So, the brief version of this character was put into the Domina Cabal outline (even though it was the longest description there), and I've been planning to post a full bio eventually. The history is mostly completed, though the parts toward the end haven't been proofread yet and are undoubtedly a little rough at the moment. I still need to give a description of her personality and the appearance of the ship (both inside and out.)
I'm afraid if I don't post what I have now, I'll end up moving on to other things and leave her incomplete.
Spoiler
Name: Celesine
Colors:
Race: Ship (previously Elf)
Age: Really freaking old.
Home Plane: Genoflora (See: History)
History:
Early Life: Genoflora was a world unlike anything you might see in the multiverse today. The vast majority of the plane was covered in massive forests, with trees rivaling those of the Sertarian continent of Afresa, all of which were dominated by the elves. The few plains and mountains were dominated by the Florans, who required the light of the purple sun in order to survive, something they couldn’t get in the more heavily forested regions. Meanwhile, the swamps and islands, both of which were covered in woods, were the homes of the Shrooms and beefolk, respectively.
The Florans, though they couldn’t survive with the trees, still felt a kinship with their vegetative relatives, and had shaky relationships with the elves that built their homes from wood, and ate only of plantlife. A new leader of the mountain Florans, one who called himself “The Sunflower King”, preyed on this racial tension, using it to unite both the Florans of the plains and those of the mountains under his command.
Nobody saw the first strike coming. In the middle of the night, the Florans swept over an elven village, slaughtering everyone they could find, including the daughter of a young woodcarver. The woodcarver, Celesine, was helpless to stop it, and could only watch in horror. Then, she was flung into the Blind Eternities.
From there on, she traversed the multiverse, jumping from plane to plane, never returning to her home world. For the next several decades, she threw herself into her sculpting, working almost constantly, doing anything and everything she could to make herself forget the life she had left behind. She practiced not only carvings and sculptures, but magic as well, using enchantment runes acquired from across the multiverse in her carving. During this time, she met many other ‘walkers, and befriended one, an elf, who would later become a member of the Dominia Cabal.
Eventually, she did return home. And when she did, she found her people embroiled in a fearsome war against the Florans. A war which began the night her daughter was killed, and her spark ignited. Only now, the Florans had united with the Shrooms, who had sought to spread their venomous spores to Elven land for as long as anyone could remember. The beefolk were the only race which remained neutral in the conflict, preferring to isolate themselves away within their island homes. Celesine began using her knowledge of magic to craft enchanted weapons and golems of wood to aid her people. She also used this as an opportunity to further experiment with her enchantment magic, with many of the sculptures she sent into the battlefield being new, untested designs.
Dominia Cabal: Word of Celesine’s enchanting skills spread across the multiverse, particularly regarding a wooden ring which, when worn, would allow a person to survive in the Blind Eternities, as long as a Planeswalker was with them. For her part, the carving of enchantment runes she drew were carved into her creations were simply an extension of the woodcarving she had done since birth. The ring was just another carving to her, not truly understanding how extraordinary such an artifact was.
At the same time as Celesine created the wooden ring, a far more sinister device was being unveiled from within the group known as the Dominia Cabal: The Aether Vent. A weapon which could wipe out entire planes at the flip of a switch.
With the realization that these would annihilate countless cultures, a ranked member of the Cabal, the elf who Celesine had previously befriended, hired the woodcarver for a special assignment: She would build a ship that could travel the planes, while leaving the crew alive.
By this point, the war on Genoflora was tipped firmly in favor of the elves, and Celesine saw little use in remaining there. She agreed to build this ship under the condition that it would only be used to save people, and not as a weapon. While many professional shipwrights helped to brainstorm the design, and hundreds of workers actually performed the building, it was Celesine who was responsible for the enchantments. Runic symbols were drawn throughout. Runes for binding the ship to obey the orders of whoever possesses its key, wards to protect it, enchantments to contain the artificial Spark that would have powered the ship, and many more.
