Tanis
From Changeling Venue
| Seeming | Beast Coldscale |
|---|---|
| Court | Spring Court |
| Freehold | The Pageant |
| Player | Roo James |
Contents |
Overview
Alias(es): Jane Johnson
Real Name: Tanis
Location: Sonoma County, Northern California
Age: Could be anywhere from twenty-five to fifty
Seeming: Beast
Kith: Coldscale
Court: Spring
Virtue: Charity
Vice: Sloth
Concept: Gentle Serpent
Mask: Tanis is curiously ageless – her face is unlined, her hair a rich color still, but she doesn't appear to be young. Her eyes blink about half as much as they should.
Mien: Tanis is more human than serpent, but only just. Her cool skin is interrupted by green and gold scales, and she stares at the world through serenely unblinking eyes. Her tongue, when she reveals it to taste the air, is delicately forked, and she moves with a slow and sinuous grace that shows through even her mask.
Mantle: The world around Tanis seems crisp and fresh, and she seems forever enveloped by a cloud of rich earth, bitter oak and apples. Even her scales are always bright as if she had just shed her skin.
Personality and Quirks: On the surface, Tanis is quiet, composed and appears in control. She almost never refers to anyone by name, bears few grudges and avoids politics. She uses a mask of careful benevolence to conceal the truth: she remembers everything, but never when it would be useful. Events that have happened in the last ten or so years have a better rate of retention, but she is the master of the noncommittal answer.
Character Livejournal: The Serpent's Garden
History
Basic Timeline:
1970: Born
1990: Taken to Arcadia at the age of twenty
Eight years pass in Arcadia
1992-1994: Escaped through the Hedge to Cavanaugh's. Met and maintained friendship with Loch Smith.
1994-1996: After two years, Tanis decides to move on from Cavanaugh's. Some requisite wandering. Loch Smith accompanies her through at least some of it.
1996-Present: Winds up in California and much to her surprise is left a homeless shelter and a moderate income to care for. Joins the Innkeeper's Guild and opens up the shelter as a safehouse and inn for the newly escaped and travelers.
Current Activities:
- Tanis runs a homeless shelter, The Mild Garden, and takes the worst of the worst in. The local authorities know that she will take in people other shelters have refused. The strange, the crazy, and the just plain weird all end up on Tanis' doorstep, and one way or another she deals with them all. When they are changelings, she accepts them, keeps them until she is relatively certain of their health and sanity, and sends them on their way, either to the locals or away from them.
- She has taken it upon herself to act as an agent for The Innkeepers, traveling when necessary to help new Innkeepers start Inns or check up on Inns that have dropped off the map.
Background:
Tanis started life in a good family – well raised, excellent education. She could have been taken for a number of reasons – she was beautiful, she tended her garden well, her Keeper took a liking to her for reasons not fully understood… In Arcadia, she was a beloved pet, given a garden to do with as she pleased. It was her Keeper's desire that she became the Serpent, and so she did, and she was content for some value of the word. And one day, she was taken from it, shoved into a dark box. No longer a gentle gardener, she fought for her life and her new Keeper's pleasure, kept forever in the dark, in the cold. Eventually, the lid was left off the box, and she escaped, following the little threads of memory that drew her back through the Hedge.
After her own escape from Arcadia, Tanis' mind was left profoundly shattered. Remembering almost nothing of her past before being taken and little of her time in Arcadia, she spent several years trying to regain her memories. Failures mounted, and eventually she gave up the search, letting her memories come and go as they pleased, and eventually building a new life for herself. Spring is the court of those who live in the moment, and Tanis is no exception. Eschewing a past that would be mostly meaningless, she forged a new identity for herself and quietly celebrates every day as new and joyous.
Inspirations
Would God I were the tender apple blossom
That floats and falls from off the twisted bough
To lie and faint within your silken bosom
Within your silken bosom as that does now.
Or would I were a little burnish'd apple
For you to pluck me, gliding by so cold
While sun and shade you robe of lawn will dapple
Your robe of lawn, and you hair's spun gold.
Yea, would to God I were among the roses
That lean to kiss you as you float between
While on the lowest branch a bud uncloses
A bud uncloses, to touch you, queen.
Nay, since you will not love, would I were growing
A happy daisy, in the garden path
That so your silver foot might press me going
Might press me going even unto death.
Londonderry Air, Trad. (The tune is probably better known in its later incarnation, Danny Boy.)
"There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behaviour, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward." --Khalil Gibran
"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." --Khalil Gibran
Associations & Associates
- The Choir Empress was Tanis' keeper, although if you called her that, Tanis would give you a blank stare. She recalls only the faintest snatches of dreams of her durance.
- Tanis restarted her life as a patient of Cavanaugh's Home for the Wayward.
- Loch Smith was the first man who reached out to Tanis, and was rewarded for is efforts by a life-long friend.
- Presently, she runs The Mild Garden, a homeless shelter, where she takes in new escapees and Changelings who've simply lost their way.
- The Innkeepers have held Tanis' loyalty longer than anything else. When she's not tending her own shelter, she finds ways to make herself useful to the guild.
- Jimmy was dropped on Tanis' doorstep by the local authorities in 2003 and has been with her ever since.
- Jax has been a friend and companion for years, floating in and out of The Mild Garden with some frequency.
- Race helped Tanis out when she needed it, and she'll never forget his kindness, if not the specifics.
- Vestigere caught her once, but she escaped the second time. She didn't send him away immediately when he stumbled, lost, into her Garden years later.
Soundtrack
Datura - Tori Amos
Quotes
"Fear drives us more than almost anything else, but we shouldn’t let it consume us – no good comes of that." --Tanis
"They say snakes ain't got pity or mercy, might be true. If it is, then Tanny is either one hell of a liar... or an example of how we ain't just what the Others made us to be. I'm bettin' on that... for all our sakes." -- Race Ardent
"I admire her purity: Live. Strike. Kill. Consume. Sleep. Untethered from moral complication. Unshackled from sense of self. Unabated by the needs of prey. Had our Empress deemed otherwise, oh...what a Harrier she would have made." -- Vestigere the Usurper
Rumors
- Tanis only eats once a month. Has anyone seen that door-to-door salesman recently?
- Tanis is far more cagey than she appears - ever notice that she always knows which plants are poisonous, but can never remember her keys? It's all an act.
- She really is as flighty as she acts. Anyone who has tried to have a conversation with her knows it.
Contact
Name: Roo James, US2002023866
Email: gardenserpent@gmail.com
Character Ties:
I'm looking for ties of all kinds, however the most obvious ones are centered around The Innkeepers. These include:
- Anyone looking for a place to stay for a time;
- Anyone needing help reintegrating back into life on this side of the Hedge;
- Anyone Tanis has met while traveling to other Inns;
- Friends, Allies, Associates, etc.
- Lovers for whom the memories have been misplaced; Tanis has some significant memory problems and personally I dream of having an interaction along the lines of "Remember Paris?" "Who are you again?"
