#taken

Finnegan Wake He / him

"I’ve still got my sea legs. One just needs some breaking in."

SPECIES: Selkie OCCUPATION: US Coast Guard Captain AGE: 50 Years Old PLAYED BY: Gray FC: Shawn Hatosy 

BIOGRAPHY:

A selkie’s life is supposed to be simple: go with the flow. Which generally works out just fine, Finnegan Wake has found, unless you’re drifting on a different current than the rest of the pod. He didn’t mean to! Like he didn’t mean to break most of the rules his family barked out. Like, let the tide take what it wants. Human lives, most of all! And, mind your pelt. Now, that, that was a little broad, he protested. He’d never let anyone touch it. Obviously! And he didn’t spend so much time above water, and when he did, he looked after that precious sealskin of his, he promised. It didn’t seem so bad at all, really. They had thingamabobs and whatzits and hockey and movies and school, where they learned about everything everywhere, and, and, and… all these things selkies didn’t need, at all, if you asked his family. Which he didn’t have to do. They’d told him, since he was a pup. Like they’d told him the rules. 

But, say there was this - yeah, a human. And they were just a little one, swept out to sea! And it was an absolutely awful scene, not at all like the long sink into sleep that they told him drowning would be. (Not that selkies ever drowned.) No, they were flailing for the surface, crying for the shore, for a breath, for the rest of the life they were about to lose. And they were maybe just a little older than he was, and he was young, so that was a lot of life they stood to lose. And their people were screaming for them, not going with the flow at all but fighting. The tide be damned.  

Say all that happened. And maybe, just this one time, the ocean didn’t get its way. And maybe that human didn’t touch his pelt, not really, his pelt just… touched them, spread over their heaving back as they hacked back to life. What then? 

Then he got a fucking earful, is what. 

The right thing to do? There was no right thing for a selkie to do for a human, the pod objected, aghast. They’d probably go on and become another pelt-stealing, littering, gas-guzzling, motor-gunning, polyester-wearing monster. Or not, Finn floated. Maybe they’d love the ocean, the waves, the world, just like selkies did. (Seeing as they hadn’t drowned!) Just like? His parents barked. He must be shoresick; spending too much time up there, on his legs. Maybe they should try it, he insisted. They had. No, really - back and forth it went. Again and again, until, eventually, disagreeing to disagree for the umpteenth fucking time put too much of a kink in his teenage whiskers. He’d swim with his own damn current, from here on out. And if the ocean led him back to his cut-off, fearful, fussing, frustrating family, so be it. 

But he’d put a little distance between them, to start with. At least a coastline. A border. Maybe most of a continent. 

From there, well. Shit! The world was his oyster, cracked wide open. So Finn had a few drifting years crossing new horizons, chasing his irrepressible curiosity wherever it led. (So long as that somewhere had a shore to escape to.) But people were supposed to have things to do. Causes. Callings. Eventually, that brought him to the Coast Guard; didn’t it make sense? Helping people to stay safe on the ocean he loved so much, so they could love it too, that… seemed perfect. The program was easy enough, of course. Then came time for postings. His looked - interesting. Had a heck of a name, too: Wicked’s Rest. Really? Really. Couldn’t not check that out. And it was great, actually. The town itself was a little odd, sure, and so were the woods, the lake, and most of the people… but Finn could handle all that; the ocean wasn’t any weirder than the one he’d been born in, and that’s where he spent most of his time, anyway. Several ranks, three marriages, three divorces, twelve to fifteen cats depending on the day, just one hand-restored schooner, and a whole lotta fishing later, and Finn was happily going with that flow, now that he’d found it. Not bad at all. 

Until the sea turned on him. During one of the many magical mishaps surging through Wicked’s Rest, Finn had the bad luck to be in his pelt, at sea. He washed up nearly drowned, torn apart by - something. No, he doesn’t know what! Yes, that pisses him off! And scares the shit out of him, because he should know. Because that pelt he was always told to mind is broken, now, behaving badly, its magic unpredictable for the first time in his life. And the sea - the sea is waiting. To finish what it started, or welcome him back? At the moment, the first feels a hell of a lot more likely…

PERSONALITY:

Hardworking · Affable · Energetic · Self-reliant· Practical · · Stubborn · Spontaneous · Avoidant · Defensive · Compartmentalized

OTHER INFO:

While Finn has a house in Harborside, it’s pretty minimalist. Not in a by-design, stylish way - he just has precisely as much as he needs, and he doesn’t need much at all on land. You’re more likely to find him at the Coast Guard station, on the water, or under it, even when he's off duty. At least, that was the case before the incident…

If you know him well enough, you might have picked up the nickname “Finner” from his fellow Coast Guards - a gift from teammates during his junior hockey days.

