Moira

User Name/Nick: Kathryn
User DW: n/a
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: YawningDodo, or PM this account
Other Characters Currently In-Game: n/a

CONTENT WARNINGS: References to rape, captivity, and abuse (not described in detail)

Character Name: Moira
Age: Early 20s, precise age unknown
From When?: Upon being eaten by a shark while attempting to evade well-meaning wildlife rehabilitators.

Inmate Justification:
Moira has a lot of displaced anger, which she has applied to the human race in its entirety rather than face its root causes. She's torpedoed her relationships with what family she has due to an inability (or refusal) to adapt to a life that doesn't force them into codependent reliance on one another for survival, and has never learned how to have a positive, healthy relationship. Also, she attacked quite a few humans in Boston Harbor, careless of the fact that she was causing injuries and might have killed someone if she'd kept it up. Also, Moira's attitude makes her a danger to herself. A lone selkie is a selkie in perpetual danger from all sides, which she learned the hard way when she was eaten by a shark.

Working with a warden would help Moira come to grips with the roots of her anger issues, as well as help her learn empathy and how to prioritize the well being of others. She will need this if she is ever to return to her family and make amends.


Arrival:
Moira has been brought here against her will; she has zero trust in offers from mysterious beings of great apparent power.


Abilities/Powers:
Moira is a pretty average selkie--that is, a seal who can cast off her pelt to become human (or perhaps a human with a pelt she can don to become a seal). Her ability to transform is entirely voluntary and requires only that she is in possession of her pelt. In human form selkies like her retain a high tolerance to the cold and the ability to hold their breath for minutes at a time, though neither to the full measure possible in seal form. In human form, too, an echo of the seal remains in eyes just a little too dark, teeth just a little too sharp, and fingernails thick and pointed like claws. To the true human eye, though, all of that is hidden behind a mild glamour. Only those with magical abilities themselves will see past the impeccable illusion of humanity--an involuntary glamour Moira wears at all times, similar to that which a true fae can don at will.

Beyond the shift itself and these few traces of innate power in human form, selkies do not possess any special aptitude for magic, and a typical selkie is no more able to cast spells than a typical human (while any human or selkie is capable of learning at least some small measure of magic, it takes a degree of will and focus that Moira in particular lacks). Neither, however, do they possess any of the needs or compulsions that cause some supernaturals to feed or prey on humans, making them one of the more benign types of fae-like creatures. While a true fae creature would be physically burned by iron, selkies are only uncomfortable around iron and its alloys; this takes the form of the metal always feeling too hot, too cold, or even electric to the touch, though the effect is largely psychosomatic.

The magic that enables transformation is bound up in a selkie’s seal pelt, and the pelt is as much a part of them as the rest of their body and soul even when it has been shed. A selkie without her pelt is trapped in human form and bound to whoever possesses the skin. While the theft of a pelt does not rob a selkie of all free will or make her an automaton, a selkie is unable to harm their pelt’s keeper and is compelled to obey that person's orders.

As Moira's powers are defensive and come with severe weaknesses, and her animal form does not pose much more threat than a human might, I do not plan to nerf her abilities unless the mods feel it is necessary.


Inmate Information:
Major Life Events: Up until she was a teenager, Moira lived in isolation with only her mother and twin brother for company. The three of them were reliant on each other for survival as well as representing each other's only meaningful social connections. That suited Moira just fine at the time, since it was all she'd ever known. By chance, they encountered another selkie with a human wife and son, and were adopted into that family as cousins. Moira's mother and brother greatly benefited from their change in fortune, but Moira's experience of trying to integrate into human society, even on its periphery, was one of losing everything she'd known and no longer being needed by her family (the idea that they might still love her without requiring her assistance to live another day is outside of Moira's emotional vocabulary). After torpedoing all of those familial relationships, Moira ran away to live alone among the seals. That sort of worked for a while, except for how the isolation worsened Moira's mental health and ultimately led to her lashing out at any humans unlucky enough to encounter her. When her crime spree resulted in wildlife rehabilitators attempting to capture her, Moira fled up the coast and was eaten by a shark while searching for a new haven.

