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restinglichface) wrote2017-09-17 04:33 pm
restinglichface) wrote2017-09-17 04:33 pm
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entranceway
Name: Mey
DW username: N/A
E-Mail: meyggy@gmail.com
IM: I don't have aim, but I have a discord over at meyggy#8884
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meyggy
Other Characters: N/A
Character Name: Lup Taaco
Series: The Adventure Zone
Timeline: The end of Episode 66, The Stolen Century, Chapter 7. Into Lup's journey to track down the gauntlet.
Canon Resource Link: Here is a link to her wiki as well as to the Stolen Century arc that she makes her first appearance in. I'm also including a link to the TAZ transcripts right over here because reading through scripts instead of listening to over, like, 70+ hours of podcast is definitely easier.
Character History:
(Just a note, Lup is a trans woman, assigned male at birth, but transitioned to female very early in her life.)
For most of their childhood, Lup and her twin brother, Taako, were passed around from relative to relative, never really knowing what a proper home or loving family felt like. They’ve only ever had one relative that provided them with the closest thing to home that either of the twins had ever known. Their time with their Aunt was short, but memorable. It was from her that the two found an interest in cooking, a skill they’d continue developing through their whole lives. At the age of twelve, they decided enough was enough and left, deciding they’d have better luck out in the world on their own, instead of being handed off like regifted Candlenights presents. It was at this moment that the two stopped looking for a physical home and instead found home within one another.
It was never easy, living out on the road, wondering just what they’d eat next or where they’d be the following day. Their time spent with relatives had already given the two a certain sense of wariness considering how quickly they’d been tossed between family members, but their time on the road is really what solidified their distrust in the rest of the world. It quickly became very apparent they could only trust one another. They began to journey with various traveling caravans, never wanting to stay in one place too long, using their cooking skills to earn their places among both mercenary groups and traveling acting troupes. It was during these years on the road, that Lup and Taako began to experiment and learn magic, using it as a means to protect themselves.
Eventually, once they were grown, Lup and Taako worked their way up to attend proper schooling for their magical ability, which they crushed, making it to top of the list by their graduation from the academy.
Shortly after, the twins were enlisted to work for Institute of Planar Research and Exploration (the IPRE, basically NASA but with wizards and shit), being selected out of hundreds of applicants to join the crew of seven that would be leaving on an exploration outside of their planar system. To keep it brief, the IPRE discovered an artifact they dubbed the light of creation, a tangible ball of light that can be used to create anything a person could even imagine possible. This light was used to construct a ship that could travel through multiple planes of existence, even into parallel worlds. The twins were hired to work as the resident cooks aboard the ship, but also were going along as powerful arcanists to help keep the mission running smoothly. During a press conference to introduce the team and explain their mission in detail, Lup is asked if she’s really comfortable leaving this world, the only world she’s ever known, behind. Lup’s reply says it all:
That last night on their home world, Lup and Taako go to a local dive bar and hustle people at pool, asking for their shoes for payment after winning. Not because they need (or even like) the guy’s shoes, they just want to punish him.
When the Starblaster, their beautifully named ship, takes off the following morning, a sudden darkness descends upon their planet just as they are retreating. Long, dark tendrils appear from space, reaching for the very world they are leaving. The IPRE crew manage to escape from the darkness that they would soon call the Hunger, but upon returning to where their planet should have been, but it takes the crew no time at all to recognize that this isn’t the world they’d left behind. This was an entirely different reality altogether, the first of many they would be encountering over the next one hundred years.
Thus begins their stolen century. The facts are as follows: The crew land on a new plane of existence, stay there for one full year exactly, but then the Hunger descends and they have to make their way off of the plane in their ship before the whole world is consumed. During the first few days of their stay, the light of creation comes flying down from the sky and the IPRE are challenged to locate it and take it with them. Leaving it behind for the Hunger to devour up with the plane, they soon realize, just makes it stronger. So it is imperative that they spent their time wisely in locating and seizing the light. There is at least one point in their favor. As long as one member of their crew make it off of the planet with the ship, all seven will be revived, returned to the same exact state they were in when they left their home. Which means, deaths are no longer permanent, aging ceases to be an issue. They keep all of their memories and the skills learned through the year, but they’ve just become trapped in time, unable to die. One hundred years. One hundred different planes. One hundred different lights of creation.
It makes for a very intense game of cat and mouse.
The first year, they arrive on a planet inhabited fully by animals. Lup decides to work with Taako and Barry, their crew’s resident science nerd, to spend their time decoding the animal language in the hopes of being able use the animals to help them locate the light. Though they eventually are able to locate it, they aren’t able to get it by the time the Hunger comes. The first sign of the end of the world and the twins are out the door, leaving their crewmates behind to race to the ship, Taako leading the way and dragging Lup while she takes potshots at every dark tendril they come across. And from there, the pattern of dropping into a plane, attempting to locate the light, and leaving at the end of the year emerges.
