Grey Murphy and Princess Ivy

PLAYER
Name: Chicklet
Age: Adult - by age, at least.
Personal Journal: Chicklet
E-mail: DWLogs@writeme.com
AIM/MSN/etc: Plurk: ChickletLARP, aim: Bardess Ookami

CHARACTER
Name: Princess Ivy of Xanth and Grey Murphy of Mundania. (Also known as Grey Mundane.)
Canon: Xanth
Age: Both are adults
Timeline: Between the end of Man From Mundania and the return of the Good Magician, working in his Castle as their service.

Appearance/Chosen PB: They aren't OCs, but they are from a novel, so I had to cast it myself. Grey is said to be plain and bland with "hair colored hair" someone that you could pass in a crowd and forget you saw them from middle of nowhere. College student. Ivy is supposed to be a little shorter than him, and pretty, with green tinted hair (it turns blond in the absence of magic), eyes, and eyebrows. Since I could find pictures of them together, I used Arthur Darvill and Johanna Christie. I edited her hair to green tones. They are a little older than they aught to be, but were the best I could find.
Items with character at canon point: While I would love Ivy to have Stanly Steamer, I some how doubt she'd be allowed to bring one of the most ferocious Dragons in all of Xanth. For items, this can be fairly flexible given canon point, and anything you don't want them to have, I'll nix.
I was thinking he is probably dressed more or less mundane, so jeans, shirt, vest, knapsack, though his shoes were plucked ripe from a shoe tree. She is dressed more Xanthian, long traveling gown, and lady slippers, and a crown.
~If alright, I'd like him to have a standard (for Xanth) enchanted sword on his hip. They make the wielder competent, by moving for him.
~They each carry a small magic mirror that will of course not allow them to call home (whoops) though will connect to any other magic mirrors in play if the other player wants them to.
~She would have a few primed seeds, charged with her mother's magic, so they'll grow on command. Lady slipper plant, bread fruit, milkweed, pie tree, and choke vine for defense.
~I love the idea that he has a knapsack that has a few odds and ends including his very mundane pocket knife, a tax manual (it actually came up in canon!), an eye-queue vine (a vine made of braided eyes that attaches itself to someone's skull, and makes them think they are smart. Unless they have some previously hidden intellect, it doesn't actually make them smarter. Most people more or less act drunk, thinking they're geniuses and being boorish and pushy about their ideas), a hand full of cherries (small red balls that look like fruit and cause minor explosions), a book of American Sign language, a change of clothes for him and Ivy each, and a hypnogourd which would be startlingly inoperative in Ruby City, confusing them terribly.
I'd love for her to also have a small bone that (in her world only, here will do nothing) summon a cyclops she is friendly with, a harpy feather that would (again in her world only) summon a male harpy she is friendly with, A bright green dragon scale, and a note book. this would be a book that depending on the page it is opened to will either play music - a NOTE book, or it will comment on things of note.


If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?:Only each other. They will be played on the same journal so that their posts will combine each into a single post so as to not spam anything. Things just between them will either happen in threads with others, handwaved, or posted as a one and done for if anyone wants to read it. I can post these in my journal rather than on the coms if requested.

Personality:
Ivy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magicians_of_Xanth#Ivy
~Ivy is stubborn - More so because what she expects is usually what she gets. This comes out most when bullying Hugo into being as smart as she knows he can be (when she was a child), and with Grey when she is determined to prove to him that magic exists, even when his talent (unbeknownst to them) keeps making paper tigers of the threats of the gourd. (How did they wind up in the paper world, anyway?)
~Ivy is kind and caring - As seen in Dragon on a Pedestal; when despite her own predicament (picklement), she wants to help the goblin and the harpy and the cyclops, and everyone! And when she decides that CLEARLY the dragon bearing down on her is a new friend!
~Ivy is more than a little mischievous, though she mostly grows out of that by the time she befriends her brothers two fiancées. With Princess Nada around, Ivy TRIES to be more lady like and princessly, though she and Nada both Envy Electra's freedom. Ivy does re-find some of that Freedom with Grey.
~Ivy is bright and learns quickly - all the more because she convinced herself at a very young age that she was and did. Given her talent (amplification via belief) works on herself as well as anyone, and that it doesn't fade as she always believes in her self, she is quite competent. This also goes to her being self assured.

