Profile

BASICS;;

Name: Ivy
Age: 24
Birthdate: June 25, 605 (Cancer)
Class: Dancer
Weapons: Daggers
Country: Megam
Family: Father (Blaise), Mother (Hilda), Brothers (Heath, 22; Colt, 20; Forrest, 16); sisters (Wren, 19; Lily, 13; Briar; 9)
Blood type: A


HISTORY;;

Ivy was born, as most Megami Roma are, in the slums of a small Megam community, wrapped in an old blanket for her swaddling clothes, raised among dust and dirt and poverty. She was the eldest child in a family that grew to be quite large, as many Roma families do. She became a second mother as well as a sister to her siblings, and was her Daddy’s little girl. The life they lived was a happy, calm one, spent scrounging what little coin they could and trying to avoid the Megami.

It was her father’s idea to perform on street corners; when Ivy was barely 12, he took her to one corner and played for her on his guitar. As she did at home, she danced and sang -- nervously at first. The Megami mostly ignored them, occasionally muttering to each other as they passed, but it was pilgrim season, and some of the foreigners passing through the little town on the way to Lucre smiled and tossed their coins into the bowl they’d left out. The coins were better than anything her father had gotten working simple illusions and sleight of hand, so it became their little routine.

The coins gave her father confidence, and confidence turned to cockiness, and cockiness made him propose, when Ivy was 16, that the family join up with a passing performer’s caravan when it next came by the city. Her mother was hesitant, but agreed; Ivy’s father took the five older children and set off to join the caravan, promising to return a rich man.

Life in the performance troupe was hard. There was dancing in plazas and parks, instead of on grimy corners, but the reactions from the Megami were vastly the same. Ivy grew desperately homesick, especially now that, with her mother back home, she was basically fulfilling the role for her younger siblings. She cooked, she cleaned, she wiped runny noses, she did laundry with the other women of the troupe and shared woes with them. And while they traveled, she sang and danced and tumbled with the best of them. The years passed, and the money was always too scarce to ever return home rich as had been promised. They stopped by home with the caravan every now and again, visiting her mother and Ivy’s growing siblings, and Ivy grew more homesick even as she vowed to carry on until she could make life easier for her family.

And ultimately, she was the reason the troupe earned its patron.

House Farsine was a small Megami house in the countryside, held by men too rich to care much about the world around them. It was held by an aging lord and lady with a single son, Kendal, who was used to getting whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. And one day, when Ivy’s troupe came through Farsine City, he decided that what he wanted was the pretty young Roma dancer who had caught his eye. He was notoriously free and careless with his money, and offered Ivy a place at his manor as his personal entertainer would she only leave her troupe. Ivy refused, but, convinced that he could win her over, Kendal offered her troupe patronage instead.

It was an offer she knew she would be stupid to refuse. It was the only chance she had to really earn the money her father had dreamed about. The troupe would have more coin for food, more freedom on the land, the opportunity to mark the Farsine seal on their signs and handbills. It was an opportunity to be more recognized than the rest of the Roma wandering the Megam countryside.

And Ivy knew she had to take it.

So she did. And House Farsine became the troupe’s patron, and the coin became a little more plentiful than before. Visits home became more frequent. But so did visits to Farsine, and with every one of them, Ivy found herself waiting on the man who had only offered her the deal because he wanted to bed her.



PERSONALITY;;

Made motherly by 8 years of looking after her siblings in the troupe, and more from before the family joined the troupe, Ivy often feels older that her years. This has not gone without its share of bitterness. Ivy resents being a second mother to her siblings, resents her truncated childhood, and resents the burden of responsibility she’s been left with as she comes to realize that her father is an irresponsible man who is too ashamed to admit to chasing an impossible dream. She accepts the responsibility without outward complaint, but lets it seethe inside her and is constantly frustrated and unhappy with her life. As a result, she tends to snap at people often without meaning to.

Ivy has a deep-rooted sense of nostalgia for her home and as such is often homesick. There’s nothing she wants more than to go home and stay there -- not for the brief weeks her family usually takes when the troupe makes their rounds, but for good. She wants to learn her mother’s tricks, sleep in her own bed, and dance the streetcorners of her hometown’s alleyways again. She grows tired of the Megam roads and the sneering Megami everywhere she goes and desperately just wants to go home.

But her sense of responsibility denies her that. It led her to accept Kendal Farsine’s proposal, and it leads her to stubbornness over her position in the troupe. To go home would be to admit defeat, to let down her father (and she’s always been Daddy’s little girl), and to admit to her mother that she could do nothing for her father’s dreams. She can’t let herself be the one to bring those truths to light, so she fights on, even accepting ugly circumstances to do so.




APPEARANCE;;

Ivy has dark Roma skin and features -- thick black hair that falls to the middle of her back, large chocolate-brown eyes. She is tall and thin, with most of her height in her legs; her figure is very delicate and slightly muscled from work in acrobatics and dancing. She has a light, slightly melodic voice and carries herself with a certain sense of poise and grace. She dresses conservatively in the Roma tradition.

pb is noah from fma: conqueror of shamballa.