Menagerie and Hao

Lots of me talking about two of my newest favorite characters in this fuckin story
== Overview of the Relationship ==
Menagerie and Hao; an unlikely duo consisting of a religious historian and occultist, and a pioneer in the modern day civil private investigation field, both are average mages at their best, and both have some very fine, if a bit odd, tastes and quirks. Menagerie is the child of incest, Hao the product of occultism, both see the world through different lenses based on their interactions with it, and yet the two have been together since the early 1040's. Menagerie is obsessed with the idea of deities, historical religious focus, and a continued connective cycle that spans all time and space and interweaves within the lives of all terrestrials and voidspawn. Hao is a down to earth investigator who finds comfort situating themselves in the real and the mundane, understanding that so long as they know who they are, then everything else can be grounded in reality.
Yet, Hao finds Menagerie to be utterly fascinating and peculiar in all the right ways, and Menagerie finds Hao to be a beloved anchor that holds her from going too far into the clouds and always protects her. The two grew form a professional association, to a platonic partnership, to now being the other's world in a myriad of ways including a romantic sense despite the fact that one lacks the capability of any sexual desire or intercourse, and the other one only thinks of reproduction in the mechanical definition devoid or any emotional attachment. Somehow, that seems to unite the both of them in a common understanding, and allows them to subvert many of the normal hangups that other partnerships may take on because there is no primal force that provides a tension between them.
Hao is the emotionally intelligent one, guarding the naive and sometimes overly enthusiastic Menagerie from potential threats and persons who would try to exploit her struggles to read social cues, or grasp the nuance and undertones of a person's intentions. Hao is also the honestly more intelligent soul in a general sense, not sheltered in place for ages and having lived a very much real, and fairly harder life. For this reason, Hao dislikes leaving Menagerie alone for long periods of time without at least one trusted missionary or family member nearby Menagerie. However, Hao is also the only way Menagerie feels comfortable gathering more books and materials, as Hao knows best how to retrieve such things and can better handle the interactions that have to take place all over Terros.
Menagerie is the heart and soul of the relationship, bringing in the creativity and imaginative splendor that lights up their world, though she is a bit off to some, her unique viewpoints and her fascination with the ethereal is almost cute in a way to others. She is capable of deciphering magical texts, or reading old obscure elvish dialects like one drinks water, it's like a drug for her, to consume more and more information-not even to better utilize magic, but simply to know more and more about history surrounding how magic was used and how ti related to gods and demons and the lives within Terros. She's smarter than people give her credit for, but it comes out in different ways, there's clearly something off about her, but not in the bad way-she's just different.
Of the duo, Hao is the one with real experience of any note in combat, though limited, Menagerie has only been in one real fight in her life, and it was more a misunderstanding that got her stabbed. Violence is fairly prohibited, and so Hao has developed a suite of skills that allows them to protect and do their job, without causing much pain to others if they can help it. Hao will ignore this rule if Menagerie's life is at stake
The pair have names for each other that they tend to refer to the other one as fairly commonly: Hao is Moony because their white, near shimmering skin and their perfect bright grey eyes, and Menagerie is Starlight due to her projecting all the majesty of the cosmos like a constellation of charisma and her golden irises. 
== Menagerie Dul-Sansiska ==
* Menagerie Dul-Sansiska was born on the 22nd of Harvest Moon, 1028AE
* Menagerie is 6'2" and weighs approximately 240lbs, making her tall for a drow woman and standing around the height of elven men.
* Menagerie is still on the family roster despite the issues currently developing, and thus is still considered a member of the family in any official situation.
* Menagerie generally does not give her last name to others, but if pressed she calls herself Ginny Maiden
* Menagerie is an animancer and theoretical constructionist in terms of magic
* Menagerie is a former scholar of the Volia's Grace University and a known noblewoman in the region.
* Menagerie is extremely feminine and wears mostly dresses and skirts, jewelry, and make up, she has gone through phases of apparel over the years but is currently in her bright and flowing stage.
* Menagerie has a highly muted sexual drive, with the only instance of real sexual attraction being interlaced with Edmund Blackthorne and her brief relationship with him during the events of The Brecildian Rebellion. Due to the complex nature of their relationship and the way she was in her youth, that spark has not survived and with the damage to her womb making her barren, sexual thoughts are non-existent nearly.
* Menagerie has the normal blend of drow eyesight and has no functional issues with her vision, her normal eyes are bright sky blue, however she is an mastered speaker of the Golden Tongue and thus can develop radiant golden eyes as she recites incantations.
