Name : Guinevere Lawful née Curtis, but only old people call her Guinevere
Nickname : Vanora, also will go by Granny and basically anything else except for Guinevere. If you call her by Mrs. Curtis, however, she will direct you to pay your respects to her mother
Age :88 89 90
Birthday : December 22nd
Gender : Female
Nationality : American
Category : Teacher / Staff / NPC
Appearance Description : Vanora stands at five feet and five inches tall. She had dark blonde hair once, but by now, it's all faded to a light, ivory-grey color. She keeps it cut in a bob. There are many wrinkles on her face but they're offset by dark brown eyes and a heart shaped face. Her nose, however, has a twisted shape to it, from the time when she accidentally knocked herself out with a spell and smacked face first into a window. There is a noticeable scar that curves into her right eyebrow, from another clumsy accident, and a burn mark on the right side of her chin from a failed experiment in spell creation.
Vanora is fit for her age, although her strength is more in her arms than her legs these days. Though she's perfectly capable of breaking somebody's face with her bare hands, she often uses a walker to get around. People learn very quickly not to mess with this walker because Vanora has essentially turned it into the equivalent of a mobile magic circle. Bad things happen to people who aren't keyed into it.
Vanora likes wearing floral printed long sleeved dresses and white sneakers. It doesn't matter if it doesn't look good on her -she's old, after all, and a widow. So what does she care?
Personality Description : Vanora has been around a while, maybe not as long as some people, but it's good enough. For a person who doesn't have wacky immortality or time based magic, she thinks that she's done pretty good for herself. Which is why she can call bullshit when she sees it. She won't hesitate to call something stupid if she thinks it is but she also will linger on the issue, figure out why the thing that makes it stupid has to be there, and then attempt to replace it. Repeatedly.
Vanora is of the opinion that you can always cheat life. Always. The problem is that life sometimes cheats back, so if you're going to do something stupid, you had better plan ahead. That said, if the cost looks too great, Vanora will content herself with theoreticals. The goal, afterall is to live to two hundred. She isn't sure if that's possible but she's going to damn well try. Since she knows that some people will violently disagree with her on certain points, she's not above withholding information or misleading people. Technical truths are almost a specialty.
Active Abilities: The section about Vanora's base power is almost entirely just a long explanation about how her branch of magic operates, for reference in her magic classes. Actual abilities that come as a result of this power come after that section.
Erudite Arcana - Vanora is what most people would call a practitioner of "traditional" magic. That is to say, she's the kind who will break out the spell books and magic circles in order to get what she wants. Not the wands, though. Wands are for beginners only. If you put a wand in the hand of somebody who actually knows what they're doing, it'll just explode. So it's a great way to figure out when you don't need to use one anymore.
Studying anything is boring but for Vanora's line of work, it's necessary. And it's slow. Oh, sure, anybody can go ahead and just cram knowledge into their brains but there's a fair chance that being greedy like that will just result in lots of explosions. And besides, rushing forward like that is just rude. Since magic is an entity in itself, that rudeness can have deadly consequences. A common saying among magicians of Vanora's breed is that "magic has to be courted like a lover, respected like a wife, and hidden like a mistress."
What this means is that when a magician wants magic to do something, the magic has to be first offered something in return. For standard, mundane spells, this usually amounts to small sacrifices of incense, crystals, and so on. Those spells are usually standard and given enough usage, they'll be . For larger spells, the thing that must be offered is either time or ability. Time can be given up as years off of somebody's lifespan or simply that the spell itself will take a very long time to be prepared. Ability can be given up as almost anything, as long as it is somehow related to the spell that the magician wants to master. In Vanora's case, she forever gave up the ability to prepare food in any manner (a very bad decision from her rebellious teenage years) in exchange for the ability to create and control fire at whim.
An important thing to note is that both time and ability have different tiers that magic recognizes. Giving up your sense of sight is considered more weighty than giving up your ability to read because the former is a base skill normally bestowed by birth and the creation of life is considered the greatest feat of magic. The other skill is merely acquired. Between birth skills and acquired skills, however, there are skill necessary to survival such as the ability to prepare food which Vanora had given up. Vanora's case is especially extreme because she cannot even cut an apple without it going right up in flames.
