Welcome to Gaia! ::

First things first, the Guardian. Difni has already been accepted and she tends to make it through round one so I'm going to consider her "complete" and focus all my attention on making sure Clem is up to snuff.


NAME: Difni De Costa
GENDER: Female
AGE: 200-ish, a lady doesn’t tell (215)
OCCUPATION: Head Librarian of Durem Central Library.
RACE: Dark Elf
LIKES:
Books // Collecting Knowledge // Well tailored suits // Hot coffee // Dark and quiet nights // Afternoon rain // Plushes, the fluffier and bigger the better
DISLIKES:
Excessive heat // People who ruin books // Poorly written romance novels // Torn stockings // Sandals // Indecision // Sudden loud noises, like fireworks or car horns.

LOOKS:
Custom tailored waist coats and shoes with heels so sharp they double as carried weapons. She prefers a pencil skirt but a good trouser isn’t unusual in winter. While she only measures in at a measly 5’4” out of her shoes, with such a strong personality you’d think she were six feet tall. Her skin is dark gray, her hair stark white and long enough to reach nearly to the backs of her knees, not that you’d know with how well she packs it into braids.

PERSONALITY:
Difni appears to be the stereotypical dark elf: well put together suits, professional attitude towards her work, and a resting expression stuck on “stern disapproval.” But appearances are deceiving, she’s actually quite approachable. She enjoys meeting new people and figuring out what they’re all about. Everyone is a unique and fascinating little puzzle for her to piece together. While she’s dressed like a high class business woman that doesn’t mean she can’t have a good time; she’s very likely to drink you under the table. Her temper is legendary and she’s a nightmare for anyone who dares to damage her books or her library. People still tell stories of how she once bodily threw out a patron for snapping the spine of a vintage reference text.

Under all this carefully crafted appearance and attitude is a soft center. She’s kind and even sometimes motherly to those few she’s come to call family. She’s naturally one to help a friend and she isn’t afraid to call up old favors to do so. She grows easily attached to those that share her love of knowledge and books, several of her regular patrons growing into close friends. She likes to surround herself with people who can keep her mentally stimulated, those that love to learn, people who are puzzles she can’t seem to solve. The softer side of Difni is all sweaters and home cooked meals. She feeds her friends and family, often substituting a good meal or homemade cake for a gift.

HISTORY:
Growing up in the seedy underbelly that is the Dark Elf community makes a girl grow up quick. You learn to twist things in your favor and do anything you can to get one up on the next guy. Difni was clever and excelled at information gathering, eventually making a career out of it. Most of her work came from less than reputable sources but a girl takes money where she can find it.

She grew and she climbed the underworld corporate ladder, collecting favors, money, and secrets. She hated the world she was growing up in, all its dark corners and the need for putting on a show for any and everyone. Once she was able, she used the small fortune she'd worked so hard for and bought her way out into the light. She found work as a librarian, starting once again from nothing to rise up to sit comfortably as the head of the Durem Central Library. While she found herself content with her books and gossip she was left wanting. While finally in an environment where she could start a family she finds herself unable to conceive. For a while it seemed children weren’t in the cards, but then a curious lab put out a call for guardian applicants. The opportunity to learn about the growth of magic in a created being and the added bonus of an adoptive child (of sorts) was too good to be true.

APPLE of IDUN
(One million points to everyone that got that nerd game reference.)
Apples naturally expedite the over ripening (and eventual rotting) of neighboring fruits and vegetables, ruining everything happening to live in the same crisper drawer in your fridge. That is, normal apples do. This particular apple, the rest of its bunch gone missing, does the exact opposite, improving the health and flavor of nearby produce.

• APPLES: Apples will ruin your fruit man. Chunk a bushel of those in your crisper with some strawberries and a couple bananas and what you thought would be a delicious smoothie for your weekend will be RUINED before you can even realize it. They naturally release ethylene gas as they age, hastening the process for other fruit.
  
• IDUN: (Idunn/Ithun depending on your Anglicized version) A Norse goddess associated with apples and youth. She was said to tend a crop of a apples at the gods ate to retain their youth. She's tricked into being kidnapped the gods begin to age. There are some myths that say that Idun herself controls this gift of youth and could give it without her apples, but the association still remains.