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Entry tags:
Application for Tu Shanshu
Player Information:
Name: Ange (Kate)
Age/18+?: Yes
Contact:
Other Characters Played: None
Most Recent AC Link: N/A
Character Information:
Name: William "Penny" Adiyodi
Canon: The Magicians (TV)
Canon Point: During "Thirty-Nine Graves" (season 1, episode 12). When the group escapes the Neitherlands for Fillory; after killing the local, Penny dives into the fountain and emerges on Tu Vishan instead of in Fillory.
Age: 23ish
Type of Character: Canon
Reference: Show’s Wiki. Book’s Wikia & Book’s Wiki - for world/general info; the show differs a lot from the book(s)
Setting Concepts:
CW: brief reference to sexual abuse
(* = will be explained below)
The Magicians takes place in modern (2016) times. Magic is a very large part of the world. While the general populace are completely unaware of the existence of magic, there are universities dedicated to magical aptitude and study; one in America, one in Europe, and so on.
Brakebills University, where the majority of the show takes place, is located in upstate New York. There are a great number of wards (protection spells) on the school, making it basically impossible to find or enter without being invited (or an alumni). There are 20ish students in each year, four years total. First years live in the dorms until they are assigned a discipline (ie physical kids, psychics, illusions, healing, nature, knowledge); after that, they live with that group. The show doesn’t give a clear timeline as to whether disciplines are assigned after the first semester or just X amount of time in.
Students who are shown to be magically adept are invited to take the entrance exam (mostly by being invited by a portal of sorts) and are either returned to their lives with their memories wiped or are accepted. Students’ families generally are given a working excuse (ie “your child has been accepted into a prestigious university for their post graduate study”) which is backed by magic so no questions are asked.
At present, 16 of the 20 fourth year kids have disappeared and are presumed dead.
There’s an extended campus, Brakebills South, in Antarctica. Only one professor is there and teaches students through an extremely strict and difficult regimen (for example, he makes them mute for their first week or so). All students turn into geese to travel there, though they take a portal back to Brakebills proper.
Magic is cast using a mixture of specific hand gestures, words (mainly in ancient languages), spell ingredients, and instinct. All spells must be adjusted for complications (ie where the moon is, what time of day it is, etc). The more advanced a magician is, the more able they are to cast more complicated spells and the more they are able to cast off of instinct instead of words or even hand signals. Spells range from easy thoughts or gestures up to the type that take months or years of preparation and rare, complicated ingredients. Extremely talented magicians are also able to create/write their own spells.
There is a famous series of books called Fillory & Further, written by Christopher Pluver. They are essentially childrens’ books (five in all, though a sixth is revealed to be written by Jane Chatwin*), about a group of children who find their way into a magical realm called Fillory (think Narnia basically). The books are later revealed to be mostly true events, with Pluver writing about his neighbors, The Chatwins*, and their adventures in the real land of Fillory*.
The Chatwins are a family of English children in Britain during World War II. Their parents are absent due to the war. The family consists of Martin, Fiona, Rupert, Helen, and Jane. Though all visit Fillory at one time or another, Martin and Jane are the notable children.
Jane Chatwin, the youngest, ends up messing with time travel (a powerful magic that is otherwise impossible pretty much) and ends up acting as a mentor for Quentin* in an effort to help defeat The Beast*. She is later killed. Martin Chatwin, the oldest, is banned from Fillory as he gets older and resents it. It’s later revealed that he also suffered abuse from Pluver. As a result of being unable to escape his hell, he becomes obsessed with the magic of Fillory, draining magic from the land until he’s overwhelmed by it and loses his humanity, eventually becoming The Beast.
The Beast is the major antagonist of the show. He is a man in his 40s or 50s, tall, and always dressed in a suit. His face is obscured by moths and a bright blue moth often leads the way and hints at his arrival. He has absorbed most of the magic of Fillory and is thus considered to be nigh unstoppable. In fact, Jane Chatwin has continually rewound time, changing one thing each time, in an effort to defeat The Beast. The show takes place during the 40th such attempt; in this timeline, because Jane is killed, there’s not an opportunity for a 41st.
The Beast appears at Brakebills fairly early into the current academic year, tearing out the Dean’s eyes and killing a professor. Though his home is in Fillory, where he’s taken over the land and terrorizes the world, he now also threatens Earth as well (to take the magic away, kill the magicians, etc). Serious murder business, okok.