Grey - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magicians_of_Xanth#Grey
That's his Wiki but I'd say ignore it, it tells you little.
Grey in short believed his life to be bland, boring, and well... mundane. It took a lot of work on Ivy and Sending's behalf to crack that belief, and he grew up fast during Man From Mundania.
~Grey is caring. Even when he didn't believe in magic, he still tried to help Girad the giant in the Gourd, passing up multiple offers of reward. He also was concerned enough to track down the source of the river of blood in the first place.
~Grey is resourceful. Unused to magic, and unknowing of his talent for most of the book, Grey had to find mundane ways to get through various situations that the magical residents of Xanth took for granted. He also helped Ivy navigate Mundania, even when he could no longer speak to her. And he was a huge help in getting Electra back to the magical ambiance before her age caught up to her. Grey also figured out that the best way to get a prophetic priestess to have enough gibberish to spew was to give her a copy of the tax code.
~Confidant. he did not start out this way, but learning his power, discovering his love for Ivy and for Xanth, he grew in confidence and found himself. He is comfortable enough with himself, in the end, to accept the fact that one day... he may well be QUEEN of Xanth, when his wife becomes king.
~self-sacrificing/honorable - When they discovered the truth about him, and how he was promised to the evil machine Com Pewter by his parents when they were fleeing Xanth, he knew that if he remained in Xanth, even though he had not been the one to make the promise, he would have to honor it. But he also knew that the evil machine wanted him as part of a plot to kill good people and take over Xanth. He saw that the only honorable way to handle things was to return to Mundania, since the geis was on his time in Xanth only. When Ivy was prepared to give up the home she loved, and her family, he took pains to ensure she couldn't, because while she would make his life worth living, even in Mundania, he knew that she would not survive it. And he loved her too much to let her suffer that way. Thankfully another answer was found, and they were able to stay together, in Xanth. But as of this canon point the Geis is only suspended, not removed.


Background:
Her story:

Ivy was born of a magician and a sorceress (ruled Magician class in time of emergency and thanks to Ivy she later earned it), and seemed at first a disappointment, as she seemed to have no strong or noticeable magic. Her parents even thought her somewhat slow. But really Ivy was a rather clever child who just had some wrong ideas. Her dad's friend Smash Ogre did very well by making people think he wasn't as smart as he was, and doing what they expected. So she tried to act like what others expected, though secretly she believed herself to be very smart and clever and sneaky. So of course she was. When she was really little, she got lost in the wilds of Xanth. She decided that the rejuvenated Gap Dragon - the single most ferocious monster in all of Xanth was her new friend and playmate! And he was so friendly! And he loved hugs! He turned out to be surprisingly susceptible to her. And then she met Hugo, who she decided was her knight in shiney armor. She thought knights were handsome and brave and super smart, and over time and exposure to her, he became so. (though this fades when she is absent from him for too long, but pops right back when she is focused on him again - usually when she mirrors because she needs help squirming out of trouble as a preteen.)
The three had a grand adventure in the midst of one of the biggest crises that Xanth had ever faced, and Stanly (the gap dragon) and Hugo - both bolstered by her belief in them - managed to save the day.

She was taken home, and allowed to keep the gap dragon as a pet for as long as he wanted to stay, but they now knew she was bright, and expected her to practice her talent and study. And they hired Zora the Zombie as a housekeeper/nursemaid. And Zora liked to wax when it rained meaning Ivy was often looking for mischief to get her away from the castle. And when her baby brother Dolph was born, she tried to get him into enough trouble that her parents would return him to the cabbage patch for the stork to take back.

Of course, Dolph was quite capable of getting himself into his own messes. At once point, when Ivy's only close friends were Stanly (who had gone back to the gap chasm), Hugo (who had vanished when the Good Magician did), and her pun-pal Rapunzel (who had recently married Grundy Golem and thus had less time for Ivy), Dolph convinced his parents to let him have an adventure with proper adult supervision. Somehow his supervision - a skeleton named Marrow Bones - came home with a female Skeleton whom he married, and Dolph came home with two Fiancées. The two girls, Electra and Princess Nada because fast friends with Ivy and the three of them had all manner of adventures in which the princesses bemoaned that they had to act like proper ladies and wear dresses while Electra got to run around in jeans and braids. They would go play with Stanly, and he would whomp around with them, and it was fun.

But Ivy was unfulfilled. Electra's powers let her charge up the Heaven Cent - which would send the invoker wherever he or she was most needed. Everyone in Xanth presumed - because of a cryptic message that Dolph found while looking for the Good Magician on his adventure - that the cent would take whoever used it to him. Instead it dumped Ivy in drear Mundania, a world without magic, and seemingly lacking in puns.