Unfortunately, that last one never came to fruition. The Mender failed to produce a viable Spark in her experiments, which was necessary to power the ship. The closest she came was the Grail, which could only give the ability to Planeswalk temporarily, and the temporary “Spark” it produced, while useful for testing, proved to not be strong enough to protect mortals in the Blind Eternities. While Celesine experimented on a smaller scale to make a working enchantment which could accomplish the goal they sought, the Master was assassinated, and a war broke out within the Cabal. Celesine, having no desire to get caught up in their battles, planeswalked away, and went into hiding.
Several more years passed, when she heard word of the first Vents being deployed. Against her better judgement, she broke into the building where the Cabal’s supply of Vents were housed. Had she given it more thought, she would have realized that after the war, the Cabal would have relocated their weaponry. But hindsight is 20/20, and Celesine found herself in a trap set up for someone else.
Whether it was a fortune or misfortune that the Mentalist had a completed ship in his possession that needed only a Planeswalker Spark to function is up for debate. As the old ‘Walkers were made more of mana than of flesh and bone, the spell to fuse her with the ship was fairly simple. The enchantment Celesine created to merge the artificial Spark with the ship did the same to her essence, and the enchantments that would make the ship follow the direction of whoever held its key forced her to obey the Mentalist’s commands.
For years, Celesine was forced to transport the Cabal’s armies and weapons, and even deploy Aether Vents. Eventually she was responsible for the Venting of her home plane of Genoflora as well. As one final insult before his death, the Mentalist had the words “The Celesine” carved onto her side in Genofloran characters.
From then, ‘til now: Celesine broke free of the Cabal shortly before the Ending, when Ilinda assassinated the Mentalist. After that, she used her new form for its intended purpose. She would find dying worlds and attempt to relocate their citizens to other planes. This usually ended badly, with the current population not accepting the new ones, and trying to wipe them out, or the new population being the aggressors and trying to overtake the plane they were left on. Occasionally, the newcomers would end up creating a device or spell which would bring about an apocalypse, as happened often with the Cyreans (and there were so many Cyreans). She kept trying though, believing it wrong to simply stand by and allow entire civilizations to be annihilated when she could do something to help.
Celesine also carved a wooden “crew” (mostly using her other creations to do so) to take care of the issues she couldn’t handle in her current form, such as taking care of any passengers, cleaning the ship’s inside, making repairs on the rare occasions there were any to be made, and even going places outside the ship that she couldn’t get to. Most of these carvings are elven in appearance, but other forms are crafted as well.
For the most part, life wasn’t particularly bad for the boat planeswalker during this period.
And then the artifact which The Mentalist had used to control her resurfaced in the hands of the human Planeswalker, named Vasilias. Once gaining control of Celesine, she was once again used for transporting armies through the Aether. Though, she was used just as much for the transportation of goods, workers and diplomats this time around. Additionally, Vasilias made use for both her knowledge of enchantment magic, and for her knowledge of Cabal artifacts (what she was allowed to reveal).
There is no record of Celesine surviving the Mending. In fact, the last known record was from decades prior to the event.
Ship Description:
From the outside, Celesine doesn’t appear particularly dissimilar to how you would expect a ship to look. The wood is colored a light grey, and the bottom is a bit more squared off to allow it to stay upright easier on land.
Perhaps the most striking feature about the ship to an outward observer would be the two strange wooden beams that stretch well over a hundred feet in the air. These beams serve as Celesine’s “sails”. The Spark allows the first of these beams to access the Blind Eternities and release a small amount of Aether in the direction of the second, which then absorbs the Aether and uses it as a power source. While in flight, it appears to non-Planeswalkers that the ship has a single sail, created out of pure darkness. To Planeswalkers, it’s something infinitely more confusing and complex, that should not logically be capable of existing in the physical world. As the Aether is returned to the Blind Eternities almost instantly, it doesn’t seem to cause any lasting damage to planes, however, but anything caught in the sail is completely torn apart at an atomic level.
In total, Celesine is comprised of six decks.
The sixth deck, the lowest, is designed with large compartments for storage purposes. What is stored in these has varied over the millennia. At various times, they have been used to hold Aether Vents, golems, statues of Vasilias and even a dragon or two.