Crimes: Moira injured quite a few humans and caused a bit of property damage around Boston Harbor in the month or two leading up to her death, but she's not a killer (at least, she never progressed to that point before her life came to an end). That period of her life boils down to Moira lashing out at humanity in general due to her feelings of isolation and resentment over the loss of her family (which was her own fault). Her 'crimes' consisted of biting beachgoers, pulling people off of docks and boats and into the water, unmooring boats in the night so they'd drift into the harbor, and generally doing her very best to ruin everyone's day, all day every day.

Harm to Others: Beyond her actual crime spree, Moira has estranged herself from her biological family, and caused strain between them and their adoptive cousins. The property damage she caused during her time in the latter's home was mostly unintentional, but her bitterness regarding what was for everyone else a positive change drove a wedge between herself and her brother in particular. And, of course, she broke her mother's heart.

Personality: Moira is a deeply selfish person, focused at almost all times on her own wants and needs without consideration for those around her. While she does love her mother and brother, she has a twisted idea of what love actually means, conflating it with needing someone in a very literal way. She's also impatient and has little resilience when it comes to anything that doesn't come easy to her, which is why she has retained little understanding of human society despite having been exposed to it throughout her life. She's enthusiastic and joyful about things she's good at, like racing through the water or digging for clams, but she's quick to become frustrated with the unfamiliar. Faced with a confusing situation, she's more likely to leave in a huff or resort to a brute force solution than to stick it out and find the answer. Moira can be very playful when she's in her element, though; she was always the one finding things for her and her brother to do and inventing games for him and her mother to play with her. She endures hardship without complaint--with cheerfulness, even, back when she endured it with her brother and mother. When the problem is something as simple as facing starvation or risking a shark attack, she knows what to do and handles herself well. In short, she's just generally a better harbor seal than she is a person.


Path to Redemption:
Moira needs to learn how to have a healthy relationship with literally anyone. She idealizes her early life, when she existed within a codependent triad of herself, her brother, and their mother, bound together by an unending struggle for survival. That was when she was happiest because it was when she had the two of them to herself and had a very clear us-vs.-them mindset regarding her family vs. literally the rest of the world. Once the three of them became part of a larger family group and had their basic needs met, her mother and brother began to flourish and open up to the world around them, which caused Moira to go off the rails due to her perception of no longer being needed by either of them. She's never trusted anyone else, and has never formed so much as a friendship outside of those two immediate family members.

She would also benefit greatly from learning to like things about being human (at least part time) beyond enjoying human food. She has spent a lot more time in seal form than human form throughout her life, and does not see herself as human at all. Her refusal to adjust to human social norms rather than demand the world readjust itself to her liking is one of the factors that estranged her from her family and prevented her from forming a positive relationship with their adopted cousins.

At the root of it all, she needs to come to terms with why she hates humans and why she doesn't want to see herself as one of them. While Moira's mother never told her how she and her twin brother were conceived or why they had no family outside the three of them, Moira's bright enough to have put a few dots together over the years. She knows, deep down, that her father was a human who stole her mother's pelt and forced himself on her before their mother escaped somehow, but that knowledge and her feelings about it are buried as deep as she can force it down. As long as she keeps telling herself she simply detests humans as a species rather than working through her feelings about one specific, incredibly shitty human who happens to be responsible for her existence, she's not going to get anywhere with all of that.

Major milestones will likely include making a friend (a real one, someone she actually trusts), finding things she enjoys about spending time in human form and acknowledging that she's both human and seal rather than a seal who's forced to be human sometimes, and getting honest with herself about her feelings regarding her family...and her father. Regarding the last, things will probably have to get worse before they get better; Moira has a lot of bottled up anger she's directed at the human race in general in the absence of the man whose abuse of her mother is still felt by the entire family decades after Moira's mother escaped him.

Moira will react to being on the Barge like a wild animal would react to being caged: that is, she'll be terrified and prone to biting. She'll also hate being wardened when she catches on that they're trying to keep her under control and change her; she's gotten that once already from adopted family and she's not having it now any more than she was having it then. She'll likely respond best to a warden who focuses on befriending her and gaining her trust before making an attempt to correct her behavior; conversely, she will respond very badly to most forms of disciplinary action. Side note: Moira is highly food motivated, and it might not be the worst idea to approach the problem as though she were a fear-aggressive dog.