His Story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_Mundania
History was one of Grey's classes. One he was failing. Like Freshman English. Grey was (or so he thought) the son of Major Murphy and his wife Vande Murphy. They lived bland lives, and his parents always seemed.... drawn. Sad. Depressed. Like they missed something he couldn't begin to fathom. They didn't have much money, so Grey went to a small college and had a small rundown apartment. He saw an add for a program that promised to grant his wishes, and on a whim spent his food and textbook money on it because he was that bored.

And the program seemed to work. Sort of. He asked it for a girlfriend, and then sent him girl after girl whose personalities matched their names. He quickly learned to look up what their names meant after Agenda, Anorexia, and Bulimia all moved in across the hall from him. Finally he picked Ivy's name, unaware that was what Sending - the program - wanted all along. Of course this timed out with her use of the Heaven Cent....

Their story:
Ivy tried to figure out why she was stuck in drear Mundania and needed help. Grey didn't believe her story and thought she was deluded, but... liked her too much to demand sending choose another girl despite that. He tried to break her delusion, she tried to prove to him magic was real despite the lack of it in Mundania. (though for a while because they could communicate, she thought she was still in some odd place in Xanth, like the hypnogourd)

They found some of the Muse's History Tomes, sold in Mundania as fiction novels. This further convinced Grey that she was deluded, but he bought a few of the novels anyway - they were eating the food the previous girls left behind) and found himself almost wishing he could share her delusion. Any place that had pie trees and lacked freshman english was ideal to him.

Finally Ivy discovered that the reason they could communicate was that the program - Sending - was from Xanth and carried some small amount of magical dust with it. It agreed to help them get back to Xanth in exchange for a favor. Ivy didn't trust it, but was desperate. Grey didn't believe that they would find anything, but even a small adventure beat college, and he wanted to show Ivy, once and for all, that Xanth didn't exist so he could get her help. He wanted to be part of that help.

Of course, Xanth is real, as we all know. But getting there wasn't easy, especially since once they took Sending from the computer, they lost the ability to communicate. They got picked up by the cops who thought they were runaways, but the encounter led to them learning sign language - a way they could communicate! - getting a book on ASL, and some food for the road. They made it to the No Name Key, and Turn helped them get back, Via the Gourd.

they stepped into the large hypnogourd that served as one of the few bridges between Mundania and Xanth. In the world of dreams, Ivy's hair returned to its proper green tint, thank you very much, but everything she tried to show Grey fell flat. Very little could stand against her disbelief, and then it was her trying to break his illusions. It was a frustrating time for both.

Ivy knew that she should mirror home as soon as she was back in the ambiance of magic, but she knew her parents would never let her marry a mundane, and her mother WOULD NOT APPROVE of her even remaining friends with him. Besides, she reasoned that her dopy little brother was probably watching them on the tapestry anyway, and would alert someone if they were in any real danger.

Getting home was quite the adventure, and involved among other things - saving Girad the Giant and reuniting him with the Giantess of his (literally) dreams, and thus taking his place. He became part of the Gourd, and they were sent out where he had been. From there, among other scrapes, they wound up captured by a particularly nasty band of goblins that liked using the local hate spring to make sport of their prey before eating them. They tied Ivy up and left her on a small isle in the middle of the spring. They told Grey that if he swam to her, then if he wanted to save her when he got to her, they'd be free to go. Ivy pleaded with him to just run, to leave her, because she was in love with him and couldn't bear to see him hate her.

He swam towards her, his eyes never left her, but where every past victim had tried to kill the one they had gone to save, he untied her and led her back. And neither of them were compelled to hate. He bluffed, saying he was a magician who could nullify magic springs, and demanded they honor their word and let them go... and the centaur they had tied up.

He filled a cup of water from the spring and used it as a threat, splashing any who got too near, and lo, the goblins did hate! But he reasoned that the spring was actually a psychological trick and that the goblins still believed in the power so were affected by it. He still didn't believe!

They and the Centaur - Donkey - finally made it to the castle. And true to her expectation, Queen Irene put her foot down with a big fat NO to her marrying someone without a talent. Normally this would be solved by a visit to the Good Magician, and spending a year in service for an answer to how he could get a magical talent so they could be wed. But Humphrey being missing was what started the whole kerfuffle in the first place.

So they went to parnassus, to see if one of the Muses would help them. And it certainly seemed as though he might have the power to nullify springs, and he denuded the Maenad's winespring soon after a clue that he did have a talent after all.

Nada figured out what the talent was, and they consulted with Donkey, who concurred. He could nullify magic by disbelief. His power was the other side of the coin from Ivy's, disbelief and belief. And he was a Magician Class talent, which meant not only could he marry Ivy, he was in line for king of Xanth himself.

