#char:nora

kristen summerbright (balance, life secondary sort of?)

the OG isekai-ed wizzy girl, probably entered the spiral at around 14, and it took maybe 2 years to defeat malistaire?? (idk), so 16-ish by the end of dragonspyre

at the start of her journey she wears her hair in a ponytail, but over the course of the adventures she ends up wearing it down instead.

a pretty reserved person, all in all. already pretty quiet, but when she gets isekai-ed it really gets to another level because there’s just so much going on, all she can really do is stand there and nod, wide eyed. has an overall desire to keep the peace/balance, hence the school of magic. ambrose intimidated her a little when she first arrives but overall, meh.

is sad balance doesn’t have an official building (nor do they have official dorms in my headcanons) and it’s overall a decently small balance cohort. arthur is a good teacher though and she learns a lot. balance suits her, and balance is what she needs coming to terms with the new world she’s in

she spends a lot of time learning life as well, both because she has a deep fear of dying (in this world, ie the spiral) and a need to know how to keep herself alive, and later in an attempt to better understand sylvia drake and malistaire. she spends a lot of time with moolinda and ceren and the life kids. takes up life as a secondary school.

re: fear of dying in the spiral: it stemmed from “what happens to me if i die in this universe” + “have i ceased to exist in my original universe”-type thoughts, you know?

that, plus her time in mooshu and in the various libraries/archives, ends up leading kristen toward a life of research and such. as the og isekai girl, she’s very interested in the whole mechanics of magic and everything, so she spends a lot of her free time researching that.

goes through wiz city to dragonspyre b/c she’s the one originally tasked with defeating malistaire and stuff. thus she has the closest relationship with malistaire/the drake bros, and is very affected when she has to actually battle malistaire.

arc 2 takes longer, maybe 3ish years, just because I imagine that like. idk. celestia-zafaría-avalon-azteca-khrysalis is a lot! and it’s more…. stakes have been raised and everything is done at a lil more risk and at a bigger scale so stuff takes longer in my head?

celestia-zafaría-avalon only take up a little over a year. she’s 17+a few months by avalon. turns 18 in the middle of azteca. kristen is 19ish by the end of khrysalis

she meets nora winter for the first time in celestia (see below). ends up questing with nora till arcanum, really.

goes through celestia-khrysalis, doing ok but it’s not... going Great for kristen. she’s already a lil tired and has a lot of thoughts on the Malistaire tragedy, and then suddenly she meets Morganthe and there are parallels??? and she goes “oh no.”

azteca and khrysalis are particularly rough for her. seeing malistaire in azteca really did a lot to her and she has to come to terms with… all of that, at this point (end of azteca) it’s been maybe 2ish years since dragonspyre so all the peace she finally found has been completely disrupted. she probably goes back to relay what happened to cyrus. they deal with the whole Malistaire thing

kristen and nora share the YW role narratively in azteca and in khrysalis part 1. she’s 19 in khrysalis

she’s definitely checked out emotionally in khrysalis. once khrysalis part 1 ends, nora is basically the main hero now (YW).

that being said, as emotionally checked out as she is, she’s still pretty observant. notices/understands zaltanna faster than nora, and is probably closer to zaltanna than nora is.

also she and zarozinia get along really well. they are both fans of subtlety and are a bit exasperated with dyvim and nora’s enthusiasm. tl;dr kristen’s friends with the mantises and nora with the burrowers

also i think darkmoor happens sort of in the middle of khrysalis!? despite being emotionally checked out of khrysalis, she’s definitely going to do darkmoor because she needs that malistaire closure again. kristen is the one spearheading the darkmoor thing.

by the end of khrysalis, morganthe is on her shoulders too and then grandfather spider is a thing too at the end of khrysalis?? she’s in so much shock that polaris feels like a fever dream. kristen hits 20 in polaris

nora did a lot of legwork and has narratively taken over the YW role

the arcanum is a much needed haven and break but also brings a lot of extra responsibility. she doesn’t continue after polaris.

by khrysalis she’s lost some of her fondness for ravenwood. khrysalis was pretty traumatic after all and ambrose/council of light were… well you know how it is. “go save the world YW! what do you mean your companion just died?? time to move on, go fight these minions now”

nopes out once she’s introduced to the arcanum, and becomes quick friends with everyone there. the arcanum is like, her thing, it’s all the research and information she could hhave ever wanted. she does Not continue with nora once she reaches the arcanum

occasionally she and nora catch up, and kristen will help out when nora asks, or when nora is at the arcanum doing… arcanum things. otherwise she’s actually pretty good friends with the librarian, and she and ione get along decently due to them both being of few words and stuff. i bet she takes up meditation with xander. focuses more on crafting and spends a lot of time making jaki’s bow and relearning how to use magic with a bow.

