#icalia

Let's go with the ones of the main cast that are currently in a committed relationship, or were in one for a long time.

Icalia: She often told her husband she loved him directly or indirectly in private, more tamely in public, holding hands, whispering, flying together or otherwise being close. She treated him as an equal in general, and took time to listen to him and be attentive to his needs, very conscious of the power imbalance between them. She spoiled him a bit, all the way to his old age.

Dolores: She can have a hard time admitting her love, she still sees it as a potential weakness, but she's often made to do so, and even otherwise, her acts speak a lot. With Inza, she's caring and understanding, much more than with almost anyone else, and trust her. She'll actually put up with a lot of stuff and try to help her. Their love is rough and usually shown a bit roughly, they're both very self-centered individuals, the other just happens to be something that makes them much happier.

Moloni is a plane where magic isn't as readily available as most. Between the plane's core and leylines and the surface, there's a layer of nullstone that stops magic from reaching except through specific spots and cracks.

Those create Sources on the surface, powerful (or more minor) fonts of magic that allow magic to be used within its range (by default). Most are associated with a single color but some can have more.

From each Source tends to emerge a Guardian, an Iconic of matching color that is tied to that Source, lives from it and controls its access. They'll be an Angel for a white Source, a Sphinx for blue, a Demon for black, a Dragon for red and an Elemental for green (not a hydra because harder to make sapient, though most elemental guardians take a hydra-like shape by default). All sources but one have a single Guardian, even if they have more than one color, it might be either of the iconics but embodying both.

A Guardian controls the magic of their Source, and how it can be used. They can allow or refuse the use of magic within its range to anyone they wish. How that is used vary from Guardian to Guardian, but most countries have a default way to do things their Guardians agree to.

A very common thing is for Guardians to choose a mortal to grant a particular tie to their Source, sharing and delegating some of their power to them, and making them ruler within the range of their Source.

Due to access to magic being able to be allowed to one side (there's some work arounds, but they're nowhere as practical), defense on the plane is much easier than offense, which led to a lot of independent city-states managing to survive, but there's still a few larger countries or alliances that managed to form.

Due to its limited access to magic, the plane is hard to pinpoint and planeswalk to if you don't know what you're looking for. Planeswalkers have the huge advantage of being able to draw mana from off-plane though, so it's a good thing they are even more unlikely to be found there.

A few know about Arcavios and Strixhaven, and a smaller number actually interacted with them.

The one most involved with them recently is likely Vaalin. He's not part of any colleges properly, but he's glad to have found a place where his Tolarian diploma is recognized. He sometimes gives lectures as a guest to Strixhaven to interested students across colleges. He has started a correspondance program (with approval from both campuses) where a select few students from Tolaria and Strixhaven were assigned to each other to discuss anything they'd like via bi-monthly letters Vaalin transports back and forth.

Icalia is not involved in Strixhaven, but she's been trying for at least a century to get them to destroy the copy they have of the Interdiction spell she used when she sparked. So far, even her negotiation skills didn't get them to destroy it, but she did get them to heavily restrict access to it and secure it, which she's mostly fine with as a compromise.

Well, technically only a bit more than one of this week's roster is a planeswalker, but the name stands.

Name: Icalia

Pronouns: She/Her

Species: Aven

Age: 389

Plane of Origin: Dominaria

First Planeswalk: Moloni (Fan-plane)

Colors: White (hint of black)

Appearance: Icalia is based on eagle-type aven from Otaria, with some of her facial and bodily features having scales in lieu of feathers, due to a shapeshifting mix-up during the Mending between dragon and aven forms. Her outfits are often quite… Visible due to how the uniforms in her Haven evolved along the years, but she generally keeps to things she can easily fly in.

Backstory: (First, a word of warning. Icalia is my character who’s backstory mixes and meshes with canon lore the most. I don’t think it contradicts it in any point, Otaria not having existed until well after the Invasion, but it might not be to your liking or contradict the story of characters of your own, in which case, I don’t know, ignore it?)

Icalia lived most of her childhood in Otaria, where she was trained in magic, but specialized in null magic herself. As an adult, she travelled around Dominaria to improve in it and see the world, then came back home to become a neutral mediator and diplomat. When word first spread about the phyrexian invasion, she devised a plan to protect Otaria by enveloping the entire continent in a field of null magic. When she failed to convince various parties to help her in this endeavor, she attempted to do it by herself by connecting to the Null Moon.

It nearly killed her, and would have had she not sparked when she did. Or absorbed a sparking through her spell. Her spell kept her on Dominaria until it was over, and even if it killed many directly or indirectly, her spell mostly worked and Otaria came out of the Invasion relatively unscathed. She even managed to unknowingly redirect the fraction of Rath that would have overlayed Otaria.

When the Null Moon was destroyed and drained by the Weatherlight, she was freed from her spell at the next night, unable to balance with the Null Moon. Her spark spirited her away to Moloni, a plane where magic is only available in some places, and only to those connected to the Source of the place they’re in. Through specific circumstances and linking with such a source, she was confusing for an angel (avens don’t exist on Moloni) and traveled Moloni to try to understand this new world, discovering as things went what and who she now was.

When she managed to leave Moloni, she intended to go back to Dominaria, but was instead tugged onto the piece of Rath she’d stopped the overlay of, now drifting through the Multiverse. There, she found Rathi survivors fighting the phyrexians that should have invaded Otaria. She helped the survivors using her newfound power, then stayed to help the rebuild. When separated from Rath, the flowstone had formed a new Stronghold, that she occupied and remodeled to her need, eventually creating the Haven, an establishment dedicated to be a Multiversal neutral ground where no magic was allowed, for leaders, worlds or planeswalkers to negotiate and talk in.

It’s while running the Haven that she met who would later become her husband and have children with. The Haven developed and Icalia lost sight of some things over the years. When the Mending hit her shortly after the death of her husband (that she’d done as much as she could to keep alive), it was a bucket of ice water for her, reminding her of her priorities, while also taking away most of her clientele (interplanar portals stopped working and planeswalkers stopped being able to take people across planes) and ability to run the Haven. She managed to keep it afloat through it, although reduced in scale. Over the centuries, her family has grown and her blood now runs in a significant portion of the Haven’s population.

Magic, gear and/or abilities: Icalia’s main magic is null magic, one that is able to stop magic from taking place, or stop ongoing spells. She’s very good at it, enough to cover large areas and be precise with it, closing off or allowing certain types of magic or spells. Aside from that, she has the ability to cast many miscellaneous spells she’s learned over the years, but generally is slow and mediocre at them at best.

She’s also an aven, which comes with all that is associated with it, flight, talons and wings. Her shapeshifting mishap left her stronger than she looks.

Card: 

What's Icalia's biggest flaw?

Hmmm, for Icalia, likely one of the fancy ones that was offered at the Haven back when they had access to ingredients from all of the plane. Now they don't, and the person who cooked those is dead anyway. Won't go into details because I don't have any idea of how different an Aven's dietary needs and tastes are like, even less Icalia's.