It is not recommended for any magician to simultaneously use spells from different creators. This is because spells that are widely taught usually belong to distinctively different schools of theory, general categories that any magician can easily understand. Mixing spells together can therefore result in disaster. As for spells that are not widely taught, those are mainly for personal use only and are only obtained through devoted apprenticeship or by prying it from some magician's cold, dead fingers. Again, due to theory differences, it still may not work the same.
Vanora can in theory work from multiple spell books at once. Not many, but a few. At her age, she's had enough experience to pull it off. But then she might end up doing something stupid like many old magicians do and blow herself up. That's definitely not on her list. One spell book is plenty, thank you very much.
Magician's Folly - There comes a time when most magicians will decide to stupid take on a much younger person and attempt to teach them about magic. Vanora is unfortunately not exempt from this. Like all magicians, she is able to coax the ability to practice magic out of potential students. If this person has no magic to start with, it normally begins with her beaning them over the head with a book to let the knowledge "seep into their heads." In reality, she just needs that slight moment of shock to get through their defenses and send a jolt into their systems, just a streak of her own power that they can borrow. After time, if she decides that she likes them enough, she'll give them another jolt and their bodies will simply adapt to produce their own magic without her help from that point on. If she doesn't like them, then she'll just forget about it. It has to be noted, however, that the student will be required as somebody not born with magic to make a special concession to it. Sometimes this will be a one time deal, sometimes it will be a repeated process.
For people who already have magic, that sort of magic is usually not entirely compatible with the sort of magic that Vanora practices. So what Vanora has to do is break off a bit of that person's magic and convert it into the kind that she can work with. The conversions are usually small, because that's more manageable and less of a shock on the body. Again, if she decides she likes the person, it just takes a jolt to ensure that the new magic starts being produced naturally. However, the presence of this new magic may disrupt the magic that the person already has.
Fire Manipulation - Vanora is able to create and control fire. The yellow and red flames are the easiest, which is good, because then she then she can blow things up faster. Blue flames are the hardest to manipulate but the difficulty definitely isn't the same as when she was young. Whenever she tries to do anything resembling the preparation of food, though, her magic will kick in and automatically burn it up. It doesn't matter if it's not even touching her or not. The food will be destroyed completely. Because of this, Vanora is incapable of making food for herself and has to have somebody cook it for her. And put it on the plate for her. More or less. At least putting something in the microwave isn't considered preparing food. But scooping out ice cream is. Well. At least she can still paint.
Spell Book : Useful Spells for the Relatively Easy Life of Being a Magician Painting in the Wilderness (Or Not) : Nixon Atwater : Spells to make paintbrushes instantly clean (with the grime sliding right off), spells to prevent paint from drying out before it is used, spells to measure out exact amounts of pigment, spells to ensure that paint remains clean before and after being applied, spells to clean paintings up without damaging them, spells to preserve newly finished paintings, spells to clean paint off of skin (again, with the paint just sliding off).
Birth Place / Hometown : Boston, Massachusetts
Occupation : Art / Magic Teacher
Father : William Curtis (Deceased 120, Died 97)
Mother : Helen Curtis née Laughingwood (110)
Siblings(s) : Cassandra White née Curtis aka old hag White (87) Retired Elementary School Teacher, Deborah Armstong née Curtis aka old cow Armstrong (80) , Laurence Curtis aka lame leg Larry (76), Theodora Sanders née Curtis aka little sis Sanders who has a thing about turtles (74)
Spouse : Theodore Lawful (Deceased 92, Died 75)
Children : Linnet Newbury née Lawful (63), Cornelia Merriweather née Lawful (58), Bernard Lawful (55)
Grandchildren : Tristan Newbury (30), Rachel Newbury (25), Christina Newbury (20), Caius Coriander Merriweather (33), Loralai Lovage Merriweather (31), Fay Fennel Merriweather (27), Arlene Anise Merriweather (30), Laura Lawful (31), Christopher Lawful (27)
Biography : Vanora was born the second child of an already established family of magicians. Though her hometown was Boston, her family often went up and down the east coast, visiting family members and friends all throughout the year. So Vanora's childhood was one constantly that was bombarded with movement and people. And magic. There was the magic.
