Character: Elurina

Elurina Mermin is the Centaurina.
 

Early Background:

Born to Elisi, the daughter of the legendary mage Elealora, Elurina should have been well acquainted with the ways of the mage from youth. Yet, she was not. It appears that until the sudden disappearance of both Elealora and Elisi, Elurina was not only not aware of her heritage and powers—but had her powers kept from her.

(Golum scholars attribute this decision to be made on account of Elisi’s troubled youth. Elisi had grown up in an era when all Ethereal powers were considered supernatural and condemned to be evil; moreover, because her human father had taken her from Elealora as a child, she had grown up amongst godfearing Old World humans. Though Elisi and Elealora have been living in the diverse setting of Santa Rina for some time now, Elisi might still maintain the self-destructive belief of shunning all that is Ethereal. Thus, perhaps, hoping to spare her daughter from being ostracized as other-than-human, as she had been, Elisi had endorsed the deliberate suppression of Elurina’s powers. However, this golum scholar believes that there are likely further reasons as to why Elurina’s powers were kept hidden from her. Perhaps Elealora had seen the Centaurina in Elurina, and had, naively, wanted to keep her from her fate. Then again, the Elealora of legends cannot possibly have been so naïve; thus, perhaps, the suppression was because that the child’s powers had already been too great for even her to handle, and might have been a danger to the child.

There is much debate amongst golum scholars over how the state of things might have been different had Elurina been raised a proper mage. This golum scholar agrees with the view that despite the odds against her on account of her human upbringing, she is, nevertheless an Ethereal and the Centaurina, and therefore, she shall bring order to this city.)

It appears that throughout her life, Elurina had felt apart from the humans Elisi was so willing to immerse her in.

According to her elementary school teachers, young Elurina was an intelligent, though oddly quiet and withdrawn child. During recess, she would silently sit in an abandoned corner near the classrooms, never engaging in any games with the other children. When a teacher asked why she didn’t want to play, an eight-year old Elurina had answered, “I don’t think I’d ever fit in—maybe I’m a different race or something.” She was always the loner, except for one year, when she attended the Antebellum School in Fremont. There, she met Eva, and the two became inseparable friends. However, she was soon sent off to another school. Perhaps because Elisi wanted to avoid all Ethereal presence, Elurina would be shuffled from school to school until finally ending up at Endover, an east coast boarding school that had been, apparently, devoid of Ethereal presence, other than the demurred suppressed mage Elurina.

During her first year at the boarding school, Elurina often complained of a peculiar headache that actually became intensified by pain-killers. (Simultaneously, there were also several reports of Elurina levitating objects. One particular report had her hands burst into a small bonfire on a particularly cold January day.) Though the school nurse could find no physical reason why Elurina was having such headaches, concerned about Elurina’s welfare, she had called home to ask for a family history. Elealora had told the nurse, simply, that it was a family malady. Subsequently, Elurina began receiving mail containing parcels supplying bottles of unmarked pills. (Along with her headaches, the reports of Elurina’s “magic tricks” faded away.)

Perhaps because of the strength of Elurina’s powers, the wards of suppression Elealora wove around her might have faded away through distance. This may have been one reason why Elurina was not sent to a school far from Santa Rina in the first place. A minority of golum scholars believe that Elealora and Elisi had not followed Elurina to the east coast because Elealora still had local dealings with Omni. There is little evidence suggesting this, and as such, the possibility is merely a fanciful speculation.

Though she had been accepted to several east coast schools virtually devoid of Ethereals, Elurina returned home to the Santa Rina bay area for college, enrolling in the diversely Ethereal University of California at Berkeley. Perhaps because this was against the wishes of Elisi, Elurina did not visit her old home in downtown Santa Rina despite its close proximity.

