Welcome to Gaia! ::

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BASICS

• Name: Catherine Turner
  
• Nickname: Cat
  
• Gender: Female
  
• Age and Birth Date: 25 - Born July 12th, 1991
  
• Occupation: 6th Grade Teacher

APPEARANCE

You can tell at first glance that Catherine is of European descent- standing at 5’9” with blonde hair, storm grey eyes, and a strong jawline [x]. While not particularly toned, she likes to keep fit and maintains her hourglass figure with bike rides, walking with friends, yoga, and archery. Her clothing is typically modest, but compliments her figure and simple taste, with fitted tops and flared skirts in solid colors or large prints [x]. While her style can consistently be seen as simple and practical- but stylish- with vintage, feminine touches like lace, bows, and skirts, her tastes change with the season: preferring pastels and floral prints in the spring [x], warm pops of color in the summer balanced by neutrals [x], autumn enters her wardrobe with warm jewel tones complimented by rich browns [x], and there’s no better season for wearing comfy sweaters, leggings, and boots than winter [x]. Cat typically keeps her long blonde hair at least half-back in some braided style [x], playing with different styles and textures on a daily basis. Her accessories usually follow a natural theme and she’s always had a fondness for owls, so she is usually wearing a necklace, brooch, earrings, or even purse that pays homage to Athena [x]. Although she typically doesn’t wear much makeup beyond a tinted lip gloss, she’s careful of her fair skin, using makeup that already has an spf factor (or applying sunscreen if she plans on being out for the day) and uses products for sensitive skin. She smiles easily and laughs often, lending her appearance to an open and friendly disposition.

PERSONALITY

Intelligent - Catherine loves stimulating conversation and brain puzzles about as much as anything. She needs to keep her mind constantly busy and was lucky enough to find herself naturally talented to many disciplines at a young age, starting with honor classes in elementary school, progressing to college appropriate work in high school, and graduating summa c** laude with a Bachelors of Science in Child Development from a well-known university. So whether it’s a morning sudoku with tea, playing a word game on her phone to pass the time, or researching the latest pedagogy, her mind is always on the go.

Creative - Part of Cat’s busily racing mind is usually occupied by a creative hobby, from paper crafts to fine arts to writing. She’s acquired quite the cache of art supplies over the years, having a fully-stocked craft room/studio at her home away from the Prytaneum. You can typically find her doing some kind of creative work in her free time, whether that’s as simple as doodling in one of her many sketchbooks to spending hours on a plein air watercolor landscape. She’ll usually have graphite smudged along the side of her right hand from extensive writing and drawing, or trying to keep up with finger exercises from typing up a storm in preparation for her bi-weekly gaming group. One of her many quirks is singing at random through the day- probably brought on from years in choir- so she may be singing about the task currently at hand, or just humming along to the tune that’s been stuck in her head since morning.

Outgoing - Cat is one who easily makes friends, trying to put her best foot forward with every first impression and always eager to start a conversation. She’s always been someone who enjoys talking to others and, although she’s only kept a few deep and lasting friendships, she can usually find something to find in common with the people she meets - leading to many fast and fun friendships. While not the most for partying- she rarely ever drinks- she’s usually up for a new adventure and loves bringing people to her favorite places or involving them in her favorite activities, so inevitably you will be invited to tea.

Particular - Catherine is a major stickler for organization and a finicky eater, she likes things just so, and that’s just the way it is. Part of her craft-y nature lead to an early obsession with stationary, so among her collection of supplies is a swathe of pens, mechanical pencils, and highlighters for color-coding along with day-planners and coordinated to-do lists. There’s a trove of beautiful and unused journals hidden in her house that she just hasn’t found the right purpose for, and she’s someone who wants a separate notebook or journal for every subject or task. When it comes to food she’s regrettably picky, having to ask for substitutions or parts of an order to be held because she’s not particular to a certain spice used in the dish- triggers being mustard, dill, and any food that hits an extreme: sweet, spicy, sour, or salty.

