(no subject)
Jul. 20th, 2013 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
givemebackmyhatSpoilers ahead, tread carefully!
Character Information
Character Name: Penny Ngwenya
Canon: Matthew Swift novels
Canon Point: Post-Minority Council
Character Journal:givemebackmyhat
Appearance: PB: Gugu Mbatha-Raw
http://i.imgur.com/gxK2cfs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ydoQYSf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/M1qrZ7O.jpg
Penny is fairly petite, with dark skin and eyes, and usually wears her hair in a number of braids; when it's not braided, it poofs around her head in a crinkly mane. She has a somewhat interesting fashion sense and likes to wear bright colours, tight jeans, and knee-high boots.
Age: 22
History: Not too much is known about Penny's early life. She was born in England to two illegal immigrant parents. They were deported, but Penny was a British citizen, so she was allowed to stay. She was raised by her aunt, and while she loved her and treated her like a daughter, they never quite got along. (When Penny was eight, she got in trouble for eating her aunt's dinner and blaming it on rats - it was, in fact, rats, and Penny hadn't done it, but her aunt refused to believe her.) Her aunt eventually had four kids (the oldest was eleven years younger than Penny), but still let her niece live with her, even into adulthood.
After she took her GCSEs, Penny got a higher education diploma in art and media studies, then, like everyone who studied liberal arts, promptly went to work in retail - in this case, spending two years working at a supermarket. She eventually quit that and spent a couple of years drifting from job to job before becoming a traffic warden. It was then that Penny's life really went to shit; she was abused by the public the entire time she was a traffic warden, culminating in three visits to her local police station in three months. The first time, someone she had ticketed beat her so badly that she required two days of hospitalisation; the second, she had been spat upon. The third and final time, a group of local teenagers on bikes called her racist names and stole her traffic warden hat. That was the final straw, and the next day, Penny quit her job.
But her story didn't end there. Penny, as it turned out, was an untrained sorceress, and when she screamed her frustration at the world on London Bridge, she inadvertently used her power to summon a creature known as the Death of Cities. Unbeknownst to her, the Death of Cities (sometimes known as Mr Pinner) killed the Midnight Mayor - the man who ran the magical side of London - and a new entity was sworn in to replace him: Matthew Swift, the last sorcerer left in London, a man who'd been killed by his mentor and resurrected as something more than human. Matthew, the Aldermen, and a religious psycho-bitch known as Oda worked out what was going on, and concluded that the only solution to their problem was to kill the person who'd summoned the Death of Cities - Penny.
While all this was going on, Penny had taken a temporary job as a cleaner (and, unbeknownst to both of them, had met Matthew whilst cleaning at a university bar where he'd been sleeping); Matthew and Oda tracked her down at Euston Station, and when Matthew spoke to her, he suddenly realised that she was a sorceress. He didn't kill her, and he told Oda and the Aldermen that he must have been mistaken about her - that she wasn't a sorceress, that she wasn't the one who'd summoned Mr Pinner. This was, of course, a lie; Matthew had come up with a solution that didn't involve killing her. All he had to do was return Penny's hat to her - and, after a prolonged battle-slash-chase (and after getting shot), he did just that, and the Death of Cities was destroyed. Once he'd recovered, Matthew took Penny on as his apprentice (after she persuaded him that she didn't want to go study with some other sorcerer in a different city).
Some time later, Penny and Matthew found themselves caught up in a war between the Neon Court and the Tribe, two of the major factions in the city; they were fighting over a Promised One whose appearance had been foretold by a seer. But there was a bigger problem - an entity named Blackout had possessed Oda and had basically cut London off from the rest of the world. The sun was no longer rising, and as far as everyone was concerned, nothing existed outside borders that were shrinking constantly. Matthew was the only one who knew that this wasn't the way things had always been, and he and Penny (and the spirit of his former teacher, preserved in his final breath) set out to defeat Blackout. A lot of things happened - most of them involved Matthew doing stupid shit and Penny saving his ass by being totally awesome - and eventually the day was saved.