Except magicians don't just come from nowhere, especially not from Mundania which is so much worse than nowhere. They investigated, and with Electra as chaperone to make sure that Ivy and Grey didn't kiss or do anything too mushy, they sought out his parents in Mundania and brought them to Xanth.

the answers added up, and made sense, and were not at all good. In short, his parents were exiled magician class talents from hundreds of years in the past (though Ivy's father knew them when he was a boy!) who had tried to take the throne. Murphy had a contest with Roogna for it and eventually lost. His talent was to make whatever could go wrong, go wrong. Vandne was a woman who had the power of topology. She was banished for turning Millie the Maid into a form that killed her, leading to the death of the Zombie Master. In the time of no magic, they escaped, and despite starting out hating each other wound up summoning the stork while still in Xanth. The evil machine Com Pewter helped them escape, but extracted a promise. The baby delivered to them would serve Com Pewter while he or she lived in Xanth. Sure they'd never see this place again, and having no intention of keeping the promise, they agreed.

Grey was given a one week grace period to either accept his servitude or leave Xanth. Murphy, ironically welcomed back where his son was not, put his curse on Com Pewter. It was all he could do to help.

And help it did. through a freak series of coincidences the like of which usually only happen around Bink, they found the Good Magician but could not rouse him. He told them that if they wanted an answer, they were to serve him until he returned. They served until it was time for him to leave, and discovered they loved the Good Magician's castle, loved helping people, loved the life. Grey planned to make sure that Ivy couldn't follow, when their ride to the border - Dolph in Roc form, crashed into the castle and hurt his wing. Looking up a cure for feather injuries because they didn't have enough time to get to the boarder any other way they found an entry about service to the Good Magician - it trumped any other service, geis, or debt! In other words, as long as they served Humphrey, even in his absence, Grey was free of his geis to the evil machine, and once the Good Magician was back, he would tell them how to void the geis honorably, and Grey would be free.

Irene relented and said they could marry - once the geis was completely broken. I am taking them from soon after this point, when they have been serving for some time, but Com Pewter still looms as a threat, and they still cannot wed.

One other thing of note. Ivy has a twin sister named Ida. They will not know this for three more books. Her parents do not know that Ivy has a twin. The stork works do not know that Ivy has a twin. It is largely theorized that they became twins retroactively because Ida's talent is the idea - any idea presented to her by someone who does not know her talent becomes true. So before she knew her own talent there was theorizing among her friends "Maybe you're a princess. Or a long lost twin, or a magician class talent" and then BOOM, she was suddenly all three. This is only of note if I canon update them and/or someone apps Ida.


World Information: Not OCs

Abilities:
Grey - Disbelief in magic/rebound. He can nullify any magic by disbelieving it. He can undo this, but when he does, there is a rebound and the magic is generally stronger in unpredictable ways than it was when he first encountered it.

Ivy - Belief/enhancement - Ivy's ability to affect the world by believing in certain qualities is strong, but it is limited in duration. Where Grey can nullify magic, and it stays nullified until he undoes it, Ivy has to remain proximate (in terms of focus more than physical location) to her target. If she enhances the softness of the ground to the point where falling on it doesn't hurt, she can do that. But when she walks away and someone else falls, the ground is the ground again. Also, it isn't always immediate, and the larger the effect, the more work she has to put into it, and the longer she has to be around. Hugo was significantly smarter at the climax of their adventure than he was a day after they met. But all of that vanishes when they go to their separate homes. But when she calls on the mirror and thinks about how smart he is, he is as smart as he was at the climax or smarter. The Gorgan (Hugo's mother) loved having Ivy over to play, because she finally had a competent son.
There are also limits. She was able to enhance the friendliness of the Gap dragon because he was disoriented, her actions were already confusing (she neither fled like food nor attacked like a foe), he was alone, and he was really really young. When she was attacked by a brace of wyverns, she could not make them friendly - she and grey were in their territory, they were hungry, and they were aggressive. But as they were crossbreeds, she enhanced the distinction between the species that made them until they over balanced and fell, at war with themselves. She and grey then had to RUN because she knew it wouldn't take them long to recover.

So her power isn't as overly strong as it first seems, though it is Magician Class which means it is a big deal. It's just that she is clever with how to use it, and is constantly redefining her limits.

Both - Some aspects of Xanth will carry over with them, in part because Ivy believes they should, and in part because some things are biological, and in part because somethings are habitual. They are as follows:
The Adult Conspiracy (also known as the Adult Conspiracy to Keep Children from Interesting Things)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanth#Adult_Conspiracy
In short - when they swear it comes out as *&@#$%! and wilts the local vegetation, might yellow the air, and produces an oder. They will not be able to swear if they are aware that child can hear them.
Ivy's undergarments will cause males to freak out (Player consent needed OOC before this comes into play, of course), and Grey will freak out seeing any woman in her underthings. As I prefer things to be PG I am very much hoping to NEVER be in a thread where this comes up.
Ivy firmly believes that babies are delivered by the stork. You will not be able to shake this belief.
When they find a patch of burrs, they will curse at them if no children are near, this will cause them to fall off.

