Whiffle
Basic Stats
Name: Whiffle
Species: Deer Mouse Peromyscus maniculatus
Gender: Female
Height: 3 inches (feral) or 4 feet (anthro)
Occupation: Witch
Headcannon Voice: Judy from Zootopia
Song
'Try Everything' by Shakira from the Zootopia soundtrack
I messed up tonight, I lost another fight
I still mess up but I'll just start again
I keep falling down, I keep on hitting the ground
I always get up now to see what's next
These opening lines have incredible importance to Whiffle as a character. As a tiny field mouse, she has been fried, zorched by lighting, half-drowned, and so exhausted that she nearly gave up, but she never gave up. She kept trying everything regardless of whether she might fail, always getting up to try again. With her flagship enchantments functional, she takes of the world as a 'giant' 4 ft tall mouse even if her ritual is flawed and she sometimes reverts to her original size. She takes on the world with a smile and an open heart.
Origin and Background
Modest Beginnings
Whiffle was named for her habit of nosing into people's ears and snuffling about until her mother declared 'Stop Whiffling in my ear!' The name stuck. Whiffle was not a dull mouse by any measure, and she managed to take up a safe residence in the roof of a witch's house. She eventually befriended the witch's raven familiar, and from the familiar she began learning of witchcraft.
Of Rituals and Hayfever
Whiffle was best suited to two forms of magic: the magic of natural plants and the power of the ritual. The two sometimes intersected, but not often. As a witch, Whiffle never learned much in the way of combat casting and was left instead with her herbal approaches and powerful rituals. One such ritual was meant to protect her from harm by making her into a four foot tall anthro mouse instead of her feral shape. In her mind, this would make her virtually invulnerable to predation. Her ritual was nearly perfect except for one small detail: she sneezed halfway through it. As a result, the ritual was imperfect, and sneezing would cause her to revert to her feral shape. She was able to make an herbal remedy, but if deprived of it, she has no ability to fix her size again.
Whiffle Today
Today Whiffle is an outgoing and friendly mouse that enjoys meeting new people and exploring the world in what she sees as safety. She still carries her remedy with her, but at times she runs out of materials for it and she is forced to endure a return to her feral roots. She has been trying to learn combat magic, but to date she only has a lightning spell that generally just zaps her instead and make her fur puff out everywhere. She has a terrible addiction to peanut butter that can get her into trouble at times.
Whiffle's Rituals and Spells
Transform Self
This incredibly delicate and massively involved ritual is not just about changing the size or shape of a body. Such rituals are much simpler than what Whiffle has produced. In her quest to be 'big' she has bound herself to the very elements of nature to ensure she would endure in a new world at a different size. The purity of morning dew, the strength of stone, the patience and endurance of the great oaks of her home forest, the warmth of sunlight, and the wonder of stars and a full moon were used to produce her new body and maintain a similar binding and change in her soul. Most rituals of this form only focus on the physical alterations, but Whiffle has made something that commands body, mind, heart, and soul to ensure her magic and who she is would remain after the transmutation.
One of the side effects of Whiffle's ritual is that it is extremely difficult to undo or alter it once it is cast. The bindings she used to the elements of her homeland also demand that all of these bindings and locks be addressed in any attempt to disenchant or further alter her. It also made possible the use of another ritual, the Soul Hook.
Soul Hook
The souls hook is a very difficult and expensive ritual that bonds Whiffle's soul and links in with the Transform Self ritual to ensure that, should she die , her soul and prior ritual work would not be lost. The soul hook contains enough power to recall, preserve, and reanimate Whiffle in a safe location. However, once used it must be reset manually, and that requires a large investment of materials and time which means it can only be used every few months and must be carefully hidden. Whiffle will make new Soul Hooks in locations she settles out of prudence.
Call Lightning
Whiffle's only combat spell and it never works. Most of the time it strikes her because she lacks a familiar to mediate the rapid use of power necessary.
Minor Curative
This is an enchantment consisting of herbal remedies in a magical binding that is them sealed within large leaves. The pale green powder can be used like a tea or applied directly to wounds to mend them. These require rituals to prepare them.
Mend Tranformative Ritual
This is a difficult to prepare remedy composed of several of the allergens that cause Whiffle's hayfever, sneezing, and subsequent shrinking. She hates making them as she always has to use one by the end, and while her size recovers, the watery, itchy eyes remain. This is a patch she invented to mend the otherwise immutable ritual of transmute self.
Descriptions
- Non-anthro
Standing only three inches tall, it is easy to miss Whiffle let alone know that this tiny mouse is a witch with many of the power and properties thereof. Standing with nothing but the fur she was born with, most of her body is covered in golden brown fur with a white throat, chest, and belly. Even her long, slender tail follows this pattern with the underside white and the top golden brown. White fur covers her chin and the lower part of her cheeks and makes a line up to the corner of her mouth where it slopes up over her small muzzle to leave a small band of white behind her pink nose. Her eyes are brown, but they are so dark that it can be hard to tell. Large faintly furred, rounded ears and large eyes give her a very expressive face that is often augmented by the wiggle of her long, glassy whiskers.
- Anthro
Name: Whiffle Species: Field Mouse Gender: Female Height: 4 feet Eyes: Brown-black Classification: Witch
Description:
Whiffle is a young, bright-eyed mouse with long glassy whiskers and a warm smile. Suffering from hay-fever, she does all she can to keep herself from sneezing as it would collapse the potent magical field that keeps her from reverting back to a common, non-anthro field mouse. Having little in the way of financial resources, she carries only a walking stick, a satchel, and a well-loved but bordering on threadbare blue-green dress. At four feet tall she feels like a giant because be started life as a non-anthro field mouse, but her simple origins are not to be underestimated. While she is not prone to such, she is capable of powerful ritual magic including rather terrible curses. More often than not, however, she would rather just enjoy being 'large and safe' with others in the 'big world.' Whiffle possesses soft brown fur with a creamy throat, chest, and belly. Like most mice, her tail, feet, ears, and paws are furless and pink in color.
- Familiar Eliphas
Familiar: Eliphas Male Flying Squirrel 8 inches tall
Eliphas, or just Eli, could be called an omni-squirrel. He can be any squirrel that he wants to be. However, as a spirit and a familiar, he has settled into the role of a flying squirrel and as a familiar to Whiffle As her familiar, Eli is a lot more than just someone who can run errands. Elias is the source of Whiffle's power for anything that isn't either ritual, herbal, or alchemically based magic. Eli is quite intelligent, has vast amounts of arcane knowledge, and tends to space out as he muses over memories and irrelevent topics. He is still Whiffle's connection to greater magic, and as rodents they have common ground enough to annoy each other to nearly sibling levels. However, when cirmcumstances become serious, so does Eli.