Name: Sofia Halvorsen
Codename: none
Date of Birth: September 30, 1986
Height: 5'2"
Weight: 110 lbs
Hair Color: brown
Eye Color: brown
Place of Origin: Canada
Nationality/Race: Norwegian and Greek, with a mix of Polish, French, and Italian
Classification/Origin of Powers: Magical
Status: Employed
Occupation: Demon hunter, consultant, sorcery tutor
Personality Profile:
- Dark, dry sense of humour
- Deep appreciation for a well-timed profanity
- Fatalistic bravery; tends to jump head-first into situations
- Nearly impossible to intimidate
- Rarely plans ahead; prefers to learn and adapt as she goes
- Little patience for indecisive people
Physical Description:
Sofia is short, slim, and light on her feet, with a lightness and grace to her step like a dancer or gymnast. She has a shaggy mop of curly brown hair that she rarely bothers to style, giving her a permanently dishevelled appearance. She has an elfin, almost childlike appearance, and is frequently carded despite her actual age.
Sofia has little fashion sense to speak of and dresses almost entirely for utility, favouring sturdy boots or sneakers, dark cargo pants that make her look even shorter than she is, and blank shirts in muted colours. She sometimes attempts to add a dash of colour to her drab wardrobe with a scarf or neckerchief, usually in red, yellow, or bright blue. Her favourite item of clothing is her fur-lined leather bomber jacket, which she takes meticulously good care of, and frequently uses magic to repair.
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General Power Information: Sofia is a magic-user who specializes in making pacts with spirits that allow her to call upon their powers.
Ability One:
Sorcery: Sofia is a capable spellcaster, but her arsenal of spells is limited mainly to utility spells. Her sorcery is a mix of Nordic Seithr and Japanese Onmyodo.
- Minor Telekinesis: A spell for lifting, moving, and manipulating small objects. Has a weight and force limit of about ten pounds, and is limited by sight. Mostly useless in combat, but can be used to flip switches, push buttons, pull levers, bring objects to her, and other simple tasks.
- Vatic Sense: This spell opens Sofia's senses to magic and other supernatural forces (like psionics), allowing her to detect and identify sources of these energies. The spell can be used to detect lingering traces of energy where magic-users passed by or where spells or magic powers were used. The stronger the source of magic, the longer it leaves traces and the further away it can be sensed from.
- Aethereal Disruption: This spell disrupts magic. It unravels the fabric of other spells, and distorts and suppresses the flow of magic. Weaker spells and magical effects can be completely undone and destroyed, stronger ones required sustained focus to break down, and especially powerful or permanent effects can only be suppressed based on how much power Sofia puts into it. It can be used on magical creatures to weaken or suppress their innate powers, and can be used to undo spells that animate magically-created entities, such as undead or automatons.
- Exorcism, Banishment, and Sealing Rituals: Sofia knows several rituals to exorcise, banish, or seal away fiends, demons, devils, yokai, spirits, and other supernatural entities. Being rituals, these take time and materials to set up, varying widely with what the ritual is meant to do (a sealing ritual requires a vessel, for example) and the origin of the entity being targeted. There are times when appropriate materials just aren't available in a given location.
- Spectral Chains: This spell creates up to a dozen chain-shaped force constructs that bind one or more targets to a location. The chains have the same strength as steel chains and can be broken with sufficient force or if Sofia's concentration is disrupted. The spectral chains emerge from a magic circle and have a range of about 15 feet, and pull the target toward the circle.
- Cessation: This spell creates a zone that inflicts a form of magical paralysis on anyone inside it. While the target can still see, speak, breathe, and move their eyes, their limbs cannot move. Unlike Spectral Chains, no amount of physical strength can resist this spell, but a strong enough will can break it. This spell also requires concentration.
Ability Two:
Pact Spirits: Sofia is capable of forming bonds with spirits. These spirits grant her a variety of minor boons that are always active, but she can also bring forth a spirit and temporarily fuse with it, a process called mantling. During this time, Sofia and the spirit become a single entity, and she gains access to all of the spirit's knowledge and powers.
Each spirit Sofia makes a pact with resides in an object she carries on her person. Losing this object prevents her from accessing that spirit's powers, including any passive boon it provides.
Erasmus
This is the spirit of one of Sofia's ancestors, a champion glaidator named Erasmus. He lived in Greece in the 1st century and was renowned for his mastery of a huge variety of weapons, whether local, exotic, or improvised. He was also a heavy drinker and very promiscuous and indiscriminate.
Of all of Sofia's spirits, Erasmus is the closest to and most protective of her thanks to their blood ties. He tolerates no insult, often encouraging Sofia to fight people who disrespect her in even minor ways.