Vanora actually was the type of child who didn't care much about magic at all. Studying was just another burden on her. What she really wanted to do was paint. Now that was actually doing something, and leaving proof. Using magic was just like cheating. Too easy, absolutely no proof of the deed if you wanted to show it to normal people. And if you showed it to magicians, well. They were all older and they'd probably just give her an annoyingly condescending smile and tell her what a good girl she was. (Ha! Now she got to be that annoying old woman who did all that. Needless to say, Vanora is presently quite okay with doing things the easy way.) In the end, it all came down to a bet. Some idiot at a party once joked that she couldn't get through a spell book to save her life.
She proved him wrong. So very wrong. And on a whim, she sacrificed her ability to prepare food in any capacity. Sure, maybe her family was furious at her for a few years -it had destroyed her marriage prospects- but what was a little teenage rebellion every now and then? She hadn't wanted to marry any of those snobby, upper crust magicians anyways.
Vanora went at her new position as a professional magician casually. She liked painting so she kept at that, just for fun. It wasn't like she needed much money anyways. There wasn't much she wanted, and if things went bad fast, her siblings wouldn't let her starve. Although she did hate the idea of going to any of them for help. They would laugh at her for eternity if she did.
For the most part, things went well. She even found a nice, socially dumb but otherwise intelligent man to kind of settle down. He wasn't a magician when she found him but he was one for about a week, when Vanora tried to teach him magic. After accidentally destroying the entire living room and ripping off the front of the house, they decided to call it quits.
Husband, children, house on the prairie, more practical house on a farm, grandchildren. Magic. It was a good life. And then some people went off and died in different ways. But fine, whatever. She'd get them for that later, just wait.
Nowadays, Vanora's found around Starlight Academy. She moved there with her husband about a decade before he went died. Very rude of him to do so. She takes her anger out on the kids that play on her lawn and the ones that sleep in her classes. It's nice in its own way.
Nickname : Vanora, also will go by Granny and basically anything else except for Guinevere. If you call her by Mrs. Curtis, however, she will direct you to pay your respects to her mother
Age :
Birthday : December 22nd
Gender : Female
Nationality : American
Category : Teacher / Staff / NPC
Appearance Description : Vanora stands at five feet and five inches tall. She had dark blonde hair once, but by now, it's all faded to a light, ivory-grey color. She keeps it cut in a bob. There are many wrinkles on her face but they're offset by dark brown eyes and a heart shaped face. Her nose, however, has a twisted shape to it, from the time when she accidentally knocked herself out with a spell and smacked face first into a window. There is a noticeable scar that curves into her right eyebrow, from another clumsy accident, and a burn mark on the right side of her chin from a failed experiment in spell creation.
Vanora is fit for her age, although her strength is more in her arms than her legs these days. Though she's perfectly capable of breaking somebody's face with her bare hands, she often uses a walker to get around. People learn very quickly not to mess with this walker because Vanora has essentially turned it into the equivalent of a mobile magic circle. Bad things happen to people who aren't keyed into it.
Vanora likes wearing floral printed long sleeved dresses and white sneakers. It doesn't matter if it doesn't look good on her -she's old, after all, and a widow. So what does she care?
Personality Description : Vanora has been around a while, maybe not as long as some people, but it's good enough. For a person who doesn't have wacky immortality or time based magic, she thinks that she's done pretty good for herself. Which is why she can call bullshit when she sees it. She won't hesitate to call something stupid if she thinks it is but she also will linger on the issue, figure out why the thing that makes it stupid has to be there, and then attempt to replace it. Repeatedly.
Vanora is of the opinion that you can always cheat life. Always. The problem is that life sometimes cheats back, so if you're going to do something stupid, you had better plan ahead. That said, if the cost looks too great, Vanora will content herself with theoreticals. The goal, afterall is to live to two hundred. She isn't sure if that's possible but she's going to damn well try. Since she knows that some people will violently disagree with her on certain points, she's not above withholding information or misleading people. Technical truths are almost a specialty.