The magical land of Fillory used to be a wondrous place, ruled by kings and queens of Earth (the Chatwins) in a time of prosperity. The gods Ember and Umber (sibling fauns) allow the Chatwins to come and go, insisting that being given free entry to Fillory would endanger the land. Talking animals, quests, etc. Seriously Narnia. Unfortunately, when The Beast takes over Fillory, it turns into a dark and tortured place that generally sucks. He kills Umber and imprisons Ember; the Chatwins are long gone, unable to enter Fillory.
There’s a core group of students (and later friends) who are unique in their studies and who, in the end, face off with The Beast in Fillory. Penny is obviously a member of this group, but I think it’s important to touch on the others as well, as they are such key figures in the series and, to some extent, in the greater world (given the threat of The Beast).
Quentin Coldwater is the main protagonist of the series. Jane’s efforts revolve around him, because it’s clear that he’s essential to defeating The Beast. He’s an awkward nerd type with a victim complex who’s obsessed with magic and Fillory. He’s given no discipline, which is extremely rare, and seems not to excel in any particular field.
Alice Quinn is the genius of the group. She comes from a famous and highly respected magic family and is considered the brains of the outfit. Her discipline is Phosphoromancy (light bending).
Eliot Waugh is the most wonderful Physical Kid ever (telekinesis). He’s a host through and through, always insistent on fixing the perfect drink for his guests. Although elitist in almost every way, he’s extremely accepting of Quentin and then the core group in general. After being forced to kill his boyfriend (whom The Beast had possessed), he becomes an alcoholic and drug abuser and begins to spiral. It’s said in the books and seemingly reinforced in the show that Eliot is one of the most gifted magicians, possibly even more so than Alice, but he chooses never to study and coasts on his natural talent.
Margo is Eliot’s BFF. She’s catty and a bit of a bitch, a decent magician, and mostly tags along because she likes being included. That said, she always gives their quests/spells/etc her all and really does want the group to succeed. Another Physical Kid.
There’s also Julia, but
Last but not least, the Neitherlands is a place between worlds, a sprawling maze of fountains, each of which leads to a different world (including one to Earth and one to Fillory). There are “locals” lost in the Neitherlands, some of whom work for The Beast and attempt to kill or capture visitors to deliver to him. Time passes differently in the Neitherlands; at one point, Penny is gone for six hours in the Neitherlands and is presumed missing on Earth, where he’s been gone for six weeks.
The Library — part of a larger network of libraries with every book ever written, every book that could be written, and the story of every life — is also accessed by the Neitherlands (there’s no real information given about the other libraries). There is a single Librarian to watch over said Library and she chooses who can enter, gives the rules, and ejects those who fail to follow them.
Personality:
Penny is mostly the ‘what you see is what you get’ type. He’s up front about his thoughts and attitudes, with little-to-no reason to deceive people or hide his intentions, including candor with people in his attitudes about them and any problems or relationship issues that might be festering. While he’s loyal and cares about his friends, he’ll still call them out on their shit; even as he works with and supports Quentin for months on end, for example, he continues to call Q out for his dumb comments and social awkwardness.
The guy’s perpetually focused on what he views as more important things than whatever stupid petty social drama is going on or the like, making him impatient and often brusque (even when he’s part of that drama). Penny’s generally content to be alone and focus on his studies, or whatever he wants to focus on, and doesn’t like being distracted from it, finding it irritating when other people bother him. Even though he might entirely support what they’re doing.
Magic is extremely important to him. He’s interested in exploring magic and wants to do it right and do it fully. The guy’s hardworking and dedicated beyond reason. He’s not afraid to work with who he needs to or to admit his shortcomings to progress in his goals (including cheating on one task and using teamwork on another). Penny wants to throw himself completely into whatever he’s doing, whether it’s quickly falling in love with his girlfriend Cady (before she abandoned him) or constantly seeking out people to help him learn to astral project and travel; he gets a tattoo that prevents traveling at the advice of one man, then later cuts it out at the advice of someone he trusts and respects more. He’ll do whatever it takes to be a part of it, to excel, to get buried in it. Because he doesn’t really have anything else.
He seems to have a history of being unwanted or abandoned (there are mentions of his having no home or family to return to), which is most of the reason he wears the hard outer shell. He’s chill in the sense of not getting rattled by much. Because he has better things to think about and to do, it’s easy for him to brush off the little things, like when Q tried to attack him and got his ass kicked. Bigger betrayals, however, like his ex-girlfriend Cady abandoning him without warning, tend to fester and grow, leading him to be bitter and to angst. He wants to find something he can succeed in, and hopefully it comes with belonging as well.
