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Socchio
Socchio
"Of course I can do that." · Battle-tested sorceress of Kristofferson, only passing through
Basic Information
Full Name
Socchio
Nickname
Scorch
Race (Grade)
Human (E)
Class
Sorceress
Height
5'7"
Birthday
Heatwave 20, 1278
Age
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Birthsign
Bloodline Ability
Unknown
This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.
Physical Description
Socchio, about to make her point
Appearance
Socchio has a mane of fiery red hair, thick and wavy, worn loose past her shoulders with a long sweep of it falling across one eye. Her skin is fair and lightly freckled, her mouth usually set in a knowing half-smile, and her eyes have a way of daring people to look away first. She dresses to be seen: a violet off-the-shoulder gown with wide bell sleeves lined in red-and-black harlequin diamonds, a matching red harlequin corset laced with gold, gold bows at the hips, and a ragged-hemmed violet overskirt over flowing crimson. Over all of it she wears a long hooded cloak of shimmering plum and crimson velvet that pools on the ground behind her, along with a black leather choker set with a steel ring and a pair of laced sandals. When she casts, she throws both arms wide, like someone welcoming a crowd.
Unique Characteristics
Heat does not bother Socchio in the slightest, which makes her the only person in Ssi'Korr more comfortable in the jungle's steam than the vishkanya who live there. The air around her runs a few degrees warmer than it should, and candle flames lean toward her when she is annoyed. Her sorcery came with no teacher and no manual, and she casts the way she talks: directly, loudly, and with total conviction. She has never once hesitated before a spell, and she has yet to meet one she wasn't sure she could cast.
Personality & Temperament
Positive Traits
- Utterly fearless in a fight, magical or otherwise
- Honest to a fault; says exactly what she thinks
- Generous with praise when someone has truly earned it
- Treats men and women as equals, and expects the same
- Hungry to learn anything she doesn't already know
Challenging Traits
- Has not felt humble about magic in over a decade
- Assumes she is the strongest caster in any room
- Brings up desire and sex at the least expected moment
- Takes on fights she should probably walk away from
- Impatient with anyone who treats power as shameful
Of course I can do that. The only real question is how impressive you would like it to be.
Nobody ever tells a man his power is unbecoming. I've simply decided nobody gets to tell me, either.
I like men just fine. What I don't like is being told what a woman is allowed to want.
Likes
- A spell that works exactly as hard as she does
- Ruins nobody else has been brave enough to enter
- Honest talk about desire, over strong wine
- Rivals worth the effort of beating
- A skeptic's face the moment the fire goes up
Dislikes
- Being told her magic is "unladylike"
- False modesty, in herself or anyone else
- People who mistake frankness for an invitation
- The undead, now more than ever
- Wasting a good spell on something that didn't earn it
Background & History
A Harbor Girl Who Walked Out of the Fire
Socchio was born in 1278 in the Harbor District of Kristofferson, the city of floating spires, where enchanted cranes unload ships from across the world and the city's mages live in towers that hover above everyone else's heads. Her mother cooked for the dockworkers, and her father loaded ships and sang badly while he did it. Her sorcery arrived when she was twelve, during a warehouse fire on the docks, when she walked back out of the burning building carrying the cat she had gone in after and without a single mark on her.
Not What the Guild Had in Mind
Kristofferson's Arcane Quarter is home to the Mage's Guild and its academies, and the Guild took one look at an untrained harbor girl who could set a pier alight by being annoyed and told her, kindly, that sorcery of her sort was powerful but unrefined, and that a young woman might find a gentler discipline more becoming. Socchio has been answering that sentence ever since. She left Kristofferson at seventeen with a single bag and a firm conviction that she would come back one day and make the Guild wish it had phrased things differently.
Ten Years of Fire
She spent the next decade proving the point the hard way, as a hired battle-caster for caravans, mercenary companies, and any town that needed something burned before it burned them. She held a river crossing against raiders for an entire night, broke a siege by setting its engines alight from four hundred feet away, and walked out of more fights than she can count with her gown scorched and her confidence entirely intact. The mercenaries she fought beside started calling her Scorch, and she let them. Somewhere along the way she stopped feeling humble about magic at all, and she has not yet found a compelling reason to start again.