A big motivator for lasting change will likely be if her warden can provide Moira opportunities to learn empathy and reflect on the effects her behavior has on others. Moira may love her mother and brother, but she's a lot more concerned about her own hurts than she is about theirs. The result is that she's disregarded the hurt she's caused them by dropping in and out of their lives and unconsciously sabotaging their shared new life in favor of how all of it makes her feel.


World Information:
Moira hails from a world that, on the surface, appears very similar to the real one. Human society and technology have progressed at much the same pace as our world, the major events of history the same as well. Where her world differs is the presence of magic users and supernatural beings living hidden (or carefully apart) from humans, who greatly outnumber them and who have long forgotten how many less careful 'monsters' their ancestors hunted to extinction. Little, if any, non-sapient magical life remains; those who survived the proliferation of humans across the globe were those who could either pass as human or have the sense to keep themselves hidden. Those who live among humans form a secretive underground: a complex network of staunch allies, bitter rivals, and everything in between.

Magic, in Moira's world, requires both innate ability and training to use effectively, and rarely results in truly spectacular effects. The greater the magical feat, the more risk to one's own life in carrying it out, as tapping into that power requires tying one's own life force to the spell. Still, there are those who make their way in the world as magical healers or purveyors of curses.

Within that world, selkies are among the more secretive but generally benign supernatural creatures that live on the outskirts of human society. Selkies are fae-touched creatures, the result of magical meddling. While the exact origins of the first selkies are lost to history, legends that they were first born from the souls of drowned humans, remade into seals by sympathetic (or bored) fae, may not be too far off the mark.

Though they originated along the coasts of northern Europe, their population has expanded throughout the world since then, with most choosing to live in colder climates along coasts. Selkies, even those who spend a great deal of time among humans, tend to be highly secretive and their clans and families are often insular and reclusive. Vulnerable to humans and other creatures if they lose possession of their pelts, and without any special aptitude for magic, a selkie can make all too easy of a target for someone with ill intent. The secrecy that keeps them safe from outsiders has the unfortunate side effect of splintering their population and making it difficult for clans, families, and individuals to identify and make contact with one another.


History:
Moira and her twin brother Tynan were born on a cold, rocky New England beach out of sight of prying human eyes, two among many squalling white pups born to a colony of harbor seals hauled out together for pupping. What set them apart from the others (beyond the rarity of twins among seals) was that they were, in fact, selkie children born to a selkie woman.

Their life was not an easy one. Gnawing hunger was a frequent companion in the early years, their mother's efforts stretched thin in the effort to care for both of them. More of their childhood was spent in seal form than in human shape, but there were also long days of sun on human skin, spent digging for clams and listening to their mother's stories about the world into which they were born. Their mother, Myrna, rarely spoke of her own past, of where she had come from or who she had been before she was their mother and the three of them were an entire little world unto themselves. Her stories were instead the old stories of how selkies had come to be, promises that there were others like them, that they weren't really so entirely alone in the world as it seemed. There were stories of their seal brethren, animals but cousins all the same. Stories of the good neighbors, of monsters, of all kinds of people with all kinds of powers that might or might not be real and true. And then there were stories of humans...or rather, warnings about them. Moira and Tynan learned early and learned well that there was nothing more important than to keep themselves and their nature hidden from anyone who always walked on two legs, who had no seal pelt, who had never felt the bone-deep call of the sea. Lose your pelt to a human, and not only your freedom, but your self, your who-I-am, was gone along with it.

Myrna did not tell her children just how this truth had been carved upon her bones. There were stories that went unfinished, topics that hurt her enough to dim the light behind her eyes and silence her voice for days on end. And so, Moira and Tynan learned not to ask certain questions.

For all her warnings about humans Myrna was perpetually drawn back to their world, pulling her two children along in her wake. When they were old enough to be left alone, she would venture ashore when the fishing had been especially poor. Sometimes she would come back with a feast for the three of them to wolf down; sometimes she would come back empty handed. Sometimes she didn't come back for days and days.