Boon: Sofia's bond with Erasmus grants her fighting skills and mastery of various weapons, as well as skill in unarmed combat and wrestling. Unfortunately, Sofia's small size is a detriment to her combat ability.
Mantled: While mantling Erasmus, Sofia gains incredible physical attributes. Her all-around strength, stamina, agility, and toughness reach peak human levels, allowing her to take full advantage of the skills Erasmus imparts.
Object: Erasmus's spirit resides in an old brass bangle that he wore when he was alive, an heirloom passed down through her mother's side of the family.
Cofgod
Cofgod is a minor but ancient household deity of Anglo-Saxon pagan origin from the 5th century. Sofia happened upon the ruins of Cofgod's ancient home while hunting a black shuck and, seeing the state of the home and Cofgod's dwindling power, offered to take him in and be his new home.
Boon: Sofia can emanate an aura that fills any room she's in, effectively turning it into a figurative home. The aura instills in people the same feelings they would experience in a calm, safe, and comfortable home, which greatly aids in sleep and natural healing, as well as calming people who are anxious, afraid, or agitated.
Mantled: Cofgod's power allows Sofia to heal wounds. Sofia can channel power to quickly heal widespread but minor injuries over a person's whole body, or focus on a single severe injury to slowly mend it over the course of a few minutes. This makes this power less useful in the middle of battle, but greatly speeds recovery between missions.
Object: Cofgod resides in a tiny gold locket in the shape of a house.
Yadori
Yadorigiko Matsukaze (Yadori for short) was a yuki-onna, a murderous ice yokai from 1600s northern Japan. In life, she was a noble whose husband spurned her for a younger woman and arranged to have her murdered by tying her up in the forest, where she died of exposure. She returned as a yuki-onna, slaying her husband and his new wife before retreating into solitude.
Yadori returned in modern times when construction disturbed her lair and she killed the entire crew with a brutal blizzard in the middle of summer. Sofia was brought in as part of a team of demon hunters to deal with her, but when Yadori was defeated, Sofia offered her mercy and a pact instead.
After many years as Sofia's partner, Yadori passed on to the afterlife, having overcome the anger and bitterness that led to her transformation into a yuki-onna. A proper funeral was held in her homeland of Hokkaido, Japan, and she was buried with her necklace.
Boon: Despite her passing, Yadori's permanent blessing grants Sofia immunity to the effects of extreme cold. Thanks to this, Sofia is comfortable in any cold temperature and suffers no harm from cold, such as submersion in icy water or exposure to weather.
Arvo
Arvo is a lesser fox spirit from Finland. In the 1800s, he was sealed away by a witch who trapped him after he had stolen many of her talismans and eaten her chickens. After the witch's death, Arvo was left sealed until 2022, when Sofia and a group of hunters discovered the witch's hut and offered to make a pact with him in exchange for setting him free. Arvo reluctantly agreed, and while he initially resented Sofia for not just setting him free outright, they have since become friends and Arvo has come to enjoy hunting night creatures with her.
Boon: Arvo grants Sofia the eyesight of a fox, giving her incredibly sharp vision and the ability to see in the dark.
Mantled: While mantled, Sofia has the superior senses and agility of a fox. The enhanced includes eyesight, hearing, and taste/smell sharp enough to differentiate people by their smell rather than sight. Because Sofia is already naturally agile, Arvo's power pushes her agility into superhuman range, giving her incredible reflexes, speed, balance, and physical precision.
Object: Arvo resides in a silver coin he stole from the witch who sealed him. Sofia has since made the coin into a necklace.
Ability Three:
Svinrbanni: This is an 8th century iron Viking sword with the ansuz (ash tree) rune on the base of the blade on one side, and its name (Swift Death) on the other side in Elder Futhark. The weapon's main power is that it is capable of harming and even killing entities that normally require special materials or circumstances to properly kill. For example, it can be used to slay vampires or werewolves, and can even send ghosts or other spirits to their final rest. It also possesses the supernatural durability typical of most magical weapons. Sofia's fate is inexorably bound to this weapon and it always seems to find its way back to her.
Drawbacks & Weaknesses:
Mental Strain: Mantling a single spirit takes a certain amount of focus and mental effort, but Sofia can go for extended periods while mantled. However, mantling two spirits at once takes twice as much effort, and three spirits takes triple. In addition, the rapid fusing and separation of minds takes a significant toll when used repeatedly in a short time period.