* Menagerie has all the power that a drow should have, despite having the genetic make up of a mutt from her father, she's strong, fit, and fairly resistant to poisons. She bears several denotations of high elvish though such as longer ears, curvier proportions to her face, and differing eye color to normal.
* Menagerie naturally ages much slower due to being an elf.
* Menagerie is the only child of Divankul Dul-Sansiska and Ornia Dul-Sansiska's marriage, she is the progeny of incest, this has stunted her magical growth, altered her appearance through drastically lightening her skin and partially inhibiting her physical development, and possibly her mental acuity as well in some respects.
* Menagerie has a form of high functioning developmental disability: She has difficulties understanding nuance, social cues, deception, and other manipulative behaviors or subtle gestures. She has some tendencies to shut off emotionally if she feels threatened, and is quite sensitive to undue ridicule or critique.
* Menagerie is highly obsessive with religion, language, history, and the cultural impacts religion had on mortals over time, she believes that all the world functions on a cycle, and that disruptions to the cycle can cause drastic and irrevocable harms. She believes that Terros has been in the midst of an interruption of said cycle for the past seventy years, and utilizes examples such as the 1036 Mage Rebellion, The Pirate War, The Brecildian Rebellion, and The Red Death as her direct input into the catastrophic nature of disruptions.
* Menagerie is capable of reading magic script like one drinks water, she mastered all known forms of elvish within years of entering higher studies, and even began to discover and decipher esoteric forms of elvish and adjacent languages, she is able to read Black Tongue with ease and with no negative effect, and mastered the Golden Tongue within half of a decade. Menagerie's favorite language is Imperial Elvish or Old Drow to the layman, as the Imperial Elves, or the Empire of Dusk's citizenry, wrote troves of information that formed the bedrock of Menagerie's research.
* Menagerie was a very sheltered child who spent her time in Ques Novich most of the time, and thus was not well known by most of the nobility of Bastion City unless they were to visit Surial. She is somewhat spoiled in a sense because she never actually dealt with much harsh criticisms, anyone who actually had problems with her seemed to be very silent due to her parentage.
* Menagerie has had romantic leaning towards Hao for far longer than Hao has reciprocated said feelings, finding the odd androgynous investigator to be oddly alluring in some way she had not understood at the time of their meeting due to her age, lack of maturity, and certain concepts of her own mental health still being misunderstood to her. Such feelings would only exponentially increase as their activities together and platonic relationship formed and blossomed.
*
== Hao ==
* Hao was born on the 10th of Demon's Moon, 1022AE
* Hao is 5'0" and weighs approximately 120lbs making them both shorter and lighter respective to many others 
* Hao refuses to ever give their full name to anyone beyond Menagerie, to protect their adoptive parents
* Hao is a mentalist and a magician in terms of magic
* Hao is a licensed private investigator in the Surial region of Aradia, specializing in insurance fraud investigation and adultery
* Hao presents themselves in the masculine in their attire and mannerisms, but feminine in their speech patterns and choice to utilize makeup and general identity with Menagerie.
* Hao has no sexual organs, sexual drive, or any emotional connection to reproductive function, they even process waste differently, disregarding the need for anything the pubic area beyond strong bone.
* Hao has perfect vision, darkvision, and resistance to damage to their eyesight except by things like the sun and kinetic or chemical action. Hao's eyes have no pupils and instead the whole of the iris is one light gray circle against the white of the eyeball.
* Hao has abnormal bone strength and musculature, hypothesizing they're at least partially elven, and considering the nature of their birth, this may be in fact true
* Hao has a drastically extended lifespan and hasn't seem to age beyond their mid twenties over the last sixty years
* Hao as born to a strange cult attempting to derive a void child by both the conception of Hao on a Wound, but birthing them on the same wound nine months later, and having introduced drastic alchemical and magical reagents and changes to the gestating fetus.
* Hao was given to an orphanage shortly after their birth when the cult was discovered and massacred by drow soldiers taking them for demon worshippers in league with anti-monarchists of the time. Hao was spared euthanasia due to the stepping in of Reynis Dul-Sansiska who was spearheading the manhunt. Hao would spend their first ten years in the Del-Sumir City Orphanage, one of several large scale academic homes for orphans within the Surial state.
* Hao was bullied relentlessly as a child due to their body, seeming timidness, and overall scrawny stature. The attacks would only stop as Hao got older and got a sharp wit and a firm hand to defend themselves and fire back insults. Hao would be adopted by an unnamed merchant couple at the age of ten.
* Hao would go on to live a confused life for years, unable to determine their own identity despite now being in a loving home with a family who wanted them, including an undisclosed sibling that looked after Hao and got them work as an assistant for a fraud investigator age the age of 14.
