Rebecca Arcanis

Rebecca Alina Arcanis

Rebecca actually doesn't like any nicknames based on her first name, like Becca or Becky or Becks - she tends to get irritated and ask that you call her by Rebecca or Miss Arcanis.

20

She/Her

Student/Assistant

Mage

December 23rd

Charlotte Spencer

5 FT 5 IN

She has high cheekbones and a willowy frame, and her build leans towards lithe and graceful.

Light Brown

Auburn Red

She tends to keep it to about mid-shoulder length, and it has natural waves.

A SPARROW on her right shoulder blade. Rebecca got her sparrow tattoo the summer shortly before her family locked her away and sent her to Snow Haven. It is a normal tattoo, unwarded with no particular magical properties.

The movement of the bird is a symbol of liberty and the freedom to travel where one pleases as well as quickness and cunning. A sparrow with wings spread, clearly in flight, can also symbolize a swift mind, which is a unique meaning.

The Matriarchs were, predictably, irate when the tattoo was discovered. Her family has attempted to have the tattoo removed via normal and magical means since then, but Rebecca has successfully managed to divert or resist all attempts thus far.

Single piercing in each earlobe

For being from a fashion line-owning family, her taste in clothing is more demure and less eclectic than the majority of her family. She prefers solid colors and practical clothing; she doesn't like any kind of crazy patterns or clothes that look good but don't function well in a day-to-day life. Not every day can be lived at a party or on a show stage.

Her dress tends to be conservative as a result; long sleeves, collared shirts, and the like; although she's not the type of girl who requires skirts and dresses all the time. She will take jeans and a t-shirt or a skirt and a blouse over a little black dress any day of the week. Rebecca tries to dress practically, comfortably, and respectably for whatever she's doing for the day.

The air of professionalism is important to her, particularly anything that will make her look older and more business-like, as people tend to take her more seriously that way.

Rebecca is pale in the way most redheads are, so any markings are plainly visible to see. That being said, the only real prominent markings are freckles, scattered all across her body and primarily across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks.

Rebecca is born from a long line of Mages who have carefully cultivated the magic blood in their line in an attempt to keep their lineage 'pure'. As a result, Rebecca is considered somewhat of a natural beauty due to the higher-than-average magic blood in her veins.

Thanks to her pale skin, she tends to sunburn easily and any changes in color (such as blushes) tend to telegraph themselves across her cheeks, neck, and ears.

Rebecca has been a bookworm from the time she could read. She was forced from childhood illness to spend most of her time indoors as a child. Because she couldn't go out and play and be a child, she turned to books instead, taking on adventures in the stories and studying the world from the safety of her bedroom.

As a result, Rebecca ended up as a walking encyclopedia and was labelled by others her age as a 'nerd'. She drew back from others and became shy, socially awkward, and introverted around others her age.

Instead, she turns towards people who are more her intellectual equals, those who don't see her as awkward or funny. She gravitates towards people whose mental age and maturity level match her own, most of which end up being old enough to be her parents or grandparents. She is more 'adult' than your average teenager, although still completely naive and innocent to the real world.

She was often praised for her "maturity" as a child thanks to this, and soon became enamoured with the idea of praise from her mentors. She throws herself into her studies (when devoted to them) and lives with fear at being seen as a disappointment, to others and especially to herself.

Due to her mysterious childhood illness, Rebecca is fascinated by medicine, both of the magical and scientific varieties. She wants to help others and heal their sicknesses, especially other children, to prevent others from going through what she went through. It is her dream to someday become a doctor and combine her knowledge of ancient magic and modern medicine into something to revolutionize the medical field, in a way that doesn't expose the supernatural underground.

