Took me a while to think of answers for some of these… Got some heavy hitting questions here.
14. Most heroic thing they have ever done?
I have two ideas here, one from backstory and one from in-campaign, so I’ll list both.
In-campaign, it’d be when Ophelia encountered a trainer which appeared to be mistreating both wild Pokemon and the trainer’s own Eevee, and Ophelia- calm Ophelia, quiet Ophelia, Ophelia who would never hurt a (Cutie)fly- just reamed her out for seeing Pokemon as replaceable tools instead of sentient beings with their own thoughts and feelings. Didn’t really accomplish much except saving one particular group of wild Pokemon from further abuse, but.
(If any of you read @lordlyhour‘s post responding to these asks about his own character from the campaign, this is the same incident in which his character divetackled Pokemon to get them out of harm’s way. Ophelia did most of the talking, while Kurtis did the acrobatics.)
What would you do if you were a young child out in the woods with your brother around sunset, and when you let go of his hand and looked away for just a moment, he was nowhere to be found?
Would you cry? Scream? Stand in one spot and hope he returns? Go home and hope he finds his way back without you?
If your answer is “retrace your steps until you’re out of the woods, tell the first adult you can reach to start a search party because that’s What You Should Do, and then go barreling back into the woods to conduct your own search while resolving that you won’t return home without him”, your name might just be Ophelia Jane Smith.
…though, if we’re being entirely honest, there was some crying along the way there, too.
(Another instance in which her success on the endeavor in question was… mixed.)
15. Most despicable thing they have ever done?
This one’s all backstory.
There are a number of bookshelves in Ophelia’s family home- a side effect of both parents being intellectuals of a sort, though their fields of interest differed wildly- but there is one bookshelf in particular that her mother never so much as touched, but housed arcane tomes that her father had pored over time and time again.
The night before her father left the house and never came back, he had been reading one of the books from that shelf, and while he left behind almost all of his worldly possessions, several of the books from that shelf were missing.
When a still-young Ophelia asked about the books- still in place, gathering dust, though her mother would never dream of reading them herself- she was told in no uncertain terms to avoid that bookshelf, that nothing good would come of her reading the books on it. Her mother had a strange distant look in her eyes when she made this pronouncement, the same look she often had when the topic of Ophelia’s missing father came up, one suggesting that she wasn’t sure whether to cry or to just change the subject.
Ophelia has read every book on that bookshelf at least three times through, reading short snippets here and there whenever her mother was sufficiently distracted, and she stashed a couple of those books into her bag when she left, secure in the knowledge that her mother would never notice them missing, would never give that bookshelf more than the most perfunctory of glances.
(Not a grave crime, perhaps, but it’s all that Ophelia has to offer in the way of dastardly deeds done.)
21. How did they become an adventurer?
It was her mother’s idea, actually. When they heard that Kurtis, the guy who probably uses more of Ophelia’s mom’s healing than the rest of the town combined (aka the other PC, played by @lordlyhour), Ophelia and her mother talked about how dangerous it would be for him to go on such a journey alone, and after some discussion Ophelia agreed to join him (with his consent). Ophelia was feeling a bit stifled by the small-town atmosphere, anyway, and she’d already read all the books she could get her hands on several times over- going elsewhere could only be an improvement.
(What Ophelia doesn’t realize is that her mother hopes that by sending her daughter on a good old-fashioned Pokemon training adventure, Ophelia will get her nose out of the books and find some interests outside of her preoccupation with studying the occult. She’s lost enough family members to the occult already- she doesn’t want to lose her daughter to it, too.
What Ophelia’s mother doesn’t realize is there’s not a chance in hell Ophelia’s gonna come back from this trip, where she’ll have access to all sorts of new books and tools and won’t have to worry about her mother’s watchful eye, LESS involved in the occult than she was before.)
22. Most amazing monster they have ever killed or helped kill?
Assuming whatever part she played in the disappearance of her brother and father don’t count…
Probably, like, a bug she unthinkingly swatted once. Ophelia’s not really into the whole killing thing; in fact, she’s yet to take part in an actual fight in our campaign. (It’s still early, though, so that’s bound to change eventually.)
29. Biggest positive and negative influences on their life and development?
Her mother’s definitely the biggest positive influence. Through thick and thin, her mother’s been there for her, a grounding presence in her life when so much was up in the air. It’s her mother’s influence that makes Ophelia want to use her knowledge to help people- even though that “help” may come in ways that her mother wouldn’t strictly approve of. (But hey, if you can use magic to protect people, why wouldn’t you? Seems like a no-brainer to her.)
As for negative influences… It hurts me to say it, but probably having “Ezra” (the Phantump Ophelia found just after the disappearance of her twin brother with the same name, and that she believes is said twin brother, ‘cause that’s a legitimate possibility given Pokemon lore about Phantump). It’s not that “Ezra” is bad in and of himself- he tries his best to help her out, he hasn’t done anything wrong per se- and it’s not just that he helped her get interested in studying the occult, because the occult isn’t all bad either, and she might well have developed that interest regardless. But being known to much of the town as “the weird girl who thinks her brother’s a Pokemon now” and spending much of her time alone with said Pokemon rather than spending time with actual humans hasn’t exactly been great for Ophelia socially. She wasn’t a social butterfly beforehand, but her social skills are especially rusty now, to the point where she usually stays quiet and lets others lead the conversation rather than open her mouth and risk inserting her foot into it.
(Though I do also have to give a shout-out to her missing father, who left his family without warning not long after… whatever happened with Ezra, but left behind a good chunk of occult-related books and supplies that a young Ophelia gleefully studied. It may or may not have been his choice to so abruptly leave his family behind, but that just made their household situation go from bad to worse. Good thing Ophelia’s mom was already the family breadwinner.)