Post by Agate / Echo on Aug 16, 2008 19:49:24 GMT -5
• Name: Agate Cole.
• Age: 14
• Descent: Daughter of Hephaestus
• Description: Agate is, in appearance, quite the stereotypical Child of Hephaestus. Disregarding the fact that she's a girl, of course; the majority of the children of Hephaestus tend to be male, for one reason or another. She's tall; freakishly tall, in fact, as she is reminded every time she steps foot in a new school or mortal institution. She's six feet and half an inch, a fact that she is very proud of. Her upper body is well-developed, muscularly. She has broad shoulders for a girl, and muscles more prominent than many of the weaker males, although her long legs are rather weak. Her skin is a dark, rich, African brown. Her hair is left natural: she has a short Afro extending half an inch from her scalp in all directions. Her eyes, like her hair, are a dark, nearly-black brown, but cloudy, like a dreamer's. Her body is covered with hand-made metal ornaments: her right ear bears one small silver ring and two studs in the lobe, as well as three rings along the ridge. Her left has two rings and a stud in the lobe, and three studs an a ring along the ridge. In her nose is a small silver ring that she would have removes long ago, for safety reasons, if it hadn't been melted closed when she leaned her heat-resistant face too close to a mass of molten bronze. Whoops.
On her throat is a gorget woven of steel thread-- the product of a winter break in which she had been stranded in the forge by a snow drift. Her upper right arm bears a band of braided silver, and both her wrists hold an assortment of leather bracelets threaded with designs in copper wire and branded with patters, including a dog-tag with her name and parentage in ancient Greek. Her classic attire is as follows: one of many orange 'Camp Half-Blood' tee-shirts with the sleeves unceremoniously hacked off (to prevent them from dragging through coals or hot metal. There was a Hephaestus-cabin legend in which a girl's sleeve had caught fire while she was working on a major fire, and my the time the girl realized it, her entire shirt had burnt off.) A pair of loose, burn-scarred jeans raided from the men's department at whatever discount clothes store she could fine, and a pair of purple-on-white Etnie skateboard shoes.
• Personality: Agate, or Agg, as she is called by close friends who grew tired of her loooong, two-syllable name, is the essence of tom-boy. Before puberty, she was constantly mistaken for male, and sometimes still is. This is the product of growing up with two boys, her uncles, six and eight years older than her, and living with a cabin full of boys during the summer. She doesn't mind the gender-confusion, though-- in fact, she doesn't mind much at all. She's considerably laid back, and appears oblivious to the world around her. In truth, she remembers everything that is said or done in her vacinity, she simply doesn't often notice them while they are occurring.
Her mind is nearly as active as that of a child of Athena, although while Athenian campers are puzzling over quantum physics and the possible, hitherto undiscovered implications of Bernoulli's principle, Agate is consistently concentrated on her projects; whether the mechanics of a new weapon, the magical procedures necessary to animate an automaton, or what design best suites the shape of the crosspiece on a son of Apollo's sword which she has agreed to engrave, is entirely unknown to many but herself. She often finds herself drifting off during conversations, and, unless the conversation is of vital importance or elevated interest, she usually needs reminding to stay focused. She can be extremely determined and stubborn, a product of her mainly one-track mind, although rarely to the point of causing arguments or disputes. Just because she has dropped the subject, does not mean that she has submitted to her opponent's point.
Her interests include metal and punk music, especially some of the more exotic, underground bands, mountain biking, video games, and, oddly enough, the endangered rhinoceroses species of the African Savannah, as well as birds. Any kind of bird-- she marvelled at their flight technique, and had attempted to re-create the anatomy of an osprey in an automaton, but it had been too heavy. She tried skateboarding, and wasn't too shabby at it, but complained that the boards felt too light, like they could snap beneath her at any moment.
Her dislikes include pop music, makeup, and kittens. About the last one, it's nothing personal about kittens, it's just that she doesn't see what's so d**n cute about them: little buggers that attack anything that moves and are so weak she could crush one with one hand.
• Abilities: Like most children of Hephaestus, she is extremely talented with the workings of mechanics and the manipulation of metal. She can also stand extreme heat with little to no difficulty. She can cause flames to flare or die down slightly, a useful skill when you need to change the temperature of the forge fire, and don't have time to set down your project to feed or bank the fire.
Her main weapon is a large, double-bladed battle-ax of celestial bronze with a silver-inlay design of Hephaestus' fall from the peak of Mount Olympus. The shaft is as long as her torso, of fire-hardened, gnarly olive wood, wrapped so tightly in thick iron wire, singed into place, that the wood underneath is invisible. On the pommel of the haft, is embedded a large, round, polished mass of agate.
