MerMarch because i said so

[blackmagicduck]

 

Types Of Mermaid:
1.Good: Everything said about merfolks is wrong. They are reclusive, but not evil. Especially not this one. Maybe they even saved you. No matter what, they love you, absolutely. And, were you to be honest, it was love at first sight on your end, too. But that doesn't mean you can be together...at least, not easily.
2. Bad: Come, jolly sailor bold. Come into the arms of a mermaid, and you will not regret it. They will hold you, and you cannot resist, even as you're dashed against the rock.
3. Wild: Good and evil cannot be applied to mermaids here, for they are like any other wild creature, more beast than man. Yet the more they're exposed to the kindness of humans or others who live on land, the more fond they grow towards it - and those who show them that kindness.
4. Ignorant: The mermaid's intentions are good, yet he or she doesn't realize what they could do to hurt their land dweller lover.
5. The Mermaid Dilemma: What can be done if someone wants to do more with a mermaid than give them kisses or sweet words? Not much, it seems. At first glance, that is, though who knows what can happen if one puts their mind to it.
6. Not What Was Expected: Beauty is always expected of a mermaid, but what if such a creature looked more like this? Who could care for such a beast? Well, there's still charm there, and with enough personality, appearances can be looked past.

Scenarios:
1 ♢ Little Mermaid
♢ Mer
♢ One of you is a mer person with something you want. The other is a powerful mage who can possibly give it to you. Can an arrangement be made...?

2 ♢ Exploration
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Whatever you are, your curiosity has gotten the best of you. Whether it's a sunken shipwreck on the bottom of the ocean or a mysterious cove hidden away along the cliffside... Venturing with a friend or running into something unexpected... What will you find?

3 ♢ Exchange
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Sometimes, territories are broached, but it's not always a bad thing. Whether you're of entirely different species, or just from different seas, you've met in peaceful circumstances- perhaps as a direct result of those! So it's time for a cultural exchange. Just ignore the fresh water mer. 

4 ♢ For Science
♢ Mer and Human
♢ This is a one in a lifetime chance.... for at least one person. Are you on an isolated island? A ship far out to sea? A highly funded aquarium? Or perhaps even a laboratory with more than questionable methods... Either way, you have the chance now to study something rarely seen before. How will it turn out for both of you?

5 ♢ Ariel's Dream
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Some say it's impossible for a mer to live on dry land... except that's been quietly proven wrong. One of you has taken to living among humans, whether for years or still learning the ropes. As for the other... Are you a concerned friend, checking in on them from the sea? Or are you a landdweller, stumbling onto a great secret?

6 ♢ Sea Life
♢ Mer and Human
♢ While they have the legs for landdwelling, some humans seem to have more saltwater in their veins than blood, and those are the kinds of humans that end up with dealing with the mysteries of the sea the most. A surfer catching waves with shark mer? A pirate bartering with sirens for safe passage? A fisherman working together with those who know fish best? There's all sorts. 

7 ♢ Stranded
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Well, carp. Good job. One way or another, you're stuck where you shouldn't be. Whether that's a human lost in the tides, or a mer trapped against the land, you need help.... So don't be picky with what you do get. 

8 ♢ Siren Song
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Sometimes, there's a good reason people fear the too wide expanse of the sea, or how deep its depths an reach... Strange songs which string through coastal towns and cause disappearances... The sound of something slipping through the water around a ship in the dead of night... Unexplained shapes which flicker outside of deep-sea vessels or submarines or installations. Do you want to know what's out there? 

9 ♢ Capture
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Sometimes, there's a good reason why people fear humans. You don't belong here, being gawked at through thick aquarium glass or trapped in a too-small freakshow tank, but what can you do? Is there anyone who cares for your plight, or are there only people responsible for it?

10 ♢ Chance Encounter
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Well, this is awkward. You didn't mean to stumble onto a mer just... there, doing whatever, on the beach or by the docks or tangled up in your fishing net, but, well. It's happened. Now what?

11 ♢ Transformation
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ For one reason or another, you want to go where you've never gone before... A mer, venturing on the land either as a rare chance or every day business? Or a human, accepting some sort of trade or just to run away from the life you have now? Either way, it might get messy.... Feel free to mix in with other scenarios. 

