Name: Tullia Callaghen
Age: 20
Description: Standing at no more than five feet tall, this young woman would appear of a barely marriageable age were it not for the womanly shape of her small, quick frame. A somewhat heart-shaped face is young and smooth, containing full pink lips, a slightly dimpled chin and a straight and lightly freckled nose. Very large and round blue-green eyes are surrounded by thick black eyelashes and positioned beneath plucked eyebrows.
Nearly to her waist fall thick waves of well groomed dark brown hair; normally, however, it is bound into a braided coil that covers the back of her head, leaving only two long, glossy curls to fall past either shoulder from a deliberate part. Pierced ears rarely hold any elaborate decoration; usually they hold a pair of tiny brass bobs.
Both hands and feet are small and slim with long, neatly maintained extremities. Footwear invariably consists of a pair of hardy black shoes; her attire is that of a lady, consisting largely of modest, plain black dresses and skirts. Although she is usually covered from neck to toe, there are well-developed muscles beneath her smooth healthy skin. It appears that her posture is very good; she carries herself with the air of someone who is well learned. She has only one real ornament: a heavy, slightly tarnished brass ring with a very large, square-cut jewel as its centerpiece.
History: Not much is actually known about life inside the Callaghen household (a neighborhood monument which has been in the family for five or six generations), except by its members. Although not regarded as unfriendly, they are a large and private collection. Edmund and Winny are a proud, honest and unimposing couple who have built their lives and family on humility, respectability and accountability, and have been rewarded by seven successful living children. In total, they had nine: Amelia, Eddy, Kegan, Tristan, Avery, John, James, Tullia and Elia. None of the children were encouraged to mingle with those outside of their family, and all were rather reserved and shy from their childhood. Although none were generally popular, neither were any excluded or despised, and all had some friends in Mathonwy as well as very tight bonds with one another.
Tullia entered her family with little ceremony, although she was far from wanting attention or affection. Business as usual continued within the Callaghen house around her birth and babyhood. Before she was four years old, her eldest sibling and only sister, Amelia, died of influenza. The Callaghens tried to put things behind them and move on with their lives, but her passage into the Land of the Dead was felt by all, and in particular her next oldest sibling, who has been a playmate and best friend all through their childhood. Amelia was only eighteen when she died - too young, it was agreed throughout the neighborhood. Eddy was barely a year younger, and he as good as shut himself up after her death; his interest was in the way of necromancy after that as he sought to regain contact with his favourite companion.
As she grew, other moderations were made to the state of the family. Eddy left to persue an apprenticeship with a very old apothecary, and held little contact with his family since; when Tully was eight or nine, Kegan married a wealthy young woman and settled in a small manor, provided by her parents, in the North Quarter. Tully's first niece was born when she was ten; she would be followed in the next two years by two more of the same. Kegan and his wife, Cleva, remained very close with Edmund and Winny and the babies were all deeply cherished. John and James, twins closest to Tully in age, went to stay with a widowed sister of Winny's as they progressed into adolescence, where they were each encouraged to choose and practice a craft. This left Tullia with her older brothers Tristan and Avery, who because of the difference in their ages and genders were never very close friends to her.
Although she befriended a girl or two in her immediate neighborhood, Tullia spent the mast majority of her time deep in study. Both of her parents held administrative positions in the Tribune Court, her father specifically in the City Repository. Much of her time was spent here reading and copying down notes, and it was agreed by various busybodies that her interest in books of such an unchildlike nature was vastly unhealthy. Edmund, however, was and still is in posession of a spotless reputation within the city, and was trusted by his superiors to keep the information supplied to his daughter appropriate. In this way, too, Tully became acquainted with the movers and shakers of Mathonwy, many of which relationships graduated to an informal and even friendly level as she neared adulthood and became the mistress of a mature mind.
When she was fifteen, Winny gave birth a ninth time. This child, named Elia after her long-deceased sister, died within a year of conditions caused by complications during the birth, but not before Tullia had grown to love caring for and nurturing the infant under her mother's tired, watchful eye. Winny and Edmund were understandably devastated; they never conceived again. Encounters with the dead are not dwelled upon in the Callaghen family, but Tully's skin still prickles at the memory of waking up sometimes in the night with the smell and sensation of a live, not unhappy, but very cold infant wrapped in her arms.
At the age of eighteen, Tullia was offered a position as a librarian within the Repository, which she accepted with gratitude. Initially she worked beneath her father and others enlisted to keep a watchful eye on her; as she proved competent and trustworthy, security related and she was left mostly to her own devices. In recent months, her father has retired, leaving her as a sort of middle-authority reporting only to her seniors and administrators.
Job: Tullia currently works as a bookkeeper and librarian in the City Repository.
