#Lum Lucendi

[ottisbuns]

Ok. So like. Lum, right? Lum Lucendi. My OC who I talk about very little in proportion to the amount I think about her.

She is a living weapon. She is the last and only of her kind in multiple ways. She’s a pacifist. She has abandonment issues. She’s like eight. If you don’t let her be useful she will have a panic attack. She is the stable one. She is the mentor of the villain of her story. She could kill you. She would refuse to try even in self-defense. You can’t kill her. She has done nothing wrong ever.

She's a living weapon. Designed with intent and purpose to win a hopeless war. A soldier and walking magic battery, intentionally designed in the form of a child because well, if you hesitate for even an instant to strike her down because that's a child, you want to kill a child? An eight year old? then you are going to die extremely to death.

She probably would have worked, too. Certainly not well enough to single-handedly turn the tide, but she would have stalled things, prevented enough attrition that more like her would have time to be created. It's possible she might not even have died in the process. A true wonder-weapon.

But this didn't happen. Her creation process started much too late, and her side lost. All records of the attempt of her creation were intentionally destroyed to hide just how far they went to try and prevent defeat. But they didn't destroy her. They did not have time, and the facility responsible for her creation was near impossible to find without direct knowledge of it, so they judged it a needless risk.

It was thought that without the constant stream of intentional magic used to slowly make her she would eventually die, or at worst remain in stasis, half-complete, forever. Either way, ambient magic wouldn't be enough to actually finish her.

Except with nothing else around to consume said magic, it was.

It only took a thousand years.

Enough time that the civilization she was created to defeat collapsed, and the type of magic she was made to utilize to be lost utterly. Forgotten. She still knows it instinctively, but she’s the only one.

Not that she knows any of this when she wakes up. She doesn’t know much of anything other than how to fight and keep herself alive.

The battle instincts of a veteran and the understanding of human society of some sort of feral animal in the brain of a six year old child. She has no context for what she is, both as a weapon and as a person.

As a man-made living weapon she was of course intended to receive both magical and mundane conditioning to be able to fill her role. This was the one thing that the aimless, ambient magic that finalized her creation couldn’t replicate. So her conditioning is… spotty, mostly consisting of early priorities.

As a result, her instincts are extremely quick to pick a fight and choose the lethal option as per design, however the conditioning meant to make her not feel guilt about it is entirely absent. Moreso than in a normal person. As a result she has killed exactly once, an animal who looked at her in a way her instincts didn’t like, and felt so catastrophically remorseful feeling their life fade that she refuses to listen to those instincts again under any circumstance.

As a result for a full two years all she has as a being that she's willing to use is defensive instinct. How to directly make sure other things don't kill her. Her body can sustain itself indefinitely through a combination of ambient and her own magic, but only if she doesn’t use it for anything else. If she needs to defend herself, she won't be able to use magic to sustain herself for a while. So she slowly gets weaker.

Until she finds and saves the life of Tenebris, though they weren't called that at the time.

Whether it was because she was conditioned to imprint on the first human she saw or because she was just like that after spending her first two years in isolation, she gets attached extremely quickly, only really surpassed by how quickly Tenebris gets attached and adopts her.

Cue four years of being lost in the wilderness as neither of them know where the hell they are, during which both Lum and Tenebris get their names. Tenebris teaches Lum language and what being a person is. How to live and enjoy it. How to be a human. Lum, meanwhile, teaches Tenebris her magic. The magic that quickly comes to define Tenebris, indirectly leading them down the path that ends with Tenebris forging themselves into more of a weapon than Lum ever was.

and more than anything, during those four isolated years, they both become hopelessly dependent on the other.

[ottisbuns]

One of these days I should put together something vaguely coherent about Lum

[ottisbuns]

1,12,14 for OC ask meme :333

What memory would your OC rather just forget?

For Tenebris, that one time she introduced herself as Tenebris all dramatically before fighting a pair of cloaked figures, who it turns out are two of her old friends who actually know her real name and know who she is, and just didn't recognize her due to how much she has modified her body, and also recognizes the name Tenebris for what it is (Latin for Shadow). Extremely cringe. She wants to die. While she also thinks it would also be nice to forget the time she drained the life out of a whole village in order to fuel her apotheosis to lichdom, or the human experimentation, she doesn't think she deserves to. Lum doesn't really want to forget anything, she values all of her memories, good or bad, too much, though she's pretty embarrassed about the first time she accidentally called Tenebris Mom.

12. Is your OC self-destructive? In what ways?

If you asked Tenebris she'd say no, but literally all of her problems can be traced directly back to herself. She's self-destructive on the grand scale, not so much in the day to day. She does get more day-to-day self destructive as the atrocities pile up though. Lum has a hard time recognizing when she is pushing herself for the sake of others. "No problems boss. Magics herself into a temporary coma" type behavior. Of course she is a child so this usually isn't a problem with anyone but Tenebris, who over-relies on her a bit.