Headstrong - Being strong-willed part of Cat’s being, she can’t recall a time where she was ever unsure of who she was or what she wanted out of life. To that end, she’s been fairly independent and will stick to her guns once she’s made a choice or formed an opinion. She can be rather obstinate in an argument where she thinks she has the superior knowledge and can come off as dismissive towards other’s opinions, especially when they don’t have well-reasoned support for their thoughts. She can argue a point to death and will only begrudgingly admit that she was in the wrong when someone brings up evidence that overwhelms her own point.

Distracted - Having a busy mind is usually a gift, but can lend itself easily to distraction. So while she has a lot of book smarts, Cat relies heavily on her paper and digital organizers to remember the details of her plans for the next month, week, day, and even hour. Many creative endeavors will end up half-finished because she becomes obsessed with a new idea, if it weren’t for deadlines in her professional life and parents keeping her accountable, she would rarely finish any task she started if it took more than a single span of hours. And although she loves spending time with people and conversing with others, her mind can wander away to that next project she wants to start, or the engagement she has the next day, leading to the other party feeling as though she’s ignoring them. She’s rather conscious of this shortcoming though, and tries to combat this tendency through active listening techniques.

RECRUITMENT

Catherine sighed as she used her favorite blue pen to write in the next row of the paper before her “72”. She rubbed her temples and looked woefully to the cold tea beside her, she’d have to make a new batch if she was going to keep at this until the task was done.

She stood and shambled towards her kitchen, filling the electric kettle by rote and settling on a pre-packaged loose leaf tea bag in lieu of one of her nicer bags of whole leaf tea for the simple effort of needing to clean out a tea ball and then putting in the right amount of whole-leaf tea, and then worrying about over steeping- ugh. She did not have the presence of mind to do all that for a simple mug of tea. She flipped on the switch for the kettle and returned to her couch, scooping up her mug and returning to the kitchen. It was a large mug, comically large even, more like one of those soup bowls with a handle than what any rational person might consider to be a “mug”. With the water boiled, tea steeped, bag easily discarded in the bin, and milk added to the plain English Breakfast, she returned to her task, a most dreaded task … grading.

The last five reports she had scored were all mediocre, lacking in author’s voice, any creative individuality, and missing many of the requirements she swear she had reiterated a million times over. Maybe her expectations were too high for her sixth graders, but she remembered back to when she was in sixth grade learning about Ancient Greece. She had loved it- well, really she loved every subject in school, yes, even math- and couldn’t get enough of the mythology. So she had designed this project to hook her students into their shared love of greek myths. They had already gone over several myths in class and analyzed them using the language arts standards, looking for plot, themes, character traits, figurative language, and the overall composition of the works. Her students were then supposed to pick their favorite god or goddess and write their own version of a Greek myth, they even got to choose the style based on the types of Greek literature they had studied.

She opened the next emailed report hopefully and began reading. A smile started to tug at her lips and soon she was laughing along with the antics of this student’s characters. Finally, a well-written story (to be expected from this talented writer, many of their projects were a treat) and it even starred her favorite goddess- Athena, the student had inserted a picture at the end of their story- a statue of Athena from the Louvre, with her helm raised and hand reaching out towards the viewer. Cat happily wrote “100” next to the student’s name in the next row on her grading sheet after filling out an online rubric and sat back to look at her screen, sipping her tea and thinking fondly back to when she’d seen the statue in person last year on vacation.

She took another sip and cocked her head, “Well that’s weird.” For a second there it seemed like the statue had tilted its head towards her. She narrowly avoided spraying her tea on the screen as the statue parted its lips and spoke! “I am Athena.” She leaned back into her couch, “Hah, no kidding. You are indeed a statue of Athena, talking picture.” She chuckled to herself, but froze when the statue looked … mad, displeased, impatient? Was that even possible? It seemed to sigh and began again, “I am Athena and I have Chosen you.” Cat looked down into her mug dubiously, was she hallucinating? “No, Catherine. You are not hallucinating, nor is this any sort of phenomena that can be easily explained away by science. If you accept my blessing, someone will come by within the next week to recruit you, and you will say yes, because it will mean magic in your life.” Cat shook her head, this couldn’t be real, she had to be seeing things from grading too many reports, staying up too late, something … but what if it was real. What if this really was Athena talking to her, offering her a chance to have a life of magic, a life she world have leaped at when she was a child learning about myths and fairy tales. She whispered almost inaudibly, “yes”, and looked back to the screen.

