Name: Morique

Author: Phantom M

Status: Public

Classification: Human Planeswalker

Alignment: True Neutral

Colors:


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-{Author's Notes}-

Updated on 22nd November 2014, 19:55 GMT +8
- Character name - From Merudia to Monique (more flavor and hints the reference of French influence)
- Plane name - From Kraforl to Valencia (Same rationale as the previous)

Updated on 23rd November 2014, 12:13 GMT +8
- Character name - From Monique to Morique (attempt to break from conventional naming)
- Plane name - From Valencia to Ebancia (same rationale as previous)
- Hometown name - From Oryunh to Aucanfall (Oryunh is quite an awkward name to be frank)

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~First Appearance~

At home in the Unknown

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Physical Description

Morique is a young woman, 21 years old, bony face, snake-like emerald eyes, dark circles, dark green straight hair tied into a high bun with bangs framing her face, sickly grey skin, thin build. Her corpse-like appearance is repulsive to most.

She usually prefers wearing a dark grey tunic with long black skirt, finished with a light brown druid cloak. She travels barefooted.

From time to time she would wear dead roots shaped into a circlet over her cloak or directly on her head, other natural and creepy accessories include belts and armlets crafted from dead roots with what seem to be screaming faces on them.

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Personality

Morique is a reclusive and quirky individual who finds comfort in the presence of plants, she does not like conversing with other humans, although she used to be more open. Due to her ability experience deep empathy with plants, she witnessed the horrors which humankind have inflicted upon them, further distancing her from others, even to the point of rooting for plants to take vengeance upon their slave masters.

She despises ignorance and civilization, two aspect of self-proclaimed 'intelligent life' which goes hand in hand. She feels uneasy being in crowded places, preferring to spend more time at the greenhouse where she practiced agriculture. Becoming more silent over the years, she expect the same from her surrounding, shunning events and gatherings in her hometown.

Since young, Morique had a huge fascination with fear and death, which provided easier access for black mana.
She also seek knowledge about origins and purpose of existence, her love for sea creatures and wisdom ties her to blue mana.

Morique is unforgiving of trespassers to her territory, those who hurt her family (plants, dryads, sea creatures, horrors) shall answer to her.

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History

Morique was born on the peaceful plane of Ebancia, a plane which excels in Green and Blue mana.

Grew up in a commoner family as the only daughter, she was an estranged individual who never fitted well with her peers. She constantly questions the rationales behind taboos and sensitive subjects regarding human morals. Not to mention she had a secret fascination with the anything morbid.

Morique gradually became accustomed to being a social outcast, choosing the agricultural path as the other paths would require more human interaction. When she was 15, her powers matured and she could sense emotions felt by plant lives within a certain range, this overloaded her with a torrent of pain no matter where she went.

For progress, humans would expand their comfort zone at the cost of others, claiming that they are unable to feel. For Morique, a flora empath, it further affected her distaste for other human beings as well as civilization as a whole, to her, humans are too ignorant and prideful for their own good.

Over the years as she begun to understand the way her city works, she sees a pyramid hierarchy which ultimately benefits a minority. Vices and corruption were present but hidden, Morique had now lost all hopes of living alongside her own kind.

With a couple of potted plants cultivated by her nurturing green mana, she set sail across the sea after abandoning her duties back in the city. Morique would have to answer for her absence but first, they would have to find her.

She now resides on an unnamed island with the ideal environment for her to live in solitude with her twisted floral pets. Upon touching down on her new home, she received an influx of ancient echoes from the deep, bridging her connection with the unfathomable depths (blue mana) and augmentation to her ghastly craft (black mana). With her new found powers and desire for greater understanding, her spark ignited.

[Edit: Updated on 22 November 2014, 19:55 GMT +8]

The augmentation to her abilities granted her the power needed to wage war with her hometown. Despite having the means to an end, she struggled with between the decisions of leading the secluded life she wished for or risk more deaths to her new found family in a skirmish.

She decided on the former and swore to guard her new home with her life. As long as her plants and fishes can live in safety, she is willing to give up on revenge.

But in order to create a haven, Morique must first exterminate all parasites on the island. On that day, she took the lives of rowdy pirates lurking around her turf, never before had she felt the glee of watching her plants devouring the intruders.

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Story Types

Morique is a seeker of the unknown, she ponders on questions like 'is there inherent meaning to life?', 'how would one define good or bad morals?' and 'which determines a person's character, Nature or Nurture?'. A misanthropic thinker who has little patience with humans in general (and humanoids).

No doubt the ghastly nature mage seek methods to augment herself and her ecology, her planeswalking adventures usually involves observations, occasional experiments (social or biological), and makes an effort to stay as discreet as possible.

If possible Morique would avoid conflicts by slipping into the dark. When forced to retaliate, she can be relentless and cruel, if she emerge victorious, she'll have her plants gobble up the dying (or dead) enemy.

