[Magician] Saravati "Sara" Nair

FULL NAME: Saravati "Sara" Nair
ALIASES: Sara, Little Bird
CURRENT AGE: 17
GENDER: Female
OCCUPATION: N/A
FACTION: Necessarius



APPEARANCE: Sara sports dark, chocolate-esque colored skin and shoulder-length hair that is in between blue and purple and eyes that match her hair color. Her body is relatively slender aside from more muscular legs and she has a decent-sized chest. In Summer, when not on assignment, she tends to wear more of a sundress type outfit as depicted in the above image. In the Winter, when not on assignment, she tends to wear more of a white coat with a green frog-like hood, orange shorts, and thigh-high socks. When on assignment, she tends to wear skin-tight pants that fully cover her legs. Her top is more reminiscent of a swimsuit with no back and a more open chest area. Her hands are covered with black, fingerless gloves that reach halfway to her elbows. On her left hip is a pad with a pair of white water lilies on it, all attached to a belt with a holster for knives. She tends to wear this under the dress of her casual outfits. Her assignment outfit is generally covered by her causal outfit during travel as public indecency laws can still get in the way.  
HEIGHT: 170.2 cm [5’7”]
WEIGHT: 50.34 kg [111 lb]
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: In contrast to the rest of her body, Sara’s legs are more muscular due to the high amount of use they undergo.  



PERSONALITY:
Explorer’s Instinct
Given the chance, Sara will immediately run out to explore the scenery as much as she can. Whether it’s a new city and a new culture or just an expanse of forest as far as the eye can see, Sara is all too willing to push out just a bit further to take a look and understand.
Sit back and watch the view 
Despite her reliance on speed, Sara would much rather take the time to enjoy the scenery. Running around is wonderful, but there are always time when it’s best to just relax and take everything in. In the end, a traveler cannot impress the world onto her just by zooming past everything she sees. For that, there always needs to be time to let everything soak in.
Energetic and Bubbly
The traveler needs to be high energy. In daily life and in missions, Sara’s philosophy is to give everything her 100 percent. As such, there is nary a dull moment when she is around. Though, whether or not that energy is a good thing is best left to the eye of the beholder.
New Experiences are Wonderful
In conjunction with exploring new places, Sara also loves trying new experiences. One need not look any further than Sara’s first experience in a train and in a plane to distinguish her excitement. It’s enough to dull any aversion of risk-taking she may have to the point where she would even try bungee jumping. One can only dread the day someone tries to make her tipsy.
Outgoing
In conjunction with her own energetic nature, Sara tends to be quite socially outgoing. One would normally not think that a village girl like her would be quite so outgoing but five years are more than enough to change a girl from a shy recluse to an open conversationalist.
Dedicated to a Fault
Giving 100 percent to what she does is wonderful. It’s what allows Sara to persevere in any task she is given. However, that dedication can lead to tunnel vision as she can get too focused in her own tasks that she misses things that she would have normally noticed. It truly is a great aporia for a girl with wanderlust.
Let’s Get Physical
There are no barriers for Sara. Personal space is merely an unnecessary mental barrier created for its user’s fear of the outside world. For someone like her who loves freedom above all else, what better way is there of being free than being physical in social interactions? Her interactions are far from violent and compose more of being willing to hold hands, embrace, or hanging around on taller people.
I Like Embellishments
Despite her work as a magician, or perhaps because of her symbolism preference as a magician, Sara enjoys trying on new clothes and jewelry. While she does not keep up with the latest fashions, she enjoys experimenting with random clothes to see what looks nice. Take her shopping and she will run amok throughout the mall.


