Kindness and goodness are not the same thing.

User Name/Nick: Sy
User DW: N/A
Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal: anstaar on both plurk & discord or PM to character journal
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Antryg Windrose, Fitz Kreiner, Nokov & Armand

Character Name: Simon Torquill
Series: October Daye
Age: ~ approximately 400
From When?: At the end of The Winter Long, he bleeds out after being hit by an arrow

Inmate Justification: Simon is willing to sell his soul to the (metaphorical) devil to save the people he loves. It’s not that he doesn’t care about the people he harms along the way, it’s just that that doesn’t stop him. His crimes range from helping his patron’s political standing by gathering information to trapping his brother’s wife and young child in a black void for years. Once he gave himself to the service of his patron, he’s not entirely in control of his actions, but the first choice was his. He hates himself for what he’s done, but he claims he’d do it all again. He’s always needed help to be a better person, and a warden can help him get there with more active agency on his part.

Arrival: against his will, because he has made some mistakes in terms of where he’s put his service before

Abilities/Powers:
• Even when they aren’t trying, Fae tend to overwhelm humans and make them want to obey them. There’s a punishing beauty to them that doesn’t do anyone any good but can do them a world of harm
o Stuck in his human illusion
• He can mimic the magic of someone else by using their blood
o Can’t use magic that would actively harm others
• He can experience what has happened to someone by tasting their blood, which gives him access to memories and – if they’re alive – a way to communicate with them/overwhelm their mind. It can be extremely unpleasant since the user can feel emotions and hear thoughts and the effects can linger
o Can’t control someone else’s mind & can only take blood consensually
• Very powerful illusions that go beyond just being able to hide himself or appear different than he is all the way to having a physical ‘reality’ if you’re in them i.e. a dungeon covered with an illusion of comfort will feel comfortable to someone as long as they’re in it
o Can’t create anything dangerous
o Weak enough that people can break out of them with focus
• He can create wards, but it takes a lot of work
• He really likes/is talented at turning people into things like fish or trees
o Cannot transform people without consent
• Can’t use aggressive/destructive spells (like setting something on fire) in general

Inmate Information:

Simon is a Daoine Sidhe one of the races of Faerie and like all the races of Faerie the Daoine Sidhe have a Firstborn. They’re just unlucky to have Eira Rosynhwyr, whose method of dealing with her children was to tell them that they needed to avoid entangling themselves with other races of Faerie and gather power for her once she returned in order to get her love. As Firstborn, Eira has power over the Daoine Sidhe, able to cloud their minds and do her bidding without much effort.

He has the sort of abandonment issues that come when someone who’s born to expect immortality in those he loves has to deal with his parents dying when he’s still (for his race) young. Which is to say, he has absolutely not dealt with it in any way, not even to the extent of acknowledging how much it drives him. When he thinks of his failures it about how he couldn’t save his parents, he couldn’t save his sister, and he couldn’t even save himself. He believes he has a responsibility to fix things, so things that are out of his control become personal failings. He can’t stand losing people, and he can’t bear to let more people in.

When Simon loses all his memories of the people he tried to make himself a better person for and is twisted to be his worst self, he accept that even though he knew that his patron lied to him and never wanted him well he keeps to her because he has nothing else. He will pick a monster that lies to him because he believes he’ll be useful and so she won’t leave him. He’ll burn himself through rather than be alone.

He’s described as a man inclined to make poor choices, but always for his family, and it’s true. The most obvious and most destructive example of this is the deal he makes when his daughter disappears and, as he puts it, he got the strength to do whatever he needed to do, and all he had to give up was his autonomy, his integrity, and the love of his twin brother, Sylvester. But he freely made earlier choices which look less serious on the surface but play an important part in the later, larger ones.

Simon grows to resent Sylvester a great deal – a fault in their relationship that grows ever deeper. Sylvester certainly has his flaws as a brother, but a lot of Simon’s resentment is based on boxes that he puts himself into (and not helped by not being there when their parents died while Sylvester was). Sylvester is a hero, and so Simon feels that he has no choice but to play the fool – the charming brother with the silver tongue that no one takes too seriously, the one who could flirt and flatter – that he says Sylvester needs, despite hating to look the fool. But Simon was the one who decided on this. Nothing forced him except his belief that this was what was needed. At any point he could’ve broken with him not just as an internal matter of jealousy but by changing his reputation. It wouldn’t be simple or necessarily easy, but it was something he could’ve done. He could’ve chosen to try to honestly stand with his brother or fully broken with him, but he chose a place in between and lied about what he felt and grew more upset at his lies being believed.