Personality: There are many, many layers that make up the vastly complex mind of Tullia Callaghen; to detail every wrinkle in her grey matter would take hours.
Early in Tullia’s life was instilled into her the concept that knowledge is worthwhile. Together with an earnest and diligent nature and a dazzling intellect, these handcrafted values have produced from the girl a cultured and well learned young woman: better educated, in fact, than the vast majority of her peers, for the sheer luck of her having been brought up to study vigorously. At her fingertips have always been thick tomes full of information, which she has always accessed with a genuine interest and inclination to learn; the benefits of such hard work have not been lost on her.
Alongside the usual aspects of such an education, Tullia has to a much greater degree a knowledge of magic. Her entire life has been largely devoted to the study of the same. For many years her existence consisted of rigorous training and extensive reading to further her understanding of the subject; such relentless work truly threatened to stretch her good mind to capacity, but that is neither here nor there. For the reason that most of her life has been lived in imitation of a brown recluse (shying away from light and humanity and turning on anything that would disrupt her), she is no social butterfly.
To say that she is not, however, a social
creature would be a lie. She is not antisocial and she is not heartless; she often feels loneliness, but feels that it is a sacrifice well made for the privilege of being left alone with her own thoughts and ambitions. By nature Tullia is compassionate, empathetic and highly astute; however, due to the way she was raised and cultured, she has difficulty executing her good traits in a way that displays them well. On an exterior level she is, unfortunately, often cool, unresponsive, cynical or callous.
Tullia is focused, calm and steady. She is able to remain calm in the worst of situations and she is always fully aware of what she is doing; she is capable of using her intelligence to her advantage. The woman is a natural actress, and those who are close to her (very few) might watch for subtle changes in her usual behaviour: when these make themselves apparent it is usually that she is acting in order to achieve some end or the other. Her purposes are usually selfish, not because she is selfish but because she has no one for whom she would do a favour out of affection or debt.
With all of that said, however, a few slightly deeper traits must be outlined. Despite what one might think from this account, Tullia is far from narcissistic. In fact she is very modest; this is, again, a value that has always been pushed upon her by her parents. Humility, reason and patience are valued very highly by her family. Tullia appreciates the value of respect, whether it is a matter of giving or receiving, and she has a reasonable tolerance for the laws and ways of Mathonwy. Although she is hardly wealthy, she is not deprived of her basic needs, and she accepts that her life will, in all probability, never change.
Rather than spend her life in wistful daydreams, Tullia seeks to occupy herself as fully as she can. She values honour and respectability very highly and believes in likely consequences for those who are well intentioned; to her, the ends justify the means and the result crowns the work. Honour, to her, comes from servitude and the degree to which people are able to help those above and around them. She is very familiar with the concept of hard working, honest, grateful, respectable poverty, and her first priority is to make herself of absolutely the most use that she possibly can to those superior to her, and those that she loves – if applicable.
Dead People:- Amelia Callaghen: Sister, dead of influenza sixteen years ago. Known to have appeared to Edmund Callaghen Jr. at least once.
- Elia Callaghen: sister, dead of suffocation as a result of seizure four years ago.
- Bryce Branwen: associate and colleague of her father's; intimate family friend, dead of a heart attack two years ago. Known to have appeared to Edmund Callaghen Sr. at least once.
- Eartha Callaghen: paternal grandmother, dead for seven years after a long dementia.
Scene: It was many years ago, but that wasn't of much concern to Tully. She dawdled among the rows of books in the Repository, replacing an armful of those tomes left out by recent patrons in accordance to the strict system. Tullia worked almost constantly; by now, she knew her job inside and out and, as usual, she let her honed reflexes take over and her mind wander to other subjects. Elia, Elia, Elia. She didn't remember much of Amelia Callaghen, but she knew that Elia had had her namesake's spirit. The infant had been happy and remarkably undemanding, although not independent. She had always wanted to be picked up and carried; it seemed as though she longed for human contact as much as Tully sometimes did. The child had been one of, oh, three or four people with whom Tullia had formed a real bond.
The first time she had sensed Elia's ghostly presence was as vivid to Tully as the first time she had tried a pomegranate at Kegan's wife's home. She remembered everything - the familiar smell of extreme youth, the silky sensation against her skin, the cold, heavy weight in her arms. Despite the memory being so strong, Tullia knew that she had not been fully conscious when it happened; the icy warm feeling slipped away as she regained all of her wits. She
knew it wasn't a dream, but still she refrained from talking about it.
Shuddering slightly, Tully replaced the last book and walked away from the shelves, towards her desk.
It may seem silly, she thought fervently as she seated herself,
but I really do firmly resolve never to make an enemy of one of the departed. I can't wait until I am dead and we can all be together again.
Tully Callaghen, Librarian and Bookkeeper.