What they do during the course of the year varies, some years Lup sticks with the crew physically hunting for the light, others she and Taako do their own thing, like pillaging deactivated robot parts to use for ship repair, but the pattern always remains the same. And, as hard as they try, they more often than not lose the light of creation, but there are some moments of triumph
Year seventeen brings the IPRE crew to a plane devoid of life, it’s only inhabitants sentient automatons. The robots eventually reveal themselves to be the remaining humans left of the world after a disease wiped everyone out, where the last few humans alive put their souls inside of robots before their human bodies could perish. Fearing that The Hunger will swoop down and consume the powerful crystal the automatons rely on and become even more powerful, Davenport suggest that the crew destroy it themselves instead, an idea that Taako is completely in favor of. However, Lup is quick to speak out against the others:
Cycle forty-seven is the next significant cycle for Lup, where the crew is introduced to both the Legato Conservatory and the Voidfish. Tracking down the light of creation is surprisingly simple this year, the only difficulty is in actually retrieving it. The light is supposedly being held inside of cave that no one has ever gone into. Instead, they present things (like art, music, dance) to the mouth of the cave and if the light inside finds the gift quality enough, it will consume the creation and then broadcast it out to everyone in the land, straight into their heads. If it does not like what has been presented to it, the light will devour the gift and it will disappear from existence, the memory of that dance or that song completely erased from the mind's of everyone. The group is told that if they present something to the cave and the light finds it suitable, they may be able to get access to go inside. Thus begins a very long year of the group discovering their talents and preparing for this very important performance.
Lup spends the year with Barry, their resident science nerd, and the two work on a duet, Lup on violin and Barry on piano. Through the last fifty years, the two have been getting closer and closer, spending more time together on their journey to end the Hunger once and for all. And even if the two were aware of their feelings to an extent, it is during their performance where the love that they "cultivated quietly and cautiously over the last half century truly bloomed. There was romance in every measure, and longing in every note." Their performance is accepted, but neither really cares. Their focus is just on each other and they leave, hand-in-hand, to catch up on missed time.
While Lup smooches Barry's brains out elsewhere, Magnus discovers that there was no light of creation in the cave, the light is still hidden and they've wasted an entire year looking in the wrong place for it. Instead, he finds a cave full of jellyfishes, floating through air. They learn that these jellyfishes (who would later be called voidfishes) are creatures that consume memories, deleting them straight from the minds of all creatures across all planes of existence. The only way to bypass this is to be inoculated, to drink the voidfish's ichor. So, say someone wrote down the lyrics to a song and gave them to the voidfish to consume. If someone who had been inoculated sang that song, anyone who had not been inoculated would only hear static coming from their mouths. If they were presented with a page of lyrics written down in front of them, their mind would slide over the words, unable to comprehend what they were seeing.
And if someone was to give the voidfish the name and history of a person, all memory of that person would disappear across the minds of all people who knew them. And if those people had significant history with this deleted person, their minds would work to rearrange their history so as to keep this person erased completely. When this world is destroyed, Magnus brings one of the voidfish along with them for safe keeping. This is all very significant.
Year sixty-five is a short one for Lup, who dies the first day of the cycle, but a significant one for the whole team. Six of the crew, everyone but Lucretia, ends up being turned to stone on day one of this cycle. Lucretia spends the entire year on her own, working to repair their ship that had been shot down, all the while being hunted by the people who'd captured the rest of her crew. Somehow, miraculously, she manages to repair the Starblaster, learn to pilot it, and fly out at the end of the year, saving both her crew and the whole universe in the process. This is the catalyst for Lup's next big decision. Her and Barry secretly agree that they can never allow another of their crew to balance the fate of their mission on their shoulders for an entire year. It's too dangerous, too close to total failure for not just their mission but for everything in existence as well. So this is when Barry and Lup begin their plan to become liches.
It takes seventeen years of research and planning, but the pair finally decide the time is right during cycle eighty-two.
Liches in this universe are not bound by phylacteries. Instead, they're tied to the earth by particularly strong emotions. Barry savors his memories of his relationship with Lup, and while she loves him, the elf knows she needs her brother. She comes to Taako one day and asks him to plan a special day for her, what she calls the best day ever, and leaves it very simply at that. She doesn't disclose her plan or mention Barry's involvement. She just asks for a day between the two of them. That's it.
Taako, naturally, hits it out of the park. They spend the day enjoying incredible meals together, starting a water gun fight in the park with Davenport, and the end up blowing up a DMV just for kicks. At the day's close, when they are dining on Lup's favorite recipe from their aunt, that Lup reveals her real plan.
