Meredith Thompson

* Current Design
* Post-Alexylva
* Alexylva

## Family and Relationships

### Relatives

Georgia Blakely (Mother)Gabriel Thompson (Father) Romero (Father Figure) Cicada Man (Brother?) Pangloss (Distant Ancestor)

### Family

Manic, F1V3, Lottie, Delva, Elaine, Ronan, Lorelei

## Biographical information

### Age

20

*"I've killed a god before. I can deal with a little sacrilege."*

## Backstory

### An Anomaly Born

Meredith Thompson was born near Phoenix, Arizona in 2001, in a dimension entirely different from the world of Somerlow. A world where magic was hidden, something to be deeply afraid of and persecuted. A world where corruption ran deep, and an organization called the Jailers captured magic users, called "anomalies," and imprisoned them or worse.

As a child, she was adventurous and curious, and often played around her neighborhood with other kids. One day when she was seven years old, she was roller-skating around the neighborhood and found a rusty gate leading to a place called "Wonderland." Opening the gate, she was transported to a dimension filled with seemingly free-standing doors. These doors all had different appearances, with some elegant and immaculate, others burnt and torn asunder, but all lead to a wall with a mural of a large deer, covered in moss and surrounded by glowing red rings.

Frustrated that she couldn't open the doors, Meredith went to the wall and to her surprise, the deer in the mural stepped out of the painting and offered to help her, asking for her consent to enchant her. When Meredith agreed, the Deer broke off a piece of its antler and stabbed her in the gut with it, causing glowing sap to erupt from her and for her to collapse in pain.

And Meredith woke up, unsure if what she had just experienced was real. There was no stab wound, but she had a fever, and figured that it had just been a vivid nightmare.

### Wild Magic Beginnings

After a year, Meredith had set aside her weird dream and moved on. However, when she turned 8 years old, she had her first wild magic surge. While baking cookies with her mother, she collapsing to the floor and started bleeding sap as pure wild magic energy pulsed around them.

When Meredith woke up at the hospital, her parents had no idea what had happened to her, but her father's new boss, Mr. Ostapholies, was standing at the bedside with them. He said he had come to wish her well, but Meredith somehow knew that she was in danger from him. She ran from the hospital with her parents in pursuit, and found herself surrounded by people in suits and black tanks in the hospital parking lot. The Deer appeared again and knocked all the people to the ground, writhing in pain, and caused Meredith's parents realize the danger they were all in. They were all three able to escape, but Meredith's parents told her that they had to remain in hiding for the rest of their lives- Meredith was an anomaly and they would be hunted by the Jailers now that they had seen her capabilities.

### Romero's Rise

Meredith spent a few years hiding in warehouses with her parents, constantly being told to stay inside and stay quiet so that the Jailers wouldn't find them. The Deer didn't appear again, and life became monotonous for her as she watched her parents' relationship become more and more strained.

When she was 11, she heard smooth jazz coming from a nearby town one evening. She snuck out and met Romero, an older entertainer working at the jazz club "The Seven Sins Lounge." He convinced her to stay for a while and listen to the music, and for the next few weeks Meredith would sneak out every night and meet Romero at the lounge.

One night when they met up, Romero told her that she should run away with him to find a nightclub called "Elysium." He said that since she had felt freer when entertaining with him, she should go down South, and he vaguely insinuated that he had followed her and found where she lived, saying “By the way, I know. You should change your living situation- there’s a lot of asbestos in that old warehouse.”

Meredith ran back to the warehouse and found her parents asleep for the night, and left a note saying she didn't want to be a burden to them any longer. She left with nothing but a red ribbon that her father had given her and the clothes on her back, and met Romero at the Seven Sins Lounge for one last time. They caught a bus to Louisiana and found a city called La Rue Macabre, and when they arrived outside a prominent nightclub Romero expected Meredith to pay their way in- thinking that she had stolen money from her parents. However, she hadn't, and they set up a tent on the street for the time being until Romero found a place to entertain and got his big break.

### La Rue Macabre

Meredith and Romero lived on the streets together for 7 years, with Romero constantly out searching for a job while Meredith stayed in the tent and managed the chores, cooking, and cleaning- Romero told her to stay inside and not be seen.

