Post by oya on May 25, 2012 5:32:55 GMT -5
SAFARA AYITA OIÁ
Confident Fearless Wanderlust
[/size][/font][/center] Confident Fearless Wanderlust
basics.
• Full Name
• Significance of Name [/color] |
How your character's full name can relate to the god's names.
' first- Safara – Mean fire. Oya is a goddess of fire amongst other things.
' middle- Ayita- Means dance. Oya is a dancer goddess.
' last- Oiá – Oiá is another spelling of Oya.
• Age: [/color] | 31
• Grade [/color] | Mythology Teacher
• Sexuality [/color] | Heterosexual
• Deity [/color] | Oya - African
• Title of your deity [/color] | Goddess of thunder, lightning, tornadoes, winds, rainstorms and hurricanes, fire, warriors, women, feminine leadership, transformation, witches and guardian of the gateway between life and death.
appearance.
• Build [/color] | Curvy Hip-Hop body, standing at 5'7"
• Hair Color & Style [/color] | Naturally, black, but it's become a light brown with lighter highlights due to exposure to the sun.
• Eye Color [/color] | Rio Grande brown
• Played By [/color] | Beyoncé Knowles
• First Impression[/color] | Safara strolled into the room with the commanding presence she normally maintained. She held herself like a queen, though unintentionally, but her face was friendly, approachable. She smiled widely at her students, her teeth white, and said in an accented voice that hinted of Lousiana and Texas, but not nearly as thick as some people. She was comfortably dressed, as usual, in her attire of jeans and a shirt. Curvy in all the right spots, Safara filled out clothes just right without being too thin or too big.
Her hair was worn long today on account of the weather, though the humidity didn’t affect it at all. A light brown because of her time outside, she tossed it to one side giving off the scent of cocoa butter to people in the front row. She always managed to smell nice. Her complexion was lovely, due to a daily regimen of skin care products, and the color of café au lait.
Her red-brown eyes studied the class briefly because she announced the assignment for the day.
personality.
• Overall Personality[/color] | Safara is a riddle and her personality is ever changing. Right when you think you got a hold on her, she changes it up. Then, when you think you got a hold on her again, she’s changed again. It’s just in her nature to be shifting and transforming. She gets wiggly when she’s not allowed to change her personality on a regular basis.
Though there are many sides to her, one of Safara’s more noticeable sides is her wild nature. She’s prone to anger and her emotions (literally) change with the weather. Being extremely confident and proud, she’s more like to choose fight than flight and can definitely take care of herself. She has no tolerance for bullshitters and can see through them like a windex’ed window. She hates being challenged and she equally hates being challenged by a man, as she knows full well she can ‘beat a nigga down.’ She’s volatile and it’s best to approach her on a sunny day as the weather affects her mood more intensely than most. Safara is absurdly powerful in her weather abilities, and very attuned to it as well, so one should think twice before they want to bitch her out.
On the other hand, Safara can be very loving. She loves children and animals, especially horses and her pet lizards. She’s the ‘mother’ of nine fire Salamanders, named Fuego, Feu, Dife, Fuoco, Fogo, Aga, Pozhar, Hwajae and Bill. Bill’s her favorite. She’s raised them practically from the egg, so she’s very attached to the little guys and all hell will break loose if someone does anything to her lizards. She has much more patience with children and animals than she does with everyone else, so they have a better chance of reaching her than say, one of her classmates.
Safara likes color and tends to surround herself in colors that reflect her mood, though primarily she enjoys the color burgundy. She’s developed quite a fashion sense and has a vast knowledge of what’s in and what’s out. She’s also annoyingly thrifty and can haggle down the price of an item to lows that should be illegal. This has happened even in chain stores. Strangely, no one gets upset when she does this. Supernatural? Maybe…
Safara is prone to wanderlust. She hates being kept in one place too long which is why Pantheon Academy is a bit of a struggle for her. She can often be caught looking out the window or in the distance as if she’s watching something big that no one else can see. When summer, spring, winter, whatever break comes along, she’s gone the minute it begins so she can travel and let herself be taken away wherever the wind takes her (literally). It’s easy to walk into her office and see her staring out the window with a melancholy look on her face.
Safara is very confident and can come off as blunt or rude. She doesn’t back down and doesn’t take kindly to people who insist on being the dominant personality. This can be dangerous as her losing her temper can lead to gales, electrocution and losing her sanity. She’s towing a razor’s edge when it comes to her emotions, but she has been known to lose it from time to time. In the bedroom or as a lover, she’s very dominant, but definitely knows how to keep a spouse.
