Alder Wytte

## ♤Physical Appearance

The first thing anyone notices about Alder is her incredibly long, fluffy, and slightly curly auburn hair, since it looks like something straight out of a fairytale. The next thing people notice are her very deer- like ears and set of dainty antlers, and that fairytale creature aesthetic gets even stronger. Alder is the youngest kid in a long line of naturalist homesteaders, and it seems to have manifested in her looks. Standing at a minuscule five foot even, she’d easily blend into the background if not for her unique features. She's overall the golden- brown of someone used to working in the sun day in and day out, with a smattering of darker freckles all over her entire body. Her frame is more sturdily built, with somewhat bulky arms and a built core used to long hours of hard work, though overall she’s a very exaggerated pear- shape. However, she does also happen to have a few parts where she’s a little chubby, her lower tummy being the main place her chub collects. The exaggerated shape is due to the immense amount of muscle she has in her thighs and glutes, which taper down into surprisingly dainty calves and feet. She has lighter freckling all over her hips and upper thighs, reminiscent of fawn’s spots. To cap it all off, she has a small, incredibly fluffy deer tail, with the same fawn’s spots and a bright white underside. Her face has a very strong jawline leading to a narrow chin, though her still- chubby cheeks serves to soften her face enough to make her look cherubic. That innocent look is further compounded by large, somewhat downturned dark hazel eyes, framed with long lashes the same color as her hair, with slightly arched eyebrows a shade darker set above. Her nose is a bit wide and flat, with a very straight bridge, giving it a vaguely deer- like look. She has a small, heart- shaped mouth that seems perpetually stained a light berry red. While these mutations seem visually stunning, they don’t give her any added abilities. It’s simply a family trait, with family members resembling different deer species. She normally wears very natural colors, her entire wardrobe being hand- made and hand- dyed with whatever pigments the family had close at hand, which resulted in a lot of browns, dark yellows, red, creams, and stony grays. She's normally wearing either one of her oversized sweaters and a pair of leggings, or else what appears to be a basic t- shirt and some basic shorts/ pants, pending on weather. While she prefers to go barefoot and just wear some jewelry around her ankles, when forced she prefers to wear sandals over any other type of shoe. She will often decorate her antlers with flowers or metal rings, or else wear flower crowns. She wears two small hoops in her right ear, and one on her left.

## ♤Personality

Due to her very sheltered upbringing, Alder is about as naive and innocent as they come. Her sense of wonder and curiosity is boundless, especially since all these normal urban sights are alien to her, and she is driven by her need to experience more and more of it. She could happily sit at a corner cafe and people- watch all day, then go on all night and stare in awe at the multiple bright lights of the strip and the shows some of the bigger casinos put on, and still find the energy to wake up early the next morning for a walk through the campus. As long as she's a spectator she's all whimsy and childlike energy. However, this open curiosity and sense of adventure she shows towards the urban sprawl does not carry over when people directly approach her. She's incredibly shy and socially inept, most of the time uttering a small squeak of fear whenever someone approaches her, usually mumbling at a tone just slightly above a whisper. It's not to say that she’s agoraphobic, she’s just very self- conscious about how airheaded and simple she can seem to others. When she's past her initial bout of shyness, she can be very chatty and a bit of a brat, easily switching between smiles and pouts and back again. However, she's incredibly sensitive, and it's very easy for someone to make her tear up or even send her into a full- on crying session. She's very easily overwhelmed, so the easiest way to become her friend is to let her lead the interaction, since she's so easily psyched out. Because of her shyness, she can be a bit if a recluse, especially during the fast- paced schooldays, since they're so overwhelming to her. Her immense need to help others is what motivates her to keep going most days, and without that drive, she honestly would've ran back to her homestead. She wants to improve her healing quirk, so she can better help the hero world as a whole, even if that want doesn't extend to learning combat.

Alder is a bit of a coward, preferring to take every other route besides direct conflict to resolve a situation, to include just turning tail and running away. When faced with confrontation, she immediately resorts to copious amounts of apologies, and both makes herself look very small and avoids eye contact in an effort to make the aggressor go away faster. Her life in her homestead was always carefree and easy, so she simply doesn't know how to handle someone being angry with her, or someone yelling at her, or really any voice that’s not friendly. When she's needed, though, she can curb this flight response and become very defensive, especially if she counts the person as a patient or a friend.

Her heart is as big as the state of Texas, with a sense of compassion and empathy to match, which is what drives her to push herself to bigger and better heights, to practice socializing, to be brave and defend her patients. She feels as if she was put in this earth to heal, even at the expense of herself, and her quirk reinforces this thought process. When she's comfortable, she channels this love and compassion into everything she does, whether it be the gentle and motherly affection she showers her friends with, or the quiet confidence of her bedside manner, or the tender care she gives the plants and animals around the school.

At the end of the day, she just wants to make everyone feel better.

### ♤Speech Pattern

Her voice is high and sweet, with a flute- like quality to it. When she's nervous, it gets even higher and becomes more child- like, and when she's incredibly comfortable it gets slightly huskier.