One day, Romero came home with a shiny golden costume and told Meredith that he'd found his big break, and she needed to guard this costume with her life so that he could take it back to the club. However, she stepped out of the tent for 5 minutes to clear it of trash and the costume was stolen. She ran through the swamps, trying to rescue it, and was saved by a college student named Micah using vine magic. He told her that she shouldn't have been able to see the magic, and that she should consider joining Alexylva University, a hidden school of magic for anomalies like herself. She politely declined and thanked him for saving her costume, and took it back to the tent.

When she arrived back at the tent, Romero had been waiting for her and started to lecture her about "going out into the city alone," but Meredith saw someone she hadn't seen in a long time standing in the back of the tent: The Deer. He started to step on the costume with razor-sharp hooves, and Meredith leapt at him to stop it, knocking over a candle in the process. The cloth of the tent caught fire, and Romero grabbed Meredith by the shoulder and pulled her out of the collapsing tent. Their entire home burned down, including the costume, leaving Meredith and Romero with nothing.

Romero stared at her, didn't say a word, and turned and left her alone.

### Arriving at Alexylva

Meredith lived alone on the street for another few months before she received a mysterious invitation from an anonymous source, inviting her to journey to Alexylva University and learn about the magic she possessed. With no-where left to turn, she wrote back accepting the invitation, and Micah appeared again to guide her to the university. After trials, subway portals, and a trek through the Sylvanus Forest, Meredith arrived at Alexylva University, two months after term had started.

She was put in a dorm house with three other students: Michael, a bard studying in the Illusion Discipline; Anya, a non-magical woman studying archery in the Combat Discipline and investigating the disappearance of her sister; and F1V3, a cyborg student studying in the Healing Discipline. When Meredith was tested by the Dean to find which discipline she should study under, she was placed in the Reality Discipline- the rarest and most difficult discipline, of which she was the first student in centuries.

The four roommates quickly adjusted to each others' presence but never became close, each keeping to their own rooms for the first few weeks. Meredith began to be constantly visited by the Deer, who would offer mediocre advice and vague threats while teaching her more about how to harness her wild magic. Meredith, used to keeping it a secret her entire life and scared of what might happen if the school found out her magic came not innately, but from a deal, kept the Deer hidden from everyone, including her roommates.

## Alexylva

### Connections, Both Good and Bad

As Meredith began to settle into her new life, things turned upside down yet again by a sinister new force disrupting the campus: a being calling himself the Man of Cicadas. The four roommates were visited by an extremely powerful, timeline-seeing woman named Allison who told them that they needed to stop Cicada Man's plans to destroy the campus and the magic inside it, or the entire student body and later the world would be in danger. After learning this, the party began to pursue his forces and in turn Cicada Man began to target the party. There was a brush with 7 ghostly generals on Halloween, a fight with an evil Medusa-like auctioneer, and other smaller forces that never seemed to stop coming.

Meredith also became aware of a strange connection between herself and Cicada Man- sometimes she would feel a powerful headache and her vision would be taken over by a first-person perspective of whatever he was doing in the moment- be it making plans, torturing his victims, or briefing his 3 lieutenants. She tried to keep this hidden from her roommates at first, similar to how she continued to hide the Deer, but eventually they began to use this connection to their advantage to track Cicada Man's actions.

Meanwhile, Meredith was continuing to navigate campus life and trying to make friends, growing closer with F1V3 and Micah. F1V3 confided in Meredith that he was worried about the closures of the places of worship on campus, as it made it much hard for him to worship his god, and they began to look into what could've been causing it together. Micah, who on campus was a junior member of the student council board called the "Welcome Committee," continued to help Meredith whenever he could with research and little missions around campus to gather more information about the Man of Cicadas.

### Romero's Reprise

One night, Michael, Anya, and Meredith were searching for a box containing a powerful statue following advice from Allison, but the instant the party touched the box, everyone fell unconscious.

When Meredith came back to consciousness, she found herself bound to a chair in a small, dark room, with Anya and Michael similarly restrained and unconscious on either side of her. From the shadows, none other then Romero emerged. He told her that she should've told him about her magic when they were still together on the street, and said that she'd finally be of some worth to him.

Meredith, still half-conscious, couldn't do anything but limply struggle as he threatened to take her far away from anyone who could help her and use her to make himself rich, leaning in close and brandishing an empty syringe as he asked her "Do you know how much magical blood is worth on the market these days?"

Just as all seemed lost, a blast hit the room from outside and the back doors flew open, revealing that they were trapped in a U-Haul truck. F1V3 emerged and woke everyone else up and helped them escape and fight off Romero, who was immediately outnumbered. As the party ran away, Romero ominously threatened that he'd be back.

