[Michelle]

Art by Campanella

Jane Sycamore
6 (As of November 2014)
Female
Mesalian
Human Noise Generator

Spoiler

Jane was born thirty-five years after the war of Veld, in a large, mainland city that was close to the Dusk Portal. She can barely remember her parents: they were passing figures in her earliest years. They were ambassadors for the city, and were often away on long trips to other places--their job was important, the family servants would tell her. They wouldn’t tell her that her parents were busy getting other settlements to join the Alliance, which Jane’s city was a part of. Jane also had an older sister named Veronica, but she was busy getting married to a Lucin man named Colin and starting her own family. So for the first three years of Jane’s life, she was part spoilt by servants, and part neglected by them. They tended to give Jane whatever she wanted, as long as it got her to stop crying. She grew up as a toddler with mountains of toys to play with, though she was expected to play with them alone. She grew up as a toddler who thought that the only way to get someone to spend more than a second with her was to cry. She grew up as a little brat.

Thirty-seven years after the war of Veld, the Alliance still wasn’t making much progress with the Dusk Kingdom. Tensions became high, especially for Jane’s city, and Jane’s parents became worried about the future. No one knew what the Xitians were planning. Jane was only three when her family agreed that it was best to send Jane, Veronica, and Colin to live with their great aunt, far out in the countryside near the Western coasts of the mainland. They left in a carriage with a small handful of guards, but it wasn’t enough. Deep into the twenty-third night of the trip, the carriage broke a wheel. They were far in the countryside by then, and any building, let alone a town, would be days away. The night was deep. There were too many dusk. There was no light to keep them away, and no time to set it up. When Veronica and Colin went to join the guards outside of the carriage, Jane knew something was wrong.

She obeyed when they all told her to stay inside, to keep the door shut until they said it was safe. From the other side of the door, she listened to the swords, and the monsters, and the screaming and the screaming and the screaming… until the horses reared, and the carriage began to move. Jane was already paralysed with fear at that point. She didn’t move, even when she heard the voices shouting her name getting further and further away. Even when what was left of the broken wheel gave up, and the carriage came to a thumping halt. Even when the sun rose. Even when she heard someone approaching.

At first, they went from place to place, trying to find her parents. But it was impossible--she was three years old and barely able to remember her age, let alone her surname, or her city. The first two months were especially terrible for Jane. She didn’t eat, or sleep. She just clung to Cyn Sycamore like he was the last thing left. She would cry and shake at random. But then, she started to forget what happened. She started eating, and then sleeping. She started letting go of Cyn’s arms. She started playing. Accepting that her biological parents weren’t going to be found was easy for Jane, much easier than it was for Cyn. She barely knew them, barely saw them enough to even remember their faces. But Cyn was there, and he was always there. Cyn Sycamore meant safety and consistency. She got used to constantly travelling with him. After seven months, she started calling him ‘papa’.

They stopped looking for her biological parents, and just started travelling to what Cyn referred to as ‘somewhere to stop’. They stayed in random homes Cyn deemed safe, and Jane was often left to play while Cyn worked for their accommodation. It was a simple life, but the lack of groundedness took a toll on Jane. She found she couldn’t play with other children much--it was difficult to make friends when she’d be gone the next day. She often fell behind on her literacy and numeracy--it was difficult to learn when she and Cyn spent most of their time walking. By the time she was six, it seemed Cyn had noticed this, because they were soon on a ship to the Forbidden Lands. However, to Jane, it would just be another adventure: Cyn hadn’t yet told her of his intentions to stop travelling permanently.

Timeline
- 35 AV: Born, Dusk Portal re-opens
- 38 AV: Sent away for safety with Veronica and Colin at 3 years old
- 38 AV: Becomes only survivor of a dusk creature attack, meets Cyn Sycamore at 3 years old
- 38-41 AV: Travels mainland with Cyn for three years
- 41 AV: Leaves for the Forbidden Lands with Cyn at 6 years old

Appearance
Overall, Jane looks like a messy child. She is 106cm tall (roughly 3 feet and 6 inches), with soft, dark-brown skin, and a pudgy, undeveloped physique. Her belly is round and protrudes, and her face is round in shape and features. She has a large, flat nose and a small, thick-lipped mouth. She has dark brown, almost black, afro-textured hair that reaches the middle of her back--it’s poofy and tangled, full of dry, tightly coiled curls that grow outwards, and cluttered with debris: sticks, twigs, leaves, mud, and maybe a dead bug or two. She currently wears it out. Her eyes are the same colour: they’re almond-shaped and they squint when she smiles, her chubby cheeks pushing upwards on her lower lid. When she smiles, one can also see that she’s missing one of her top front teeth. She’s only a kid, but she has a few scars: scabby splotches on her knees from tripping on her boot laces and smacking into a stone road, and a small scar along her hairline from trying to surf down a flight of stairs on a bit of scrap wood. She wears a mid-sleeved, saffron-coloured dress made of cotton, with a midnight blue sash around the waist--underneath that is a white, muslin petticoat that gives her skirt a poofy shape. Her dress is stained with grass, mud, and dust. Peeking out from beneath the chaos of her skirts are a pair of loose, brown, calf-length pants and a sturdy pair of boots: it’s kind of like she’s wearing a princess costume over normal clothing. She smells like sweat and grass.