On their way out of that cycle, just as the Hunger is descending upon the world, Lup decides that now is the time to test her new powers. She winks and falls backwards off of the side of the Starblaster as it ascends into the sky, her red-robed lich form quickly rising from her body on the ground before she strikes out at a nearby column of the Hunger. It is obliterated. It's only just a piece of the whole thing, one of dozens, but it's the first significant attack they've ever had against the Hunger in the last eighty-two years of this game. They're close.
During cycle ninety-two, the team are brought to a world of artificers, who craft normal objects to be infused with magical abilities. This is where Lup creates her Umbrastaff, an umbrella with the power to eat defeated magic users. It is also where the IPRE team has their first real divide. After studying for a year with the artificers, Lup and Barry come up with a plan to divide the light of creation into seven parts, putting them into objects. The idea behind this is that in doing so the Hunger will no longer be able to locate the light and therefore not be able to find them or the plane they've landed on. If they hold onto the light for a number of years this way, they may be able to starve the Hunger out and destroy it. Unbeknownst to Lup, Lucretia has been working on her own plan since her year alone, which is to use the light of creation to create a shield around the world, closing it off from the possibility of being attacked, though it would close off this plane from all of the rest. Lucretia speaks up, but her plan is quickly shot down by the rest of the party, who unanimously agree to Lup and Barry's plan instead.
It's on cycle ninety-nine when they finally put their plan in motion, grabbing the light of creation within hours of landing. All seven of the crew create magical items to hide the light within, each from a different magic specialization. Imbued with this amazing power, these seven items are sent out into the world, because the light needs to be craved by the world or their plan won't work. But they do send them out and their plan does work. A year quickly passes and the Hunger never comes. The universe should be saved, the group should be lost in celebration, working to rebuild the lives they've had to put on hold the last one hundred years.
But things are never so easy. It doesn't take long for the life on this new planet to start abusing the relic's incredible power. Wars break out between kingdoms just on the chance of being able to possess one of the famed items. Lup's relic, the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, is especially misused, leaving thousands of people killed in the wake of it's destructive power. Her friend's relics are so much more, transmuting any matter into something else or control over the power of time, but Lup's is simply pure damage. And so that is what it does, it destroys.
Lup, who had once made her friends promise that they'd never sacrifice a single world, is left to sit and watch as the item she created burns through entire cities, leaving nothing but a black circle of glass behind, never any survivors. It becomes too much for the elf to bear.
Nearly two years into their stay here, the guilt of what she's brought to this plane is too great for her, and with one last conversation with her twin, Lup disappears completely, on her own journey to find the gauntlet that she created and put an end to this abuse of power. All on her own. She only leaves a note behind--Back Soon--but months pass by with no word from her. She's just gone.
--And this is not directly relevant to Lup and her backstory necessarily, but there's significance related to her after her disappearance. Lucretia, devastated at the sight of her friend's guilt over what they've brought upon this world and the sadness weighing them down at Lup's disappearance, decides to go through with her own plan instead. Knowing her friends would never agree, she uses the voidfish to erase their memories. They all lose all knowledge of their mission, of their journey, of their relationships with one another. And she erases all memories of Lup, leaving Taako to believe he'd spent his entire childhood alone instead of with his twin.
Abilities/Special Powers:
Lup is a D&D wizard (5th edition), which means everything is overly complicated to explain! In D&D, wizards cast their spells by using their acquired magical knowledge and experience. To do this, they have to prepare a certain number of spells daily that can be used, but once those have been used up, they are completely out until they are able to take a long rest (six hours) and recharge their spell slots. Though the show has not stated her level specifically, we know that over the course of The Stolen Century arc, we have seen her "grow furiously in arcane power, studying the mystical secrets of the planes", so I'm just going to put Lup as a level 16 wizard.
Going a little further into things, Lup is specifically an Evocation Wizard, which is described as a spellcaster who "creates powerful elemental effects such as bitter cold, searing flame, rolling thunder, crackling lightning, and burning acid." Her full list of spells is right over here.
Lup is also coming in as a Lich, which gives her access to some higher spell power and the ability to return to her Lich form (a red-robed specter) upon dying. Liches are very dark, taboo necromancy magic, that comes from the result of a magic user ripping out their own soul and infusing it with raw, arcane energies, causing their mortal lives to end. They can continue to inhabit their bodies and their bodies function as if they were normally living, but upon being killed, their lich form rises up from their corpse and continues to live that second, ghostly life in it's place. (And just for clarification, Lup will be coming in with her body intact.
Like her brother, Lup can also speak six different languages, though it's unlikely those will be of much use. She's also a kickass cook, having learned with Taako growing up, but due to his whole celebrity and cooking show, I'd put her on a lower level than him there.