Penny tries to generally be polite to authority figures, even as he thinks he’s cooler than most of the people around him. He won’t censor himself for the sake of being polite, but he’ll follow decorum when there’s no reason not to, or if he truly respects someone. He’ll also trust them if he has no reason not to. He’s loyal as hell. Although it takes some effort for him to build relationships, he’s definitely the guy to have friends’ backs. If they’re in the wrong, he’ll call them out for it, but he’ll still defend them to other people. With people who don’t have that loyalty, he’s all too happy to throw them under the bus to save his own skin (or the skin of those he does like).
While he’s not exactly one to look for a fight, he’ll definitely be the one to throw the first punch when one is started. He’s a fighter, physically and mentally, with an athletic build and determination to survive anything and everything thrown his way (literally and metaphorically). He doesn’t like death, what little he’s seen of it, and engages in heavy violence with restraint and respect for the danger of it way more than he cares about petty violence. When shit gets real, though, he’ll be there with battle magic ready. He’s not afraid of it, or death, beyond the usual.
Penny is pretty good about self-care, but can get reckless when things become too intense or overwhelming. When he first develops his psychic abilities, for example, he begins popping pain pills to cope with the noise. Later, when The Beast speaks to him, he ends up overdosing in an attempt to keep the noise bearable and later agrees to a relatively sketchy metal bit being stuck in his neck to prevent it. He’s not great at coping with the big things that are completely out of his control.
The magician views himself as a cool and handsome loner. He wants to do what’s ultimately right and do it damn well, to succeed in pretty much whatever he sets his mind to. He’s very much caught up in his own world and his own personal goals, which is part of the reason it can be difficult for other people to cross his radar to begin friendships, and failure just isn’t an option. He’s not brave, but not cowardly. He’s not selfless, but not particularly selfish either (though he probably leans that way). In Tu Shanshu, he’ll mostly be focused on improving his magic and exploring once he realizes that he can’t get home for now; he’ll take it pretty well outside of his usual brusque and sarcastic nature.
Penny will remember his time in Keeliai. He's been sleeping in makeshift housing (semi-homeless), making money through various odd jobs and occasional theft, and getting to know the world. He's become more agitated and impatient recently, because of his inability to return home to find out what's going on, but appreciates the time to learn more magic and study his craft, believing others that no time passes in his home world. He's making more of an effort to reach out than normal because he knows a network is important in an unfamiliar place and also because most of the people he's reaching out to are teaching him things (aside from Daenerys and Voldemort, who he just feels the need to criticize). Upon his return, he'll quickly work to regain his bearings and then get back to it.
Appearance:
Portrayed by actor Arjun Gupta.
Penny is often shirtless in vests or robes with loose pants and a scarf. He has an assortment of tattoos and a mangled former tattoo, now half-scarred, on the inside of his left bicep. Roughly 6’ tall, lean but athletic.
Abilities:
Penny is a skilled magician. He studies hard and takes magic very seriously. He knows basic magic, Brakebills South specialty magic (mind control of insects, some basic turning into animal magic (the group turns into geese to travel there; I can’t see him using this in game), how to cast basic spells while mute) and a few battle magic spells, but his real skill lies in his unique discipline.
As a general discipline, Penny is a psychic and is able to read minds. Most magicians have wards up to protect their minds (except stupid Quentin and his stupid Taylor Swift) and Penny generally tries to avoid reading minds anyway.
As The Beast did, it’s possible for another psychic to reach out to Penny and he will hear their voice in his head. He hates it and will self-medicate to prevent it, but it does work. Obviously, in TuShan, he won’t be able to hear other worlds.
Penny’s specific discipline is that of a Traveler.
Travelers are extremely rare at Brakebills (3 in like 30 years) and, thus, he was given very specific instruction and special attention. On the other hand, there was no Traveler as a professor; he’s mostly self-taught with some guidance from Brakebills South, the Dean, and a specific professor who helped teach the last Traveler.
At a lower level, he is able to astral project himself to pretty much anywhere and return to his body unharmed (he will be invisible/intangible while projecting, although a powerful magician/psychic/etc may be able to detect his presence); he has to meditate within a specific pattern/circle/drawing on the ground in order to do so and any damage that comes to him during this time will cause his projection to fail (and obviously he’s super vulnerable while doing it).