Vocal Details
Similar to how she moves, Jane doesn’t really exercise restraint when she talks. Thus, Jane’s voice usually rings and can be heard from ages away. It doesn’t matter if she’s indoors or outdoors, or if she’s happy or upset--she is just this constant source of loudness. Generally, she can be fumbly in her speech in that she tends to stop briefly to think mid-sentence, then starts up again (so not a stutter, that’s different). Her voice also has a quality to it that is somewhere between whiny and sing-song--especially when she says someone’s name, which makes her sound like she wants something from you all the time. The only time Jane isn’t loud is when she isn’t confident in herself--when she’s scared, or shy, or just doesn’t want other people to know that something is wrong. Her speech tends to become more fumbly, and she tends to talk through Miffy (i.e. ‘Miffy wants some warm milk’, when she really means she wants warm milk).

Jane has an accent, though it is strange and mixed--vaguely Central European, though only a little similar to Cyn’s. This is the result of Jane growing up while travelling, and having various influences to base her voice on. Another result is Jane’s vocabulary--it’s mostly simple, but she tends to misuse or mispronounce more complex words she’s picked up from some adult somewhere. This also reflects her desire to be seen as an adult. Other speech patterns include: using ‘sorry’ as a way to brush off things and get out of trouble quickly; telling people she hates them far too easily, and I’ll think of more later when I start RPing her.


Physicality
Jane moves without restraint. She tends to not be very conscious of how she looks to other people, and still hasn’t grasped how to lie convincingly. Thus, her movements tend to be big and expressive--again, she has no sense of restraint, so her emotions are always easy to read in her body language and facial expressions: she screws up her entire face, crosses her arms, and stomps around when angry; sticks out her bottom lip, cries, and closes up when upset; and smiles wide with her teeth when happy. Her expressions always show through, even when she’s lying, so she’s not particularly difficult to interact with on this level. However, another consequence to her lack of restraint is that Jane tends to play rough, and show physical affection (like hugging or petting) roughly--this is also because she isn’t used to playing with others, and isn’t aware of her own strength. Cute little animals: beware.

The exception occurs when Jane is scared, as her PTSD makes her feel fear more intensely--which means her movements aren’t just easy to read, but they’re bigger than big. When Jane is scared, she shakes violently. She shrinks herself and cries. She has has trouble breathing. She sucks her thumb, despite being at an age where she should be too old for it. She says and believes things like ‘someone’s gonna get me’, and she refuses to be separated from whoever is around her until she is calmed down.

Jane also has an inability to stay still, and will fidget if made to stand or sit still: she’ll pick grime out of her gross nails, pick earwax from her ears, play with her hair, pick her nose, look around, hum, and will just generally rock her head around. When she sits, she tends to slouch and swing her legs. When made to stand in one spot, she tends to rock between her heel and her toes. Miscellaneous ‘Jane-isms’ include: she always sleeps fully covered by blankets for security; she pushes her hair back when she’s sweaty, and I’ll come up with more later when I start RPing her. Like all of my characters, Jane is left handed.


Personality

Spoiler

Overall, Jane is egocentric and behaves selfishly, even more so than the usual child due to a lack of social interaction with others, specifically people her age. Though her years with Cyn have encouraged Jane to throw tantrums less often, Jane can still be very inconvenient, annoying, demanding, and just plain bratty. Her problems, no matter how minor or superficial, are the crises of the entire universe. However, Jane can be capable of kindness to others, and is able to distinguish right from wrong in a binary sense, but her morals are more based on obedience rather than on understanding (‘I have to share because I will get in trouble if I don’t’ instead of ‘I have to share because it will make others happy’). As she grows, Jane is learning to value less superficial things like family and honesty, but those are still a while away. Currently, what she values most is herself, but more specifically, she values entertainment and positive attention. It’s important to stress that Jane doesn’t only just value these things because she’s a child. These are the result of the upbringing she’s had thus far: Jane has been neglected by many adults (including Cyn to an extent), and has had little interaction with other people her age, which has slightly stunted her social development and made her into a somewhat needy person. While she previously used crying as a means of attention, she has grown to prefer Cyn’s positive attention over attention in general. Many of her days have been spent coming up with new ways to entertain herself. So it suffices to say that entertainment and positive attention are generally what motivate Jane: they’re usually what she wants the most at any given time, in at least one form.