Third-Person Sample:
A pillar of flame shoots straight up into the sky that Lup's gazing longingly up at, her arms tucked neatly behind her head, her body laid out against the green grass of a hill overlooking a valley. Overlooking a battle. The elf sighs, eyes squeezing shut against the burning brightness of the fire stretching upwards, coiling as if trying to reach for the moon hanging overhead.
"Almost there, Lup. Just a bit longer."
Surprisingly, the loneliness ends up being Lup's biggest opponent on the road so far.
Fighting, whether it was with magic or with her fists, had always come easily to the woman. She'd spent a lifetime protecting her brother, squaring her thin shoulders and baring her teeth at adults who harassed them as children, then firing off red-hot flames from her wand tip when they were faced against worse opponents as adults. Lup was no stranger to going into brawls all on her own, throwing up her head and smirking with a confidence that she owned, her words just as sharp as the magic she wielded.
But it was being alone that kept her awake through the nights now, not the aggressors she faced on the way. It was loneliness that coiled up so tightly in her gut and refused to lessen, her mind always wandering back to the Starblaster and to her friends, her family, hoping upon every star shining above her they were alright.
The flame of the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet disappears just as suddenly as it materialized, the valley below falling into a soft, eerie silence. Lup knows exactly what that means. The battle is over. It's time to collect her relic and end this for good. And once she does, she can finally get back to her family.
The elf turns, eyes opening slowly, as if dreading the scene she can already see in her head. She imagines a circle of black glass, perfectly formed from the gauntlet's destruction, and the ground beneath it just littered in ash. But instead, when her eyes open to face what's left of the battlefield, she sees a fountain.
"What--!" It's such a surprise that Lup starts, hopping to her feet and quickly spinning around, as if preparing for an ambush of some kind. But she's in a garden now, lush and beautiful, the aroma of flowers heavy in the air. Her eyes trail over the scenery, the neatly-trimmed hedges and perfectly manicured lawns, before settling back to the fountain.
The woman's expression drops, her mouth pressing into a thin line as she mutters, "Riiight, seems fake." Lup strides forward and sticks a hand straight into the cool water of the pond, willing this obvious illusion to pass, but all she feels is the curious mouths of goldfish pecking at her fingers, their fins brushing against her hands, reinforcing the realness of this moment. If this was really illusion magic, wouldn't her acknowledging it was fake cause the illusion to disappear? What the fuck was going on here?
For a brief moment, Lup considers dunking her whole head into the pond, just to see if that will be enough to drag her out of this dream, but her eyes catch sight of the Mansion looming just in front of this beautiful garden. If she's going to find any of the answers she's looking for, best to start there.
Her hand curls into a fist at her side, Lup throwing her head back, hair flicking over a shoulder. She may not know where the fuck she is, but she's going to walk in like she owns the place. "Alright, you're about to learn that this girl does not take well to being fucked with."
First-Person Sample:
[For someone from a place of slightly more primitive technology, Lup seems to get a handle on her phone quickly enough, the elf framing her face perfectly in the screen, mouth curled to the side in a sharp grin. She looks totally in her element, confident despite knowing nothing of this place or of the people who run it.
In fact, for any residents who know of Taako the elf, they may mistake this woman for him considering they share the same identical faces and long, elven ears. Her voice is a little different, naturally, but hey, elves get sick sometimes too, right?]
Now, I don't want to crush your game, but I'm gonna need the name of the nerd who runs this place, because I'm a busy woman who has exactly zero time for this bullshit. I can't fault you for wanting some of the good, ol' Lup brand to sparkle up this place, but it just isn't going to work. It's not me, it's deffo all you.
And hey-- [She holds up free hand in front of the camera, which certainly looks to be on fire.] If you don't want to come out and face me yourself, I'll just start burning it down. I have a feeling that garden out front is gonna make a beautiful blaze. And I've got spell slots to burn, baby.
Your move. [And okay, that ending is slightly marred by the fact she struggles to figure out how to disconnect the call, but still!]
DW username: N/A
E-Mail: meyggy@gmail.com
IM: I don't have aim, but I have a discord over at meyggy#8884
Plurk:
Other Characters: N/A
Character Name: Lup Taaco
Series: The Adventure Zone
Timeline: The end of Episode 66, The Stolen Century, Chapter 7. Into Lup's journey to track down the gauntlet.
Canon Resource Link: Here is a link to her wiki as well as to the Stolen Century arc that she makes her first appearance in. I'm also including a link to the TAZ transcripts right over here because reading through scripts instead of listening to over, like, 70+ hours of podcast is definitely easier.
Character History:
(Just a note, Lup is a trans woman, assigned male at birth, but transitioned to female very early in her life.)