But being the Midnight Mayor's apprentice meant that Penny inevitably got dragged into just about all the bad shit that went down in London, and so she, Matthew, and a medusa named Nabeela found themselves in another dilemma. Someone was distributing a magical drug throughout London (one that was made from the bodies of those who'd been taking the drug, once they'd reached the point where they disintegrated into a fine powder), and someone else was unleashing a magical construct gone haywire on kids who were reported for causing a ruckus, and the two problems weren't entirely unrelated - they were linked together by a rogue sect of Aldermen known as the Minority Council, and one Alderman in particular, named Templeman, was manipulating Matthew to bring down the dusthouses (the refuges where the drug was created) and the fairy godmother (a bloke in a dress responsible for creating and distributing it) so that he could take over with his own strain of the drug. To further this end, he kidnapped Penny and Nabeela (blaming it on the fairy godmother so that Matthew would go ballistic on him) and had them taken outside the suburbs, where Penny's magic would no longer work. The two women managed to thwart their kidnappers and escape, but they had to walk back to London in the middle of the night - and just when they made it to Croydon, Templeman appeared and shot Nabeela in the head. Penny managed to scrape up just enough magic to defeat him, and she ran away. She had no money and no phone, but she hopped on the Tube and made it back to central London - and from there, she used a raven from the Tower of London to track Matthew down to a safe house in Osterley. Kelly, an Alderman who was also Matthew's PA, took care of both of them, and Penny remained in the safe house while Matthew hunted down Templeman and solved the problem of the dusthouses.
Personality: Penny likes to describe herself as "a totally kick-arse sorceress". The side of herself that she shows the world is overconfident, sassy, loudmouthed, and a tiny bit intimidating. While not the most academically inclined person, she's still rather bright and very street-smart, and quite capable of learning quickly if the subject matter interests her. She's got a fierce temper, and it's probably best to avoid getting on her bad side; even without magical powers at her disposal, she has a sharp tongue, and she isn't afraid to use it. While she hasn't got many friends, she's fiercely protective of the people she cares about - even if she occasionally shows her love by mocking them gently. She jokes about how equal relationships are crap, and that they take all the romance out of things when carried to extremes (which is why she won't even tell anyone she's dating that she can cook till after several dates), and believes firmly that old music shouldn't be considered good just because it has some sort of nostalgic value.
Beneath her exterior of bravado, however, lies fear and uncertainty. She loves being a sorceress and loves the world it's opened up to her, but she's keenly aware of the trouble she caused without any training, she knows that spells can go wrong, and she's afraid of her power backfiring on her. Sorcerers are distinguished from the other varieties of magic-users (such as shamans and druids) because their magic is larger and more destructive; when things go wrong, they go wrong on a large scale, and often destroy the unwary spellcaster (at the very least). Her fear doesn't drive her to inaction, because she's stronger than that, but it does make her second-guess herself sometimes, and in high-stress situations, she can't help but be completely terrified of something going wrong. She does what has to be done, but she's bloody scared while she's doing it - though that doesn't make her any less brave.
Things going wrong is, after all, basically the theme of Penny's life. Her parents were forced to leave her shortly after she was born, and many years later, her life dumped so much shit on her that she was inevitably driven to the breaking point (and it takes a lot of shit to drive someone as strong as Penny that far). She feels alone and adrift sometimes, even though her studies in magic have taught her that London isn't a city of strangers, but a city of fellow Londoners; they all share a common bond, a common life, but it isn't always enough. She doesn't quite feel like she's part of her family (her aunt's family, rather), she can't hold down a job, and she doesn't have much in the way of relationships - but at least her studies in magic have given her life more of a direction, and that helps her put everything else in perspective.
Powers/Special Abilities: Penny is an urban sorceress - while the magic system in her world is largely undefined in terms of specific skills, her powers are based on the everyday flow and rituals of life in the city. Each city has its own unique flavour of magic, but sorcerers from one city are more than capable of practicing in another (in fact, Matthew, her teacher, mentions spending years visiting different cities and learning from the sorcerers there). Urban sorcerers can do things by themselves - pulling energy from lightbulbs to create light, or shifting their posture and the way they walk to become invisible (though it's more like the ability to blend in and become unnoticed, rather than true invisibility) - or use the ephemera of urban life to aid them in spells and rituals, from using an Underground ticket to create a personal ward to using postage stamps in a teleportation circle or binding creatures with police crime scene tape. Any sorcerer can use magic instinctively, and untrained sorcerers sometimes inadvertently use their powers in dangerous ways (Penny, for example, summoned a being that nearly destroyed London when lashing out in her rage and frustration). The ebb and flow of a city can drive an untrained sorcerer mad, and control is one of the most important things to learn as an apprentice.