12 ♢ Fantasy Meets Fantasy
♢ Mer and OTHERS!
♢ Who's to say that humans are the only other creatures in the world? Maybe people living beneath the sea's waves aren't the only strange things. Maybe there are centaurs who travel along coastal roads to watch the night sky along with mer astronomers. Perhaps selkies are just distant cousins. Or who's to say that mer can't be a host of things unto themselves? The ocean's the limit. 

13 ♢ Sci-fi
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Some say astronauts are nothing more than sailors venturing off into another unexplored sea, one that's above instead of below. And, befitting those same sailors of older days, they seem to tell tails of strange melodic frequencies coming in over the radio to their ears, and strange comets that look like tails passing them by on a landed planet. Do they not know what's accompanying them in space, or is that what they're actively chasing?

14 ♢ Divinity
♢ Mer and Human
♢ There are stories told of what exactly it is that could be both human and fish... So it's not surprising that, eventually, one would land upon calling them divine entities, either gods of the sea or lakes, or just their messengers. Is that true, or just a very clever, long lasting ruse?

15 ♢ Afterlife
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Some say mer are just humans, wrongfully forced overboard by superstition or cruelty and welcomed by the sea into something more. Others say that they're the spirits, haunting a particular sea or lake town for a wrongful death. What's the truth? Time to find out. 

16 ♢ Peaceful Living
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Not everything has to be a dramatic mess. Sometimes, things just... work out for the best. These are better times, and mer are just another part of life. Water-side towns where everything is built around those that share the waters with them, or huge metropolises with water tubes and sprouts for mer to travel through. How will you imagine this sort of life?

17 ♢ Wildcard
♢ follow your dreams, make up whatever

Mix and Match the two, or pick one!  Pick one of my characters to play with! 

Comments

[blackmagicduck]

"... Can't be helped. What's done is done." Another sigh, closing her eyes. She didn't want to sleep again, she was restless.

[richestduck]

"You can practice your magesight by watching what I do," Scrooge told her. "Then if you need to, you can take a break. It's going to take a few hours to fully layer the permanent shielding."

[blackmagicduck]

Well, it was better than laying around doing nothing. She grunted as she turned over in bed to look at him. "We've got nothing but time."

[richestduck]

Scrooge smiled. "Aye, that we do. Plus you watching me assembling these shields will help you get some idea of how the personal shields work. Though, obviously, on a smaller scale."

[blackmagicduck]

"Who taught you?" She asked, now finding herself curious.

[richestduck]

"My parents initially. Then the selkie colony after they took me in," Scrooge explained.

[blackmagicduck]

That made sense. "Has magic made you any happier?"

[richestduck]

"Yes and no," Scrooge told her honestly. "There are things I could never do if I didn't have my magic. Not only that but if I'd never had my magic, you and I would've never met one another.

"But magic did ultimately separate me from my family."

[blackmagicduck]

Magica didn't ask any further, not wanting to hurt him by prodding about his past. Yet she couldn't help wondering - if, someday, his family ever found him, would he be able to choose between them and her?

Foolish question, really - of course he'd choose them.

"... So. How do you go about making a shield?"

[richestduck]

He was grateful she didn't ask. There was still a lot of pain attached to that separation even all these years later.

He took a deep breath and blew it out. "Well, first step is figuring out what precisely we want the shield to do. In this case, I think the best shield would be to shield the house against evil intent: not just potential killers but robbers and vandals. I'd also like to put in place a shield to make sure that should a massive storm blow in for any reason, your cottage would still be standing."

He gave a thoughtful frown.

"Perhaps it'd be a good idea to build it beyond the cottage walls with some sort of fence border so it also encompasses the garden..."

[blackmagicduck]

She frowned - that seemed like extra work for him, which she didn't want.

"Just the cottage is fine. You don't need to over-exert yourself for plants."

[richestduck]

"But you need the garden for food, don't you?" he asked.

Honestly, it would be less work to just use the walls of the cottage. Still, if there were any expansions done to the cottage, he'd have to expand the shields anyway...

[blackmagicduck]

If he'd discussed his thoughts, Magica would have called him an even bigger idiot than she first knew. Why would she expand the cottage? It had all she needed, now with him included.

"I need the forest and the well too, but even your shields have limits." She countered. "Start small."