For most of their childhood, Lup and her twin brother, Taako, were passed around from relative to relative, never really knowing what a proper home or loving family felt like. They’ve only ever had one relative that provided them with the closest thing to home that either of the twins had ever known. Their time with their Aunt was short, but memorable. It was from her that the two found an interest in cooking, a skill they’d continue developing through their whole lives. At the age of twelve, they decided enough was enough and left, deciding they’d have better luck out in the world on their own, instead of being handed off like regifted Candlenights presents. It was at this moment that the two stopped looking for a physical home and instead found home within one another.
It was never easy, living out on the road, wondering just what they’d eat next or where they’d be the following day. Their time spent with relatives had already given the two a certain sense of wariness considering how quickly they’d been tossed between family members, but their time on the road is really what solidified their distrust in the rest of the world. It quickly became very apparent they could only trust one another. They began to journey with various traveling caravans, never wanting to stay in one place too long, using their cooking skills to earn their places among both mercenary groups and traveling acting troupes. It was during these years on the road, that Lup and Taako began to experiment and learn magic, using it as a means to protect themselves.
Eventually, once they were grown, Lup and Taako worked their way up to attend proper schooling for their magical ability, which they crushed, making it to top of the list by their graduation from the academy.
Shortly after, the twins were enlisted to work for Institute of Planar Research and Exploration (the IPRE, basically NASA but with wizards and shit), being selected out of hundreds of applicants to join the crew of seven that would be leaving on an exploration outside of their planar system. To keep it brief, the IPRE discovered an artifact they dubbed the light of creation, a tangible ball of light that can be used to create anything a person could even imagine possible. This light was used to construct a ship that could travel through multiple planes of existence, even into parallel worlds. The twins were hired to work as the resident cooks aboard the ship, but also were going along as powerful arcanists to help keep the mission running smoothly. During a press conference to introduce the team and explain their mission in detail, Lup is asked if she’s really comfortable leaving this world, the only world she’s ever known, behind. Lup’s reply says it all:
With Taako going with her, Lup has no remaining ties to the world they grew up on. What’s the point of staying?“Well, I, uh. I did this one already. I did this world and kind of… crushed it, so, I guess I’m excited for opportunities to expand the ol’ brand as it were. So yeah, I’m pretty psyched to get off this stink-planet and see what else is out there.”
That last night on their home world, Lup and Taako go to a local dive bar and hustle people at pool, asking for their shoes for payment after winning. Not because they need (or even like) the guy’s shoes, they just want to punish him.
When the Starblaster, their beautifully named ship, takes off the following morning, a sudden darkness descends upon their planet just as they are retreating. Long, dark tendrils appear from space, reaching for the very world they are leaving. The IPRE crew manage to escape from the darkness that they would soon call the Hunger, but upon returning to where their planet should have been, but it takes the crew no time at all to recognize that this isn’t the world they’d left behind. This was an entirely different reality altogether, the first of many they would be encountering over the next one hundred years.
Thus begins their stolen century. The facts are as follows: The crew land on a new plane of existence, stay there for one full year exactly, but then the Hunger descends and they have to make their way off of the plane in their ship before the whole world is consumed. During the first few days of their stay, the light of creation comes flying down from the sky and the IPRE are challenged to locate it and take it with them. Leaving it behind for the Hunger to devour up with the plane, they soon realize, just makes it stronger. So it is imperative that they spent their time wisely in locating and seizing the light. There is at least one point in their favor. As long as one member of their crew make it off of the planet with the ship, all seven will be revived, returned to the same exact state they were in when they left their home. Which means, deaths are no longer permanent, aging ceases to be an issue. They keep all of their memories and the skills learned through the year, but they’ve just become trapped in time, unable to die. One hundred years. One hundred different planes. One hundred different lights of creation.
It makes for a very intense game of cat and mouse.
The first year, they arrive on a planet inhabited fully by animals. Lup decides to work with Taako and Barry, their crew’s resident science nerd, to spend their time decoding the animal language in the hopes of being able use the animals to help them locate the light. Though they eventually are able to locate it, they aren’t able to get it by the time the Hunger comes. The first sign of the end of the world and the twins are out the door, leaving their crewmates behind to race to the ship, Taako leading the way and dragging Lup while she takes potshots at every dark tendril they come across. And from there, the pattern of dropping into a plane, attempting to locate the light, and leaving at the end of the year emerges.
