalus. By binding her chest, cutting her hair, and renaming herself Lysander Lyell, Margaret was able to pass for a fairly runtish young man two years her junior. For three years she lived and worked in the open sky on The Daedelus, rising to the rank of Midshipman before her right arm was taken off by an aether cannon in a skirmish with a French ship.
This caused her secret to be revealed once more, to both the ship's surgeon and Admiral Jacks, the first and only other he told. Jacks made the decision to keep Margaret's secret, as "Lysander" was one of his favorite men and he believed the young sailor to show great leadership potential. So he ordered the surgeon to keep quiet about it and allowed Margaret to continue serving as Lysander, though her duties were severely limited as she was recovering. She learned to cope without her dominant arm for several months until they got back to land and an aether prosthesis was able to be procured for her.
Jacks took Margaret under his wing then, becoming to her the caring father she never had because her own was so distant and cold. Life was good for Margaret for nearly a year after that, until The Daedalus was commissioned by the Queen to become a privateer to help irritate the French during the stalemate. Margaret wasn't comfortable with this being the ship's sole purpose, as she thought it made them no better than the pirates it was their job to stop for the common good as part of the Royal Navy. And she wasn't the only one, either.
So Lysander Lyell, as well as several other crew members, left the Air Division with an honorable discharge and on good terms with Admiral Jacks. Margaret Jaimeson did not return home, however. She instead bought an airship and began pirating the privateers on all sides of the war, believing herself to be cleaning up the skies just as much as if she were hunting actual pirates. Because of who she targets, however, The Nightingale, her ship, is classified as a pirate ship and she herself is a high-priority criminal to both Britain and France. This has left her with only one refuge and one source of new members for her crew: The Black Isle, the constantly moving slice of land in the sky that is home to the pirates of the air and those who support their lifestyle. Margaret doesn't much like having to scrape from the best of the bottom of the barrel, but in trying to teach her country a lesson in morality she's willing to.