LIKES:
+Spicy Food
+Sweet Foods (One does not remove an Indian’s sweet tooth)
+Travelling
+Photography
+Casual Stargazing
+Fluffy Things
+Bathing in the River
+The Wilderness
+Spelunking
DISLIKES:
-Sour Foods
-Meat (Strict Vegetarian)
-Heavy Traffic of any sort
-Smokers
-Restrictions
-Stilted conversations
STRENGTHS:
+Adaptability
+Conversationalist
+Acrobatic
+Strong legs
+Puzzle Solver
WEAKNESSES:
-Tunnel Vision
-Terrible at domestic work aside from cooking (That won’t stop her from trying)
-A bit too much of a risk taker
-A tad too trusting
-Tends to roam a bit too far out


HISTORY:
Freedom. It was such a simple concept that most people take for granted. The freedom to move around, the freedom to explore. Many people in the civilized world at least had the capability to do just that but take such a luxury for granted. The young Saravati never could say she had that.

She was born to a devout Brahmin family which fell closer to the Vishnavism sect of Hinduism. She resided among a small isolated community of Brahmin families in a portion of Kerala mostly cut off to the outside world. Of course, the cut-off to the outside world was not merely a lack of internet and phone. The community was almost self-sustaining.

Almost. It had one person, named Shankhi, in it as a liaison to the outside world in cases when they had shortages. If necessities like water or food were short, he would go out into nearby cities and towns to purchase those necessities. As such, the majority of the residents never needed to leave the community for any reason and could live a near ascetic lifestyle as they prayed to Lord Vishnu in that temple which housed idols symbolizing his deeds and his many avatars.

Saravati lived the same lifestyle the rest of her village lived in. She would spend time at the temple daily, listening to tales of Vishnu that the priests and gurus had told. She was taught how to read and write in Malayalam and Sanskrit.

Kids would often gather around Shankhi to hear tales of the world around them. Over time, they would either grow to lose interest or the parents would start to hold a heavy hand over them if they grew too curious. Saravati's parents were no different. While she still maintained her curiosity, it could never be sated as the village leaders attempted to actively stifle it.

However, that would eventually change. When Saravati was about twelve, she met him. An outsider. A dying man. He looked to be in his early twenties and seemed to have collapsed, injured, near the implicit borders of the village.

While the village was obsessed with isolation, the elders and the villagers were not people who would simply leave someone to die for such a simple reason. Even if he would simply return to Samsara and then reincarnate, that was still no reason to leave him for the dead. As such, Saravati's family ended up using their own home to let the injured traveler rest while the village spent the effort to nurse him. Saravati, herself, had to spend a fair amount of time keeping watch over the outsider, named Akash.

During that time, Akash spent a lot of time talking to the girl, telling her about the city where he came from, London, and the many sights and people he had seen throughout his life. He surprisingly was easy to get talking, though Saravati assumed that it was simply because of the fact that he had nothing better to do while he was resting up. In fact, there never seemed to nothing short of a jovial attitude whenever he spoke. On the flip side, Akash found it odd that he could never prod deeper on the girl. She was only a twelve year old girl. Prodding deep into a person's consciousness with conversational technique should have been child's play for him, especially for someone that young.

All attempts made by the community beforehand to spurn Saravati's innate wanderlust had been negated by her interactions with this one man. As such, Saravati eventually attempted to get the village leaders to let her leave with Akash when he healed. Unfortunately for her, the leaders first lectured her, telling her that the outside world is terrible and dangerous and that for people in the village, the ascetic life should be all that's necessary. However, they also let it slip that Akash would not be allowed to leave even after he healed as the village needed to protect its secrecy entirely.

Saravati immediately informed Akash who's treatments were nearly complete. Akash feigned indifference at the sound of that but it was evident to Saravati that he desperately wanted to leave. Some time later, Saravati walked in on Akash making some odd preparations. In a panic, Akash took advantage of the wanderlust he had awakened in her to keep her from leaking information out to anyone else. Apparently, there were magicians within the village creating a barrier that he planned to breach in order to escape. As such, Saravati bargained to get two things: to learn magic as well and to escape from the village alongside him.

Regardless of how much she respected the elders of the village who kept it a peaceful place, Saravati could not imagine how terrible the outside world could be when she had heard so many interesting and wondrous things from Akash. As such, she undertook the practice of magic, engraving the name 'volare723' into her soul. The bird known as Saravati would surely escape from her cage.