(also investigating the cabal and having to go through malistaires house when nora needs to… that’s also very rough for kristen)

side note: since kristen is from our world she canonically like goes mildly insane whenever people from the spiral make references to earth pop culture and shit. she’s the only one who gets them and it drives her mad <3

nora winter (storm)

she’s a storm wiz from wizard city, and has been studying with halestrom in ravenwood, one of halestrom’s favorite students (: very engineer-y and hands on, more outspoken than kristen and a bit more… i don’t wanna say social?? but like. idk. you get it.

she really enjoys all the ‘fix this for me’ quests, idk

she’s maybe a year or two younger than kristen (assuming spiral-human/wizard and wiz-from-our-world age at the same rate). at the start of celestia she’s 15ish?

nora in-game has that weird spiky ponytail hair thing with side bangs going on? i feel like in game her hair is either very winona-ryder-in-heathers or like,,, a layered shoulder-length bob? i haven’t decided yet. she keeps her hair pretty much the same throughout her entire journey.

once celestia is opened up via kristen, halestrom sends nora along because he thinks she’ll benefit from studying celestia tech. the engineering feats and advanced celestian tech are a dream for nora. originally nora and kristen don’t really cross paths, but they meet up every once in a while.

once morganthe makes herself more known, near the end of the world, they run into each other more often.

the same thing happens in zafaria, although nora’s not super active there. for the most part what happens is she chills in celestia, but occasionally kristen calls nora up and is like ‘yo, you down?’

once kristen gets to avalon, nora follows and nora is immediately like ‘oh hey i like this a lot’ and goes with. there’s something about avalon that calls to her? she learns her swordsmanship in avalon

they both go through all of avalon together. at this point nora and kristen and morganthe are like. definitely familiar with each other, and seeing morganthe in the past definitely has an impact on nora. before this, nora was pretty much focused on her studies and inventing and storm magic and shit, you know? as she learns from kristen and takes cues from her, nora realizes morganthe is like, uhoh. then realizing the morganthe was a student just like she and kristen were??

she turns 16 in zafaría, 17 near the end of azteca

azteca goes Rough. like Rough rough. despite celestia and zafaria and Avalon, Azteca is like. Azteca is to nora as malistaire was to kristen. it’s bad. but kristen is with her and has gone through this and they persevere. nora is devastated

khrysalis.... hoooo boy khrysalis. kristen’s been noped out emotionally since midway through avalon honestly, but azteca was devastating for nora. meeting dyvim and then immediately seeing him sacrifice himself so they could continue in khrysalis. woof.

she turns 18 in khrysalis

khrysalis is a lot of spy work and sabotage and, well, it’s hard for nora at first. she’s a pretty direct and upfront person so this doesn’t come naturally to her. kristen isn’t good enough at acting for it though so it’s up to her to sell their cover effectively. hence her interacting more directly with dyvim. they bond over swordsmanship. (yes this is me slowly trying to get to dyvwiz)

khrysalis… happens. (fill in more details once i go back and do khrysalis again)

for all that nora is the better saboteur of the two, she’s a bit caught up in trying to spy for the first time in her life. she’s better at it than kristen but she’s so focused on keeping their cover that she doesn’t catch on to how much leeway zaltanna gives them. kristen catches on a bit earlier, i think.

shadow magic kinda sucks and nora hates it. having to confront the entire azteca thing in order to learn about shadow magic…. lemon juice in the wound

morganthe has been… well, honestly seeing morganthe in her final form was horrifying and learning what the spiders did to her was also horrifying. nora can’t recover, really.

also grandfather spider what the fuck??? nora has a lot of her worldview shattered and remade in those last few months/year when she’s learning about that. she knew grandmother raven existed from her friends in grizzlehrim but like. it didn’t really click you know!? and now she has to deal with his edgy kids

19 in polaris