Something else that affects Jane’s behaviour is her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which was caused by the dusk spawn attack that separated her from her biological family (see backstory). Jane’s PTSD manifests itself in a few ways: 1. she has an intense phobia of darkness, night, and dusk spawn, 2. when she is afraid in general, her fear is more intense, 3. she is shy or anxious around new people (though is quick to warm to anyone she deems safe), and 4. she suffers nightmares more frequently. The fact that Jane was very young during the incident hasn’t affected her ability to remember it or be traumatised by it, aside from the fact that years have passed since then. However, Jane has repressed the incident into her subconscious, which means her symptoms are currently minor and are easy to pass off as standard childhood behaviour--it also means Jane can be triggered into remember everything in the future. Despite her PTSD, Jane is sociable and quite extroverted, even to the point of being intrusive or needy. This relates to her constant desire for attention, and the neglect she has experienced. Jane wants to be given the same amount of attention that she believes an adult would receive; being neglected so often has led her to believe that adults only make time for other adults. Thus, Jane is also one of those children who are in a rush to ‘grow up’. Aside from general extroversion, this belief also manifests itself in behaviours like acting tough, demanding that she perform tasks on her own, attempting to follow and join conversations between adults, and mimicking what she perceives as adult behaviours in make-believe (such as performing an occupation, or getting married, or playing ‘house’).

Because Jane is used to being left alone while adults work, and is used to being responsible for her own entertainment, she has developed a vivid and limitless imagination. She enjoys being creative through outlets like drawing, pretending, and inventing new games to play by herself. She also enjoys any activity that stimulates her imagination, like listening or reading stories, or exploring, or simply talking to others. However, a downside to Jane’s imagination is that she often ignores the line between her imagination and reality whenever she’s playing. When she’s playing, reality and fiction become unimportant because fiction is simply more fun, which usually means Jane will get upset whenever her imagined world isn’t respected. When she is the fairy queen, you better bow and call her ‘your majesty’. Outside of play, Jane is mostly fine with understanding what is real, but her energy and entertainment-fueled personality makes it hard for anyone to make her stop playing. Jane tends to get bored easily, and thus her interests shift a lot--she tends to go through phases of obsession with a subject (see current state)--but her interest in being imaginative and creative has always remained a constant in her personality. Another constant is Jane’s imaginary friend, Miffy (see relationships).

Jane likes piggy backs from Cyn, climbing trees and carving her name into the branches so everyone knows she climbed the highest, catching ladybugs, seeing Cyn smile at her, making forts, feeding wild birds food scraps, the wind blowing all her hair back, playing with fire, cracking leaves in Autumn, seeing how many peas or beans she can fit on her fork, drawing, seeing shapes in clouds, dressing up, chasing chickens, and mud drying on her skin. She dislikes runny eggs, the dark, people talking for Miffy, raw tomatoes, sharing, giving her toys away, being asked about her biological family, haircuts, not being allowed outside on a rainy day, being tickled, having her hair combed, when adults care about Xitians more than they do about her, and not being allowed to count on her fingers when doing math. Her favourites are yellow, gingerbread, warm milk with honey, and pretending.

Theme Song
Sleepless - Flume feat. Jezzabell Doran


Capabilities

Spoiler

• Novice Literacy [knowledge]: Jane started learning how to read and write from roughly the age of five, though is somewhat behind for her age due to the travelling lifestyle mentioned late in her backstory. She knows the full alphabet in upper and lower case, and understands that letters represent various sounds and phonetics. When reading and writing, she often has to stop to “sound out” words aloud, which means she will often mispronounce and misspell words. Her handwriting looks like pictures rather than words: she’s still grasping the basic shapes of words and letters, so for instance her lowercase “A” looks like a circle attached to a stick. She understands very basic grammar (i.e. full stop and a capital letter).
  
• Novice Numeracy [knowledge]: Jane started learning numeracy roughly from the age of four, though is also behind on this too due to the travelling lifestyle mentioned late in her backstory. She knows how to read and count numbers up to one hundred, and can count backwards from twenty. She can do simple addition and subtraction (with numbers one to ten) in her head if pushed, but still heavily relies on concrete things like her fingers to help.
  
• Poor Combat [skill]: It’s just worth noting that Jane can’t really defend herself beyond screaming, biting, and hitting--the most she can manage is maybe a critical hit to the nads. Despite her intense fear of dusk, Cyn has not taught Jane how to defend herself--she hasn’t displayed enough responsibility for Cyn to trust her. Like most kids, she relies on others for protection.
  