Opinions, Freely Given
Socchio has never seen the point of pretending to be less than she is, in magic or anything else. She talks about womanhood, desire, and sex with the same frankness she brings to fireballs, and she has done so around campfires, in taverns, and once, memorably, at a lord's formal dinner. What surprises people is that none of it comes with a grudge. Some of the best friends she has ever had are the loud, rough men of the companies she fought beside, and she will defend them as fiercely as she defends her own right to live exactly as she pleases. Her argument is not with men. It is with anyone, of any sort, who thinks a woman's power or appetite needs their permission.
Only Passing Through
Socchio came to Gelderai chasing a rumor of ancient elven magic kept in the Crownreach, and spent three frustrating weeks being politely refused an invitation upward. She was still in the city, drafting a strongly worded letter to the Council of Seasons, when the undead incursion hit. Fire is very good against the dead, and she proved it for most of that night on the bridges of the Boughways, holding her flames tight and aimed with a precision that would have impressed the Guild, buying time for families to get down to the trade roads. She left with the refugees, though she objects to the word. She was, she reminds anyone who uses it, only passing through.
Into the Thicket
The refugee wave carried her into Haven, and Haven turned out to be the most interesting thing she had seen in years: not a kingdom of ordinary borders but a patchwork of whole lands grown out of dimensional magic, jungles and marshes and deserts stitched together by long corridors of grass. Within a day she had heard about Wildgrove Thicket, the jungle whose trails form on their own and whose undergrowth rearranges itself overnight, and about the Hollow Sentinel at its southern edge, a colossal dead tree the jungle itself avoids and which some say is still dreaming. She left for it the next morning. Ssi'Korr, the thicket's only settlement, did not know what to make of her. Its duchess, Ssi'Katha, let her stay anyway, for reasons she has not explained, and within an hour of arriving Socchio had met the tribe's ritual sorceress, Irixa Nhaal, and the two of them had taken each other's measure the way two fires do.
Goals & Aspirations
What the Sentinel Dreams
Socchio came to Wildgrove Thicket for the Hollow Sentinel, and she intends to find out what it is dreaming and whether any of that power can be touched. The birds refuse to perch on it, the jungle gives it a wide berth, and the tribe will not go inside. She regards all of this as an extremely promising sign. Irixa has warned her, in no uncertain terms, to leave it alone. Socchio has heard the warning, respects the woman who gave it, and has no intention whatsoever of following it.
Learning Haven
Socchio grew up in the greatest city of magic on Xeres and fought her way across half the continent, and she has never seen anything like Haven. She wants to understand how it works: how whole lands are grown and attached, what holds the corridors between them together, and what the people who live inside them owe and are owed. Eric Esmond, the Goodberrian teacher who is the only other human in Ssi'Korr, has become her reluctant and increasingly fond tutor in all of it, mostly in the evenings, and mostly while sweating.
A Fire That Means Something
Irixa's magic is weaker than hers. Socchio is quite sure of this, and has said so, out loud, more than once. What she has not said out loud is that Irixa's fire does something hers never has: it carries the tribe's rites and memory, and it means something to the people standing around it. Socchio has not felt humble about magic in over a decade. Watching Irixa teach Ssi'Korr's children, she has come uncomfortably close.
Current Status & Relationships
Residence
Role
Sorceress
Friends & Rivals
ATTENTION!
Socchio is a battle-tested E-grade sorceress whose fire magic is every bit as powerful as she says it is, and she says so often. She does not start fights, but she rarely walks away from one, and bystanders should give her plenty of room the moment her arms go wide. She is frank about womanhood, desire, and sex in ways that can startle the unprepared; take it as honesty, not as an invitation, and not as hostility toward anyone. Whatever you do, do not tell her what a woman should or should not do with her magic.