The fourth and fifth decks hold the cabins where passengers sleep. The rooms tend to be fairly small on these two decks, as the goal was to carry as many people as possible, with comfort being a secondary concern. Both of these decks also have a single eating area, that’s large enough to hold about half the occupants of that floor at any given time.
The third consists of only twenty sleeping chambers. Each very large, and intended to be very luxurious. This was a point of conflict between Celesine and the Cabal during development, with Celesine arguing that the space would be better spent if used in the same manner as the lower floors, to save more lives, and the Master (who Celesine never personally dealt with) believing it would be better if high-ranking dignitaries, kings and other Cabal members were placed in quarters above the simple rabble. Inevitably, as the Cabal was responsible for virtually all of the funding for the project, the Master won this particular battle.
The second deck contains just about everything else you would expect to find, and a few things you wouldn’t, its main purpose being recreation, to give people a place to stretch their legs. This includes a greenhouse room, where Celesine grows a variety of plants she can use for wood.
The second deck also features the control room, which contains most of Celesine’s enchantments, a scrying pool that can look anywhere on the ship, and a wheel and two levers that can control the ship manually if Celesine’s mind is unconscious (the wheel controls the horizontal, one lever controls the vertical, and the other controls velocity).
The top deck is just that. It’s the top of the ship. While in flight, one can come up here and peer over the edge of the wooden guardrails at the land below. However, mortals up here are not capable of surviving once in the Blind Eternities.
Ohter Enchantments:
The ship’s “sail” uses the same technology as Aether Vents. Early on, Celesine asked to analyze the devices, under the guise of the possibility that they would help her in designing the ship. The Aether sail was developed to prevent the Cabal from suspecting that she might have had an ulterior motive in the request. Because of this, however, if the absorption beam was destroyed or otherwise disabled, then the front beam would end up acting as an Aether Vent (albeit, much slower). As such, a failsafe was put in place to turn off the front beam. In the event that the first failsafe would be destroyed somehow, a second enchantment was interwoven with the first that would cause the ship to self-destruct if subverted.
The Mentalist (through other Cabal members) also added a few of his own. Most notably, an enchantment which prevents Celesine from revealing Cabal secrets to potential enemies, an enchantment which continued to persist even after the Cabal’s destruction.
Personality: [To be added later.]
Colors:
Race: Ship (previously Elf)
Age: Really freaking old.
Home Plane: Genoflora (See: History)
History:
Early Life: Genoflora was a world unlike anything you might see in the multiverse today. The vast majority of the plane was covered in massive forests, with trees rivaling those of the Sertarian continent of Afresa, all of which were dominated by the elves. The few plains and mountains were dominated by the Florans, who required the light of the purple sun in order to survive, something they couldn’t get in the more heavily forested regions. Meanwhile, the swamps and islands, both of which were covered in woods, were the homes of the Shrooms and beefolk, respectively.
The Florans, though they couldn’t survive with the trees, still felt a kinship with their vegetative relatives, and had shaky relationships with the elves that built their homes from wood, and ate only of plantlife. A new leader of the mountain Florans, one who called himself “The Sunflower King”, preyed on this racial tension, using it to unite both the Florans of the plains and those of the mountains under his command.
Nobody saw the first strike coming. In the middle of the night, the Florans swept over an elven village, slaughtering everyone they could find, including the daughter of a young woodcarver. The woodcarver, Celesine, was helpless to stop it, and could only watch in horror. Then, she was flung into the Blind Eternities.
From there on, she traversed the multiverse, jumping from plane to plane, never returning to her home world. For the next several decades, she threw herself into her sculpting, working almost constantly, doing anything and everything she could to make herself forget the life she had left behind. She practiced not only carvings and sculptures, but magic as well, using enchantment runes acquired from across the multiverse in her carving. During this time, she met many other ‘walkers, and befriended one, an elf, who would later become a member of the Dominia Cabal.