The trio settled in Boston Harbor, and as Tynan and Moira grew older and more capable they began to accompany their mother into the human city. They made for a bedraggled set in whatever clothes they could scrounge, steal, and hide among the rocks, which served Myrna's purposes well enough when sitting on a street corner with her children to beg. Boston always put Moira on edge. She didn't like being among so many humans, didn't like the stink of iron everywhere she turned, and most of all didn't like having to sit and be still and patient and sweet. Her brother Tynan soaked up new information in a way she simply didn't; he took to their mother's reading lessons using street signs and discarded newspapers like a seal to water, while Moira had neither aptitude nor patience for it. What Moira did learn to read (or at least recognize) was the signage for her favorite restaurants--special treats like Dunkin' or Taco Bell, places where Myrna and later Tynan would carefully calculate an order to make the most of a few dollars while Moira fidgeted impatiently.

Dumpster diving and petty theft were more to Moira's liking than begging. With her brother for a lookout, Moira learned the best places to find good things to eat and things useful for day to day survival, no matter if they belonged to someone else. She never learned to care for owning things, though; the thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction of immediate needs and desires always more important than the alien concept of hoarding money or things. Myrna must have known what her children were doing whenever they ventured off without her, but as long as they came back in one piece and kept their pelts safe, she turned a blind eye.

Life went on this way for the three of them for many years, bound together by blood and for survival, any contact with other people fleeting and fraught with danger. There was no such thing as friendships, no familiar haunts - it was important, always, to keep moving, to be unpredictable, to make no connections with humans who might pay them too much attention. Living on the fringes of both human society and the natural world, Moira only ever grew more distrusting, more contemptuous of "land walkers."

And then, one morning when the twins had grown into a scraggly pair of teenagers, a chance encounter changed everything. Hauled out for a rest among true seals, the three of them were shocked when another seal hauled out from the sea and casually shed his pelt, revealing a tall, broad-chested man whose bumbling amongst the rocks in search of his clothing was immediately interrupted by Myrna throwing off her own pelt even as she burst into a fit of weeping that would continue, on and off, for days to follow. That first encounter was full of noise and confusion, and at the time even Moira was excited over meeting him.

In the weeks and months that followed, though, Moira came to bitterly regret the happenstance that put them on the same beach on the same morning Hurley McNamara returned from one of his visits to the sea. Hurley turned out to be the willing and free husband of a human woman, the father of a web-fingered boy called Shawn, and, of all the stupid, human things he could have been, a tailor. He and his wife, Monique, welcomed Myrna and her adult offspring into their lives and their home without hesitation, giving them warm human beds in which to sleep, clean human clothes to wear, and a sturdy human hope chest in which to safely lock away their seal skins. For Myrna and Tynan, it was a dream come true--an end to Myrna's loneliness and desperation, and an opportunity for Tynan to see and learn all the things that had been denied to him when secrecy was king. For Moira, it was like a cage closing in around her.

If she'd disliked visiting Boston, Moira hated living there. Suddenly there were all new expectations, her mother cajoling her to adapt, to please try. Her new aunt and uncle (who weren't really an aunt and uncle at all) telling her what was allowed and what was not, her younger cousin (who wasn't even a real selkie, let alone a real cousin) whining about every little thing she did. Objects were suddenly supposed to be important--their furniture was important, the clothing was important, the stupid, pointless house itself was just so important according to the McNamaras. For someone used to taking, using, and discarding anything she found momentarily useful, it was overwhelming and infuriating to be told that she mustn't take things without asking, mustn't break anything, mustn't track in mud, must take her turn cleaning their human house full of human things she never wanted.

Worse than any of it, though, was the way it began to change Tynan. His human manners were no less clumsy than Moira's at the start, but within weeks he was using a knife and fork at mealtime, and in just a few months he'd learned to operate most of the appliances in the house. Then he'd go begging Shawn to let him help with the boy's math homework as if it were some special treat, or trip over himself at the opportunity to watch Hurley or Monique at work. It seemed to Moira that her brother had no time for her anymore. No time for dumpster diving, mudlarking, or games of tag. No patience for her refusal inability to learn skills that had rapidly become basic in his mind. Instead of games there were arguments; instead of unity there was a growing rift between them, the only thing they seemed to share anymore their mounting frustration with one another.

They could go back to the sea at any time, supposedly, but their mother seemed afraid that if she went out to sea, she'd come back to find this new life had vanished in her absence. Tynan was no help at all; Moira could occasionally drag a confession from him that he, too, missed the open water, but he always seemed to find more important things to do than returning to it with her.