Greenhouse gardening
literature, nonfiction books
the occasional adventure novel
gourmet coffee
most teas
foreign languages
the medical sciences
combining magic and science together
playing the piano

Violence, Enslavement
Immaturity, ignorance
rude or obnoxious people
the fashion world, sewing
high heels, heavy makeup
uncomfortable clothing
crazy fabric patterns
fashion snobs
bright lights (especially stage lighting)

Intelligent: Rebecca is incredibly bright. She spent most of her childhood stuck in her bedroom, which meant a lot of free time for reading and studying. She is also an avid learner, so if she doesn't know, she is eager to learn.

Moral: Rebecca follows the hippocratic oath: do no harm. She has a strong set of morals ingrained from years of reading and studying and coming up with her own opinions and views of the world. They have not, however, been strongly tested at any point in her life.

Determined: Rebecca does not back down from a challenge, particularly one that she feels is within her reach or her set of skills and something she should be able to do. If obstacles are placed in her path, she will attempt to think things over, come up with the best solution, and throw herself into a course of action.

Naive: Rebecca knows very little of the reality of the outside world. Her family kept her sheltered for most of her life, and it's only into her early adulthood years that she's really managed to get free of their presence. Her understanding of the outside world comes from her studies, not from experience.

Dazzled: Rebecca is easily swayed or persuaded by the opinions of others, especially those she looks up to and admires. She is often dazzled by other people's accomplishments, achievements, or workmanship, often falling into idolizing those she looks up to and striving to change herself to be more like that person.

Stubborn: The flip side of the coin to determination, Rebecca can be seen as stubborn. She fears failure and therefore cannot give up on a goal she's set for herself, even if it comes as a detriment to herself and others. At most she may admit that she needs time to come back to the problem, but she cannot accept failure as an end result.

Heterosexual

Rebecca is awkward and introverted, but she's not shy; she speaks out in a crowd and sticks to her ideals. Her intelligence and maturity are far, far above most others her own age, so she mostly rejects connections with them. She doesn't even trust her own cousins much thanks to their family, although she is close to her own brothers, she doesn't feel she can trust them as confidants.

Rebecca tends to make rivals of her own peers, since she tends to reject them. She isn't interested in dating or parties or anything else most young women are into. She has been bullied and called every name under the sun for being different, and Rebecca has learned to lash back out in her own way. It helps that she's good with magic.

Rebecca is young and has never had more than innocent crushes on people. She's dated sporadically, only boys her own age (her admiration for those much older than herself hasn't equaled attraction, so far), and always in secret. Her family would not allow her to 'sully' herself with some nobody, even if the relationship was innocent. She is still a virgin and isn't much interested in lovers.

Rebecca is a talented pianist, having been playing piano since she was a child (as there is only so many books a young child can take in a day, and TV wasn't much of a thing in her house). She loves it and tries to play at least once a day, often as a form of stress relief or when she needs to think. She has her favorite composers memorized, but can sight-read sheet music as well as play freehand. She has never composed anything of her own, though.

Rebecca is an avid and voracious reader; although she primarily reads non-fiction as a rule (because academia is everything), she is a lover of good fiction as well. Primarily anything that can be considered adventurous; pirates and treasure on the high seas, knights rescuing fair maidens and slaying dragons, the wild west sheriffs saving the town from outlaws.

Despite her best efforts, Rebecca has not been able to escape her family's influence when it comes to fashion and textiles. She is a good seamstress without magic, an excellent seamstress with magic, and can tell you without much effort on her part anything she can glean about whatever fabric you might show her.

If the clothing is from a fashion house - particularly if it's one of Pyre's competitors - Rebecca can usually tell with only a brief study: who the designer was, what fashion house it came from, and where it was purchased from. If she got closer, touched it, she could perhaps even say what factory the designer had it created in, and where the fabric and thread used within came from.

She will say it's a casualty of being groomed to become the President and CEO of a world-renown fashion house and she tries to make as little practical use of this skill as possible.