Antimagic: Despite Sofia's main focus being fighting against other magic users, she is vulnerable to antimagic and counterspells herself. Her spirits (both the boons and mantle powers) don't function in antimagic fields, and can be temporarily suppressed by disruptive effects. Curiously, Svinrbanni is unaffected by antimagic.
Time and Preparation: Without enough time to conduct research and without access to special tools and materials to perform rituals, Sofia is limited to her combat abilities, which can result in an undesirable lethal outcome or a slog of a fight against supernatural opponents.
Skills:
Unarmed Combat: Along with the pankration and weapon skills imparted by Erasmus, Sofia has been training in variations of Judo, Sambo, and Krav Maga since she was a teenager. Given her small size, Sofia specializes in strikes to soft tissue, throws, and redirecting when she doesn't have Erasmus mantled. When she does have Erasmus mantled, she becomes a whole different fighter, able to punch well above her weight class and compete with demons and other superhuman foes.
Swordplay: Ever since finding Svinrbanni, Sofia has focused on honing her sword skills, developing a fierce and agile one-handed style based in French and German swordplay, leaving her other hand free for grabbing, parrying, striking, or aiding in acrobatics.
Firearms: Sofia is a competent sharpshooter and is proficient in the use of various small and long arms, but favours small caliber pistols because of her small hands. She has an exceptionally fast and accurate quickdraw.
Ancient History: Sofia grew up around books and was a voracious reader in childhood, and carried that hobby into adulthood. She is especially interested in European bronze age and stone age history.
Mythology: Sofia has a broad knowledge of mythologies from various cultures with no real specialization, but sometimes she has a hard time differentiating myth from pop culture.
Gymnastics: Sofia is naturally agile and flexible, and complements her talents with actual gymnastics and acrobatics training as a child and teenager.
Driving: Sofia is a very skilled driver and is capable of aggressive maneuvering and various stunts and is also good at driving stick. She has an embarrassing number of speeding tickets.
Languages: Sofia is fluent in English, French, Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk), as well as ancient Greek, Japanese, and Finnish, which were taught to her by her pact spirits.
Background:
Sofia was born in Toronto, Canada to Henrik, a historian and museum curator from Norway, and Mariza, a renowned archaeologist from Greece. She led a relatively normal childhood up until she was 13, when she accidentally broke an artifact in her father’s study and released a lesser demon that had been sealed inside it. While her father desperately fought it off, she grabbed the nearest weapon she could find -- an old Inuit axe -- to defend herself.
Thanks to her desperation and her constant exposure to magical artifacts throughout her life, Sofia was able to awaken the axe’s dormant blessing against evil and land a lucky blow that destroyed the demon.
In the aftermath of the attack, Henrik and Mariza explained that demons and magic did, in fact, exist, and Henrik kept the company of hunters (which explains why he has so many strange friends), people who track down and destroy evil entities that threaten humanity. Sofia expressed interest in studying this, and her parents became concerned that her nascent powers could cause harm if left untrained.
Henrik then called upon his hunter contacts -- his friends and acquaintances who regularly come to him for advice and information and to exchange and repair artifacts -- for help. They put him in contact with a retired hunter who was willing to train Sofia once the wounds from the attack had healed.
Thus began Sofia’s introduction to the world of the supernatural and her training as a hunter. She spent her teen years dividing her time between training and attempting to live a normal life. After graduating, she went straight into hunting full-time, forgoing any sort of higher education.
When she was 22, only four years into her career as a hunter, Sofia took on a job with a small team of hunters to clear out an ancient burial ground in Sweden that had been desecrated and infested by draugr. Since the job was pro bono, once it was done, Sofia took a sword from one of the slain draugr as her own.
As soon as she grabbed the weapon, the draugr returned to life again and spoke, delivering what could have been either a warning or a curse: "This weapon will be used to end your life." That pronouncement has stuck with Sofia since then and has changed her way of thinking and how she treats life and death. She decided to keep the sword, Svinrbanni, and train with it.
Criminal Record: Sofia has criminal records across North America, Europe, and east Asia, but only minor charges for trespassing and speeding.
Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:
Firearms: Sofia possesses three firearms: A Walther PDP-F chambered in 9x19mm, a Ruger LCR chambered in .357 Magnum, and a beat-up shortened Winchester Model 21 double barrelled shotgun. While she possesses licenses for the pistols, the shotgun is super illegal.
Reputation: Sofia has a reputation in the magical community not only as a skilled problem-solver but also for being ruthless and willing to kill humans if she thinks they can't be rehabilitated or redeemed. Additionally, knowledge of her sword Svinrbanni and the prophecy around it has spread throughout the magical community and to other magical entities and organizations.