River Power: Shapeshifter: lion/raven
Character Information
Character Name: Penny Ngwenya
Canon: Matthew Swift novels
Canon Point: Post-Minority Council
Character Journal:
givemebackmyhatAppearance: PB: Gugu Mbatha-Raw
http://i.imgur.com/gxK2cfs.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ydoQYSf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/M1qrZ7O.jpg
Penny is fairly petite, with dark skin and eyes, and usually wears her hair in a number of braids; when it's not braided, it poofs around her head in a crinkly mane. She has a somewhat interesting fashion sense and likes to wear bright colours, tight jeans, and knee-high boots.
Age: 22
History: Not too much is known about Penny's early life. She was born in England to two illegal immigrant parents. They were deported, but Penny was a British citizen, so she was allowed to stay. She was raised by her aunt, and while she loved her and treated her like a daughter, they never quite got along. (When Penny was eight, she got in trouble for eating her aunt's dinner and blaming it on rats - it was, in fact, rats, and Penny hadn't done it, but her aunt refused to believe her.) Her aunt eventually had four kids (the oldest was eleven years younger than Penny), but still let her niece live with her, even into adulthood.
After she took her GCSEs, Penny got a higher education diploma in art and media studies, then, like everyone who studied liberal arts, promptly went to work in retail - in this case, spending two years working at a supermarket. She eventually quit that and spent a couple of years drifting from job to job before becoming a traffic warden. It was then that Penny's life really went to shit; she was abused by the public the entire time she was a traffic warden, culminating in three visits to her local police station in three months. The first time, someone she had ticketed beat her so badly that she required two days of hospitalisation; the second, she had been spat upon. The third and final time, a group of local teenagers on bikes called her racist names and stole her traffic warden hat. That was the final straw, and the next day, Penny quit her job.
But her story didn't end there. Penny, as it turned out, was an untrained sorceress, and when she screamed her frustration at the world on London Bridge, she inadvertently used her power to summon a creature known as the Death of Cities. Unbeknownst to her, the Death of Cities (sometimes known as Mr Pinner) killed the Midnight Mayor - the man who ran the magical side of London - and a new entity was sworn in to replace him: Matthew Swift, the last sorcerer left in London, a man who'd been killed by his mentor and resurrected as something more than human. Matthew, the Aldermen, and a religious psycho-bitch known as Oda worked out what was going on, and concluded that the only solution to their problem was to kill the person who'd summoned the Death of Cities - Penny.
While all this was going on, Penny had taken a temporary job as a cleaner (and, unbeknownst to both of them, had met Matthew whilst cleaning at a university bar where he'd been sleeping); Matthew and Oda tracked her down at Euston Station, and when Matthew spoke to her, he suddenly realised that she was a sorceress. He didn't kill her, and he told Oda and the Aldermen that he must have been mistaken about her - that she wasn't a sorceress, that she wasn't the one who'd summoned Mr Pinner. This was, of course, a lie; Matthew had come up with a solution that didn't involve killing her. All he had to do was return Penny's hat to her - and, after a prolonged battle-slash-chase (and after getting shot), he did just that, and the Death of Cities was destroyed. Once he'd recovered, Matthew took Penny on as his apprentice (after she persuaded him that she didn't want to go study with some other sorcerer in a different city).
Some time later, Penny and Matthew found themselves caught up in a war between the Neon Court and the Tribe, two of the major factions in the city; they were fighting over a Promised One whose appearance had been foretold by a seer. But there was a bigger problem - an entity named Blackout had possessed Oda and had basically cut London off from the rest of the world. The sun was no longer rising, and as far as everyone was concerned, nothing existed outside borders that were shrinking constantly. Matthew was the only one who knew that this wasn't the way things had always been, and he and Penny (and the spirit of his former teacher, preserved in his final breath) set out to defeat Blackout. A lot of things happened - most of them involved Matthew doing stupid shit and Penny saving his ass by being totally awesome - and eventually the day was saved.