There are plenty of things Ivy will expect to work, that will not, of course.

And then small things, like them both knowing some ASL and SEE, his having half a clue what to do with technology (which is atypical in her world) and her having a knack for figuring out puns.

Samples: Option B
Ivy
1. http://rubycity-logs.dreamwidth.org/408403.html?thread=22437459#cmt22437459 (Ivy and Demyx)
2.
Ivy looked around the park with an odd mix of interest and dismay. It was pretty enough, as parks went. But she had seen a lovely path and had avoided it carefully, coming around from another angle only to discover that it terminated in a series of benches and potted flowers. No tangle tree. No traps. No carnivorous grass.

Not that she wanted to fight for her life, or see someone else in danger, of course, but she wasn't sure what to make of a place that looked as peaceful as this park and actually was. Of course, if the dangers were missing, so too were the amenities. Her shoes were wearing thin and she had yet to see a single ladyslipper plant. There were no pie trees, and while she thought she had spotted a tree full of oranges, she preferred the reds and the greens, and could find none.

Even the typical annoyances that weren't quite harmful but not quite benign were absent. Where were the two-lips waiting to kiss anyone who went to sniff the pretty flower? Where were the dogwoods with their bark, always worse than their bite? Or the pitcher plants for if she wanted to pour herself some water?

And the map that led her here wasn't magical, but still led her where she wanted to go. A place where maps actually worked, where there were none of the familiar dangers or aid, on a path that didn't feel enchanted... she kept checking her hair color to make sure she actually was still within the ambiance of magic. Then she sat, carefully, on the grass and sighed. She arranged her skirts around her legs, and then pulled her knees up to her chin, careful not to let anyone see her legs - or worse, she wasn't her mother after all - and she watched people. Seeing how they interacted with the plants would give her a good idea of which ones were dangerous. And how.



Grey
1. http://rubycity-logs.dreamwidth.org/408403.html?thread=22053971#cmt22053971 (With Frisk)
2. http://rubycity-rp.dreamwidth.org/1357534.html?thread=108024798#cmt108024798 (With Sans)


Together:
1.

Network/Actionspam Sample:

[The image the watch showed was of two people, a man with hair colored hair and two eyes, and a beautiful woman with green hair and green eyes, who was enough to make you almost forget the man was in the scene at all. The woman was peering at the viewer.]

"So, this is like a magic mirror, right?" [she asked, reaching out to tap it lightly with a green painted fingernail.]

"Or a cellphone," [the man said, nodding a bit.]

[She frowned prettily.] "What's a fone, and why do you want to sell it?"

[He shook his head. "Not a fone a phone and... Oh, never mind." [He looked at the watch.] "Hello, out there, can anyone hear me?"

"I hear you," [she said with a smile.]

"I meant through the watch," [he said patiently. He honestly wasn't sure if she was pulling his leg or not.]

"What is it watching?" [she asked.]

"At the moment us. Ivy, are you trying to mess with my head?" [Grey asked.]

[Ivy grinned broadly.] "Yep!" [She turned to face the watch.] "Hello, I am princess Ivy, and this is my Fiancée, Grey Mundane."

"Murphy," [he muttered.]

[She patted his face.] "We are going to be going out to look for food, and if anyone wants to join us, we can make a day of it together!" [she offered with a warm smile. Then she looked to Grey.] "Now we just wait for replies?"

"More or less."

2.

They walked hand in hand down the row, looking at the shops. Some things Grey had to explain to her, some things she had to explain to him, but it was lovely, really, this odd mix of his world and hers, without being quite either. It was something they'd never had before. A neutral ground.

It was also calm. No crises loomed over head. She didn't need to hurry back to Xanth, she wasn't afraid of her mother's judgmental NO, they didn't need to find his parents in Mundania, or hurry Electra back before her natural age killed her. There was no evil Com Pewter here, nor any querants that they had to set challenges for. The odd little bugs never bugged Ivy much... They could just be them for a time. And it was wonderful. They smiled at the first person they passed.

"Hello," Ivy said. "We're still new here, can you tell us a little about this place?" Given that it didn't seem to be made of rubies and they didn't seem to make rubies here, she mostly wanted to know why it was called Ruby City.