#*hwasa

FACECLAIM: Ahn Hyejin (Hwasa), mamamoo

APPEARANCE:

No notable inhuman characteristics; she has a butterfly tattooed to the back of each shoulder, ice-blue (left) and reddish-orange (right). She tends to keep her hair cropped along her neck at various lengths, but tends to stick with ginger for coloring. Tends to have her nails painted, though the color typically changes once or twice a week in accordance with her hopes & intentions. The jewelry she wears tends to be twisted from simple wire, so she can swap out specific gemstones whenever she pleases.

BIOGRAPHY:

There are a few memories that Duri possesses that pertain to her earliest days: when she was born, her small family lived in a rural area, and her young self delighted in jumping into the rice fields (despite her parents’ chastisement). There are merely a handful of these, however, as most of her childhood is thereafter dominated with the memories of her mother, Yeon Mi, being sick.

Early on, the family moved to Seoul to be closer to hospitals & medical treatment; despite this, Yeon Mi’s health declined over the following years, leaving her seemingly on the verge of death every few months with major operations in between. Duri spent a great portion of this time within the hospital, though she was just as likely to be in her mother’s room as she was chasing spirits down halls with grieving families. This upbringing did not impact the child’s social skills well, to say the least: she found herself alienated from her peers who did not understand why she always hurried home with nary a word of goodbye.

It was at thirteen that during yet another complicated procedure—another instance of This may be it, please be prepared for the possibility that she will not make it through the night—Yeon Mi died.

The following summer, Duri’s burgeoning magical abilities came to light during a fight with her father, Gi Hoon: unable to deal with the loss of his wife and the perceived loss of his child, Gi Hoon enrolled Duri within a boarding school for witches and sent her away. Barely a teenager that was now coping with both her mother’s death and estrangement from her father, Duri withdrew into herself and had a difficult time reaching out to the new students around her that, in another life, could have been potential friends.

Once more unable to form close connections with those in her day to day life, Duri turned to the flourishing Internet to find solace. She began her first blog, detailing her new studies and the pain she felt that would not leave her. Over time, the two issues tangled together and gave birth to her interest and strong connection with death magic, paved by her natural talents for talking to spirits. While it was difficult for a high schooler to locate the materials required to study such a topic, Duri found information in questionable zones of the Internet and began her personal grimoire.

When she enrolled in college overseas in America, Duri scrapped her old blog and took on a new persona, shifting from an inner focus and her personal journey to her magical studies. She jokingly named herself “MagCoChe,” a pseudonym comprised of pushing the phrase “Magical College Cheater” into one word. Among her posts about the difficulties of finding decent candle colors locally and gripes about exams, Duri’s class notes drew something of a following, and she was shocked to find so many young witches who had never before heard of the concepts that she was referring to—all because the information was nearly inaccessible for those who had not or could not afford the typical education and schooling of the modern-day witch.

Remembering her own early forays into death magic specifically and the unreliable and dangerous information she was desperate to dig up as a teenager, Duri vowed to share what knowledge she had with the community of young and new witches, to prevent them from meeting danger thanks to making simple mistakes that could be avoided with basic education. While she remained wholly studious in real life, she flourished online as her following grew, her conviction and dedication to witchcraft growing. This newfound confidence even led her to reaching out to repair her relationship with Gi Hoon, as she her peace with death’s concept released the anger and blame that she had placed upon him following the death of her mother.

While they both agreed to take steps and involve themselves again in one another’s lives, painful parallels struck: towards the end of her senior year, Duri received news that her father had died as a result of a stroke. With graduation so close, she could not attend Gi Hoon’s funeral (as he had opted to be buried, opposed to her mother’s choice of cremation) and upon return to Korea, his grave was the first place she visited.

During this time, Duri’s involvement with death magic was of a great comfort to her, and she held several rituals meant to help her father’s spirit experience peace: she documented the process extensively on her blog, partially out of hopes it might help someone else, and partially because she was too lost to figure out what else to do.

Though the “project” is over to speak, it’s recent enough in memory to have MagCoChe to be a name buzzing in the witch community; Duri’s online presence continues to be somewhat of a controversial topic, but she remains dedicated to the cause of keeping witchcraft accessible. She makes a modest business off of selling simple wards and magic zines (all handmade) off of her Etsy shop, and maintains a certain mystique online by keeping her real identity anonymous.