### A Way Out

Things continued to get worse as Cicada Man tightened his grip on the campus. Places of worship began to be closed, students went missing, and more and more Meredith was caught off-guard by visions of Cicada Man's terrible deeds from a first-person perspective. The Deer continued his visits, continuing to tell her that he was the *only* person that she could trust- not even her roommates were trustworthy.

One night, when Meredith was heading back to her dorm after classes, a golden portal opened in front of her and she was dropped into a different dimension entirely. She met Elaine and Ronan in an interdimensional game-show where they had to complete various challenges, and she instantly clicked with the two of them. Seeing them use magic so freely and without consequence and hearing their stories of a town called "Somerlow" made Meredith wonder- was there hope for her to find a place where she could be free too?

After the game show challenges were complete, Meredith found herself right back on the path from the Ceres food court back to her dorm building, and dismissed the experience as just another strange experience, probably constructed by the Deer to keep her on her toes. But still, a small part of her continued to dream.

### Romero's Requiem

As the year kept moving forward, trouble was never far behind. Romero kidnapped Meredith again, this time succeeding in stealing some of her blood- only to discard it as "worthless" when he actually saw it. When she escaped, F1V3 was taken by one of the Cicada Man's lieutenants, Puppet Man, working with Romero. After a series of trials by an evil supercomputer, the party was able to rescue F1V3, and Meredith confronted Romero.

He revealed that he had been working with Cicada Man the entire time he had known her- separating her from her parents had simply been a step in his plan. He also told Meredith that the Deer couldn't be trusted, and with that final straw she killed him using *Burning Hands.*

### Cicada Man's Master Plan

Two weeks before the last day of freshman year, the battle with the Cicada Man commenced. Micah came to Meredith, Anya, Michael, and F1V3's dorm with a book, the *Plans of Cicada Man,* containing new information revealing his true plot: first "destroying all religious establishments" in a given magical area, gain a "position of power" in said magical area- political, social, or otherwise- and finally "explaining his plan to someone else." Meredith thanked him for the information, and he set off to the student council elections to give his final campaign speech to the student body. Meanwhile, the party set off to the Clock Tower at the center of campus to finally fight the Man of Cicadas.

When they arrived, they had to fight their way through a series of his top lieutenants- the Stranger Thief and Puppet Man- and make their way to the top of the tower as reality began to disintegrate more and more around them, warping the architecture into a swirling cosmic purple void. Cicada Man revealed to the party that the origin of magic was pain- all the pain that the party had faced had granted them their magic. Michael's fraught childhood in the circus, the death of Anya's sister in a raging fire, all the pressure placed on F1V3 by his parents to lead a new generation of Cogwork cyborgs spiritually, and all the physical and emotional pain that the Deer had put Meredith through- all of that had contributed to unlocking the magic present in their souls. Cicada Man also revealed his final plan to the group: to destroy all the magic in the world, so it would no longer cause pain to the people who wielded it.

The battle was fierce, and Meredith was hit by a fatal *Power World Kill.* However, with an amount of strength she had never summoned before, she managed to *bring herself back to life* with sheer willpower and raw wild magic. The party defeated the Man of Cicadas, and life on campus seemed to return to normal.

## Escape to Somerlow

### The Chessboard Revealed

On the last day of the school year, Allison approached Meredith for a final time, telling her that she'd come across some very important information: the book that Micah had given them just before the final battle had been altered. Leading her back to the kitchen table where the book sat, Allison pulled off the sticky note that said *Plans of Cicada Man* on the book's cover and revealed its true title: *Plans of Saturn Deer.* Meredith, confused, told Allison that she'd investigate.

She entered the Sylvan Forest on the edge of campus and found Micah near the border of the Nexus. She asked him about the difference in the file and Micah, to her surprise, began to laugh. His form began to shift from the freshmen boy that Meredith knew to that of an older gentleman. One with an earthy red cape, decaying skin on both arms leading to a missing left hand, and antlers- one whole, one broken. A familiar magical aura began to fill the air as a bright halo materialized last, and familiar bright red eyes stared into her own.

The constant use of gloves. The same bright orange hair. Always seeming to have the knowledge she needed, always appearing at just the right time.