Simon has a friend he considers closer than his brother, but he lies to him too. He plays the same games pretending to enjoy the frivolous and not take anything seriously. Not all of it is a lie and his friend can see through some of it, but, again, Simon is preventing people from seeing who he wants to be seen as. It also causes a distance that means he isn’t in a place where he feels he can talk about relationship issues because that would be an honesty he doesn’t really give to anyone.

This distance and the lies that he builds his life on ends with him having very few anchors to the world that encourage him to want to be his better self, and so when his daughter August – the center of his world – disappears he’s willing to do anything to get her back. This includes completely giving himself over to the service of his Firstborn, who he knows isn’t a kind mistress.

He’s stubborn, often arrogant, and absolutely sure of his own brilliance. He gets distracted by the smallest of tasks and has trouble focusing on things that don’t interest him. He’s also generally kind, considerate and at his best wants to make things better for others. He means well, but he has a hard time dealing with being idle and has put himself in a life where he’s more idle than he’d like. He would make himself a king for the woman he loves, but she’s not interested in that and so he doesn’t really have a place to direct his ambition.

He feels like he’s been abandoned and sometimes that’s rooted in truth but it’s often equally or more a matter of perception. He claims that he could’ve been found if someone truly cared, and it takes reflection he doesn’t do until he’s forced to realize that it’s not actually true.

His mind was clouded but when he describes himself as a willing slave doing whatever he was asked to do… it’s not entirely a way to pretend he had more agency than he did. Because if he did have a clear mind… he would’ve still done it. He went to sleep with the faces of his wife and daughter in his heart to remind him why he did it, and his heart wasn’t open to many others.

Simon has a bad habit of embracing charitable interpretations of others who don’t necessarily deserve it so he doesn’t have to fully face things. He believed that Eirra would let his sister-in-law and niece go despite knowing that her first instruction was to kill them and his general awareness that she’s a terrible person but believing it means that he doesn’t have to consider that he shattered his brother’s life and family in worse ways than his own.

He loves his wife and daughter, so he lets himself retreat from noticing how badly his daughter is being treated in that she’s locked away from the world with a mother who doesn’t really understand how to love her as her own person) despite the fact that he’s the one who was raised by loving parents who modeled a good relationship with each other and their children. He did his best to love her enough for the walls around the garden, but he wasn’t someone she could trust – and as he sent her back into a situation he knew was emotionally abusive because he thought that that was the one she’d chose, she’s not wrong. He likes to send other people to perform unpleasant tasks on his behalf.

He’s never been stupid or careless, but he is very good at lying to himself. He spends a long time telling himself that he could serve two masters to make everyone happy and because he wanted to learn everything he could. He could tell himself he did nothing wrong and didn’t make any promises he couldn’t keep. He did what he did because he thought it right rather than because a knife was held at his throat. He couldn’t fully lie to himself about the cruelty after time in service because he was treated too cruelly for that, but that’s even more reason for him to believe that it was worth it.

Simon’s made bad choices, and he’s suffered for it to a degree that even those who hate him wouldn’t say it’s proportionate to his actions. It’s been a long time since he was expected to make his own decisions beyond basic necessities of survival. He’s unused to having even the slightest space to himself or being able to trust in the idea of safety. He feels too damaged by his past and too damned by his own choices to ever deserve peace again. He bound himself to a woman who used him as a weapon. He didn’t choose the terrible things he did, and hates himself for carrying them out.

Path to Redemption:

Simon is always going to be someone who prioritizes the people he cares about over a greater cause, but that doesn’t mean being someone who accepts hurting others as an acceptable cost. He needs to grow into the person he could be when freed from others’ control.

He has to deal with the trauma of what he’s been through once he gave up most of his agency and safety or he’ll have a hard time avoiding simply spiraling into only seeing the worst of himself and believing that he can never be better. He doesn’t want to be seen as less than put together and probably won’t deal well with events that strip away those sorts of defenses. He’s likely to get very attached to people he was close to in breaches, and not know how to deal with that. He has to look at how sacrificing everything for the people he loves can hurt them.

He’s spent a lot of time playing chameleon, surviving the various roles he plays by becoming someone else. He can be someone who remembers how to care or someone who’ll shut out any part of him willing to explain. He needs to remember how to be himself, and what that can look like in the future.

He already understands his crimes and he doesn’t need a warden who will point them out, but rather someone who can help him be more constructive. He needs someone who will point out when he’s lying to himself, but not harshly. It’s been a long time since he’s been offered kindness, and it’s all the more important because he believes it’s undeserved.

History: history!

Sample Network Entry: here

Sample RP: here

Special Notes: