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deinoswitch) wrote2026-02-15 03:56 pm
deinoswitch) wrote2026-02-15 03:56 pm
Application for Unfinished Library
Player Name: Bookie
Player Contact(s): bookworm12890 @ plurk
Are you over 18? Yes
Do you have any other characters in game?: Kaiisteron
Who invited you?: Me.
Character Name: Dionysus
Canon: The Hymn to Dionysus
Canon Point: The end of Chapter 34
Age: ???? Like 6000+, though his body is 27.
History: cw: suicidal ideation, infant death, Madness
A long time ago, before humans worked fields and stayed in one place, a young boy was born into a tribe that worshiped The Hunt, and the Mother of the earth. The women of his tribe read the bones when he was young and he was destined to be one of the Mother's grooms, a sacrifice to her, which meant he wasn't killed as a baby for being another mouth to feed (and a male one, at that). He was trained by the witches to read the forest and follow animals, and he hated it. He hated having to kill other things to survive, he hated having to do nothing but Hunt, he hated having to drown children he'd just delivered because there wasn't enough food.
So when the Mother came for him, he told her as much, though he knew it was heresy. He thought that people could live off of honey and milk and corn, and then they wouldn't have to kill to survive. She told him that humans would forget too quickly, the Hunt and the earth, the power of mothers and witches. He thought that they would just need reminding sometimes. And so, she made him the watchman to remind them:
“You are the forest and the earth. Yours are the hives, and the honey, and the great bulls; the things that mean living without killing. You will die and rise, and die and rise, as evergreen as the ivy. Yours will be the border between the new world, and mine. Down the ages they will try to stray too far, and forget their nature, and their limits. Wherever they transgress, there you will be. You are the watchman, and the memory, and the madness. In the times that are to come, humans will need a god to make them remember what human is.”
Much later, and in a way that is not really explained, he is born/reborn as a child to the princess of Thebes. The princess claims the child is a son of Zeus, which is the only way she was permitted to keep it being out of wedlock, but for Political Reasons the childless queen and her twin brother, Helios, had some concerns about this child. In the night during a thunderstorm, the queen and Helios take the child and tie a kite to him, hoping lightning will strike it and kill the child. Unfortunately, no one included Helios's four year old ward, Phaidros, in the plan- and on seeing the baby sad and wet on a rug with no grown-ups around, he picks up the baby and tries to return him to his mother. Of course, then lightning hits the kite and sets the palace on fire, and chaos ensues. Phaidros flees with the baby to a temple until Helios finds them both again. Helios takes the baby to the Temple of Hermes to be raised into a witch.
And so Dionysus was once again raised as a witch, and when he is around 15 or so, he decides he would like to see what it's like to live on a pirate ship for a bit. He got himself taken in by a Theban ship- specifically, the one Phaidros happened to be on and recently disgraced. The attempted to tie him to the mast, which he easily escaped, and the crew (except for Phaidros) more or less seemed to forget he was even there. He didn't speak at all on the boat, but Phaidros talked to him and tried to look after him, which endeared the knight greatly to Dionysus. When the crew started getting suspicious of Dionysus due to strange things happening on board and planned to through him overboard, the other captives storm the deck, fighting like feral animals against their captors. The ship crashed, and he transformed all the remaining crew and captives, except Phaidros, into dolphins.
Phaidros (who was, understandably, a little terrified at this point) asked him to he was, who he should make a sacrifice to for sparing him. Dionysus told him that he'd come back for him one day and he'd tell him then. Dionysus meant this as a promise to come when Phaidros needed him; Phaidros took it as a promise to kill him at some point for the failure to protect him like he'd promised.
As a result, Phaidros did not call on him for a long time, and by this time he did it was because he was kind of ready to die. The time between their meetings it unclear, though Dionysus almost certainly went to Pylos in the time before going to Thebes, as the 'mad god' appeared there shortly before and caused its people to tear the palace to the ground. He met Phaidros again at a bull sacrifice in Thebes, saving the knight from being gored by one bull after a meteor quite literally crash the ceremony; here, he also met the young prince of Thebes, Pentheus, who wanted to forget everything. Dionysus, bound to help him by Witch vows, gave the boy a bull mask, which would allow him to take on the characteristics of a bull and forget his life as prince.
Naturally, the prince going missing is a bit of a problem for most royal families, and since Phaidros was a.) there, b.) someone who had talked to Pentheus, and c.) technically kind of an in-law of the royal family with how Theban wardships went was put on the case. Dionysus lied to him, saying he had not aided Pentheus nor knew where he was. Phaidros thanked Dionysus for saving him and told him he owed him his life- after trying to impress upon the knight what owing your life to a witch meant, Dionysus accepted, giving him a charm to identify him as 'his' and telling the man that he'd better look after his life because it belonged to him now.
It is roughly at this point where Dionysus realizes he isn't sure what Phaidros wants from him- he called him, but isn't acknowledging who Dionysus is, and he doesn't know if he changed his mind about wanting him around. (In reality, it's a lot of Phaidros trying to come up with explanations for why Dionysus is here and he's not dead yet.) So he sort of just.... sticks around, trying to be helpful here and there, including with the people he is driving mad, and making it extremely obvious who he was at times just in case, but Phaidros still would not talk about it.
Eventually, things escalate too far. During a (fake) funeral for the prince, the one of Phaidros's young knights attacks him, and then he and many of the other knights within the crowd grow wild and feral, attacking each other with weapons and teeth. The Queen, who had been denying the existence of the mad god, mostly dug her heels in deeper to try to protect her throne and to further complicate things, Phaidros finds Pentheus in the labyrinth beneath his and Dionysus's homes, having not only the bull mask he had been given but attached other animals to it, including a cuckoo and a lion. Phaidros, despite Dionysus insisting that it is the last thing he should do, takes the prince back to the palace and manage to bring him back to himself.
Because of Political Bullshit the Queen decides the best thing to do is marry Phaidros, which he agrees to because 'duty is honor.' Dionysus is less than pleased, at least partially because he is well aware that the duty weighing on him is what's causing him to be so suicidal, and also the two of them have kissed at this point. Things go even more sideways when Pentheus accuses Phaidros of being the mastermind behind his disappearance and so he gets thrown in jail. Dionysus breaks him out by driving the royal guard mad and making everyone else go to sleep, and then they finally, actually talk about things. This is where I'll be taking him from.
Is this character an AU? What type?: Nope.
Personality: Dionysus is very good at pretending he's human for limited periods of time. He is not human. If you're around him for more than a few weeks it becomes immediately clear that he is not human. However, he will continue to pretend he is possibly even past the point of it being pointed out to him because he is a lying liar who lies. This lies aren't compulsive, but instead measured and reasoned. Part of his vows as a witch are to 'never let another living soul know me true' and when you add that he's a god to that, yeah, lying a lot makes sense. However, lying is also a key part of witching- helpful lies, such as 'oh it's not that bad' and 'you're going to be alright' go down better when it's harder to tell if the witch is lying or truthful, and Dionysus is a master of blurring that line.
Witches are primarily healers, and even though he is a god, Dionysus has really never given up that part of himself. Healing, midwifery, and cursework/breaking are all in his wheelhouse, and also because of the witch's vow he cannot deny aid if it is within his power to help (at least by witching means; he does try to separate his god abilities a bit for that). It is unlikely he would turn much request for aid- he is a healer and someone who prefers helping and kindness at his core, and if someone will come to him for help then he will do his best to give it to them. However, there is only so much he will enforce that with most people; he believes very strongly in the power of choices, and is loathe to take that away from people, even if it would be better for them.
On the same vein, Dionysus is very, very paranoid about what he, as a god, is capable of doing to mortals. He despises the tales of Ganymede and Persephone, as they are illustrations of how powerful gods can just take what they want from mortals with no repercussions, and he tries very hard to not do that. This is a large part of why his relationship with Phaidros is so complicated for most of the story. He wants any relationship they have to be Phaidros's choice, not because Phaidros feels like he has to or he'll get smote.
Since he is a healer, one might think Madness an odd domain for him to hold or at least one he might struggle with, but in reality it's just that his perception of what Madness is is very different from what a mortal might think. To him, Madness is an unburdening of the soul, freeing it from the shackles of the mind and the limitations people put on themselves. He doesn't think the mind is a bad thing, but he is from a point in time where structure and regime threaten to crush the soul and turn people into little more than walking 'clockwork.' Madness breaks the mind before the mind can break the soul, so he believes, and therefore it is its own kind of medicine- a bitter one, but one that can be necessary all the same.He's the anti-burnout king, basically. It is not his first resort; things like wine and dancing and stories are 'small madnesses' that might be the cure before the big Madness is needed, but he's also not shy about using it.
Powers and Abilities: His witch abilities are pretty straightforward; he has a knowledge of medicinal herbs, ways to break curses or inflict them, and general healing knowledge including midwifery. Essentially, an Ancient Greek doctor with some magic thrown in.
Now for the bullshit god abilities:
-His human body is only a small part of his awareness- he is in the trees and the animals and can feel/see/hear things through them. I will be limiting this to a fairly small scale here to an area directly around, which potentially an opt-in if people want him to know Random Shit about their character because a bird saw them or something. Since the Library is... what it is, this does not work on any of the actual Library Parts which will freak him out a bit! (Gonna say the garden still counts for him though. He's going to live out there.)
-Because he's around within nature and animals, animals are all chill with him. If people have pets/animals assigned to their characters, I will let them decide if that applies to those animals or not as well.
-He can make plants, even ones that were dying, full of life and growth. This includes things that have previously been plants at some point in time, if he feels like kind of being a dick about it. (See: the mast of a ship growing branches.) In a related vein, he can also grow ivy literally anywhere.
-He can sort of make it so people can't see/notice him, or only allow certain people to. I will get permission if he uses this in a situation where he might be somewhere or overhear something he normally wouldn't be able to.
-He can use the life energy from things around him to heal or bring back to life himself or someone else. This life energy comes from plants and such, and usually if he's bringing back someone else they'd have to agree to never be able to cross the River Styx but that's not a problem here sooooo we'll just go with player permission.
-Being around him for too long tends to drive people mad. This will be purely opt in, and only kick in when people specifically want it; I may bring it up as a potential player plot at some point. (For reference: in this context, being mad is... more or less taking people back to a more primitive state, where they live for the Hunt and for revelry and song and dance and don't worry about stupid things like Proper Etiquette and Documentation and Politics. Basically, pure 'id', no 'ego.')
-He can also choose to drive specific people mad by taking out all the not-feral bits of their brain. He wouldn't do this anyway unless he was super pissed or they really, really needed it, but it's still opt in.
-Can turn people into animals. Dolphins are his favorite. :) He'll probably turn them back here. Probably.
Inventory: He's got his little healer bag full of herbs and things as well as a few masks, including his which is Fancy
Sample: Here!
When presented with a choice, is the character more likely to stick with tried and true methods? Or make something new up on the fly? A bit of both; Dionysus is very into new innovations, especially in things like medicine, though he does often question how they're being used. (Writing being used for surveys rather than, you know, writing stories drives him insane.) However he is not by nature a stable creature and tends to alter what he does to fit each situation as is... even if it often ends in madness.
What is more important to your character, preserving the past or forging a future? Dionysus was literally made to make sure people don't forget the lessons of the past. He thinks it's up to humanity to make their future and he enjoys watching it, but his role is firmly rooted in the past.
How does your character influence their own story? What about the stories of others? Oh he influences stories. His own, he altered very dramatically by voicing his dreams to The Mother but since then has more or less stuck with it until recently, until he offered Phaidros the chance to call for him. He's a big driver in Phaidros's story too, altering him from the path he thought was laid out for him by duty. For others, uh. Madness tends to wreck havoc on stories. /gestures at Greek mythology
Are you alright with your character’s canon being used as a Recommended Reading?: Yes!
Player Contact(s): bookworm12890 @ plurk
Are you over 18? Yes
Do you have any other characters in game?: Kaiisteron
Who invited you?: Me.
Character Name: Dionysus
Canon: The Hymn to Dionysus
Canon Point: The end of Chapter 34
Age: ???? Like 6000+, though his body is 27.
History: cw: suicidal ideation, infant death, Madness
A long time ago, before humans worked fields and stayed in one place, a young boy was born into a tribe that worshiped The Hunt, and the Mother of the earth. The women of his tribe read the bones when he was young and he was destined to be one of the Mother's grooms, a sacrifice to her, which meant he wasn't killed as a baby for being another mouth to feed (and a male one, at that). He was trained by the witches to read the forest and follow animals, and he hated it. He hated having to kill other things to survive, he hated having to do nothing but Hunt, he hated having to drown children he'd just delivered because there wasn't enough food.
So when the Mother came for him, he told her as much, though he knew it was heresy. He thought that people could live off of honey and milk and corn, and then they wouldn't have to kill to survive. She told him that humans would forget too quickly, the Hunt and the earth, the power of mothers and witches. He thought that they would just need reminding sometimes. And so, she made him the watchman to remind them:
“You are the forest and the earth. Yours are the hives, and the honey, and the great bulls; the things that mean living without killing. You will die and rise, and die and rise, as evergreen as the ivy. Yours will be the border between the new world, and mine. Down the ages they will try to stray too far, and forget their nature, and their limits. Wherever they transgress, there you will be. You are the watchman, and the memory, and the madness. In the times that are to come, humans will need a god to make them remember what human is.”
Much later, and in a way that is not really explained, he is born/reborn as a child to the princess of Thebes. The princess claims the child is a son of Zeus, which is the only way she was permitted to keep it being out of wedlock, but for Political Reasons the childless queen and her twin brother, Helios, had some concerns about this child. In the night during a thunderstorm, the queen and Helios take the child and tie a kite to him, hoping lightning will strike it and kill the child. Unfortunately, no one included Helios's four year old ward, Phaidros, in the plan- and on seeing the baby sad and wet on a rug with no grown-ups around, he picks up the baby and tries to return him to his mother. Of course, then lightning hits the kite and sets the palace on fire, and chaos ensues. Phaidros flees with the baby to a temple until Helios finds them both again. Helios takes the baby to the Temple of Hermes to be raised into a witch.
And so Dionysus was once again raised as a witch, and when he is around 15 or so, he decides he would like to see what it's like to live on a pirate ship for a bit. He got himself taken in by a Theban ship- specifically, the one Phaidros happened to be on and recently disgraced. The attempted to tie him to the mast, which he easily escaped, and the crew (except for Phaidros) more or less seemed to forget he was even there. He didn't speak at all on the boat, but Phaidros talked to him and tried to look after him, which endeared the knight greatly to Dionysus. When the crew started getting suspicious of Dionysus due to strange things happening on board and planned to through him overboard, the other captives storm the deck, fighting like feral animals against their captors. The ship crashed, and he transformed all the remaining crew and captives, except Phaidros, into dolphins.
Phaidros (who was, understandably, a little terrified at this point) asked him to he was, who he should make a sacrifice to for sparing him. Dionysus told him that he'd come back for him one day and he'd tell him then. Dionysus meant this as a promise to come when Phaidros needed him; Phaidros took it as a promise to kill him at some point for the failure to protect him like he'd promised.
As a result, Phaidros did not call on him for a long time, and by this time he did it was because he was kind of ready to die. The time between their meetings it unclear, though Dionysus almost certainly went to Pylos in the time before going to Thebes, as the 'mad god' appeared there shortly before and caused its people to tear the palace to the ground. He met Phaidros again at a bull sacrifice in Thebes, saving the knight from being gored by one bull after a meteor quite literally crash the ceremony; here, he also met the young prince of Thebes, Pentheus, who wanted to forget everything. Dionysus, bound to help him by Witch vows, gave the boy a bull mask, which would allow him to take on the characteristics of a bull and forget his life as prince.