14. How does your OC want to be seen by other characters?

Tenebris wants to be seen as reliable and relishes in being helpful. Someone who definitely wouldn't commit atrocities and crimes against humanity. She's pretty good at this. Lum really wants to be seen as someone to be doted on but would sooner die than openly admit this, so she likes to pretend otherwise. She's bad at it.

[ottisbuns]

5 and 18 for the oc ask game :3

5. How far is your OC willing to go to get what they want?

For Tenebris it varies. For things she kinda wants, or even really wants, she's not willing to go that far. She can assert herself, but if it makes someone sad in a way she can see it she will struggle to go through with it (when she is fully herself at least). However there are a few things she wants so badly they do not even register to her as wants, but rather needs. At this point all sense goes out the window and everything is on the table with one exception, which is harming her adoptive daughter, Lum. No matter how much she is not herself (this is a very recurring issue for her) or how badly she feels she needs something, it is NEVER an option. Literally everything else? Fair game. This Becomes Relevant.

Lum meanwhile struggles to assert herself with anyone who isn't Tenebris. Not really able to bring herself to harm others even in self-defense, preferring to just protect herself until they give up. Though this is mostly just true before Tenebris dies, not so much after, where she is a lot more callous.

18. Is your OC more cold and detached or up close and personal?

Both Tenebris and Lum are Very close and personal. They get attached easily. They get attached hard. They are very open about it. Not always great at respecting personal space, though they're often too busy invading each others' to really bother anyone else.

[ottisbuns]

GRISPS U hai ^w^ Quastions Beam .

1 + 10 + 17 for lum+ten perhamps?

AUGH I AM GRISPED

Putting things under cut because as we’ve all come to expect I am unable to not ramble ^_^

1. What was the original thought that led to the creation of the character

Ok, Tenebris. I actually remember the exact thought. “Why are all Liches in fiction people who are evil? What if an otherwise nice person is just really afraid of death? <-(not at all projecting)”

Originally the thought was just a character who is a Lich but still nice, though in the current iteration the Lichdom is still there, as is the pre-lich niceness but uh… not so much once they’ve died once. Evil stinky bastard mode. Paranoia to the max.

Lum uh… the thought was literally “Ok Tenebris is nice and all, but what if there was a small child also?” <-Person who had just had their brain chemistry permanently altered by Phym

and yeah there sure is a small child also now.

10. What is their main character arc in the story? Where do they start and how do they develop? Do they get a happy ending or is their story a tragic one?

Ok so. A significant chunk of Tenebris story is basically Villain Origin Story. Their deal is about Power and Mortality. Fear of death, fear of loss and paranoia. I’d say the majority of their character development is becoming worse. Shedding more and more of their humanity in their attempt to gain enough power to no longer fear death.

When they come as close as they ever get to no longer having to fear death, when they die for the first time after becoming a lich and fully abandon their former life out of fear for what the people in it would think of what they’ve become, is when the story stops being from their perspective and switches to Lum.

Lum meanwhile is basically about her attachments. While Tenebris is the one who helped her figure out what being a human is and was the one who helped her form her identity, they’re also the one stifling her. She has issues asserting herself and acting independently, essentially living as Tenebris shadow ironically enough, and her development is slowly becoming better about that.

That is until Tenebris ‘dies’ before she can do that properly, and what she had based her entire personhood, identity and purpose around is bloodily and violently ripped away in front of her eyes. She uh. Doesn’t take it well as you can imagine, and it becomes less development and more recovery.

As for the ending, whether it’s tragic or happy… I haven’t decided yet. Lum lives no matter what, but whether she has to kill Tenebris or gets to save them I haven’t decided on yet. Do they die tragically accepting their fate of having done this to themselves, or does they and Lum manage to claw them back from the abyss? Both are compelling.

17. Are there any motifs or symbols associated with the character? How are they represented, in their design, personality or in some other way?

Tenebris is actually kinda sparse on symbolism. You’d think with a name like Tenebris (Shadow) there’d be some things there but nope. Canonically the reason they’re called that is because their name used to be Octavia (before I went by that) and Tenebris was the edgy name they’d give to others out of paranoia regarding giving away their real name but uh… I stole Octavia for myself so for now they’re just Tenebris, which they originally picked for themselves literally just to match with Lum.

Lum on the other hand DOES have light motifs. She’s highly proficient in light magic, and was given her name by Tenebris after they saw that. She’s also bright as in cheerful and smart. Basically, her name being Shining Light is very fitting. Until, you know, the depression, at which point she starts to display the more destructive aspects of Electromagnetic Radiation.

If you asked Tenebris they’d also tell you that just like a photon, Lum has no mass, probably while lifting her with one of their smaller appendages for fun.