Micah was the Deer. *Saturn Deer.*

### A Bittersweet Goodbye

Saturn Deer explained to Meredith that everything that had happened over the years was part of its master plan- her isolation, her journey to Alexylva, her party's defeat of Cicada Man- all of it had been according its subtle manipulation. It gave Meredith a choice: go to the Clock Tower at the center of campus in one day's time to willingly give herself over as its vessel, living forever known as the most powerful being in the multiverse; or perish as collateral damage in its takeover, inconsequential and forgotten. He told her that giving her a day to think was a mercy, a chance to say goodbye to the people in her life, because there should be no debate in what choice she should make.

Meredith walked back to her dorm, numb, and sat in the floor of her room for hours trying to decide what to do. She decided that the only thing *to* do was to save the world from the true danger it was in, and began making preparations to fight Saturn Deer. As she was packing up all her belongings, F1V3 walked in for the first time since the Cicada Man battle and, to Meredith's surprise, apologized for not being able to protect her. Meredith apologized right back to him for causing him to worry.

She also took the chance to say goodbye, and told him that there was one more battle she needed to fight and she may not come out of it alive, no matter how she tried to prevent it. She asked F1V3 to stay inside for the rest of the day, not sure how far the potential fallout could reach, and he confusedly reassured her that he would. Not sure how much she could say without detection, Meredith also warned him not to trust any gods, no matter how good and right they may seem- she knew he followed a god as well and if Saturn Deer had turned out to be this bad, who knew how honorable other gods were. F1V3 wished her luck with whatever she was doing, and she smiled, thinking of how insurmountable the task before her seemed. Luck, were it real, would be very helpful.

### Checkmate

she got beat up so bad at first and then she had a cool "the power was inside me all along" moment that was cooler than it sounds on paper and then she beat saturn deer up!! she beat his ass so bad!!!

### Adventures in Dimension Hopping

and then she went "woahhhh wild magic portal wtff" and accidentally-on-purpose bamf'd to somerlow

## Character Description

### Physical Description

Meredith stands at 5'3 with fair skin, green eyes and shoulder-length orange hair with an undercut. She wears a green tank top tucked into beige cargo shorts, and ankle-length brown sneakers. She has various black tattoos all over her body. On her collarbone are two small butterfly tattoos that have been enchanted to flap slightly. On her left shoulder there is a tattoo of a larger butterfly with a floral pattern over one of the wings. On her lower right arm there is a tattoo sleeve of flowers and butterflies surrounding a crescent moon. On her left leg there is a tattoo of a creeping vine wrapping all around her leg, from her ankle to her calf. On her lower right leg there is a tattoo sleeve of two roses surrounding a watch. On her upper back there is a tattoo group of a butterfly surrounded by poppies and sunflowers. On her right ankle, hidden by her shoe, there is a small tattoo of a cicada circled by two flowers and two butterflies.

### Feats and Talents

did u know she knows latin cause believe it or not it was actually relevant in alexylva

## Trivia

* Meredith was named after the focal character of TV show *Grey's Anatomy,* Meredith Grey.
* Meredith's character was largely inspired by the question "In a world where trust is scarce, fragile, and unreliable, can a person stuck in isolation grow to trust others?" In Alexylva, the answer to this question turned out to be no. In Somerlow, the answer turned out to be yes.
* trivia
* here

## Spotify Playlists

"set your old heart free" - Meredith's main playlist. Encompasses her character as she currently is, and tells her full story.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Zx2Htb2N2kRlBykdDlZJl?si=f602a262febb4935

"coming apart at the seams" - Encompasses Meredith's character throughout Alexylva. This playlist was also created in-universe by Meredith and represents how she saw herself, as a way to help write her trilogy.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0tlLZSBtHpWFS3EiLMc5X7?si=6d58c50bda1a4934

"to my surprise, we found my words" - Meredith's dimensional escape from Alexylva to Somerlow, told musically.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/54xnlGQc32mwOkhfRaVbjf?si=e0b386b8c43c4950

"alumni." - For Meredith and F1V3. Friends forged in fire.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6EP5PN96m1ofQnxKUmxZCc?si=271a9ed122c34d17

"the chessmaster" - For Saturn Deer. The king of the board, taken by his own pawn.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/62AbxCHn5p9gxlx7XiwAzp?si=e941521988de418c

"pebble in the rough" - For Romero. The absolute worst.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2EPQ3azJI54FONdKt1NXeg?si=ac501539b0e748d9