As she learned the basics of how to perform magic from Akash, he finally came to realize why he could not probe any deeper into the girl. Wanderlust. Curiosity. It was not just the surface of that girl's existence, but her very core. It was the sign of an earnest person who held nothing back who was similar to himself. In the end, she too was someone who wished to escape the shackles of boundaries.

During their time, Saravati began to learn more about why Akash was injured near the town. According to him, he was chasing after a bad magician who was erecting numerous boundaries that were draining life force from younger residents of nearby populations. While he took care of the boundaries, he ended up injured by a last resort spell that hit the two of them near Saravati's village. He was unable to find out the fate of his target. Saravati strengthened her resolve to escape and help Akash escape so he could find his target and prevent anymore tragedies.

Shortly after, she and Akash made their way outside of the village's barrier and never looked back. Fortunately for Akash, his target had died not only a few tens of meters away from where he was found. In order to not traumatize the girl, Akash made sure Saravati never saw the corpse as they simply moved on from that village.

Granted with this newfound freedom, Saravati still held nowhere to go. After all, she was a mere twelve year old girl. In order to avoid abandoning the girl to the cruel world around her, he took her back with him to London, where he worked for an organization known as Necessarius, and took her under his wing. Since she was a magician, albeit a young fledgling magician, it was best she be taken in by Necessarius lest her free-spirit take her somewhere she would be killed by them.

Of course, Saravati was only a neophyte with magic and was definitely not going to be able to pass the Necessarius admission test in her state. Even so, Necessarius was not going to easily accept the raising of a new magician or the fact that Akash had taught her magic. As such, Akash did two things. The first was to deceive Necessarius by saying that Saravati had already been in the process of learning magic before he met her. The second was to imply that Saravati could be used as a shackle to keep him bound to the organization. Necessarius, seizing the opportunity, decided that they could use Akash as a shackle to bind Saravati to them as well and gave Akash a time condition: if Saravati does not complete the Entrance Exam within three years, the organization will order her execution.

As such, Akash focused on getting her ready to join the organization while keeping silent about the shackle conditions. As such, she ended up passing the Entrance Exam at the tail end of the time limit and became an official member of Necessarius, using the organization as a method to sate her seemingly infinite wanderlust.


RANK: Member
Volare723: "I shall fly boundlessly and endlessly, impressing unto myself this vast, wide world."
Embellishment Emulation/Kathakali:
Sara’s magic functions on the use of embellishments as symbols. By adding these symbols in the form of jewelry onto her body, she can emulate aspects of specific figures from Hindu mythology. While each one has its own individual function, Sara’s magic is designed to allow for simultaneous use of each aspect. While, in theory, she could use articles of clothing in order to form the symbols, use of jewelry, especially jewelry made form gold, tends to hold a stronger value as symbolism. This tends to mainly be due to the connection gold has to the goddess, Lakshmi, as well as its common use in decorating religious idols.

However, that only forms as the activation step. Part of Sara’s spell involves the consecration of her body to be a vessel for the power of the gods. She does this by wearing white water lilies on various parts of her body. The Brahmin varna (or caste) symbolizes being able to commune with and being a consecrated vessel to take in the power of the gods. Aside from the meaning ‘caste', ‘varna’ also has numerous other meanings. In the Mahabharata, one of the meanings of ‘varna’ is color. In the same epic tale, the castes were associated with certain colors—Brahmins being associated with the color white. At the same time, Brahmin's etymology comes from bráhman meaning ‘growth’, ‘development’, ‘swelling’, and ‘bulging’, all of which flowers in bloom are associated with. As such, the white water lily, a white flower symbolizing purity and spiritual enlightenment, was the perfect representation of the Brahmin varna.

The word ‘varna’ is also derived from the root meaning ‘to cover, envelop’. As such, she adorns it onto herself. The places she adorns it onto are the pad on her hip, as well as onto each arm, thigh, and foot. The latter three are put on much like a backpack strap and are used to suppress the other castes as the other three castes, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra, were said to have come from those three locations respectively during Purusha’s sacrifice.