The Arcanis family is a matriarchal Mage family from Massachusetts, that can trace their lineage back hundreds of years. However, the family didn't come into any particular sort of prominence until Rebecca's great-grandmother managed to snag herself an ancient Mage line as the father of her children. This sparked the family's obsession with a "pureblood" Mage bloodline and a lust for power, establishing her great-grandmother and her children as the main branch of the Arcanis family line.

The union between her grandmother and grandfather, and her mother and father, were all planned arranged marriages to other prominent Mage families, where the husbands took the Arcanis family name.

It is rumored - though never proven by anyone - that Rebecca's grandfather sold his soul to a demon at her grandmother's request, in order to jumpstart the "haute couture" fashion brand called 'Pyre' that the Arcanis family is world-renowned and famous for, clawing their way towards the level of Coco Chanel or Versace or Calvin Klein.

Rebecca's mother Diana was the oldest of three girls, and was married in her mid-twenties through arranged marriage to her father Arthur. The two were not and are still not in love, but found friendship and companionship together and had three children of their own: Lyle, the oldest boy, three years Rebecca's senior, Rebecca, and then Connor, the youngest son, who is six years younger than Rebecca.

Between her two aunts and her three great-aunts with their own children and grandchildren, Rebecca was the only girl born in her generation to live through her childhood. As the only daughter born in a matriarchal family line in her generation, Rebecca is expected to take on the title of Family Matriarch and continue on the Arcanis name through the next generation.

The Arcanis Family is considered powerful within their circles, old blood and old money with a recognizable family name, although ultimately low on anyone's radar except within the fashion world and those other old, powerful families that like to keep their bloodlines interconnected.

Although Rebecca is not aware of this, the fact that she was the only female to survive childhood in her generation is not an accident. Jealous cadet branches and other relatives have cursed, killed, or otherwise removed any other daughters from being born in the Arcanis line. There was only one other daughter, a second cousin, who survived to birth, but passed away at five years old before Rebecca was even born.

The debilitating illness of Rebecca's childhood was likely caused by a relative attempting to poison her, although this has never been proven by anyone and Rebecca herself is not aware that this is a possibility.

December 23rd

Salem, Massachusetts

Snow Haven, Alaska

Rebecca graduated high school, but before she could sneak off to university to begin her undergraduate degree towards med school, her family caught wind of the scheme and had her locked away, so she has yet to begin any formal secondary education besides what tutors they've forced upon her and coursework they've forced her to take while she's been in confinement.

If her family had their way, she would be interning with Pyre for the Head Designer position as she worked through her college education in Business Management, as her mother had done before her.

Rebecca considers herself somewhat of a language fanatic - she is fluent in Latin thanks to her magic studies, but can also read/write/speak French, Spanish, Italian, and German.

Meet Rebecca! Rebecca is a young Mage gifted in healing magic who wants to be a doctor, but is dealing with a lot of interference from her family. She is the last female heir in the matriarchal Arcanis family to survive childhood, and as a result the family matriarchs had her life planned down to the day from the moment she was born. When she tried to rebel, she was torn from her family and her childhood home and dumped with a distant relative in Snow Haven, Alaska, until they could decide what to do with her.

It's only been within the last year that Rebecca has been given more freedom to leave the mansion her relatives call home... and she has finally broken the wards binding her to the home to allow her to sneak out at night without being caught. Rebecca is now desperate for a way to get out and escape the destiny her family has planned out for her.

The union between Diana Arcanis and Arthur O'Brien was not a marriage forged from love. It was arranged by their parents, both children from powerful Mage families, in an effort to keep their families 'pure' in their magic bloodlines. The Arcanis family was matriarchal, so Arthur gave up his family and his last name when he married into it. There never was and never has been any love between the couple, who married when Diana was in her mid-twenties, but the two found friendship and companionship in each other, and were able to have three children:

Lyle, the oldest, Rebecca, three years later, and finally Connor, six years after Rebecca.

Rebecca was born into this loveless yet companionable marriage, and had the lucky misfortune of being the only daughter born in her generation to survive infancy.