CHARACTERIZATION:

General: ♦️ Fluent in Korean & English ♦️ Well-groomed; very conscious of her presentation, both physical & intangible ♦️ Always has a bit of candy on hand, usually gummy worms ♦️ Chronic social anxiety, ADHD, and mild depression; diagnosed, but untreated ♦️ Fear of loneliness ♦️ Lonely Self described: ♦️ “Stereotypical millennial witch” ♦️ Hedge witch (works with spirits) & necromancer (works with the various magical aspects of death) ♦️ Friendly, attentive & helpful ♦️ Adult orphan Online: ♦️ Resoundingly positive about all situations ♦️ Advice-giver; if she has no expertise in the particular subject, she can provide related references (literature & real people) ♦️ Witty, upbeat ♦️ Small-time self-published author (handmade witchcraft zines, available for purchase on her Etsy shop; more or less a rip-off of her college classes) ♦️ Exceedingly well-known: famous & infamous in equal turns (generally among the younger witch community & older witch community, respectably) In person: ♦️ Maybe become surprisingly reserved at times out of fear of bumbling over her own words ♦️ Generally becomes more excitable and forthcoming the more at ease she is with a person ♦️ Stimulating unconscious behaviors, particularly when she’s not invested or upset: fiddling with vials, playing with her hair, turning her lock screen on and off, tapping her nails against hard surfaces, etc. ♦️ Capable of holding an intensely personal discussion for hours, only for the other person to realize they’ve learned nothing about her Spirit work: ♦️ Finds something more honest about spirits, as they have already “left” ♦️ Has always found it easier to communicate with them from a young age, as they do not necessarily require words & may read her intent ♦️ Carries around several vials & tubes of graveyard dirt to aid in her speaking with her communing Death magic: ♦️ Began as a coping mechanism after her mother died; considered a natural progression due to her communication with spirits beforehand ♦️ Uses the terms “necromancy” and “death magic” interchangeably to refer to a number of practices: divination through counsel of the departed; calming the fury of deceased, violent spirits; petitioning for passive & active protection granted by spirits humans & non-sentient; praying to the deceased; removing death from dead bodies to allow for possession (“reanimation”) ♦️ Publicly, she places more of an emphasis upon the aspects of death magic that might be seen as socially acceptable, such as communing with the deceased to bring peace to both the spiritual and living parties; she fears persecution or being labeled a warlock in the making, and at points fears that it would be warranted

SPECIALTIES:

NECROMANCY; RANK III. (80)

Spirit Working: From a young age, Duri has been able to commune with spirits: between teachers and self-instruction, she has arrived at a level where she may convince spirits to do her bidding. Convincing poltergeists to cease their haunting, inviting ghosts to haunt her house, and even propositioning them to cause a distraction are all within the scope of her abilities. Additionally, Duri can conduct rituals to contact specific spirits & deceased persons, though her ability to do so is highly dependent upon how long the person in question has been dead & what physical connections she has that remain of them. During her summoning rituals, she is able to project a specter that is visible to the naked human eye & may be conversed with so long as the spell lasts.

Divination: As a subset of her spirit working talents, Duri is able to interpret the often-mysterious communications of the dead at a fluent level, and may call upon them to share memories from their life or what their spirit has seen. While divination is generally a term used to refer to determining the course of the future, the aid of knowledgeable spirits allows Duri insight into the past or present, which is far more useful when it comes to figuring out where her father left the keys to his car. (Or, it would be, if he remembered.) While the dead are still capable of fleeing interactions that greatly distress them (the recently deceased are notorious for disappearing when the specifics of their death are brought up), Duri can generally soothe them and seek answers & clarification as long as her energy sources for the ritual are not depleted, as projecting such a clear image & connection is quite intensive.

Death’s remnants: In the realm of the physical, the marks of one’s death exist far longer than the marks of one’s life: necromancy calls for Duri to make contact with dead bodies and eroded remains and work with them to satisfy several ends. Death has a specific energy that Duri can draw some measure of power from, and she is skilled with using both bones & bodies in decay in her spellcasting (both as the host of a ward & as part of the spell itself). At this rank of power, Duri has learned how to manipulate death’s energy, and may cleanse the form of the spirit’s lingering memories to allow the physicality left behind to be possessed or reanimated. Beloved pets may find themselves on their home’s doorstep to give their human families some closure, though manipulation of corpses that were once sentient is hard for Duri to control (though some other entity may take advantage of the open door).

Pestilence: This is Duri’s only purely offensive ability, and her skill with it pales in comparison to her other studies. With enough outside power (or the sacrifice of her own energy), Duri may cast something of a curse on the party of her choosing that increases the speed at which they age & decay. This conversion of life into death energy may express itself in a variety of ways, including but not limited to infections, growing tumors, or the body simply breaking down. This is a highly dangerous ability for Duri to engage in, as it is prone to backfiring in a variety of ways & requires a great deal of concentration to work. At the current time, the inflictions last only as long as she casts them, though whatever resulting weakening or damage stays behind, to be healed by the recipient.