Active Abilities: The section about Vanora's base power is almost entirely just a long explanation about how her branch of magic operates, for reference in her magic classes. Actual abilities that come as a result of this power come after that section.
Erudite Arcana - Vanora is what most people would call a practitioner of "traditional" magic. That is to say, she's the kind who will break out the spell books and magic circles in order to get what she wants. Not the wands, though. Wands are for beginners only. If you put a wand in the hand of somebody who actually knows what they're doing, it'll just explode. So it's a great way to figure out when you don't need to use one anymore.
Studying anything is boring but for Vanora's line of work, it's necessary. And it's slow. Oh, sure, anybody can go ahead and just cram knowledge into their brains but there's a fair chance that being greedy like that will just result in lots of explosions. And besides, rushing forward like that is just rude. Since magic is an entity in itself, that rudeness can have deadly consequences. A common saying among magicians of Vanora's breed is that "magic has to be courted like a lover, respected like a wife, and hidden like a mistress."
What this means is that when a magician wants magic to do something, the magic has to be first offered something in return. For standard, mundane spells, this usually amounts to small sacrifices of incense, crystals, and so on. Those spells are usually standard and given enough usage, they'll be . For larger spells, the thing that must be offered is either time or ability. Time can be given up as years off of somebody's lifespan or simply that the spell itself will take a very long time to be prepared. Ability can be given up as almost anything, as long as it is somehow related to the spell that the magician wants to master. In Vanora's case, she forever gave up the ability to prepare food in any manner (a very bad decision from her rebellious teenage years) in exchange for the ability to create and control fire at whim.
An important thing to note is that both time and ability have different tiers that magic recognizes. Giving up your sense of sight is considered more weighty than giving up your ability to read because the former is a base skill normally bestowed by birth and the creation of life is considered the greatest feat of magic. The other skill is merely acquired. Between birth skills and acquired skills, however, there are skill necessary to survival such as the ability to prepare food which Vanora had given up. Vanora's case is especially extreme because she cannot even cut an apple without it going right up in flames.
It is not recommended for any magician to simultaneously use spells from different creators. This is because spells that are widely taught usually belong to distinctively different schools of theory, general categories that any magician can easily understand. Mixing spells together can therefore result in disaster. As for spells that are not widely taught, those are mainly for personal use only and are only obtained through devoted apprenticeship or by prying it from some magician's cold, dead fingers. Again, due to theory differences, it still may not work the same.
Vanora can in theory work from multiple spell books at once. Not many, but a few. At her age, she's had enough experience to pull it off. But then she might end up doing something stupid like many old magicians do and blow herself up. That's definitely not on her list. One spell book is plenty, thank you very much.
Magician's Folly - There comes a time when most magicians will decide to stupid take on a much younger person and attempt to teach them about magic. Vanora is unfortunately not exempt from this. Like all magicians, she is able to coax the ability to practice magic out of potential students. If this person has no magic to start with, it normally begins with her beaning them over the head with a book to let the knowledge "seep into their heads." In reality, she just needs that slight moment of shock to get through their defenses and send a jolt into their systems, just a streak of her own power that they can borrow. After time, if she decides that she likes them enough, she'll give them another jolt and their bodies will simply adapt to produce their own magic without her help from that point on. If she doesn't like them, then she'll just forget about it. It has to be noted, however, that the student will be required as somebody not born with magic to make a special concession to it. Sometimes this will be a one time deal, sometimes it will be a repeated process.
For people who already have magic, that sort of magic is usually not entirely compatible with the sort of magic that Vanora practices. So what Vanora has to do is break off a bit of that person's magic and convert it into the kind that she can work with. The conversions are usually small, because that's more manageable and less of a shock on the body. Again, if she decides she likes the person, it just takes a jolt to ensure that the new magic starts being produced naturally. However, the presence of this new magic may disrupt the magic that the person already has.