Sealinnegan is a harbour seal, and one of Wicked Rest’s tamer oddities: whenever there’s a fishing derby for the local kids, Freckles the seal can be counted on to chase the catch in. As the lifespan of the average wild harbour seal is 20-35 years, and sightings date back as far as the ‘90s, there is some debate as to whether it’s still Freckles, Freckles Jr., or Freckles’ ghost. 

He’s noticeably bow-legged. This makes for an especially uncomfortable adjustment to his prosthetic leg due to the additional strain on his knees. 

Fiadh Quinn She / they

"The head that wears the crown may be heavy, but my shoulders are strong."

SPECIES: Nymph (Bog) OCCUPATION: Manager at the Yorke Museum AGE: 374 Years Old (Looks to be about 42) PLAYED BY: Chayya FC: Rebecca Ferguson

BIOGRAPHY:

One day there was only a bog and the next day, there a bog nymph. That’s how it so often began for Fiadh’s kind. Which meant, of course, that she didn’t have any family. No mother, or father. Just the aos sí that she eventually wandered her way into. And the rest of the aos sí had families. Or some little clan that they came with, a unit that they were part of, that everyone knew to associate them with. So it was just Fiadh as odd nymph out, alone in her bog. Which she’ll tell you any day of the week and twice on Sunday that she didn’t mind. She liked being on her own, still does to this day, so it was all fine.

Fiadh’s aos sí was like all the others, hardly more than a loosely linked group of nymphs, nixies, and fauns who had only really banded together in the hopes that the adage of safety in numbers might be true. They lived a good send away from any of the more populated areas of Ireland’s cities, but still there were plenty of humans to find. Plenty of humans who could find them, which meant Fiadh learned from a young age to hate glamours and concealing her true abilities. Her true self. 

While others in her aos sí had similar complaints, it didn’t seem to eat away at them as much. Or, if it did, they didn’t let themselves remember it much longer than it took until the next bonfire, the next dance, the next feast or festival. Fiadh, though, didn’t feed off the human’s, like the faun and muses. She didn’t have merry little rings to dance in, like other nymphs and nixies. So she stewed in her disdain, as pitchy and caustic as her bog. 

Stories from the humans were useful, though. Stories about her own kind, about fae kings and queens, about the division into two courts. She saw what the humans were able to amount to, when they were organized. When there was discipline to a single vision, when there was a plan. She waited, though. Studied the lines of her own aos sí and visited others. Ingratiated herself into human courts and learned what she could about their monarchies, about the stories they told of fae monarchies. 

She was only a little over two hundred when she set out on her own in London to make her first attempt at building her own regime of fae. There were plenty of her kind there, of all kinds. Somewhat unexpectedly, many were content with their masquerading at human lives – particularly the faun and muses who were able to feed more freely. Besides that, they didn’t want a leader, or a society. They were happy to roam as they wanted, do as they pleased. Even if that meant, as Fiadh so often explained, they might not be reaching their true potential.

Almost midway through her life and nothing to reap off what she had sown. She couldn’t go back to Ireland empty handed, London had been a bust… She retreated to the continent, into the wetlands of Scandinavia and Siberia. As the bogs of Ireland were shrinking, there were large swaths of her environment further east. Fiadh allowed herself nearly a century to recharge there. In her quest toward building something larger than herself, she had neglected her own abilities. This was her hermit age, as she connected only with other bog nymphs, and even then only intermittently.

After her period of rest and relaxation, she felt ready to once more attempt to build her Courts. And what better place to try it than that hotbed of supernatural activity in Maine? There are already a few scattered aos sí there, and plenty of others yet unaffiliated. And best of all? There was already a bog there. Fiadh made herself right at home, on the border of Gatlin Fields and Mossthorn forest – an actual, human home there, though she’s often found in Mossthorn bog (which she considers hers). She’s been slowly ingratiating herself to the local fae, taking a much more gradual approach than last time. And this recent loss of magic does feel like quite the opportunity. That problem was solved, of course, but isn’t it likely that, had there been some organization among the fae, they would have had things solved much quicker?

PERSONALITY:

Aloof · Possessive · Stubborn · Selfish · Creative · Nurturing · Persuasive · Confident

OTHER INFO:

Fiadh more or less runs The Yorke Museum. She keeps the schedule of tours, acts as manager to tour guides, and is liaison to the proprietor on all necessary logistics (book-keeping, utilities, etc.) She’s one of the few if not the only individual that the house and Yorke’s ghost leave entirely alone.

Fiadh has been in Wicked’s Rest for approximately twenty years now. She has a house on the border of Gatlin Fields and Mossthorn Forest, but is most often in the Mossthorn bog itself, even sleeping there some nights. 

She has a little coterie of ravens that can sometimes be found loitering on the deck or lawn of her house. If you see a raven in Mossthorn forest, it might just be one of hers. (The ravens are not, however, supernatural or fae. They just like that she feeds them and leaves them shiny things.)