At his higher level, Penny is able to “travel” (to teleport) to other places. The same circle pattern he uses for astral projection can act as an anchor for traveling if he needs to find his way back quickly, but is not necessary. Traveling takes a very specific kind of magic and relies on lots of conditions. While in the Neitherlands, for example, Penny has difficulty traveling because of the land’s 3 moons. In Brakebills South, he travels to his home town in Florida, then a desert (in the middle east somewhere)- then a volcano. Blind exploration is dangerous in that regard, though Penny can and often does take the risk.
His traveling takes concentration and energy, such that he’s not going to go bamfing around like Nightcrawler. It’s something he mainly uses to cross long distances (or to other worlds, like how he reaches the Neitherlands).
In Tu Shanshu, it will take him some time to learn the conditions of the world in order to adapt his more advanced magic, including traveling. After he does adapt, I’d like for him to be able to travel around the turtle, but obviously not to any other worlds. His ability to travel to other countries/turtles/anything or to other realms would be dependent on mod approval and mostly related to potential plots (ie as a plot device, to get a message from someone in Dreaming).
Non-magically, Penny’s a little bit street. Meaning he can hold his own in a fight, though he probably wouldn’t win easily, and has some skills with lock picking and pickpocketing.
Inventory:
The clothes on his back, yo.
Soul Gem:
An oval black opal set into a somewhat ornate bronze “frame” around the gem. The pendant, roughly an inch and a half in height and an inch in width, hangs on a thin black cord around his neck.
Writing Samples:
Third Person:
Penny pulled himself out of the fountain in the middle of the square, sopping wet. For some reason, his clothes weren’t immediately dry and the magic that would normally be second nature to him wouldn’t come. He was exhausted as he rolled off the lip of the structure and fell to the ground, closing his eyes and knowing he wasn’t in the Neitherlands anymore, nor was he on Earth.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think it worked,” he mumbled to his absent companions as he opened his eyes again. Penny focused his energy into sitting up, staring at the alien creatures who were staring back at him. First he noticed the lack of his friends, then he noticed the buildings and streets and markets. He could barely remember the books, but he was pretty damn sure this wasn’t Fillory. And he was almost definitely alone.
He sighed, feeling exhausted and having no idea where to begin. Penny instinctively reached for his magic again to find that it wasn’t accessible at the moment. Unlike his wet and clinging clothes, it was the lack of magic that left him feeling uncomfortably naked. They had prepared for a lot of different options. Being without magic was never one of them. Neither was being split up, though they’d already messed that up thanks to Quentin.
He rested for a few minutes until he felt less ill, climbing to his feet and looking around for someone who looked like they weren’t looking for an excuse to murder him. Without having much direction, he picked a random stranger and pointed at the man-thing, unconsciously taking advantage of his height in an attempt to intimidate. “Hey you. What is this place?”
The friendly enough kedan gave Penny a name, Tu Vishan, and directions to some Welcome Center. Maybe this was Brakebills East, he thought, or some other dumb test. It couldn’t be any worse than dealing with The Beast. Penny thanked the thing and began making his way toward the Center, hoping it could provide some of the answers he was looking for. Like how to get his magic back. Or how to get to Fillory. And why everything had a vaguely southeast Asian feel to it.
Network:
[The audio clicks on and runs silently for a second before Penny finally speaks, speaking with a generic American accent.]
Let’s cut the crap. This ain’t Earth and it clearly ain’t Fillory either. So if we jumped in the wrong fountain and everyone I know is here, then where the hell are they? Or the fountain didn’t work for me and I traveled somehow, then where the hell am I? I got the intro bullshit. I’m not asking where I am like ‘I want a name for this place’ or ‘why am I on the back of some fuckin’ turtle.’ I mean where am I like which way back to the Neitherlands?
Anyone know of any magical buttons, or maybe some Questing Beast? … Shit, I’m starting to sound like Q. That’s gr-. [Click.]
Network: (RE-APP)
[Penny is, per usual, posting from a cafe since he has no home. He switches on the video, leaning forward onto the console's desk area and frowning at the screen.]
Look. I'm not here to help you with your relationship bullshit and all your drama. If you want to call yourself a queen and then sleep with everyone to get what you want, power to you. If you want to act like a pussy and a stalker and then wonder why she's not into you, then either man the fuck up or get over it. But either way? Leave me alone. I'm not your damn therapist. I'm sure you can find a kedan in the city willing to listen to your pissing and moaning if you try hard enough.
This is your Public Service Announcement or whatever. Unless you're going to help me with what I want, I have no reason to listen to you whine. If I wanted that, I'd go back to Fillory and listen to Q.
Yeah, so... That's it.