[richestduck]

"Small it is."

He cleared a space on her floor and at the cardinal points on her walls.

"Every shield starts with ground it to its source. In a personal shield, you're using your own energy and magical reserves to maintain them. For a building, we use a constant source outside of you: the Earth itself."

[blackmagicduck]

Magica followed his line of sight, making sure to pay close attention with her limited movement. "Is the Earth affected by you doing this?"

[richestduck]

"Not enough to cause any major issues," he reassured her. "All of us who are born on this Earth borrow its strength in one form or another. Magic and life are intertwined that way. It's why Blood Magic even works in the first place. When we die, our spirits leave this world, and the last of our life energy returns to the Earth if it isn't gobbled up by anything nearby to be used for their own purposes."

He paused for a moment, considering.

"In a way, it's like the fish you bury in your garden to feed your plants."

[blackmagicduck]

Now that made sense, and she nodded slowly in understanding. "I see... so it's like a steady balance. I'll admit it makes me feel a little better." That way, she knew Scrooge wasn't sacrificing too much of himself for her.

[richestduck]

"Aye. And there are...I suppose you could call them 'rivers' of magic that flow all over the Earth called 'leylines'. They're large concentrations of it, incredibly powerful if you know how to tap into them. Dangerous to those who don't. And when they cross, they form 'pools' of magic known as 'nodes' which are even more powerful than the leylines themselves. A great number of mages over the centuries have made use of these leylines and nodes to power protective spells and other major works like Grand Spells. There isn't one of either near here, so I'm going to be pulling directly from the Earth. I'll be expending a lot of my own energy in the process to forge the connection and shape the shields, but after that I won't need to do much aside from periodically checking to make sure that the shields are still holding properly."

[blackmagicduck]

Some of this sounded vaguely familiar, as if it could have been something Mother and Father said long ago.

"Periodically checking... so is there something that could prevent the shields from holding properly, as you say?"

[richestduck]

"Aye," Scrooge said, smiling broadly to show how pleased he was by her question. "If the source of magic were to be completely drained, the shields would fall. Not likely given we're pulling straight from the Earth in this case. However, a mage with enough skill could siphon off energy to weaken the shields if not start to unmake them, but that's one reason why we layer shields rather than having one incredibly strong one: Each layer of shielding will have its own connection to the Earth so it will take a considerable amount of time and energy to completely expose the cottage.

"Of course, there are also more mundane reasons: Given that this will be shielding a location, if the symbols are broken or damaged, the shields can weaken if not outright fail. It's why many of the grand old castles and such use stone carvings and metal inlays to create the symbols."

[blackmagicduck]

Made sense, made sense... though she doubted any stronger mage would come along to pick on her. If any darker forces did follow her magic, they'd be disappointed to find just a starving hag and a silly selkie.

"Afraid we don't have anything like that here." She lightly knocked on the cottage wall. "Any stronger materials would have to be bought in the village... Far as I remember, this little home was built by my ancestors."

[richestduck]

"Understandable which is why I'll be periodically making sure the shields stay up," he told her.

He finished drawing the appropriate symbols--small and easily-missed things if one didn't know what to look for--before getting up to retrieve a bowl.

"I'll be back in just a moment. I find seawater helps me focus."

[blackmagicduck]

"Take your time. Not like I'm going anywhere." She settled on the bed, and Ratface came over to snuggle.

[richestduck]

Scrooge smiled and left the cottage, walking towards the shoreline. However, he stayed alert for any intruders as he filled the bowl with water which he carefully carried back inside.

First, he set the bowl down in the center of the room. Then he shut the door and locked it as best he could. It would take time to build the shields properly and he didn't want anyone simply waltzing in to harm Magica while his focus was elsewhere. The first shield would be the "deterrent" shield, he decided, something designed to make those of ill-intent too uneasy to risk throwing anything at the door much less approaching it. That would give them that little bit of added security as he built the other layers.

He sat down in front of the bowl, cross-legged. He closed his eyes, taking slow, even breaths and immediately dropping into a deep meditative state.

[blackmagicduck]

Magica watched silently, Ratface cuddling in her arms, not wanting to disturb his concentration. So that's what meditation looked like from the outside - he was pretty handsome when he was this serious.