Naturally, the prince going missing is a bit of a problem for most royal families, and since Phaidros was a.) there, b.) someone who had talked to Pentheus, and c.) technically kind of an in-law of the royal family with how Theban wardships went was put on the case. Dionysus lied to him, saying he had not aided Pentheus nor knew where he was. Phaidros thanked Dionysus for saving him and told him he owed him his life- after trying to impress upon the knight what owing your life to a witch meant, Dionysus accepted, giving him a charm to identify him as 'his' and telling the man that he'd better look after his life because it belonged to him now.
It is roughly at this point where Dionysus realizes he isn't sure what Phaidros wants from him- he called him, but isn't acknowledging who Dionysus is, and he doesn't know if he changed his mind about wanting him around. (In reality, it's a lot of Phaidros trying to come up with explanations for why Dionysus is here and he's not dead yet.) So he sort of just.... sticks around, trying to be helpful here and there, including with the people he is driving mad, and making it extremely obvious who he was at times just in case, but Phaidros still would not talk about it.
Eventually, things escalate too far. During a (fake) funeral for the prince, the one of Phaidros's young knights attacks him, and then he and many of the other knights within the crowd grow wild and feral, attacking each other with weapons and teeth. The Queen, who had been denying the existence of the mad god, mostly dug her heels in deeper to try to protect her throne and to further complicate things, Phaidros finds Pentheus in the labyrinth beneath his and Dionysus's homes, having not only the bull mask he had been given but attached other animals to it, including a cuckoo and a lion. Phaidros, despite Dionysus insisting that it is the last thing he should do, takes the prince back to the palace and manage to bring him back to himself.
Because of Political Bullshit the Queen decides the best thing to do is marry Phaidros, which he agrees to because 'duty is honor.' Dionysus is less than pleased, at least partially because he is well aware that the duty weighing on him is what's causing him to be so suicidal, and also the two of them have kissed at this point. Things go even more sideways when Pentheus accuses Phaidros of being the mastermind behind his disappearance and so he gets thrown in jail. Dionysus breaks him out by driving the royal guard mad and making everyone else go to sleep, and then they finally, actually talk about things. This is where I'll be taking him from.
Is this character an AU? What type?: Nope.
Personality: Dionysus is very good at pretending he's human for limited periods of time. He is not human. If you're around him for more than a few weeks it becomes immediately clear that he is not human. However, he will continue to pretend he is possibly even past the point of it being pointed out to him because he is a lying liar who lies. This lies aren't compulsive, but instead measured and reasoned. Part of his vows as a witch are to 'never let another living soul know me true' and when you add that he's a god to that, yeah, lying a lot makes sense. However, lying is also a key part of witching- helpful lies, such as 'oh it's not that bad' and 'you're going to be alright' go down better when it's harder to tell if the witch is lying or truthful, and Dionysus is a master of blurring that line.
Witches are primarily healers, and even though he is a god, Dionysus has really never given up that part of himself. Healing, midwifery, and cursework/breaking are all in his wheelhouse, and also because of the witch's vow he cannot deny aid if it is within his power to help (at least by witching means; he does try to separate his god abilities a bit for that). It is unlikely he would turn much request for aid- he is a healer and someone who prefers helping and kindness at his core, and if someone will come to him for help then he will do his best to give it to them. However, there is only so much he will enforce that with most people; he believes very strongly in the power of choices, and is loathe to take that away from people, even if it would be better for them.
On the same vein, Dionysus is very, very paranoid about what he, as a god, is capable of doing to mortals. He despises the tales of Ganymede and Persephone, as they are illustrations of how powerful gods can just take what they want from mortals with no repercussions, and he tries very hard to not do that. This is a large part of why his relationship with Phaidros is so complicated for most of the story. He wants any relationship they have to be Phaidros's choice, not because Phaidros feels like he has to or he'll get smote.