Although she was virtually surrounded by Ethereals, in college, Elurina still remained the loner. She had been invited to a mage sorority rush, and she had failed miserably—to quote a sister, “She couldn’t even levitate a fallen napkin! Honestly, she can’t possibly be Kinai [a mage]. Pelma must have made a mistake in inviting her—she’s definitely just some misplaced human. Eww!” A group of the Kinai intelligentsia report inviting her into their study group, “We like to use our edge against others, and well, it’s a group thing—we pool our powers together so we get a better grasp of the Ess [Ethereal Space]. Sometimes, we see the entire contents of the test beforehand—but the part that rocks would be when we see the answer key in the Ess, while taking the midterm. So it’s Cal, right, and all the prof’s write like psycho exams because it’s like their life’s goal, right? So, you can totally imagine the prof’s embarrassment that four students scored perfects on the supposedly-impossible exam! Nevermind that we were always the dorks sitting in the back in lecture reading his mind, then piping up questions we knew he couldn’t answer. Sometimes, we even beat Ethereal prof’s—yeah, we got caught there, a couple of times, but they were cool, chuckling and all, they were like, ‘Just don’t get too carried away with your so-called edge.’ It all depended on the pool, though. Even though it looked like she was hiding it, we could totally tell she had a great deal of power. The sinew [Ethereal Sinew] was like utterly dripping from her. She would have been a great member to have. But, she didn’t want in.”

Some golum scholars believe that it might have been beneficial that the Centaurina was not raised as a typical mage. She appears to be devoid of their customary pettiness, and, we have yet to find records where she had been anything but fatally honest—whether or not it’s at the expense of being ostracized from even her own brethren, the Kinai.

Recent Events

Elurina had been descending a staircase at the Doe Library, when she felt a pang through her heart. To quote a golum undergraduate present at the scene, “Fortunately, she was near the bottom landing of the staircase, and she only fell a couple of steps. But, we all thought the worst, at the time. I thought, maybe she had OD’ed on coke or something. It’s Berkeley, and a lot of students would do crazy things to gain the extra edge. She was out for maybe five minutes, and she got up and left before the campus police and meds came filing in. She kinda just disappeared from our notice—not disappeared as in “poof,” but, as in, she walked away and none of us noticed it at the time. Oh, there were a couple of people there at the scene, at the time… ten, maybe twenty. It was a decent sized group. I found it something to go, ‘huh,’ in a dazed way over, at the time, but then, now that I think about it, she’s a mage, and that’s normal for them to mess with our minds, I guess.” That night, SRTV reported “the sudden formation of the worst storm of the century,” and golum scholars are certain that its origins were Ethereal. Indeed, this was the night of Elisi and Elealora’s sudden disappearance—and the locus of the storm was at the Mermin residence in downtown Santa Rina.

According to a human night shift train driver, Elurina rode the BAST home, “but the storm had cut the electricity, an’we were jus’stuck there. Then, this girl comes running through the car gates, askin’ me what’s wrong. I tell her the power’s jacked, and, believe me yes, she gave me one long look, then her eyes started glowin’—really, glowing red like there are them neon lights in ‘em. Freaky. The power came back on, suddenly, but Center still wooden let us go since th’bay tunnel was rendered unsafe. I tol’her that we were just stuck there, and she started crying. And, I din know what to do, but fortunately, she just walked away, and returned to her seat.” Her train was delayed for nearly three hours, and it was dawn when she finally walked home.

In the days afterwards, Elurina Mermin tried vainly to galvanize the SRPD to actively search for her mother and grandmother. Unable to get them to action, she gave up and sauntered into City Hall, perhaps under the belief that she might be able to get the incumbents to command the SRPD. Interestingly, she effortlessly stepped through the ward guarding the Kinai meeting room from non-Kinai sight, to quote a human bypasser who had seen the scene, “There is no Room Five-And-Three-Fifths, but I swear on my wedding ring that I’ve seen it. This college girl barged in here one day. She made a scene, demanding that we find her parents for her—and I don’t know how many of us tried to calm her down, but… Well, I was on my way to lunch, when she walked right by me, and I thought she was going to run into a wall! But, instead, she flung open the door in the wall—well, you see, the door wasn’t actually there on the wall… in the wall… the instant before she touched it. I don’t know; I probably sound crazy to you, right now, but it was as if she made the door appear. She just flung the door open, then let it close behind her. And, she was gone, the door was gone, and there was just a wall there, again.”

Afterwards, it appears that Omni had inducted this rogue mage into their presence. Golum scholars are uncertain as to Omni’s intention, but the events shall reveal the truth, as the Epoch unfolds.