What they do during the course of the year varies, some years Lup sticks with the crew physically hunting for the light, others she and Taako do their own thing, like pillaging deactivated robot parts to use for ship repair, but the pattern always remains the same. And, as hard as they try, they more often than not lose the light of creation, but there are some moments of triumph
Year seventeen brings the IPRE crew to a plane devoid of life, it’s only inhabitants sentient automatons. The robots eventually reveal themselves to be the remaining humans left of the world after a disease wiped everyone out, where the last few humans alive put their souls inside of robots before their human bodies could perish. Fearing that The Hunger will swoop down and consume the powerful crystal the automatons rely on and become even more powerful, Davenport suggest that the crew destroy it themselves instead, an idea that Taako is completely in favor of. However, Lup is quick to speak out against the others:
The rest of the party step down and agree to let the robots live, even knowing that their life is going to be ended by the Hunger in a matter of hours. Before they race to make it to the Starblaster in time to take off, Lup hands a gun to the leader of the robots and says 'Listen. Light them the fuck up'. Once onboard the Starblaster, Lup gives a passionate speech to her friends, making them promise that they'll never even consider hurting another world like that, no matter what odds are against them. They all agree before moving onto the next cycle."Are we - are we just gonna burn every world that we can’t save? Just to keep the Hunger from getting its hands on it? How does that make us any better than them? [...] This - this is the point where we get to decide who we are. I refuse to let us be - the type of people who would destroy an entire world for any reason. This - this isn’t us! This can’t be how we do this!"
Cycle forty-seven is the next significant cycle for Lup, where the crew is introduced to both the Legato Conservatory and the Voidfish. Tracking down the light of creation is surprisingly simple this year, the only difficulty is in actually retrieving it. The light is supposedly being held inside of cave that no one has ever gone into. Instead, they present things (like art, music, dance) to the mouth of the cave and if the light inside finds the gift quality enough, it will consume the creation and then broadcast it out to everyone in the land, straight into their heads. If it does not like what has been presented to it, the light will devour the gift and it will disappear from existence, the memory of that dance or that song completely erased from the mind's of everyone. The group is told that if they present something to the cave and the light finds it suitable, they may be able to get access to go inside. Thus begins a very long year of the group discovering their talents and preparing for this very important performance.
Lup spends the year with Barry, their resident science nerd, and the two work on a duet, Lup on violin and Barry on piano. Through the last fifty years, the two have been getting closer and closer, spending more time together on their journey to end the Hunger once and for all. And even if the two were aware of their feelings to an extent, it is during their performance where the love that they "cultivated quietly and cautiously over the last half century truly bloomed. There was romance in every measure, and longing in every note." Their performance is accepted, but neither really cares. Their focus is just on each other and they leave, hand-in-hand, to catch up on missed time.
While Lup smooches Barry's brains out elsewhere, Magnus discovers that there was no light of creation in the cave, the light is still hidden and they've wasted an entire year looking in the wrong place for it. Instead, he finds a cave full of jellyfishes, floating through air. They learn that these jellyfishes (who would later be called voidfishes) are creatures that consume memories, deleting them straight from the minds of all creatures across all planes of existence. The only way to bypass this is to be inoculated, to drink the voidfish's ichor. So, say someone wrote down the lyrics to a song and gave them to the voidfish to consume. If someone who had been inoculated sang that song, anyone who had not been inoculated would only hear static coming from their mouths. If they were presented with a page of lyrics written down in front of them, their mind would slide over the words, unable to comprehend what they were seeing.
And if someone was to give the voidfish the name and history of a person, all memory of that person would disappear across the minds of all people who knew them. And if those people had significant history with this deleted person, their minds would work to rearrange their history so as to keep this person erased completely. When this world is destroyed, Magnus brings one of the voidfish along with them for safe keeping. This is all very significant.
Year sixty-five is a short one for Lup, who dies the first day of the cycle, but a significant one for the whole team. Six of the crew, everyone but Lucretia, ends up being turned to stone on day one of this cycle. Lucretia spends the entire year on her own, working to repair their ship that had been shot down, all the while being hunted by the people who'd captured the rest of her crew. Somehow, miraculously, she manages to repair the Starblaster, learn to pilot it, and fly out at the end of the year, saving both her crew and the whole universe in the process. This is the catalyst for Lup's next big decision. Her and Barry secretly agree that they can never allow another of their crew to balance the fate of their mission on their shoulders for an entire year. It's too dangerous, too close to total failure for not just their mission but for everything in existence as well. So this is when Barry and Lup begin their plan to become liches.
It takes seventeen years of research and planning, but the pair finally decide the time is right during cycle eighty-two.
Liches in this universe are not bound by phylacteries. Instead, they're tied to the earth by particularly strong emotions. Barry savors his memories of his relationship with Lup, and while she loves him, the elf knows she needs her brother. She comes to Taako one day and asks him to plan a special day for her, what she calls the best day ever, and leaves it very simply at that. She doesn't disclose her plan or mention Barry's involvement. She just asks for a day between the two of them. That's it.
Taako, naturally, hits it out of the park. They spend the day enjoying incredible meals together, starting a water gun fight in the park with Davenport, and the end up blowing up a DMV just for kicks. At the day's close, when they are dining on Lup's favorite recipe from their aunt, that Lup reveals her real plan.