* Hao would be taught skills that an investigator would have to know and would pass the license exam at the age of 18, opening their own office in Ques Novich.
* Hao would meet Menagerie Dul-Sansiska in the spring of 1042AE in the Grand Cathedral of the Morning's Grace, where then thirteen year old Menagerie took a liking to the twenty year old investigator and began talking the, supposed, man's ear off about Aradia while her mother was attempting to finish up some important work as the High Priestess. Hao would find the girl charming and let her continue to gabber on about the dead goddess while they awaited time with Ornia Dul-Sansiska to discuss a church that had burned down and trying to decipher if it was arson or accident.
* Hao would again meet with Menagerie in the summer of 1045AE, this time the sixteen year old was an aspiring historical scholar and was simplifying her father's basic magical theory lessons into a book for fun in her spare time since school was intolerably boring to her. They chatted for several hours in the library as Hao was waiting on a contact who would never show for the meeting, and this time Hao felt more comfortable giving out a business card for Menagerie to contact them if she would need something.
== Magic Known and Abilities ==
=== Menagerie's Magic ===
Menagerie is not a combative person, she abhors violence, killing, and conflict of just about all types except when such activity can be a prescription to liberate the suffering of another in the most painless ways possible, or in the case of protection of herself or others from the violence of another. This was not always her stance, and she once held the view that righteous killing, such as culling heretics and those who harmed the Monarchy, to be an absolutely acceptable measure. This state of mind would slowly alter in the decade after The Brecildian Rebellion as Menagerie mulled over the question of if the Hrow deserved their genocide, considering they were the creation of Vermithrax, and found herself doubting her earlier positions, and the actions of her former lover in the Dark Prince. She is not sorry, so much as it has made her wonder if that was the completely right course of action or if there was a redemptive way to execute justice.
To put it bluntly, she only condones euthanasia and self defense, and on the foundations, the Divanists are meant to stand by this ideal and offer healing, freedom, and the promise of a new dawn now that the eternal twilight is ending. As such, she does not have a wide variety of combative spells in her arsenal, frankly, she barely has any at all, and most of the magic she knows and practices is involved in the furtherance of her ideals of a peaceful transition to a restarted cycle and the freedom of Terrosians from their suffering.
Menagerie has mastered the language of the Golden Tongue in the understanding that, she is capable of utilizing the language to its highest functionality, not that she can pull off the kinds of spells that paladins, zealots, or the high priestess is capable of summoning in their prime years. Menagerie is an average mage with average potential, but her complete understanding of the language of Aradia is shockingly fluent for her age and time spent studying the texts. Due to the high requirements the Servants have for members of their clergy, in accordance with the services once provided, in any other era Menagerie would be fully welcomed as as a Priestess.
Menagerie also understands Animancy as a whole in an advanced state due tot he catalogs of information provided to her by her father, Divankul Dul-Sansiska, once more, while she might understand the components, capabilities, and formulas of Animancy's power, she is incapable of utilizing it at anywhere near the levels of true masters. Knowledge is only one cornerstone of magical competency, one must also have the power, control, and wisdom of when and how to use said knowledge in order to be considered to that degree.
Outside of this, Menagerie is a theoretical constructionist, this is a fancy way of saying that she has advanced conjuration capabilities and can re-configure the base magical composition of her creations as she sees fit, within reason and within her skillset, allowing her to create the kinds of tools and equipment she utilizes to fulfill her mission as it stands now. She is not capable of accomplishing something as sophisticated as a Mage Pocket, but she has figured out cheats and hacks that allow her to do something along those fundamentals on a highly miniaturized scale.
=== Hao's Magic ===
Hao is a skilled average mage, due to their strange situation of birth, and where they could have gone down many pathways in their life, they have instead been influenced by Menagerie's will. Thus Hao is a mentalist first and foremost, their power over the mortal mind is skillful and precise like a doctor with a scalpel, and beyond this is the classification of magician. Rather than waste precious mana on giant attacks, talking to plants, or throwing down with especially combative powers, why not use parlor tricks, misdirection and illusion, conjurations and pull the curtain back on a person's grasp of what is and is not happening. When combined with Hao's mental acuity and skill with the mind, this becomes a devastating prison of illusion, hallucination, and a growing sense of dread as Hao ensures you can't tell what is real, and what is simply trickery.
Hao's strength is only as capable as the opponents they take on: those with exceptional willpower, or who are grounded in their reality, and those who have gone through training against such things are much more difficult for Hao to fully wrap around their finger. The vast majority of people are not this, and haven't been for a very long time, thus Hao usually does not meet their match in that space, and if they do, they still have plenty of tried and true ways of shaping a retreat from any instance they feel they're overwhelmed within.