The girl loves to dance. She is a dancer through and through and will not acknowledge your existence until she’s done and Lord help you if you try and interrupt her.
She’s also a classy girl. She prefers not to go ghetto on a person unless she absolutely has too because she feels as if it makes her a gross stereotype. Not to say she’d never go ghetto on someone, so don’t push it. She’s also fiercely independent. She has her own job, makes her own money, and has worked for everything she has. She has no tolerance for rich kids who think they’re entitled to the world. If you’re rich or royal or whatever, it’s going to take a lot to earn her respect, especially if you’re still living off of Daddy/Mommy’s paycheck.
Safara is smart. She reads all the time, though no one would know it because she prefers to do it in private so she can be alone with her thoughts. Generally, people can tell what kind of book she’s reading by what kind of weather it is.
• Likes [/color] |
' one - Extreme weather - allows her to play
' two - Cocoa butter - smells nice
' three - Graveyards - soothing
' four - Lot's of color - Just likes it
' five - Red wine- it's yummy
• Dislikes [/color] |
' one - Pompous men - Who do they think they're kidding?
' two - Disrespecting a graveyard - those are your ancestors, punk!
' three - Being in one spot too long - she's afflicted with wanderlust
' four - Being interrupted while dancing - Just don't do it.
' five - wearing all black - color is good!
• Flaws [/color] |
' Physical - Prone to acne
' Emotional - Gets grumpy when in one place too long
' Psychological - Has the need to wander all the time
• Habits [/color] |
' Physical - Skin care regimen
' Emotional - Emotional outbursts
' Psychological - Emotional outbursts control the weather
• Skills[/color] |
' one - Smart
' two - Diplomatic
' three - Flexible
• Fears[/color] | Hearing that her sister has been hurt and/or her students being hurt
• Dreams[/color] | Become a dancer and travel the world
• Best Memory[/color] | Aya took my hand and asked me to dance with her because none of our brothers would. It was my father’s birthday in Lagos and there were a bunch of people dancing to commemorate his many many years of living, as well as his wealth of sons and two daughters. Aya was little though and hadn’t really learned what was acceptable to do and what wasn’t in Nigerian society. Dancing was a complicated matter, thus our brothers sort of brushed her off like a gnat. Aya was started to get frustrated and I could see the beginnings of storm within my little sister so I took her hand and said in Yorùbá, “We’re gonna dance, little sister, forget our stupid brothers. Take my hand.”
I swung her out into the main dancing area and together we dance. A light warm breeze began to kick up because of my ability, but I didn’t really care much. I liked dancing with my baby sister. I don’t know how old we were but the smile on Aya face and the shocked look at the indecency of the Oiá girls, dancing in front of everyone, was enough to make me smile and hug Aya close to me afterwards. My Habibti, Aya was and always will be my favorite of my siblings.
• Worst Memory[/color] | “You are a bad influence on your sister, Safara. You’re turning her into a little heathen. You won’t heed my words, you won’t serve your brothers, you don’t attend church, you ignore all my command and now it’s all rubbing off on Aya.” My mother screeches at me. We’re in Lagos so there’s really no privacy, but she likes to imagine that we’re hidden from the rest of the family, like my grandmother’s blanket that now serves as a door is going to keep this conversation away from the prying ears of my six older brothers.
“I don’t know how I raised such a willful, disgusting daughter. You know I saw you with that boy, from the city, walking around town with him like some common whore. What’s wrong with you Safara? Have I not raised you better than this?” She’s speaking in Yorùbá now, hence the weird phrasing of the language, like we’re in some old time movie.
“Iya,” that’s the word for mom in Yorùbá, “I’m leaving now. I love you.”
ability.
The ability to manipulate, control and affect the weather.
-The Superpower Wiki
• Applications
- Safara can sense and influence meteorological patterns, creating rain, wind, hail, lightning, snow, sleet, fog and temperature changes.
- This includes the ability to generate various natural phenomena or control the intensity of the weather in highly concentrated (inside room) or vastly extended (continental) areas.
- There are five main factors of Weather manipulation:
- Air Manipulation - for wind and related effects.
- Electricity Manipulation - lightning in all variations.
- Ice Manipulation- cold, blizzards, etc.
- Thermal Manipulation - make it cold or hot.
- Water Manipulation - rain, snow, fog etc.
- Aerial Adaptation
- Environmental Adaptation
- Thermal Manipulation to affect the temperature.