A few days later, with only Taako in attendance, Lup and Barry go through the ritual to become liches, their bodies crashing to the ground as two red-robed specters take shape above them. There's a tense moment where the two liches are surrounded by cackling, red electricity, seemingly out of control, but they both quickly gain composure and float down to take possession of their bodies. (Lup, of course, has to make the moment extra dramatic by waiting a few extra seconds and then dabbing beforehand. Just to make Taako sweat a little.)"We’re gonna become liches, Taako. And that sounds— that sounds way scarier than it actually is, but… we’re- we’re going to take our living essence, our… souls… and combine it with our magical essence and… we’re gonna become something… new. Something… something powerful. [...] The— the risk is— it’s hard to combine your soul with raw power and keep your mind right. You need something keeping your feet on the ground. An... emotional anchor. And when I go all ghosty, I need to have things to remember to hold on to who I am. Today is… it’s gonna be one of those memories. [...] Barry already gave me a day. And… I love him, Taako, with all of my heart, but you… I needed a day from you, because you are my heart. You know that, right?"
On their way out of that cycle, just as the Hunger is descending upon the world, Lup decides that now is the time to test her new powers. She winks and falls backwards off of the side of the Starblaster as it ascends into the sky, her red-robed lich form quickly rising from her body on the ground before she strikes out at a nearby column of the Hunger. It is obliterated. It's only just a piece of the whole thing, one of dozens, but it's the first significant attack they've ever had against the Hunger in the last eighty-two years of this game. They're close.
During cycle ninety-two, the team are brought to a world of artificers, who craft normal objects to be infused with magical abilities. This is where Lup creates her Umbrastaff, an umbrella with the power to eat defeated magic users. It is also where the IPRE team has their first real divide. After studying for a year with the artificers, Lup and Barry come up with a plan to divide the light of creation into seven parts, putting them into objects. The idea behind this is that in doing so the Hunger will no longer be able to locate the light and therefore not be able to find them or the plane they've landed on. If they hold onto the light for a number of years this way, they may be able to starve the Hunger out and destroy it. Unbeknownst to Lup, Lucretia has been working on her own plan since her year alone, which is to use the light of creation to create a shield around the world, closing it off from the possibility of being attacked, though it would close off this plane from all of the rest. Lucretia speaks up, but her plan is quickly shot down by the rest of the party, who unanimously agree to Lup and Barry's plan instead.
It's on cycle ninety-nine when they finally put their plan in motion, grabbing the light of creation within hours of landing. All seven of the crew create magical items to hide the light within, each from a different magic specialization. Imbued with this amazing power, these seven items are sent out into the world, because the light needs to be craved by the world or their plan won't work. But they do send them out and their plan does work. A year quickly passes and the Hunger never comes. The universe should be saved, the group should be lost in celebration, working to rebuild the lives they've had to put on hold the last one hundred years.
But things are never so easy. It doesn't take long for the life on this new planet to start abusing the relic's incredible power. Wars break out between kingdoms just on the chance of being able to possess one of the famed items. Lup's relic, the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, is especially misused, leaving thousands of people killed in the wake of it's destructive power. Her friend's relics are so much more, transmuting any matter into something else or control over the power of time, but Lup's is simply pure damage. And so that is what it does, it destroys.
Lup, who had once made her friends promise that they'd never sacrifice a single world, is left to sit and watch as the item she created burns through entire cities, leaving nothing but a black circle of glass behind, never any survivors. It becomes too much for the elf to bear.
Nearly two years into their stay here, the guilt of what she's brought to this plane is too great for her, and with one last conversation with her twin, Lup disappears completely, on her own journey to find the gauntlet that she created and put an end to this abuse of power. All on her own. She only leaves a note behind--Back Soon--but months pass by with no word from her. She's just gone.
--And this is not directly relevant to Lup and her backstory necessarily, but there's significance related to her after her disappearance. Lucretia, devastated at the sight of her friend's guilt over what they've brought upon this world and the sadness weighing them down at Lup's disappearance, decides to go through with her own plan instead. Knowing her friends would never agree, she uses the voidfish to erase their memories. They all lose all knowledge of their mission, of their journey, of their relationships with one another. And she erases all memories of Lup, leaving Taako to believe he'd spent his entire childhood alone instead of with his twin.
Abilities/Special Powers:
Lup is a D&D wizard (5th edition), which means everything is overly complicated to explain! In D&D, wizards cast their spells by using their acquired magical knowledge and experience. To do this, they have to prepare a certain number of spells daily that can be used, but once those have been used up, they are completely out until they are able to take a long rest (six hours) and recharge their spell slots. Though the show has not stated her level specifically, we know that over the course of The Stolen Century arc, we have seen her "grow furiously in arcane power, studying the mystical secrets of the planes", so I'm just going to put Lup as a level 16 wizard.
Going a little further into things, Lup is specifically an Evocation Wizard, which is described as a spellcaster who "creates powerful elemental effects such as bitter cold, searing flame, rolling thunder, crackling lightning, and burning acid." Her full list of spells is right over here.