Eventually, she did return home. And when she did, she found her people embroiled in a fearsome war against the Florans. A war which began the night her daughter was killed, and her spark ignited. Only now, the Florans had united with the Shrooms, who had sought to spread their venomous spores to Elven land for as long as anyone could remember. The beefolk were the only race which remained neutral in the conflict, preferring to isolate themselves away within their island homes. Celesine began using her knowledge of magic to craft enchanted weapons and golems of wood to aid her people. She also used this as an opportunity to further experiment with her enchantment magic, with many of the sculptures she sent into the battlefield being new, untested designs.
Dominia Cabal: Word of Celesine’s enchanting skills spread across the multiverse, particularly regarding a wooden ring which, when worn, would allow a person to survive in the Blind Eternities, as long as a Planeswalker was with them. For her part, the carving of enchantment runes she drew were carved into her creations were simply an extension of the woodcarving she had done since birth. The ring was just another carving to her, not truly understanding how extraordinary such an artifact was.
At the same time as Celesine created the wooden ring, a far more sinister device was being unveiled from within the group known as the Dominia Cabal: The Aether Vent. A weapon which could wipe out entire planes at the flip of a switch.
With the realization that these would annihilate countless cultures, a ranked member of the Cabal, the elf who Celesine had previously befriended, hired the woodcarver for a special assignment: She would build a ship that could travel the planes, while leaving the crew alive.
By this point, the war on Genoflora was tipped firmly in favor of the elves, and Celesine saw little use in remaining there. She agreed to build this ship under the condition that it would only be used to save people, and not as a weapon. While many professional shipwrights helped to brainstorm the design, and hundreds of workers actually performed the building, it was Celesine who was responsible for the enchantments. Runic symbols were drawn throughout. Runes for binding the ship to obey the orders of whoever possesses its key, wards to protect it, enchantments to contain the artificial Spark that would have powered the ship, and many more.
Unfortunately, that last one never came to fruition. The Mender failed to produce a viable Spark in her experiments, which was necessary to power the ship. The closest she came was the Grail, which could only give the ability to Planeswalk temporarily, and the temporary “Spark” it produced, while useful for testing, proved to not be strong enough to protect mortals in the Blind Eternities. While Celesine experimented on a smaller scale to make a working enchantment which could accomplish the goal they sought, the Master was assassinated, and a war broke out within the Cabal. Celesine, having no desire to get caught up in their battles, planeswalked away, and went into hiding.
Several more years passed, when she heard word of the first Vents being deployed. Against her better judgement, she broke into the building where the Cabal’s supply of Vents were housed. Had she given it more thought, she would have realized that after the war, the Cabal would have relocated their weaponry. But hindsight is 20/20, and Celesine found herself in a trap set up for someone else.
Whether it was a fortune or misfortune that the Mentalist had a completed ship in his possession that needed only a Planeswalker Spark to function is up for debate. As the old ‘Walkers were made more of mana than of flesh and bone, the spell to fuse her with the ship was fairly simple. The enchantment Celesine created to merge the artificial Spark with the ship did the same to her essence, and the enchantments that would make the ship follow the direction of whoever held its key forced her to obey the Mentalist’s commands.
For years, Celesine was forced to transport the Cabal’s armies and weapons, and even deploy Aether Vents. Eventually she was responsible for the Venting of her home plane of Genoflora as well. As one final insult before his death, the Mentalist had the words “The Celesine” carved onto her side in Genofloran characters.
From then, ‘til now: Celesine broke free of the Cabal shortly before the Ending, when Ilinda assassinated the Mentalist. After that, she used her new form for its intended purpose. She would find dying worlds and attempt to relocate their citizens to other planes. This usually ended badly, with the current population not accepting the new ones, and trying to wipe them out, or the new population being the aggressors and trying to overtake the plane they were left on. Occasionally, the newcomers would end up creating a device or spell which would bring about an apocalypse, as happened often with the Cyreans (and there were so many Cyreans). She kept trying though, believing it wrong to simply stand by and allow entire civilizations to be annihilated when she could do something to help.
Celesine also carved a wooden “crew” (mostly using her other creations to do so) to take care of the issues she couldn’t handle in her current form, such as taking care of any passengers, cleaning the ship’s inside, making repairs on the rare occasions there were any to be made, and even going places outside the ship that she couldn’t get to. Most of these carvings are elven in appearance, but other forms are crafted as well.