The first time Moira ran away, she came back to a family frantic with worry and so desperate to keep her that she was driven to flee again within the week. She kept coming back, though--back to her mother and Tynan, at least, even if she didn't wish to come back to the house or their adopted extended family. When ashore, Moira's heart ached for the sea. Whilst at sea, her heart ached with the deepest loneliness she had ever known. And so, she began to live between the two, slipping in and out of their lives at intervals Moira herself was incapable of predicting, alternating endlessly between those two heartaches. Time with family was little reprieve from the loneliness, Tynan growing more and more hostile toward his sister every time he saw their mother cry on her behalf or had to clean up yet another one of his sister's messes, Myrna closing herself off from her daughter in an attempt to prevent the wound from reopening every time Moira left again. Hurley and Monique, patient and kind as they were, had less and less patience for Moira's chaotic visits, and Shawn...she watched as Shawn began to replace her as a sibling to Tynan, younger than the twins but part of a world Tynan shared with him now, one that did not include Moira.

And then one day came the ultimatum. A united front. An intervention, they said. She couldn't go on like this, they told her; she was breaking her mother's heart. To be part of their lives, she must live the life they'd all chosen--otherwise, she was no longer welcome.

Moira left for the last time that very morning.

Life alone is no life for a selkie. Moira found a place in a colony of harbor seals, but they were a pale imitation of family, not least because the animals always seemed to know she wasn't truly one of them. Months passed in isolation, then years, Moira shedding her pelt to walk on two legs less and less often, playing at being nothing more than an animal as if she could convince herself of it.

The first time she bit a human, it was simply because they'd gotten too close to where she was sunning herself on the beach--the same as any seal might do if she were surprised and her space invaded. Moira was consumed shock and shame over it as she fled to the water to the backdrop of the human's cries of pain...but underneath that was a dark thrill of vindication. After all, shouldn't Moira have a place that was just hers? Shouldn't humans know they couldn't take everything they wanted, be anywhere they wanted? That this, her freedom and loneliness, was hers, and that they could not intrude on that as well?!

It wasn't that she spent all her time plotting against humans, or looking for fights. Even if she didn't have much of a life to speak of, Moira was still kept busy day in and day out with her basic animal needs. But when there was an opportunity....

She let a few opportunities slip by, at first. A swimmer she only feinted at rather than sinking her teeth into his leg, another would-be photography who received only a hiss of warning this time. But then there was the snot-nosed boy throwing pebbles at the birds and seals from a dock, and it was so easy to snatch his pant leg and yank him into the water, to teach the little shit a lesson. She didn't drown him; the screaming of his parents scared her off even if she hadn't thought better of the impulse, but from then on the humans were fair game wherever they intruded upon what she'd come to think of as her own private world in the harbor.

It didn't take all that many bitten beach-goers, dunked dock visitors, and mysteriously unmoored boats (having hands occasionally came in handy) before Moira was a known public menace. At first that wasn't a problem for her; if anything it was gratifying to see them scurry when they saw her or the other seals coming. But humans don't tolerate challenges from the animal kingdom very well, and even humans under the impression she was nothing more than an unusually ill-tempered seal were humans that could make themselves dangerous to her. Moira was in for a nasty surprise when a crew from some esoteric human agency she'd never heard of made their first attempt to capture and relocate her. It was a nastier shock still when they came back and tried again after the first failed try, and seemed to catch on to her tricks just as quickly as she could come up with them.

The decision was once again all but made for her. Perhaps her family would have taken her in; perhaps they saw the news and knew it was her and might have come to the harbor with their own relocation plan. Moira would never know; after another near miss she fled from Boston harbor, from home, in search of somewhere more secluded from humans.

She never found it. Being eaten by a shark was a stupid way to die--a danger she'd avoided for over two decades, ever since she was a pup. But traveling alone, without even wild seals for company...there was no protection. No herd among which to hide. No familiar hiding spots into which to dart. And so, without intervention, Moira's life would end--suddenly, anonymously, and without reason.


Samples: Both her network and RP samples are under this starter on the April 2024 TDM.


Special Notes: I had previously played another version of Moira in Duplicity, on another journal. In the unlikely event any players or mods are familiar with that previous version of Moira, please note that the Moira I am applying to play at TLV is substantially different, with core changes to her backstory.