Goals
- Explore the new home
- Play with Cyn
- Play with someone else
- Read more books
- Hear more stories
- Find out why it rains
- Help catch Princess Happy's husband
- Ask Hara about braiding hair
- Find a good hill to roll down
- Jump in some puddles

Current State
Jane's moved on from her ocean obsession to embrace the foggy hills of Nightveil. For now, however, Jane seems content with exploring, climbing everything and rolling down hills whenever Cyn allows her. It's hard to pretend when you have to follow an adult around all day.


Relationships

Spoiler

Miffy
Jane’s stuffed lion toy, her most valued possession, and her best friend. Jane first saw Miffy in a market, and more or less demanded that Cyn buy Miffy for her. She’s quite attached to Miffy, and is rarely seen without her. She treats Miffy as though she can telepathically communicate to Jane. Despite treating Miffy like a person and expecting others to do the same, Jane does understand that Miffy isn’t quite ‘real’. However, Miffy’s appeal to Jane comes from the fact that she’s a special imaginary friend just for Jane: no one else can hear Miffy, and Miffy can be whatever Jane needs or wants her to be (which of course means Jane gets upset when other people try to talk for Miffy, or dictate what Miffy is like). Thus, Jane is only bothered by Miffy’s lack of ‘realness’ when it matters: that is, when Jane needs to actually talk to someone, and not an imaginary lion. Jane will assert that Miffy’s a girl lion, despite the woolen mane around her neck suggesting otherwise. For a description of Miffy, see the items section.

Papa (Cynnabue)
Jane has known and lived with Cyn for three years, which means he’s been there for her as far back as she can remember. Though she is quick to say that she hates Cyn whenever she’s upset with him, she loves him deeply, but naively--because Jane doesn’t actually know that much about him. This is because her egocentricity has kept her from asking Cyn too many questions about himself, and Cyn has a tendency to put aside bonding in favour of work. Thus, Jane isn’t bothered by her lack of actual closeness to Cyn beyond the lack of attention she receives from him, which gives their relationship an interesting dynamic--while Cyn is hesitant to love Jane, Jane demands to be loved back. Jane considers Cyn as her ‘real’ father, despite knowing he’s not her biological father--this came about when Jane asked him if he was her ‘real papa’, and he replied, ‘if you feel like I am’. For this reason, Jane gets upset when people refer to her biological family with words like ‘real’.

Zark (Zarkaylia)
Jane is nearly comfortable around Zark--they were on the same ship over, a while they didn't speak to each other until they arrived in Nightveil, Zark is familiar, and seems friendly. She even acknowledged Miffy, which is quite important to Jane. It means Zark respects her pretend.

Mr Clark (Victor)


Seven
Jane isn't sure about Seven, but because he looks like he might be another kid, Jane is interested in trying to talk to him. She just needs to get used to him.

Hara
Jane's mostly neutral to Hara--after all, they've barely talked--but she's also a little spiteful towards her. It's hard for Jane not to be, since Hara's presence meant Cyn excluded her from their adult conversation. Jane's jealous.

Chathra
Jane doesn't like Chathra--my characters aren't allowed to like each other. Chathra made the mistake of asking Cyn if he was Jane's real father, which is definitely no bueno. On top of that, Chathra served some ugly soup that was lumpy and brown. Jane also doesn't appreciate how Chathra speaks mostly to Cyn and not her--it makes her feel left out.

Items

• One small pouch bag (x1 Chest: ‘Small Pouch Bag’). Plain burlap, coarsely woven. Has long, drawstring straps so it may be worn like a satchel. Just a child-sized travelling bag. Only sometimes on her person--mostly used as an easy way to carry Miffy.
  
• One stuffed lion toy (x1 Pufferfish: ‘Miffy (Stuffed Lion Toy)’). Plain wool as a body, finely knitted, stuffed with straw. Brown woolen mane, brown knitted face. Something like this. Old and worn-out. Smells like sea water. Slightly dusty. Almost always carried by Jane. See relationships for more information.
  
• One tunic (x1 Yellow Leather Armour: ‘Child’s Yellow Tunic’). Saffron-yellow cotton, mid-sleeved. Well made. Lightly stained. Currently stuffed into Jane’s bag.
  
• One wide-toothed comb (x1 Ladder: ‘Small Wooden Comb’). Wooden, plain design. Wide-toothed for thick, bushy tangles. Currently kept in Jane’s bag.
  
• One waterskin (1x Leather: ‘Waterskin’). Has a strap so it can be worn like a bag. Currently worn on Jane’s person.
  
• One charcoal pencil (1x Charcoal: ‘Charcoal Pencil’). About the length of a thumb, well used. Currently kept in Jane’s bag.
  
• One book (1x Book and Quill: ‘Jane’s Notebook’). Leather hardcover, with 'JANE' pressed into the leather. Small, thin. Thick pages. Very worn from adventures, including tears, food stains, and water damage. Plenty of drawings, scribbles, and attempts at writing and math inside (see notebook contents). Currently in Jane’s bag.