Mostly a sideline character, an observer who takes only what she needs and respects life until she finds a reason not to.

All she do, she do for the sake of her ecosystem.

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Power & Abilities

First thing first, besides magic, she does not have any prowess in physical combat, although she has superb regeneration (explained below).

Morique's primary magic revolves around plant manipulation.
Under Green Mana, she is capable of:
- Enlarging, animate and uproot plants
- Receive information picked up by plants in a certain range
- Alter their form to match the situation they are in (e.g. grow vines, grow mouths, grow thorns)
- Release poison through her plants
- Conjure dryads


In her experimentation with black mana, she embraced the beauty of death and seek to empower herself and her plant creatures with dark magic.
Under Black Mana, she is capable of:
- Speed up decaying process of living matter
- Feed dead plants or animals to her living plants
- Conjure horrors from her disturbingly imaginative mind
- Increase potency of poison


With the voices of the Ninth Depths (the sea around the island), she solidified her bridge with blue mana, her tertiary color.
Under Blue Mana, she is capable of:
- Command schools of fishes (piranhas) to do her bidding
- Command leviathans (proved to be very difficult for her)
- Increase potency to her horror summons


Under the philosophy of each of her colours, she seeks immortality through what she called 'Seed of Life and Death', a seed implanted into her heart by ingestion which would regenerate her body, giving her biological immortality (anti-aging, fast regeneration from damage) but she is not entirely immortal.

By combining mana from each color, her craft revolves around amassing an army of relentless natural and surreal abominations. Although dabbled in what would be considered 'vile' magic, she values growth and harmony among her 'family' over all else and had never considered terrorizing anyone or exact revenge on her hometown for their treachery.

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Card

Morique, Dreaded Naturalist

[+2]: Put a 1/1 green and black plant token with deathtouch on the battlefield.
[-3]: Destroy target creature, then distribute +1/+1 counters equal to the creature's converted mana cost among creatures you control.
[-6]: You get an emblem with "Whenever you draw a card, you may put a -1/-1 counter on target creature, if you do, put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature"
{3}

A pretty cool character. Her powers remind me of Poison Ivy, but at the same time her modus operandi is completely different. I can see her filling in an advisor or sage role in a story.

Hi Chinkee!

I've read two of your characters, Auric and Lumina, I'd say Auric makes for a solid recurring villain and Lumina is an endearing lady planeswalker! Always good to have a reliable and just character to bring hope and peace! (Side note: I love the idea of the alchemy tattoo, real artsy!)

You got it spot on for my character,
She is inspired by Poison Ivy, and takes after my personality traits. (Side note: I'm a plant lover myself!)

Merudia (changing her name to Monique) is a pretty much a philosopher in her own right. She seek answers about the morals, meaning of life, metaphysical and knowledge locked away from even places that would make the bottomless pit look shallow.

Let's call her Monique from now on!

You should check out my other post, it's my attempt in fleshing out a story for Monique, but changes will be made pretty soon.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on that too!

Thanks!

Okay, so I've looked over this. I don't have a ton of comments, just some things that stand out to me. As I said in the story thread, I do like the character. She hits some of those less-stereotypical views of green-mana mages that sort of reminds me of Lorwyn elves or of Multani with Urza. I like that.

Having said that, I'm not sold on her aspects yet. Now admittedly, I have not seen much about her yet, but from what seems to be the heart of her character, I'm just not sure is needed. I mean, you mention her hatred of ignorance and the fact that she's a "philosopher," but I'm just not sold yet. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it doesn't belong. Just that I'm not seeing it as necessary at this stage.

Also, and I hate to say this since I'm the one who mentioned her name, but honestly, I prefer the original name of Merudia to the new name of Monique. My reason is simple, and others may well disagree with me, but unless there's a reason for it, I prefer to avoid real-world names in fantasy fiction like MTG. Similarly, I'm not fond of the new plane name, either (sorry!) Valencia refers to several real-world locations, including cities in Spain and California, as well as a type of orange that was named for the former and led to the name of the latter.

I feel like I'm picking on your names a bit, which is not what I'm trying to do. Fantasy names are not easy, believe me. And like I said, overall, I'm liking this character. The only concern I have under her "powers" is the precognition, which seems sort of out of left field compared with the other abilities, but overall, not bad. She seems like one of those characters who is potentially very powerful in very specific situations, but is likely relatively low on the power scale overall, which I think is a good place to be.

I look forward to seeing what comes for her.

Hey Raven!

I hope that in my reboot of her story, the justification for her ties to will be stronger.

As for the names, I do agree that they are not as archaic as they can/should be, perhaps I'll play around with the letters and try to keep the pronunciation? (I like the name Monique~!)

Regarding precognition, it comes to her in the form of deja vu, not so much of an ability voluntarily wield by her. Perhaps I should state that it isn't really an ability, because that could be confusing.

Thanks for the critiques! Cheers!~