Hao can make a person forget them, not be able to perceive them, force them to hallucinate through one or all of their senses, increase their own senses, focus their perception on certain people, produce a charming effect, or intimidation, or fear, or any emotion they want people to feel around them. They can regulate just how much or how little they influence a person's mind, relative to how strong the person is against such effects. Hao can make the person's mind go completely blank and just black them out of reality for a short duration if they simply want to make a clean break. Once Hao has their hands on a person's mind the options are quite varied for what they are able to manage. They can affect multiple people at a time, at least a few, as the more to do the more intensive it all becomes.
Hao cannot read minds, at all, all they can do is alter the other person's mind temporarily and obscure their perception and memories of Hao or others Hao has dictated they should forget. It isn't perfect, but generally most people blur them out of any memories they might have and if Hao is good enough, they never even saw them. This is the stronger of Hao's capabilities, and the reason why it's been impossible to find Menagerie for so long, Hao keeps forcing people into dead ends and down rabbit holes to keep the scent off their Starlight.
On the other end is Hao's illusions, tricks and traps, and combinations of conjuration and simple effective elements of magic to create some well to do effective countermeasures against others. They can conjure rope, chain, handcuffs, balls and chains, iron bars, and even sealed boxes of magical steel to entangle, entrap, confine, or otherwise keep people restrained or slowed in all of the ways Hao wants them to be. The more complex the ability, the stronger it naturally is, and the harder it is to summon up on a larger scale than simply one individual. This is a favored ability of the investigator because it keeps violence to a minimum and ensures that there will be no shocking upsets.
Hao can produce great balls of explosive light, that let off horribly loud sonic bursts, concussive blasts, and emit heat and electrical charge called a flashbang attack. These can cause blindness, hearing loss, burns, broken bones, internal bleeding, and electrocutions when turned up to their maximum output, making them exceedingly dangerous in their potential, however both the core components and the actual maneuver itself tends to be far more muted and used as a quick disorienting tool for Hao, not some overtly destructive hammer to smash people down with. On that same degree, Hao can summon up dense fog in a near instant to cover an escape or obscure their movements, the fog physically grips to a person and slows their movements, makes it harder to breathe, and overall just inhibits proper movement, it's as if being swallowed up by a thick smog almost so it's less effective for city dwellers, but the gripping effects still inhibit motion.
Arcane birds are not something you'd figure would be on the table but, well, they are, in a sense at least, Hao creates the shapes of white fluttering birds, similar to doves or the like out of arcanum and allows them to glow brightly. They can be charged with large deposits of heat, concussive force, electricity, or sonic bursts that will detonate as they are struck down causing mass confusion or otherwise debilitate an opponent. Hao can do the same with flying daggers, balls of condensed magical energy, and generally a lot of simple shapes and designs that can be useful in controlling the possibility of a crowd coming after them.
Hao can summon up small bouts of flame, lashes of water, gusts of wind and other low level bursts of elemental magics that are ineffective on their own, but can be somewhat of a shocker if one gets struck suddenly by a slap of water to the face or has their flammable coat set alight. While basic, as is all of Hao's mysteries, it's what they choose to do, and wrap around the fundamentals that makes them a step above your average spellcaster, Hao fights with grace, control, and a bit of whimsy to catch people off guard. All of it is in service to Menagerie's safety and goals in life, and Hao has purposefully avoided such skills that would require them to outright kill those who got in the way unless absolutely necessary.
== Clothing, Accessories, and Equipment ==
=== Menagerie ===
Menagerie does not dress as she once did, nor as one would expect out of a cult leader, she wears bright colored and loose fit dresses and skirts, a bit of a fashion back in Surial as comparative to the more closed and conservative humans who, while no long sporting corsets and petticoats, have still not given up on wearing as much cloth as is conceivable. Her typical attire tends to be flowing bright sundresses or she will wear knee length skirts with something of a combination of a blouse and shawl. She loves to design her makeup for the day, and Hao's, who allows her to doll the androgynous partner up as she sees fit.
=== Hao ===
Hao is one to dress as though they are a middle class gentleman: white button up shirts, slate colored slacks, proper suspenders, a linen jacket, custom leather shoes, and a bowler hat upon their head is the typical appearance of the investigator. Matching with a cane, a briefcase, and a steady and trained walk of the merchant class, if not for Hao's skin and choice of accessories, one would not tell them apart from the common small time factory owner or banker. There's little of note about the attire, it's custom tailored and well fit to Hao's physique, the shoes are sealed with deafening charms and the hat is sturdier than it seems.