- Weather Sensing
- Electricity Manipulation only for various electric effects found in weather:
- Lightning Bolt Projection/Electrical Beam Emission of varying intensities, may even be able to generate enough power to destroy and/or vaporize matter.
- Create electric bursts and/or shock-blasts
- Water Manipulation only via rain, snow, sleet, hail, floods, monsoons, sub-zero rain, etc.:
- Blizzard Creation
- Cloud Generation/Vapor Manipulation
- Droughts
- Precipitation Manipulation/Rain Creation
- Air Manipulation for winds of every power-level:
- Can create tornadoes/hurricanes, vertical drafts, microbursts and other devastating forms of wind storms.
- Naturally can also create any less extreme air/wind movement.
- Gliding, Flight and/or Levitation.
- Telekinesis by controlling the air around objects.
• Limitations
- Safara has to be wary of her emotions as they can influence the weather. When she’s unstable, the weather is unstable.
- Needs atmosphere.
- When she’s super emotional, Safara may not be able to control the weather after she causes the effects to manifest.
- Put her in a small box and she’s useless with this ability.
• Projected Development[/color]
- Atmospheric Adaptation
- Ecological Empathy to feel a shift in natural events.
- Cosmic Manipulation: Specifically to reach beyond the earth’s atmosphere and manipulate cosmic weather.
- Atmokinetic Combat
The power to project tangible extensions [weaponry] from the mind.
-The Superpower Wiki
• Applications
- Safara can change psychic energy into tools, objects, weapons and other items of varying permanence.
- Once Safara has mastered this ability, she can use it for almost any situation, creating any weapon or tool she’ll need.
- Safara can create any item she has seen or can imagine and have a good idea how it functions.
- Short list of possibilities includes:
[/li][/ul]
- Appendages
- Armor
- Barriers, Shields and Walls
- Platforms
- Restraints
- Weapons
• Limitations
- Wounding a person with this ability only hurts them physically, not mentally.
- Prone to headaches.
- Her imagination is her limitation in the way of weapons. It’s why she usually chooses swords.
- She can’t create a ‘living’ construct, like a golem.
• Projected Development[/color]
- Once Safara has mastered this ability, she can use it for almost any situation, creating any weapon or tool she’ll need for however long she’ll need it.
The ability to manipulate the forces of nature and elements connected to it.
-The Superpower Wiki
• Applications
- Safara is connected directly and can communicate, influence, manipulate and control nature: all living beings and plants and natural phenomena, such as the weather and geology of the Earth, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed.
- Safara can survive in any natural environment on earth.
- Safara can control, tap into, blend and/or become elements of nature, including air, weather, lightning, earth, stone, metal, water, ice, clouds/mist, fire etc..
- Safara can control animals and plants and mimic their abilities and forms.
- Because Safara can communicate with nature itself, she becomes instantly familiar with her surroundings. The connection is so deep that the earth can respond to her emotions and desires (blossoming with flowers and calming weather when happy, making skies stormy when angry, shifting the landscape to gain the advantage in a fight, etc… much like the weather already does now.)
- Safara can purify, heal and generally influence the health of nature. And considering the fact that she’s helping the environment, plants and animals act favorably towards her.
• Limitations
- Safara is limited in a sterile environment with no nature
- Since her emotions affect the nature directly, control is essential.
- She can’t directly talk with animals. She generally just kind of gives off a pheromone that ‘talks’ to them.
- Because it’s magic, it’s a give and take relationship. She can’t just make nature do what she wants. She has to channel her own energy in return for earth energy. This requires prep time, concentration, meditation and lot’s of time spent out doors. Like necromancers use the energy the dead, she uses the energy of nature so she needs to understand nature better than most. The moment she starts forgetting and letting go, she’s lost. Hence, staying in a city too long will cause her pain and force her back into nature, wherever it is (parks are good).
- Because each ‘ability’ she uses is a spell, there’s a limit as to how many she can have going at any one given time.
- She has to say aloud what she’s using. Can be just lip syncing or what have you. It’s always said in the Yoruban language.
- She needs to be in physical contact with nature in order for any of her abilities to work. This means, put her in a concrete box and she's useless. Put her in a concrete box with a handful of dirt and now we're talking.
• Projected Development[/color]
Possible Spells and Spell Results:
- Communicate with and command earth's environment psychically.
- If the area has been cleared of natural wildlife and vegetation, then both will be attracted to return to the area.
- Nature will defend Safara from potential threats (and is aware of how to tell friend from foe).