Since he is a healer, one might think Madness an odd domain for him to hold or at least one he might struggle with, but in reality it's just that his perception of what Madness is is very different from what a mortal might think. To him, Madness is an unburdening of the soul, freeing it from the shackles of the mind and the limitations people put on themselves. He doesn't think the mind is a bad thing, but he is from a point in time where structure and regime threaten to crush the soul and turn people into little more than walking 'clockwork.' Madness breaks the mind before the mind can break the soul, so he believes, and therefore it is its own kind of medicine- a bitter one, but one that can be necessary all the same.
Powers and Abilities: His witch abilities are pretty straightforward; he has a knowledge of medicinal herbs, ways to break curses or inflict them, and general healing knowledge including midwifery. Essentially, an Ancient Greek doctor with some magic thrown in.
Now for the bullshit god abilities:
-His human body is only a small part of his awareness- he is in the trees and the animals and can feel/see/hear things through them. I will be limiting this to a fairly small scale here to an area directly around, which potentially an opt-in if people want him to know Random Shit about their character because a bird saw them or something. Since the Library is... what it is, this does not work on any of the actual Library Parts which will freak him out a bit! (Gonna say the garden still counts for him though. He's going to live out there.)
-Because he's around within nature and animals, animals are all chill with him. If people have pets/animals assigned to their characters, I will let them decide if that applies to those animals or not as well.
-He can make plants, even ones that were dying, full of life and growth. This includes things that have previously been plants at some point in time, if he feels like kind of being a dick about it. (See: the mast of a ship growing branches.) In a related vein, he can also grow ivy literally anywhere.
-He can sort of make it so people can't see/notice him, or only allow certain people to. I will get permission if he uses this in a situation where he might be somewhere or overhear something he normally wouldn't be able to.
-He can use the life energy from things around him to heal or bring back to life himself or someone else. This life energy comes from plants and such, and usually if he's bringing back someone else they'd have to agree to never be able to cross the River Styx but that's not a problem here sooooo we'll just go with player permission.
-Being around him for too long tends to drive people mad. This will be purely opt in, and only kick in when people specifically want it; I may bring it up as a potential player plot at some point. (For reference: in this context, being mad is... more or less taking people back to a more primitive state, where they live for the Hunt and for revelry and song and dance and don't worry about stupid things like Proper Etiquette and Documentation and Politics. Basically, pure 'id', no 'ego.')
-He can also choose to drive specific people mad by taking out all the not-feral bits of their brain. He wouldn't do this anyway unless he was super pissed or they really, really needed it, but it's still opt in.
-Can turn people into animals. Dolphins are his favorite. :) He'll probably turn them back here. Probably.
Inventory: He's got his little healer bag full of herbs and things as well as a few masks, including his which is Fancy
Sample: Here!
When presented with a choice, is the character more likely to stick with tried and true methods? Or make something new up on the fly? A bit of both; Dionysus is very into new innovations, especially in things like medicine, though he does often question how they're being used. (Writing being used for surveys rather than, you know, writing stories drives him insane.) However he is not by nature a stable creature and tends to alter what he does to fit each situation as is... even if it often ends in madness.
What is more important to your character, preserving the past or forging a future? Dionysus was literally made to make sure people don't forget the lessons of the past. He thinks it's up to humanity to make their future and he enjoys watching it, but his role is firmly rooted in the past.
How does your character influence their own story? What about the stories of others? Oh he influences stories. His own, he altered very dramatically by voicing his dreams to The Mother but since then has more or less stuck with it until recently, until he offered Phaidros the chance to call for him. He's a big driver in Phaidros's story too, altering him from the path he thought was laid out for him by duty. For others, uh. Madness tends to wreck havoc on stories. /gestures at Greek mythology
Are you alright with your character’s canon being used as a Recommended Reading?: Yes!