Her spells have limited time effects, after which the ornament itself will be damaged and will need to be repaired. Each spell has an effective time period of fifteen minutes. Addition of another spell will increase her effective time period by fifteen minutes. However, doubling the symbol for any one spell will not create any added effects. For example, stacking one symbol for speed and one for stamina will allow for both spells to be used for 30 minutes. However, stacking two speed symbols will only stay active for 15 minutes and will not provide any additional or multiplied effects.

Sara has three specific spells, each used to enhance her movements.

Garuda Aspect-
Garuda is the large mythical humanoid and/or bird deity who acts as the mount  for Vishnu. Throughout Hindu Mythology and especially in the Mahabharata, Garuda represents martial prowess, violent force, and speed. Sara uses Garuda’s connection to speed in order to allow herself to move at high speeds. While Garuda is known more for its birdlike visage, there is another aspect to Garuda that Sara takes advantage of as a symbol. Known as an enemy and predator of serpents, Garuda wears multiple snakes on his person. Two snakes, Adisesha and Gulika, are worn on his left and right wrists respectively. In order to match the two snakes worn on Garuda’s wrists, Sara uses a pair of snake-shaped bracelets on her right and left arm as the symbols to make her body an idol of Garuda.

This grants her the ability to run at a max speed of 390 kilometers per hour, the maximum diving speed of the peregrine falcon, a bird of prey much like what Garuda resembles. At the same time, the spell enhances her audiovisual perception and mental capacity and reflexes to keep up with her movement speeds. However, this is all the spell grants her. She can only control her acceleration and speed in terms of magnitude. She is still bound by the laws of inertia and will definitely become a stain on a wall if she ends up crashing into one.

Gandaberunda Aspect-
When the Vishnu’s fourth avatar, Narasimha, had finished slaying Hiranyakashipu, he did not let go of this form. This had originally terrified the gods to an even greater extent than did the demon Narasimha had slain. In an attempt to restrain Narasimha, Shiva incarnated into multiple forms which were slain by Narasimha before finally incarnating as Sharabha. In order to match that, Vishnu took the form of Gandeaberunda, the two-headed eagle. The battle itself raged on for eighteen days, though the results are variable between interpretations of the story. To Sara, the results of the battle don’t matter. In order to make use of the Gandaberunda, she a ring shaped headdress with the heads of two carnivores birds, like an eagle or hawk, sticking out from the side. This can simply be put on her head and will fit right above the ear.

Doing so allows her to eliminate any issues cause by a lack of stamina, such as pain from the lactic acid build-up in the muscles, during the duration of the aspect’s activity. However, all of the fatigue that should have been accumulated will instantly return to the user when the aspect hits its time limit. The fatigue cannot be fully erased by reactivation of the spell as tiredness and pain will only drop by 75%.

Ganesha Aspect-
Yet, perhaps the greatest obstacle to full use of the spell is inertia, the concept ordained by Newton’s First Law of Motion. To that end, she invokes the god in Hindu mythology who is known for being the master of obstacles, Ganesh. In order to do this, she wears a choker type gold necklace with the engraving of a severed elephant head and a compass with its needle facing north in order to allude to the tale of Ganesh’s decapitation by Shiva as told in the Shiva Puranas.

In using this symbol, she turns herself into an idol of Ganesh, allowing herself to void any pair of obstacles presence before her. While the obstacle will still be present in reality, it will not be present to Sara. For example, her primary use is to eliminate inertia and reaction forces, both phenomena described by Newton’s Laws of Motion. When she uses this spell, inertia and reaction forces will still exist, but will no longer affect her. The same goes for if she uses it on physical objects. For example, if she designates a wall as the obstacle, she will be able to pass through it, but nobody else will be able to.