As a matriarchal family, the Arcanis women were meant to provide healthy girls to continue the matriarchy. And yet, between her mother's two sisters and four female cousins, her mother was the only one able to do so.

Rebecca had one second cousin who passed away before she reached the age of five, before Rebecca was even born; otherwise, the Arcanis women either had no children or only had sons. This made Rebecca's mother the head of the matriarchy, and Rebecca the future head, as Rebecca is the only person capable of carrying the Arcanis name into the next generation. Rebecca lost control of her own future the moment she was born a girl.

Rebecca's early life was shielded and isolated; she fell ill as a toddler with a mysterious, debilitating illness that almost killed her, and the effects of the illness followed her through her early childhood. She was often sickly and bedridden, and despite the best medical doctors and magic healers she never got much better. The entire Arcanis family was terrified they would lose the heir to their line and thus kept Rebecca isolated from the entire outside world beyond her family and their home.

She spent most of her childhood confined to her room, watching the world from outside her window or from the TV or computer as she got older, and was introduced to reading and literature as soon as she was old enough to read. Learning, reading, and magic consumed her early days.

(Though this was never confirmed and Rebecca herself doesn't know, the debilitating illness of her childhood was likely one of her own relatives trying to poison her to prevent her line from becoming the 'main' pureblood line in the family. Hence why nothing could heal her long term.)

Rebecca had the best homeschool education her parents could provide. She was not allowed to attend a public or private school due to her illness, so instead the teachers and tutors came to her. Her brother Lyle - and later her brother Connor - were also homeschooled to prevent either of them from bringing something home that could trigger another relapse. She and her brothers had the best private teachers, tutors, and Mage mentors their family's vast wealth could buy.

Rebecca was expected to continue running the Pyre fashion empire as well as continue the family name when she was older, so she was taught to sew and design clothes from an early age. She also took up piano as a hobby since she was frequently bored and there was only so much reading a child could tolerate.

The mysterious illness that plagued her entire childhood finally seemed to pass when she was old enough to enter middle school. Rebecca was finally healthy enough to regularly leave the home and interact with others outside a controlled environment, so she (and her brothers) were allowed to attend private school in order to get her some socialization with others her own age.

Her middle school years were extremely rough on her. She was awkward and introverted and had a rough time fitting in among others her age, after years of isolation; she also had a problem of being far ahead of the curriculum in most of her classes, even taking as many advanced classes as the private school offered. She stuck it out through her freshman year of high school but afterwards quickly chose to return to homeschooling.

Despite the path and the future the Arcanis matriarchs had planned for Rebecca since her birth, Rebecca decided to forge her own path. White healing magic and potions had always been her forte growing up, and as she got older she wanted to attend medical school and become a doctor. Specifically a children's doctor, to help sick kids and keep them from the same kind of childhood she had. So instead of focusing on business administration and fashion design in high school as she was told by her family, she started studying medicine and getting some prerequisites out of the way for college.

She was able to keep this under wraps from her mother and grandmother for a time, but when it became clear she was skipping her design classes and loading her coursework with the wrong things, the Arcanis matriarchs were angry and upset. Rebecca managed to dodge a major confrontation but just barely, and it wouldn't be long before she graduated and announced to her family her plans to ditch the internship at Pyre and head off to pre-med instead.

When she turned 18 and graduated from high school, Rebecca finally sat down with her family for 'the talk'. What Rebecca didn't realize was that her family had no intention of letting their only heir escape their clutches. She was told in no uncertain terms that her destiny was to be matched with someone suitable to their family name to bear children. That she was the sole child to continue their line and preserve the family's beauty and magic. She would be interning at Pyre whether she liked it or not, and would take over the fashion empire from her mother when it came to her time.

And she would be married by no later than 25 to a suitable Mage just like her mother was to her father, and all her aunts and her mother's cousins to their husbands, and was expected to be pregnant within the first year of their marriage. They had, in essence, planned her life down to a timeline, and they would not allow this frivolous notion of college or med school.