But being the Midnight Mayor's apprentice meant that Penny inevitably got dragged into just about all the bad shit that went down in London, and so she, Matthew, and a medusa named Nabeela found themselves in another dilemma. Someone was distributing a magical drug throughout London (one that was made from the bodies of those who'd been taking the drug, once they'd reached the point where they disintegrated into a fine powder), and someone else was unleashing a magical construct gone haywire on kids who were reported for causing a ruckus, and the two problems weren't entirely unrelated - they were linked together by a rogue sect of Aldermen known as the Minority Council, and one Alderman in particular, named Templeman, was manipulating Matthew to bring down the dusthouses (the refuges where the drug was created) and the fairy godmother (a bloke in a dress responsible for creating and distributing it) so that he could take over with his own strain of the drug. To further this end, he kidnapped Penny and Nabeela (blaming it on the fairy godmother so that Matthew would go ballistic on him) and had them taken outside the suburbs, where Penny's magic would no longer work. The two women managed to thwart their kidnappers and escape, but they had to walk back to London in the middle of the night - and just when they made it to Croydon, Templeman appeared and shot Nabeela in the head. Penny managed to scrape up just enough magic to defeat him, and she ran away. She had no money and no phone, but she hopped on the Tube and made it back to central London - and from there, she used a raven from the Tower of London to track Matthew down to a safe house in Osterley. Kelly, an Alderman who was also Matthew's PA, took care of both of them, and Penny remained in the safe house while Matthew hunted down Templeman and solved the problem of the dusthouses.
Personality: Penny likes to describe herself as "a totally kick-arse sorceress". The side of herself that she shows the world is overconfident, sassy, loudmouthed, and a tiny bit intimidating. While not the most academically inclined person, she's still rather bright and very street-smart, and quite capable of learning quickly if the subject matter interests her. She's got a fierce temper, and it's probably best to avoid getting on her bad side; even without magical powers at her disposal, she has a sharp tongue, and she isn't afraid to use it. While she hasn't got many friends, she's fiercely protective of the people she cares about - even if she occasionally shows her love by mocking them gently. She jokes about how equal relationships are crap, and that they take all the romance out of things when carried to extremes (which is why she won't even tell anyone she's dating that she can cook till after several dates), and believes firmly that old music shouldn't be considered good just because it has some sort of nostalgic value.
Beneath her exterior of bravado, however, lies fear and uncertainty. She loves being a sorceress and loves the world it's opened up to her, but she's keenly aware of the trouble she caused without any training, she knows that spells can go wrong, and she's afraid of her power backfiring on her. Sorcerers are distinguished from the other varieties of magic-users (such as shamans and druids) because their magic is larger and more destructive; when things go wrong, they go wrong on a large scale, and often destroy the unwary spellcaster (at the very least). Her fear doesn't drive her to inaction, because she's stronger than that, but it does make her second-guess herself sometimes, and in high-stress situations, she can't help but be completely terrified of something going wrong. She does what has to be done, but she's bloody scared while she's doing it - though that doesn't make her any less brave.
Things going wrong is, after all, basically the theme of Penny's life. Her parents were forced to leave her shortly after she was born, and many years later, her life dumped so much shit on her that she was inevitably driven to the breaking point (and it takes a lot of shit to drive someone as strong as Penny that far). She feels alone and adrift sometimes, even though her studies in magic have taught her that London isn't a city of strangers, but a city of fellow Londoners; they all share a common bond, a common life, but it isn't always enough. She doesn't quite feel like she's part of her family (her aunt's family, rather), she can't hold down a job, and she doesn't have much in the way of relationships - but at least her studies in magic have given her life more of a direction, and that helps her put everything else in perspective.
Powers/Special Abilities: Penny is an urban sorceress - while the magic system in her world is largely undefined in terms of specific skills, her powers are based on the everyday flow and rituals of life in the city. Each city has its own unique flavour of magic, but sorcerers from one city are more than capable of practicing in another (in fact, Matthew, her teacher, mentions spending years visiting different cities and learning from the sorcerers there). Urban sorcerers can do things by themselves - pulling energy from lightbulbs to create light, or shifting their posture and the way they walk to become invisible (though it's more like the ability to blend in and become unnoticed, rather than true invisibility) - or use the ephemera of urban life to aid them in spells and rituals, from using an Underground ticket to create a personal ward to using postage stamps in a teleportation circle or binding creatures with police crime scene tape. Any sorcerer can use magic instinctively, and untrained sorcerers sometimes inadvertently use their powers in dangerous ways (Penny, for example, summoned a being that nearly destroyed London when lashing out in her rage and frustration). The ebb and flow of a city can drive an untrained sorcerer mad, and control is one of the most important things to learn as an apprentice.
River Power: Shapeshifter: lion/raven
