SERENA WALKERTON

Overview

Serena Walkerton’s life has not followed the path anyone expected. Born into the House of Walkerton, a family of modest wealth and rising social standing in Brighton, Serena was groomed from an early age by her mother, Verna Walkerton, in the many nuances of being a lady. Verna planned for Serena to marry well and elevate the family on Brighton’s social ladder. But those carefully laid plans were thrown out the window when Serena began to exhibit an aptitude for magic and, even worse in Verna’s eyes, a streak of stubborn independence that motivated Serena to pursue her training as a sorceress rather than a career as someone’s wife.

Though her mother initially opposed the idea, Serena’s unrelenting passion and help from her father, Arlen—a quieter, more accommodating presence than his formidable wife—wore Verna down until she finally capitulated. The family steward, Chane Taldman, who had long served as a steadying influence in Serena’s life, also helped convince her parents to finance the apprenticeship. With their reluctant blessing, Serena began her studies under Persimmius Falconian, a mysteriarch and pyromancer based in Brighton. Persimmius was demanding in ways Serena had not anticipated. He stressed discipline above all else, pushing her to master the fundamentals of controlling her sri—the life force energy that fuels all sorcery—before attempting anything ambitious. His methods were strict, his patience thin, and his expectations unforgiving. Under his tutelage, Serena learned the foundations of her craft, though she chafed at the slow pace and rigid structure of his teaching.

Serena is fortunate to come from a family of means, since pursuing magic is not without its costs. Too soon, though, Serena learns those costs are sometimes more than financial. Scandal ensues during her time with Persimmius, and in its aftermath, Serena finds herself sent away from Brighton to Wildemoore Manor, a remote estate far outside the city. There, she enters a new apprenticeship under the master sorcerer Ansanom. Where Persimmius was strict and methodical, Ansanom is eccentric and reclusive, a man consumed by his own arcane research. Wildemoore is a lonely abode surrounded by wilderness, and Serena soon grows bored and longs for company, even if that company includes her mother. Her visits from the outside world are limited to periodic check-ins from the family steward, who arrives bearing a lender’s note for Ansanom and a careful eye toward Serena’s well-being. It is a quiet, isolated existence, and one that leaves Serena restless and eager for something more.

Appearance

Serena is fifteen and stands all of five feet tall, a fact that has never once stopped her from filling a room. She is blonde, her hair long enough to want managing—gathered back out of her face when she is working, worked into a single braid when she is traveling or expects trouble, and dressed into curls when the occasion calls for it. On the road, that braid has a habit of threatening to unravel in a score of places at once.

Her eyes are her most arresting feature: a crystal blue inherited directly from her mother, but lit from within by an uncanny and often mesmerizing light that has no counterpart in Verna’s icy stare. Grown men have taken a step back from that gaze without quite understanding why. It is the one part of her appearance that announces the sorceress rather than the young noblewoman.

Otherwise she dresses as her upbringing dictates—gowns of good make, chosen with an eye toward what a Walkerton daughter ought to be seen in. She wears them well and carries herself accordingly: straight as an arrow, chin lifted, drawing herself up another inch when challenged. She colors easily when embarrassed, which happens more often than she would like.

Abilities & Sorcery

Serena’s attunement to her sri rivals that of any master sorcerer, a fact that is both her greatest asset and her most persistent challenge. As an apprentice, she possesses enormous potential but lacks the discipline to properly harness and channel that energy. Tutelage under Persimmius gave her the fundamentals, and Ansanom has pushed her further, but neither master has solved the core problem: when Serena’s emotions run high, her magic threatens to slip beyond her control. She is keenly aware of this vulnerability, and it fuels a quiet uncertainty beneath her outward confidence.

Of the magic she feels comfortable casting, she can easily heat a pot, automate a broom or mop to clean, or open a locked door. Small applications of focused sri—warming a metal urn into the equivalent of a small fire, lighting a dark room—come to her without effort. She remains less confident about controlling ancient elemental relics or how she will fare in a true confrontation if she ever finds herself in one.

Personality & Demeanor

Serena talks. Freely, at length, and frequently past the point where her listener has stopped keeping up—a habit she is aware of and entirely unrepentant about. Threaded through the chatter is a sharp wit she wields as readily as her sorcery, and a curiosity that asks too many questions of people disinclined to answer them.

Beneath that runs the stubborn independence that derailed her mother’s plans in the first place. She does not defer, does not retreat, and does not much care whether the person she is facing outranks her. Confronted, she draws herself up rather than backing down, and the effect is disproportionate to her size often enough that she has come to rely on it.

The confidence is not entirely earned, and she knows it. Her magic answers to her emotions more than to her discipline, and the awareness of that gap sits under everything else—a quiet uncertainty she covers with talk and posture, and which surfaces mainly in the moments when she suspects she is out of her depth.

Notable Relationships

Serena’s relationship with her mother, Verna Walkerton, defines much of who she has become—largely by opposition. Verna groomed her for an advantageous marriage and a rise up Brighton’s social ladder, and Serena’s choice of sorcery over that future represents the great unresolved argument between them. They share the same crystal blue eyes, a resemblance neither seems entirely comfortable with.

Her father, Arlen, is the quieter counterweight—accommodating where his wife is formidable, and instrumental in wearing Verna down until she consented to the apprenticeship.

Chane Taldman, the family steward, has been a steadying influence in Serena’s life for as long as she can remember. He argued her case to her parents when it mattered, and during her isolation at Wildemoore his periodic visits—ostensibly to deliver a lender’s note to Ansanom—serve equally as a check on her well-being.

Her two masters have shaped her craft in opposite directions. Persimmius Falconian, mysteriarch and pyromancer, drilled her in discipline and fundamentals with thin patience and unforgiving standards. Ansanom, eccentric and reclusive, offers a looser and lonelier education from within the wilderness surrounding Wildemoore Manor.

Role & Affiliations

Serena is a sorceress in training, presently apprenticed to the master sorcerer Ansanom at Wildemoore Manor, a remote estate well outside Brighton. She belongs by birth to the House of Walkerton of Brighton, in the Earldom of Kettering—a family of modest wealth and rising social standing whose ambitions for her she has comprehensively declined. She holds no rank within any sorcerous order and has completed no formal course of study. What she has is raw ability that outstrips her training, and a determination to close that distance on her own terms.