Rebecca was appalled. She knew how important she was to her grandmother and others growing up, that they had tried to groom her since childhood, but she had no idea they would take things this far. She fired back that she wasn't having any of their so-called 'destiny', and they could take their plans and shove it because she was going to become a doctor. Which was the most outspoken and rebellious Rebecca had ever been.

Things got so heated that, for a moment, Rebecca almost had another sickness come on for the first time in years (a lowbrow tactic for Rebecca, but it was the only thing she could think to do, use her knowledge of medicine to fake a recurrence of her illness). This sent the Matriarchs into a panic, and the debate was, for the moment, temporarily set aside. Rebecca had the summer before the final decision, and she took full advantage of her temporary freedom to secretly arrange her pre-med acceptance far from her family.

She thought she was in the clear. Make it through summer and she would flee her family for college. Her mistake came from youthful ignorance and arrogance. She didn't realize how serious and ruthless the Matriarchs were. It was discovered - Rebecca still doesn't know how, but she believes one of her cousins ratted her out - that Rebecca was seeing a local boy named Callum. Everything immediately and swiftly fell apart at the discovery.

Their relationship was innocent, a short summer fling, and really meant nothing, but the risk of the only Arcanis heir possibly sullying and ruining herself on a nobody boy sent the Matriarchs off the deep end. Rebecca was forbidden from seeing him ever again and had to undergo a humiliating examination to prove that she was still a virgin. In trying to defend herself against her own family, her secret college papers were discovered. They now knew everything, down to her coursework and the names of the girls who would be her roommates in the dorms.

This much rebellion was the last straw. She tried to fight it, but they did not give Rebecca a chance to do anything, the potential for illness or not. She was whisked away from the only home she had ever known, and her hopes and dreams of medical school, and was handed off to a distant relative who, the Matriarchs hoped, would be able to better control her and make the young girl see reason.

Her relatives whisked her off to Snow Haven, Alaska, where they kept a vacation home among other rich and powerful people, and quickly set Rebecca under lock, key, and every ward possible to keep her bound to the estate. Torn from her parents and her brothers, with no friends and no future besides selling her body for children she did not want a career in fashion she did not want, Rebecca spent a miserable year trapped in the mansion her distant relatives called home, with very few outside privileges.

It's taken her over a year - wards of this nature aren't her strong suit - but she has finally managed to dismantle the wards both on herself and to her room on the estate, and she plans to take the first advantage of a quiet night alone to escape. She knows she can't hide from the Arcanis family forever, but she hopes by the time they find her, she'll already have another plan...

Rebecca is a Mage

Rebecca is fully aware of the magical world she and her family inhabits, and has studied books on the subject quite a bit, but in practice has met very few other species or races outside of her own thanks to her sheltered upbringing.

Due to a sickly childhood and lots and lots of time for practice and study, Rebecca is an expert in the art of healing magic: spells, herbs, salves, potions, charms, wards, etc., any white magic that relates back to healing others in some way, Rebecca can do or quickly teach herself.

She also considers herself an herbalist and a gardener, to help with the herbs and ingredients required for some of the spells.

However, due to the hyper-focus on white healing magic, she is deficient in other areas, specifically offensive magic and most elemental magic. She has some weak control of fire magic (for bubbling cauldrons) and plant-based magic, and the basics in most other things, but her true affinity as a Mage comes from restorative magic.

She has some small level of skill in shielding and wards, but otherwise is unpracticed and amateurish in defensive magicks.

Not so much an ability than an observation, but Rebecca's magic most resembles 'weaves' when she casts, thanks to her family's teaching and line of work. She visualizes it this way too (whether she wants to or not); smaller or weaker spells are done in 'threads' rather than tendrils, larger spells are 'woven' together, she can split weaves as one might split a seam when casting a complex spell or casting more than one spell at once, and magic can be done and undone like a needle and thread.