Fire Manipulation - Vanora is able to create and control fire. The yellow and red flames are the easiest, which is good, because then she then she can blow things up faster. Blue flames are the hardest to manipulate but the difficulty definitely isn't the same as when she was young. Whenever she tries to do anything resembling the preparation of food, though, her magic will kick in and automatically burn it up. It doesn't matter if it's not even touching her or not. The food will be destroyed completely. Because of this, Vanora is incapable of making food for herself and has to have somebody cook it for her. And put it on the plate for her. More or less. At least putting something in the microwave isn't considered preparing food. But scooping out ice cream is. Well. At least she can still paint.
Spell Book : Useful Spells for the Relatively Easy Life of Being a Magician Painting in the Wilderness (Or Not) : Nixon Atwater : Spells to make paintbrushes instantly clean (with the grime sliding right off), spells to prevent paint from drying out before it is used, spells to measure out exact amounts of pigment, spells to ensure that paint remains clean before and after being applied, spells to clean paintings up without damaging them, spells to preserve newly finished paintings, spells to clean paint off of skin (again, with the paint just sliding off).
There is nothing of interest here.
Birth Place / Hometown : Boston, Massachusetts
Occupation : Art / Magic Teacher
Father : William Curtis (Deceased 120, Died 97)
Mother : Helen Curtis née Laughingwood (110)
Siblings(s) : Cassandra White née Curtis aka old hag White (87) Retired Elementary School Teacher, Deborah Armstong née Curtis aka old cow Armstrong (80) , Laurence Curtis aka lame leg Larry (76), Theodora Sanders née Curtis aka little sis Sanders who has a thing about turtles (74)
Spouse : Theodore Lawful (Deceased 92, Died 75)
Children : Linnet Newbury née Lawful (63), Cornelia Merriweather née Lawful (58), Bernard Lawful (55)
Grandchildren : Tristan Newbury (30), Rachel Newbury (25), Christina Newbury (20), Caius Coriander Merriweather (33), Loralai Lovage Merriweather (31), Fay Fennel Merriweather (27), Arlene Anise Merriweather (30), Laura Lawful (31), Christopher Lawful (27)
Biography : Vanora was born the second child of an already established family of magicians. Though her hometown was Boston, her family often went up and down the east coast, visiting family members and friends all throughout the year. So Vanora's childhood was one constantly that was bombarded with movement and people. And magic. There was the magic.
Vanora actually was the type of child who didn't care much about magic at all. Studying was just another burden on her. What she really wanted to do was paint. Now that was actually doing something, and leaving proof. Using magic was just like cheating. Too easy, absolutely no proof of the deed if you wanted to show it to normal people. And if you showed it to magicians, well. They were all older and they'd probably just give her an annoyingly condescending smile and tell her what a good girl she was. (Ha! Now she got to be that annoying old woman who did all that. Needless to say, Vanora is presently quite okay with doing things the easy way.) In the end, it all came down to a bet. Some idiot at a party once joked that she couldn't get through a spell book to save her life.
She proved him wrong. So very wrong. And on a whim, she sacrificed her ability to prepare food in any capacity. Sure, maybe her family was furious at her for a few years -it had destroyed her marriage prospects- but what was a little teenage rebellion every now and then? She hadn't wanted to marry any of those snobby, upper crust magicians anyways.
Vanora went at her new position as a professional magician casually. She liked painting so she kept at that, just for fun. It wasn't like she needed much money anyways. There wasn't much she wanted, and if things went bad fast, her siblings wouldn't let her starve. Although she did hate the idea of going to any of them for help. They would laugh at her for eternity if she did.
For the most part, things went well. She even found a nice, socially dumb but otherwise intelligent man to kind of settle down. He wasn't a magician when she found him but he was one for about a week, when Vanora tried to teach him magic. After accidentally destroying the entire living room and ripping off the front of the house, they decided to call it quits.
Husband, children, house on the prairie, more practical house on a farm, grandchildren. Magic. It was a good life. And then some people went off and died in different ways. But fine, whatever. She'd get them for that later, just wait.
Nowadays, Vanora's found around Starlight Academy. She moved there with her husband about a decade before he went died. Very rude of him to do so. She takes her anger out on the kids that play on her lawn and the ones that sleep in her classes. It's nice in its own way.
There is nothing of interest here.
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