Lup is also coming in as a Lich, which gives her access to some higher spell power and the ability to return to her Lich form (a red-robed specter) upon dying. Liches are very dark, taboo necromancy magic, that comes from the result of a magic user ripping out their own soul and infusing it with raw, arcane energies, causing their mortal lives to end. They can continue to inhabit their bodies and their bodies function as if they were normally living, but upon being killed, their lich form rises up from their corpse and continues to live that second, ghostly life in it's place. (And just for clarification, Lup will be coming in with her body intact.
Like her brother, Lup can also speak six different languages, though it's unlikely those will be of much use. She's also a kickass cook, having learned with Taako growing up, but due to his whole celebrity and cooking show, I'd put her on a lower level than him there.
Third-Person Sample:
A pillar of flame shoots straight up into the sky that Lup's gazing longingly up at, her arms tucked neatly behind her head, her body laid out against the green grass of a hill overlooking a valley. Overlooking a battle. The elf sighs, eyes squeezing shut against the burning brightness of the fire stretching upwards, coiling as if trying to reach for the moon hanging overhead.
"Almost there, Lup. Just a bit longer."
Surprisingly, the loneliness ends up being Lup's biggest opponent on the road so far.
Fighting, whether it was with magic or with her fists, had always come easily to the woman. She'd spent a lifetime protecting her brother, squaring her thin shoulders and baring her teeth at adults who harassed them as children, then firing off red-hot flames from her wand tip when they were faced against worse opponents as adults. Lup was no stranger to going into brawls all on her own, throwing up her head and smirking with a confidence that she owned, her words just as sharp as the magic she wielded.
But it was being alone that kept her awake through the nights now, not the aggressors she faced on the way. It was loneliness that coiled up so tightly in her gut and refused to lessen, her mind always wandering back to the Starblaster and to her friends, her family, hoping upon every star shining above her they were alright.
The flame of the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet disappears just as suddenly as it materialized, the valley below falling into a soft, eerie silence. Lup knows exactly what that means. The battle is over. It's time to collect her relic and end this for good. And once she does, she can finally get back to her family.
The elf turns, eyes opening slowly, as if dreading the scene she can already see in her head. She imagines a circle of black glass, perfectly formed from the gauntlet's destruction, and the ground beneath it just littered in ash. But instead, when her eyes open to face what's left of the battlefield, she sees a fountain.
"What--!" It's such a surprise that Lup starts, hopping to her feet and quickly spinning around, as if preparing for an ambush of some kind. But she's in a garden now, lush and beautiful, the aroma of flowers heavy in the air. Her eyes trail over the scenery, the neatly-trimmed hedges and perfectly manicured lawns, before settling back to the fountain.
The woman's expression drops, her mouth pressing into a thin line as she mutters, "Riiight, seems fake." Lup strides forward and sticks a hand straight into the cool water of the pond, willing this obvious illusion to pass, but all she feels is the curious mouths of goldfish pecking at her fingers, their fins brushing against her hands, reinforcing the realness of this moment. If this was really illusion magic, wouldn't her acknowledging it was fake cause the illusion to disappear? What the fuck was going on here?
For a brief moment, Lup considers dunking her whole head into the pond, just to see if that will be enough to drag her out of this dream, but her eyes catch sight of the Mansion looming just in front of this beautiful garden. If she's going to find any of the answers she's looking for, best to start there.
Her hand curls into a fist at her side, Lup throwing her head back, hair flicking over a shoulder. She may not know where the fuck she is, but she's going to walk in like she owns the place. "Alright, you're about to learn that this girl does not take well to being fucked with."
First-Person Sample:
[For someone from a place of slightly more primitive technology, Lup seems to get a handle on her phone quickly enough, the elf framing her face perfectly in the screen, mouth curled to the side in a sharp grin. She looks totally in her element, confident despite knowing nothing of this place or of the people who run it.
In fact, for any residents who know of Taako the elf, they may mistake this woman for him considering they share the same identical faces and long, elven ears. Her voice is a little different, naturally, but hey, elves get sick sometimes too, right?]
Now, I don't want to crush your game, but I'm gonna need the name of the nerd who runs this place, because I'm a busy woman who has exactly zero time for this bullshit. I can't fault you for wanting some of the good, ol' Lup brand to sparkle up this place, but it just isn't going to work. It's not me, it's deffo all you.
And hey-- [She holds up free hand in front of the camera, which certainly looks to be on fire.] If you don't want to come out and face me yourself, I'll just start burning it down. I have a feeling that garden out front is gonna make a beautiful blaze. And I've got spell slots to burn, baby.
Your move. [And okay, that ending is slightly marred by the fact she struggles to figure out how to disconnect the call, but still!]