She saw only the picture she would expect from a Google search result. So, had it all been in her mind? Of course it was, gods and goddesses didn’t exist. Especially not ones from an ancient culture no longer worshiped, she sighed and closed the lid to her laptop, it was definitely time for sleep.

[WC: 813]

RECRUITER

Christopher Breaux explained the Prytaneum's goal to Catherine -- to train Chosen to be Heroes, to give them opportunities to improve on those skills and interests that lead to their recruitment, to offer them housing, and food, and more. He explained the downsides -- living away from home, leaving behind any job or position they might be at now. He explained the middleground -- this doesn't mean the end of family, it doesn't mean never going home again, it just means for now, and being limited to visits. And he explained the potential -- that Catherine might need to fight for the good of the world, should things fall to pieces.

It will prep your character, at least some, for their journey to the strange swath of land in Northern Michigan, and their new life.

DEITY

Catherine is Chosen of Athena for her love and eternal pursuit of knowledge. She has an affinity for many areas of study including literature, crafts, and science along with the intense desire to pass her own love for learning on to every pupil she teaches and every person she meets.

CHOSEN OF ZUES



CHOSEN OF HERA



CHOSEN OF POSEIDON



CHOSEN OF DEMETER



CHOSEN OF ATHENA



CHOSEN OF APOLLO

Thomas Wolf ~ Prefers to be called "Tom", I was able to spar with him using a bow. Not going to lie, he's pretty cute!



CHOSEN OF ARTEMIS



CHOSEN OF ARES



CHOSEN OF APHRODITE



CHOSEN OF HEPHAESTUS



CHOSEN OF HERMES

Marisol Whelan ~ She has a certain intensity about her. My first time sparring with an actual longsword!



CHOSEN OF DIONYSUS

PRACTICE

[Completed] Catherine vs Intermediate Dummy [Stretching the Old Bowstrings]
[In Progress] Catherine vs Thomas [Just Some Practice]
[Completed] Catherine vs Marisol [Expanding Upon Horizons]

MONSTERS

[Completed] Epic 1, Lone Bird [Shoot it down!] [Cat]
[Completed] Epic 1, Small Swarm [Heroes Never Die] [Cat & Rose]
[Completed] Epic 1, Finale [Cut Our Losses] [ORP]

Level 0 [0XP] - at this level, your character is Chosen. This stage comes with base HP of 50, and base damage of 6 for balanced weapons.
Level 1 [100XP] - at this level, your character earns the title of Hero.
Level 10 [1000 XP] - at this level, your character becomes an Epic Hero.
Level 20 [2500 XP] - at this level, your character becomes a Legendary Hero.

For levels 1-10, every 100 XP you achieve is equal to one level.

Solo RP: at 400 words, this is worth 5 XP. at 800+ words, this is worth 10xp.
PRP with another player: at 800 words, this is worth 10 XP.
Spar/Battle with another player: finishing the battle is worth 10 XP, 800 words is worth 10 XP, both together is worth 20 XP.
Special Threads: These will have their own rules listed at either the start or the end of the thread.



EPIC 1: 105

XP LOG:
[EPIC] A Call to Arms & Trouble in the Swiss Alps [WC:534] - 10 XP
[A1] Fortification - 10 XP
[PRP] All Wrapped Up [Cat & Ernst] - IP
[Monster, Lone Bird] Shoot it down! - 10 XP
[PRP] Fallen Foes [Cat & Brian] - IP
[PRP] Fresh Faces [Zan & Cat] - IP
[Monster, Small Swarm] Heroes Never Die [Cat & Rose] - 10 XP
[A2] Rescue the Payload [Beth & Cat] - 10 XP
[PRP] Soup is Good for the Soul [Beth & Cat] - 10 XP
[B3] The Black Diamond [ORP] - 5 XP
[Monster, Lone Bird] Shot Through the Heart - IP
[Solo] Picking Up the Pieces - IP
[FINALE] Cut Our Losses [ORP] - 40 XP