OTHER ABILITIES:
Barrier Symbolism-Reverse Engineering Specialist
Due to the amount of time she had spent with Akash, Sara had learned how to identify and deconstruct the symbolism involved in barriers and boundaries constructed based on various religious frameworks. While her knowledge is nowhere near that of Akash’s, who had specialized and focused on this area of magic, she finds herself easily able to understand and corrupt the symbolism backing simple and slightly more complex barriers with ease.

Negate Trap-Escape Artist
The girl who had escaped her cage once before can no longer be trapped in cages. Trapping Sara is a near impossibility as she can find an escape no matter what situation she is forced into. No matter how much one may find a way to trap her, it is only a matter of time before she escapes.

Makeshift Goldsmith
Due to how Sara’s magic damages her jewelry when she reaches her time limits, she has learned how to manipulate the general shape of gold with makeshift tools or even rocks, due to gold’s malleability. She is able to do more extensive repairs when she has a work space, such as repair of engravings or more fine repairs on the shape.

Cooking
Sara is able to cook, though her specialty is in the food that is native to her home country. While her South Indian cooking is top-notch, her cooking in foods like pancakes is still at a rudimentary level.

Knife-Throwing is Fun
Sara likes throwing knives. The speed from her throws compounded with the speed of her movements tend to make for an excellent piercing weapon. Since she can’t use her fists in her high speed movements, lest she pulverizes them, she finds projectiles to be an apt substitute.

Knitting
Sara took time to learn and master knitting after the time she tried to make a scarf for Akash. That’s a story better left for another day, however. She has since grown to be competent with knitting needles.  

Multilingual
At a young age, the languages Malayalam and Sanskrit were impressed into her. After leaving with Akash, she later learned Hindi and English so that she could keep up with the world around her.


CHARACTER THEME:



PLAYER'S NAME: Saravati Nair
CHATANGO NAME: KKohaku
RATING: M
FACE CLAIM: Hassan of Serenity from Fate/Prototype Fragments
OTHER CHARACTERS: Kira Kohaku, Kumokawa Maria
MISC. INFORMATION: N/A

What is with these legs? They really seem to be a tad too long…


I. The History – About Sense & Logic

Admittedly there isn’t much wrong with the history. It’s overall very simple and doesn’t try to become too ambitious. However, I do have a complaint that I need to file: Necessarius serves the purpose of extinguishing Magicians and they do have an endless supply of those, considering there are many who are left without any better choices eventually. So why would they simply accept one of their members teach someone Magic right under their nose? Someone who isn’t even a member of the group so far and could possible turn against them eventually? Not to forget that if at all they would prefer the count of Magicians to go down, not up~
Basically what I do want you to do is to elaborate a bit further on how Akash managed to keep Saravati by his side for the 5 years until she took on Necessarius’ entrance exams. And please make sure it convinces me.


II. The Spells – Doubting the Strength

I am quite fond of how Sara’s spells, personality, history and goals add up. It just creates some sort of ideal synthesis, which is usually an admirable thing.

However I need to admit that I’m not quite happy about it either. Right now she doesn’t give off the vibes of some strong witch hunter. Basically by combining all of her spells, which are all buffs, she can achieve some neat super human things, but that’s it then. Being capable of moving at high speeds, yet not able to actually adapt to such speeds, at least from the sounds of it. Right now she should be able to storm ahead at many km/hs however manoeuvring, aiming or perceiving things have to turn out rather complicated. After all human perception is only limited.
Not to forget that 80 km/h aren’t that fast from a driver’s perspective. Especially with the universe’s standards on the table. So you might wanna reconsider the limit you imposed as well.

Leivinia Birdway wrote:What is with these legs? They really seem to be a tad too long…

Probably best not to think about it. So, let's explain it away as...eh...lens distortion? Yes. That'll do.