For the most part, life wasn’t particularly bad for the boat planeswalker during this period.
And then the artifact which The Mentalist had used to control her resurfaced in the hands of the human Planeswalker, named Vasilias. Once gaining control of Celesine, she was once again used for transporting armies through the Aether. Though, she was used just as much for the transportation of goods, workers and diplomats this time around. Additionally, Vasilias made use for both her knowledge of enchantment magic, and for her knowledge of Cabal artifacts (what she was allowed to reveal).
There is no record of Celesine surviving the Mending. In fact, the last known record was from decades prior to the event.
Ship Description:
From the outside, Celesine doesn’t appear particularly dissimilar to how you would expect a ship to look. The wood is colored a light grey, and the bottom is a bit more squared off to allow it to stay upright easier on land.
Perhaps the most striking feature about the ship to an outward observer would be the two strange wooden beams that stretch well over a hundred feet in the air. These beams serve as Celesine’s “sails”. The Spark allows the first of these beams to access the Blind Eternities and release a small amount of Aether in the direction of the second, which then absorbs the Aether and uses it as a power source. While in flight, it appears to non-Planeswalkers that the ship has a single sail, created out of pure darkness. To Planeswalkers, it’s something infinitely more confusing and complex, that should not logically be capable of existing in the physical world. As the Aether is returned to the Blind Eternities almost instantly, it doesn’t seem to cause any lasting damage to planes, however, but anything caught in the sail is completely torn apart at an atomic level.
In total, Celesine is comprised of six decks.
The sixth deck, the lowest, is designed with large compartments for storage purposes. What is stored in these has varied over the millennia. At various times, they have been used to hold Aether Vents, golems, statues of Vasilias and even a dragon or two.
The fourth and fifth decks hold the cabins where passengers sleep. The rooms tend to be fairly small on these two decks, as the goal was to carry as many people as possible, with comfort being a secondary concern. Both of these decks also have a single eating area, that’s large enough to hold about half the occupants of that floor at any given time.
The third consists of only twenty sleeping chambers. Each very large, and intended to be very luxurious. This was a point of conflict between Celesine and the Cabal during development, with Celesine arguing that the space would be better spent if used in the same manner as the lower floors, to save more lives, and the Master (who Celesine never personally dealt with) believing it would be better if high-ranking dignitaries, kings and other Cabal members were placed in quarters above the simple rabble. Inevitably, as the Cabal was responsible for virtually all of the funding for the project, the Master won this particular battle.
The second deck contains just about everything else you would expect to find, and a few things you wouldn’t, its main purpose being recreation, to give people a place to stretch their legs. This includes a greenhouse room, where Celesine grows a variety of plants she can use for wood.
The second deck also features the control room, which contains most of Celesine’s enchantments, a scrying pool that can look anywhere on the ship, and a wheel and two levers that can control the ship manually if Celesine’s mind is unconscious (the wheel controls the horizontal, one lever controls the vertical, and the other controls velocity).
The top deck is just that. It’s the top of the ship. While in flight, one can come up here and peer over the edge of the wooden guardrails at the land below. However, mortals up here are not capable of surviving once in the Blind Eternities.
Ohter Enchantments:
The ship’s “sail” uses the same technology as Aether Vents. Early on, Celesine asked to analyze the devices, under the guise of the possibility that they would help her in designing the ship. The Aether sail was developed to prevent the Cabal from suspecting that she might have had an ulterior motive in the request. Because of this, however, if the absorption beam was destroyed or otherwise disabled, then the front beam would end up acting as an Aether Vent (albeit, much slower). As such, a failsafe was put in place to turn off the front beam. In the event that the first failsafe would be destroyed somehow, a second enchantment was interwoven with the first that would cause the ship to self-destruct if subverted.
The Mentalist (through other Cabal members) also added a few of his own. Most notably, an enchantment which prevents Celesine from revealing Cabal secrets to potential enemies, an enchantment which continued to persist even after the Cabal’s destruction.
Personality: [To be added later.]
race (even though it doesn't matter, since the whole plane was kind of destroyed). I'm thinking about Florans based on