• Camp Half-Blood: As a fourteen-year-old, Agate is definitely a camper. She doesn't go to all her classes; she usually skips arts and crafts, as she considers her work in the forge art enough. She loves wrestling and weapons-sparring, and she's one of the top female wrestlers at camp, although a few of the Ares and one of the unclaimed Hermes girls were clearly better. She looks up to one of the old Hephaestus campers; the 24-year-old Charles Beckendorf, simply called Beckendorf by all. He had paid a visit to camp during Agate's second summer.
• RP Sample:
Agate sat, mind wandering, next to her best friend, Christian, son of Athena, on one of the upper benches of the amphitheater surrounding the sparring ring. Christian lived in Montana with his dad and his dad's new wife and step-daughter. He had once remarked about how absurd his name was "for the son of a deity of another religion, and a religion of the type that the religion I'm named for spent the first millennium of its creation trying to wipe out." Down bellow, a son of Ares was wrestling a son of Apollo. The Ares kid was winning. Christian was talking about something. Something about his family. She tuned in for a moment to try and catch up: "--but my step-mom wants her to stay close; she's thinking, like, MSU or something--" That's right-- he was talking about his step-sister's collage plans. As soon as she had established this, her attention snapped back to the field. She was considering challenging the Ares kid next. He didn't seem too hard, and it was always amusing to watch a 'tough' guy's expression when he found out he was supposed to be facing a girl. Or sometimes they wouldn't even notice she was a girl, and try to kick her between the legs, or grab her chest to throw her, and get a nasty surprise. She snickered at that.
Her snicker alerted Christian to the fact that she wasn't listening. He stopped mid-sentence, and said loudly, "Agg, you weren't listening, were you?"
Agate's head snapped around to look at her, and she realized she had been busted again. Then again, he should have expected it. "Sorry," she smiled sheepishly. "You know me! I would have thought you would have expected it by now."
It was his turn to smile. "True, true. Now, when did you zone out?"
She fought for a moment to remember. "Something about MSU. Your step-mom wants to send Alice to MSU. Do you think I should challenge that guy next? I think I could beat him..."
Christian grinned at his friend's extremely obvious ADHD. "Probably," he agreed.
• Age: 14
• Descent: Daughter of Hephaestus
• Description: Agate is, in appearance, quite the stereotypical Child of Hephaestus. Disregarding the fact that she's a girl, of course; the majority of the children of Hephaestus tend to be male, for one reason or another. She's tall; freakishly tall, in fact, as she is reminded every time she steps foot in a new school or mortal institution. She's six feet and half an inch, a fact that she is very proud of. Her upper body is well-developed, muscularly. She has broad shoulders for a girl, and muscles more prominent than many of the weaker males, although her long legs are rather weak. Her skin is a dark, rich, African brown. Her hair is left natural: she has a short Afro extending half an inch from her scalp in all directions. Her eyes, like her hair, are a dark, nearly-black brown, but cloudy, like a dreamer's. Her body is covered with hand-made metal ornaments: her right ear bears one small silver ring and two studs in the lobe, as well as three rings along the ridge. Her left has two rings and a stud in the lobe, and three studs an a ring along the ridge. In her nose is a small silver ring that she would have removes long ago, for safety reasons, if it hadn't been melted closed when she leaned her heat-resistant face too close to a mass of molten bronze. Whoops.
On her throat is a gorget woven of steel thread-- the product of a winter break in which she had been stranded in the forge by a snow drift. Her upper right arm bears a band of braided silver, and both her wrists hold an assortment of leather bracelets threaded with designs in copper wire and branded with patters, including a dog-tag with her name and parentage in ancient Greek. Her classic attire is as follows: one of many orange 'Camp Half-Blood' tee-shirts with the sleeves unceremoniously hacked off (to prevent them from dragging through coals or hot metal. There was a Hephaestus-cabin legend in which a girl's sleeve had caught fire while she was working on a major fire, and my the time the girl realized it, her entire shirt had burnt off.) A pair of loose, burn-scarred jeans raided from the men's department at whatever discount clothes store she could fine, and a pair of purple-on-white Etnie skateboard shoes.