- Animal Empathy
- Animal Manipulation
- Animal Mimicry
- Insect Manipulation
- Danger Intuition
- Disaster Manipulation
- Disease Manipulation
- Ecological Empathy
- Air Manipulation
- Earth Manipulation
- Electricity Manipulation
- Limited Electromagnetism Manipulation
- Fire Manipulation
- Limited Gravity Manipulation
- Magma Manipulation
- Metal Manipulation
- Swamp Mimicry
- Terrain Manipulation
- Water Manipulation
- Environmental Adaptation
- Nature Enhancement
- Ocean Manipulation
- Pheromone Manipulation
- Flower Manipulation
- Fungus Manipulation
- Mold Manipulation
- Plant Communication
- Plant Growth
- Plant Manipulation
- Wood Manipulation
- Poison Generation
- Self-Sustenance
- Shapeshifting
How many she can do at one time will increase as her power grows. Right now, this is a brand new ability.
history.
• Birthplace [/color] | Born in Lagos, Nigeria.
• Mother [/color] | Yolanda Jolayemi Oiá
• Father [/color] | Adam Segun Oiá
• Siblings[/color] | Absolom Abayomi Oiá (brother), Ezra Gbayi Oiá (brother), David Nehizena Oiá (brother), Gideon Tomori Oiá (brother), Isaac Toysin Oiá (brother), Jeremiah Mabayoje Oiá (brother), Aya Rachel Oiá (sister)
• Other Relations [/color] | None of importance
• Overall history[/color] | Safara was born to Yolanda Oiá, the daughter of a prominent village elder in a small village near the Ogun River in Nigeria who managed to somehow pull herself out of her ‘lowly’ beginnings enough to get a degree in cultural studies, and Adam Oiá, a conservationist on a wildlife refuge. Adam, who was originally from New Orleans, fell in love with Yolanda and married her, having six boys before Safara was born. After Safara was born, they had another daughter and decided that eight was enough.
Safara ended up living in between two places. On the one hand, she lived with her family in Nigeria during the summer, but, on the other hand, she lived with her New Orleans relatives during the fall and winter. She wasn’t usually alone, either accompanied by some parent, some siblings or various combinations of the two. Like her younger sister Aya. Aya was always at Safara’s side, following her around and trying to emanate everything about her. Safara liked the attention and tried to be a good role model for her little sister. However, her mother saw that Aya was just becoming another Safara and started insisting that Safara let Aya grow into her own person.
Safara had a strained relationship with her mother. Yolanda was a traditionalist, believing that women should be beautiful, honor their husbands and care for the home. She tended to forget about the fact that she was an educated woman with a degree, but always deflected this fact any time Safara tried to talk to her. Safara wasn’t the traditionalist her mother wanted her to be. At all. She was fiercely independent and would often get into fights with her mother over something stupid like doing the dishes.
It was during one of these fights, when she was about eight, that her powers started to manifest. Her mother was trying to get her to serve dinner and clean up after her brothers, something that Safara never enjoyed doing, preferring to not be subject to her brothers if she could help it. So, she refused. Yolanda insisted, trying to keep her cool but Safara just kept pushing it, saying she wouldn’t, that they could do it themselves. When Yolanda threatened to physically punish her daughter, Safara screamed that she wouldn’t do it. As she did, thunder rolled. The angrier she got, the fiercer the weather got. Eventually, she threw such a tantrum that their home in Lagos was nearly wiped off the map due to the storm that ensued.
As she grew, she realized that she was psionically linked to the weather. She could affect it with a thought and manipulate it to her will. She found that when she danced, the winds danced with her. She was felt angry or upset, clouds would darken the sky and when she cried, a rare occurrence, it would gently rain. Often, Aya was the only person who could calm her sister down, her innocence affecting Safara in a big way. Soon, Safara came to tame her powers, to a degree, with the help of her sister, who was the only one that knew what she could did. Aya, of course, was amazed and followed Safara around even more. Safara, who loved folklore and mythology, would tell Aya stories about great Pantheons of old. As the stories grew more and more exciting, so would the weather around her, causing gales if the sound effects needed them or sun if the story had a happy ending. She also loved to dance and would do so both in the classical style and the more exotic styles, would literally, dance up a storm. Aya would dance with her, though no storms would occur.
However, Safara left Nigeria, and her sister, for good when she came to the states and met a young man named Shane Storme. It was just a stage name, of course, but he was charming and loved her dancing. He was a popular choreographer, specializing in hip-hop, stomp, and dirty-south dancing. Safara, who was seventeen at the time, fell for him hard and, after a year of courtship, she ended up staying with him. He trained her and vice versa. When they entered dance competitions, they were unbeatable, though Safara was, understandably, the stronger dancer after awhile. She always gave Shane the credit though, since he was the one who was professionally training her. Shane had a personality to match Safara’s. They were tornado meeting a volcano and their relationship was intense.