Leivinia Birdway wrote:I. The History – About Sense & Logic

Admittedly there isn’t much wrong with the history. It’s overall very simple and doesn’t try to become too ambitious. However, I do have a complaint that I need to file: Necessarius serves the purpose of extinguishing Magicians and they do have an endless supply of those, considering there are many who are left without any better choices eventually. So why would they simply accept one of their members teach someone Magic right under their nose? Someone who isn’t even a member of the group so far and could possible turn against them eventually? Not to forget that if at all they would prefer the count of Magicians to go down, not up~
Basically what I do want you to do is to elaborate a bit further on how Akash managed to keep Saravati by his side for the 5 years until she took on Necessarius’ entrance exams. And please make sure it convinces me.

Hopefully, this'll be sufficient...hopefully.

Leivinia Birdway wrote:
II. The Spells – Doubting the Strength

I am quite fond of how Sara’s spells, personality, history and goals add up. It just creates some sort of ideal synthesis, which is usually an admirable thing.

However I need to admit that I’m not quite happy about it either. Right now she doesn’t give off the vibes of some strong witch hunter. Basically by combining all of her spells, which are all buffs, she can achieve some neat super human things, but that’s it then. Being capable of moving at high speeds, yet not able to actually adapt to such speeds, at least from the sounds of it. Right now she should be able to storm ahead at many km/hs however manoeuvring, aiming or perceiving things have to turn out rather complicated. After all human perception is only limited.
Not to forget that 80 km/h aren’t that fast from a driver’s perspective. Especially with the universe’s standards on the table. So you might wanna reconsider the limit you imposed as well.

I knew I forgot something...
You'd think with how much I'd read Negima that I'd remember that mental capacity and perception need to keep up with high speeds.

Revision Notes:

• Last paragraph of history edited and expanded upon in two paragraphs to create an explanation for issues noted in History section of evaluation
  
• Garuda Aspect altered in order to give an increase in maximum speed and allow for perception and mental capacity to keep up with the increase in movement speed.
  
• For reference, the speed of sound is 1,236 km/hr
  
• Character theme added because I finally realized that this one is perfect. 
  

OK, this is way better! I like how you used the standard idea of Necessarius or rather Laura Stuart binding people to the organisation by abusing the positive thing that are bonds. Quite well crafted.

Yet, I’m not done with you.


II. The Spells – Symbolism

I thought about it ever since reading the profile first, then remembered how I treated symbolism in the past and comparing it to those standards I need to drag you back into the working machine. I’m not fine with it just being left at putting the embellishments on and then having an effect. I want to see more. More of what? Symbolism of course. A spell isn’t just a one track thing triggered by a single action. There is more. Minor symbols like movements, sentences spoken or things that are exploited to work into the favoured direction; everything woven together, that’s what crafts a spell.

Leivinia Birdway wrote:OK, this is way better! I like how you used the standard idea of Necessarius or rather Laura Stuart binding people to the organisation by abusing the positive thing that are bonds. Quite well crafted.

As a wise man named Homer Simpson once said, "WOOHOO!"

Leivinia Birdway wrote:Yet, I’m not done with you.


II. The Spells – Symbolism

I thought about it ever since reading the profile first, then remembered how I treated symbolism in the past and comparing it to those standards I need to drag you back into the working machine. I’m not fine with it just being left at putting the embellishments on and then having an effect. I want to see more. More of what? Symbolism of course. A spell isn’t just a one track thing triggered by a single action. There is more. Minor symbols like movements, sentences spoken or things that are exploited to work into the favoured direction; everything woven together, that’s what crafts a spell.

As that same wise man subsequently said, "D'OH!"

Well, third time's the charm.

Revision Notes:

• Addition of the White Lily-Brahmin Symbolism to the general overview section of the spells section. The Second and Third Paragraph of that section are the new additions.
  
• In order to compensate for the new symbolism, appearance was edited from "On her left hip" to the end of the second sentence afterwards. 
  

That’s it fair and simple. I can see the effort you put into making this final cut and it’s heavily appreciated. Overall Sara is quite a good character, not entirely what I expected, thus a bit of a surprise and that makes me happy. We’re done it seems.


Now will I enslave you to assist me with Magic Side matters my little free bird?