• Personality: Agate, or Agg, as she is called by close friends who grew tired of her loooong, two-syllable name, is the essence of tom-boy. Before puberty, she was constantly mistaken for male, and sometimes still is. This is the product of growing up with two boys, her uncles, six and eight years older than her, and living with a cabin full of boys during the summer. She doesn't mind the gender-confusion, though-- in fact, she doesn't mind much at all. She's considerably laid back, and appears oblivious to the world around her. In truth, she remembers everything that is said or done in her vacinity, she simply doesn't often notice them while they are occurring.
Her mind is nearly as active as that of a child of Athena, although while Athenian campers are puzzling over quantum physics and the possible, hitherto undiscovered implications of Bernoulli's principle, Agate is consistently concentrated on her projects; whether the mechanics of a new weapon, the magical procedures necessary to animate an automaton, or what design best suites the shape of the crosspiece on a son of Apollo's sword which she has agreed to engrave, is entirely unknown to many but herself. She often finds herself drifting off during conversations, and, unless the conversation is of vital importance or elevated interest, she usually needs reminding to stay focused. She can be extremely determined and stubborn, a product of her mainly one-track mind, although rarely to the point of causing arguments or disputes. Just because she has dropped the subject, does not mean that she has submitted to her opponent's point.
Her interests include metal and punk music, especially some of the more exotic, underground bands, mountain biking, video games, and, oddly enough, the endangered rhinoceroses species of the African Savannah, as well as birds. Any kind of bird-- she marvelled at their flight technique, and had attempted to re-create the anatomy of an osprey in an automaton, but it had been too heavy. She tried skateboarding, and wasn't too shabby at it, but complained that the boards felt too light, like they could snap beneath her at any moment.
Her dislikes include pop music, makeup, and kittens. About the last one, it's nothing personal about kittens, it's just that she doesn't see what's so d**n cute about them: little buggers that attack anything that moves and are so weak she could crush one with one hand.
• Abilities: Like most children of Hephaestus, she is extremely talented with the workings of mechanics and the manipulation of metal. She can also stand extreme heat with little to no difficulty. She can cause flames to flare or die down slightly, a useful skill when you need to change the temperature of the forge fire, and don't have time to set down your project to feed or bank the fire.
Her main weapon is a large, double-bladed battle-ax of celestial bronze with a silver-inlay design of Hephaestus' fall from the peak of Mount Olympus. The shaft is as long as her torso, of fire-hardened, gnarly olive wood, wrapped so tightly in thick iron wire, singed into place, that the wood underneath is invisible. On the pommel of the haft, is embedded a large, round, polished mass of agate.
• Camp Half-Blood: As a fourteen-year-old, Agate is definitely a camper. She doesn't go to all her classes; she usually skips arts and crafts, as she considers her work in the forge art enough. She loves wrestling and weapons-sparring, and she's one of the top female wrestlers at camp, although a few of the Ares and one of the unclaimed Hermes girls were clearly better. She looks up to one of the old Hephaestus campers; the 24-year-old Charles Beckendorf, simply called Beckendorf by all. He had paid a visit to camp during Agate's second summer.
• RP Sample:
Agate sat, mind wandering, next to her best friend, Christian, son of Athena, on one of the upper benches of the amphitheater surrounding the sparring ring. Christian lived in Montana with his dad and his dad's new wife and step-daughter. He had once remarked about how absurd his name was "for the son of a deity of another religion, and a religion of the type that the religion I'm named for spent the first millennium of its creation trying to wipe out." Down bellow, a son of Ares was wrestling a son of Apollo. The Ares kid was winning. Christian was talking about something. Something about his family. She tuned in for a moment to try and catch up: "--but my step-mom wants her to stay close; she's thinking, like, MSU or something--" That's right-- he was talking about his step-sister's collage plans. As soon as she had established this, her attention snapped back to the field. She was considering challenging the Ares kid next. He didn't seem too hard, and it was always amusing to watch a 'tough' guy's expression when he found out he was supposed to be facing a girl. Or sometimes they wouldn't even notice she was a girl, and try to kick her between the legs, or grab her chest to throw her, and get a nasty surprise. She snickered at that.
Her snicker alerted Christian to the fact that she wasn't listening. He stopped mid-sentence, and said loudly, "Agg, you weren't listening, were you?"
Agate's head snapped around to look at her, and she realized she had been busted again. Then again, he should have expected it. "Sorry," she smiled sheepishly. "You know me! I would have thought you would have expected it by now."
It was his turn to smile. "True, true. Now, when did you zone out?"
She fought for a moment to remember. "Something about MSU. Your step-mom wants to send Alice to MSU. Do you think I should challenge that guy next? I think I could beat him..."
Christian grinned at his friend's extremely obvious ADHD. "Probably," he agreed.