Safara was soon raking in the money with her dancing and began training others. She worked for everything she had and she worked hard and honestly. Shane did very little to aid her financially and even less to aid her emotionally. Always independent, she paid for everything. They occasionally had fights over it. When she was nineteen and brought home a bunch of salamanders in their ‘larval’ stage, he was about to flush them down the toilet. It was a fight for the ages and ended with a flood in downtown New Orleans. In the end, she won and the salamanders were allowed to stay. She still has them.
She soon became aware that Shane was distracted. While she accompanied him almost everywhere and was publically acknowledged as his ‘girlfriend’, he would often leave on business. Upon further investigation, she realized that he had a few girls on the side, a swimmer named Olivia and another dancer named Tasha. Finding this out, Safara through a fit in a half and sent him packing fast. A fierce tempest met Shane as he left the house with all his stuff in the rain. At that point, she didn’t need him. She was an accomplished. But, she felt the winds call to her and she moved on from New Orleans.
Safara traveled a lot. She didn’t like staying in one place to long. Since she had managed to become financially secure all on her own, she’d just move from city to city, her salamanders in tow, which everyone thought was weird, but she usually just told them ‘So’s your face.’ Safara’s weather control was growing more and more intense each day. She had to learn on her own how to control it and ensure she never let it get out of control. This usually meant moving in order to not grow too attached to a place and therefore have her emotions more keenly attached in turn. She wasn’t sure what she wanted in life.
Then, she remembered those moments with Aya, the stories she told. She wanted to tel those stories and what they meant. So, she studied. She studied her ass off. And she was good at it. She gained her degree and started won awards, thanks to connections through her parents and her siblings. She had degrees in comparative literature, mythology and archaeology. Since she didn’t really have a social life to speak of, it was fairly easy for her to do. She mostly spent her time outside reading and studying, honing her weather skills.
She was eventually tracked down. It was hard to ignore weather patterns like hers and Pantheon Academy asked her to come as a student and a teacher. She accepted. What else was she going to do?
similarities between your character and your deity.
- Goddess’ name and her last name are different versions of each other.
- Her birthday (Feb. 2) is one of two holy days for Oya.
- Both are dancers.
- Both control the weather like woah.
- Both are super intelligent.
- She was born in Nigeria which where the Yoruba tribe (from which Oya comes) is primarily located.
- Oya was the daughter of Yemaya, the goddess of the sea. The two had a strained relationship, since they were polar opposites. It’s the same for Safara and her mother Yolanda.
- Oya had a younger sister named Ayao, who was the middle-woman between mortals and Oya when worshiping Oya. Safara has a younger sister named Aya who adores her.
- Safara is one of eight children. There were a total of eight Orishas, the group that Oya ran around with.
- Oya, a fire goddess, was often called the "Mother of Nine" which she took care of as a single mother. Safara is the "mother of nine" fire salamanders, that Aya helps her care for.
- Shango, the storm god, has three wives of which Oya was one. Safara was, unknowingly, one of three girlfriends to her boyfriend Shane Storme.
- Oya's parents were the sea goddess Yemaya who was in charge of the Ogun river, and Aganju, the god of volcanos and the wilderness. Safara's parents were a Yoruba woman who grew up near the Ogun river and a conservationist.
- Safara typically upstaged her ex-boyfriend Shane in dance competitions. When Oya and Shango would go out to battle, she was often the best fighter and much fiercer than her husband.
- Historically, Oya came to the Americas with the rise of slavery, where she was reborn in the voodoo religion as Maman Brigitte, among others.
- After dance competitions, Safara would give Shane the credit. Oya gave Shango the power of thunder.
- Safara is big on fashion and colors. Oya was guardian of the sacred rainbow cloth (I'm as confused as you).
roleplay sample.
Go to Nemara Dan.
about you.
• Your name [/color] | Perse
• Age [/color] | 25
• How long have you been RPing? [/color] | Since I was 8
• Where/How did you find us?[/color] | YouTube
• Have you read the Rules? [/color] | saillormn@sbcglobal.net
• Have you read the Character/PB Rules? [/color] | Purple
• Would you like to participate in a Recruitment Thread? [/color] | Nope.[/justify][/size]
application content © pantheon academy, lyrics © florence + the machine