## ♤Quirk

Alder takes energy from natural sources (plants, insects, small creatures) and can use it to speed up cellular regeneration/ repair, though she mainly uses it for healing. The more sources she can pull from, the more she can heal, though it gets harder for her to focus the longer she’s using her quirk. Her base metabolic rate drastically increases whenever she heals, which can very easily lead to her starving herself to death, especially if she loses control over the flow going through her. Though the risk to her is twofold, the solutions are very easy- she constantly eats to keep her calories up, and she sings to stay focused.

Still, the most she can safely heal right now are minor, already set fractures. She hopes to improve that while she’s at school.

## ♤Costume

Alder took deep inspiration from fairy tales and classic pantheons, which is why she takes the name of the famous Faun healer, Pan. Her costume channels those fairy tale roots while still being incredibly functional. The basic costume is a deep green tunic that hangs to the widest point of her hips, with a split up to the bottom of her ribcage, with lacing- like ties to adjust the fit. She wears a light cream linen shirt under the tunic, which is tucked into dark brown loose breeches. The bottoms of the breeches are snugly tied to her lower legs with brown cording, and she wears boots with a strong hoof- like inspiration behind the design. When she feels the need to be more defended, she wears a leather breastplate with a kevlar backing, the breastplate stylized to look like it’s been made of large maple leaves. She has matching leather bracers she wears, with the right bracer extending up to cover the webbing of her hand, as well as the bases of her first two fingers and thumb. She also has two hip- pouches she wears, with a bigger pouch on her back that connects the two hip pouches together. She carries various first- aid supplies in the pouches, so she can more effectively heal with less effort, along with various high- calorie protein and meal replacement bars. When she needs to carry more, she also has a backpack she wears, which holds even more first aid supplies and food, as well as some of the most basic survival necessities (rope, firestarter, etc). She also keeps a long staff slung across her back, though it is for those last- resort defensive battles she has to fight.

### ♤Assets

First aid pouches, staff, food. She also has a green crystal on a chain around her neck, which glows when her quirk is active. It’s also another failsafe to help her regulate.

## ♤Background

### ♤History

Alder’s family has been on the same 150- acre plot of land since the founding of California, when the entire state was wilderness and the trail to get to their slice of heaven was fraught with peril. The land had been labeled and re- labeled many times over, though now it sat within Placer County in the Tahoe National Forest, surrounded on all sides by looming mountains, crashing waterfalls, silvery streams, long meadow- grasses and deep, thick forest. The Homestead was only a 45-60 minute drive outside of the closest civilized town, but those 45-60 might as well have been years with how little the family travelled it. They very rarely left the Homestead, since the farm was enough to sustain them and their animals, and what the farm didn’t provide the forest undoubtedly would. The farm needed tending to, anyway, and there were animals to mind, and lessons to learn about Green Mother, the Green Touch, and all the responsibilities associated with their blessings. Here, at the base of Laughing Mountain, deep in Witches’ Valley, is where Alder spent most of her life until she was accepted at Lady Luck Hero Academy.

The reason for their solitude laid with her many Greats- great grandmother, who settled in the area in approximately 1838, with her litter of daughters and husband in tow. Her grandmother brought her home country’s druidic religion with her, which is what attracted her to the base of Laughing Mountain in the first place, with its beautiful vistas and bountiful wildlife, as well as its distance from the larger settlements. In those early days, her Grandmother was well- known as a midwife and healing witch, an image she fostered in order to get more customers and discourage others from wanting to settle too close to her little slice of paradise. She passed her religion and healing prowess down to her children, who passed it onto their daughters, on and on for generations, growing in both fame and notoriety in equal measures. When Quirks began to manifest, it was almost expected for the Green Witches of Laughing Mountain to develop one, since their hands already overflowed with what was certainly magic. As though by design, not only did the women of the family develop the Green Touch, but they also began to slowly transform into the animals they lived so close beside. The women would strike out into the world to spread their gifts, and seek husbands, but all were drawn back to the valley, back to home, as if the valley was loathe to let them go. With all things, it became tradition, a way for the women to go on pilgrimage and spread the blessings of Green Mother, as she would have intended.

Her own mother was one of the family members that stayed out the longest to explore the world and pass on the Green Touch, long enough to have a daughter to bring back to the Homestead, instead of a pregnant belly. She was one of the few that brought back something with her, and that was the world wide web. At least, internet with speeds faster than what was available in the early days of dial- up. With the introduction of good internet to Laughing Valley, the newest generation grew up with modern home- schooling and a better connection to the outside world. It was in this Renaissance that Alder was born, with her mom part- time blogging about her “crunchy, hippie life” to begin a savings account for her newborn daughter. While Willow Wytte and her eldest daughter Spriggan were content with spending their life here surrounded by mountains, Willow wanted more for her second daughter. The world was a lot better now, after all the unrest of the early days of Quirks, though seemed like it needed the healing touch of Green Mother now, more than ever. Besides, there were more than enough Witches here in Witches’ Valley to ensure the Homestead would be well- ran for generations.

Willow encouraged Alder to use the internet to learn all she could about the outside world, praising both her excellent grades through the homeschool program and her willingness to want to make friends and chat through the included chat- room system. Whenever Willow could, she would load Alder up into the ancient van and bump her way down the road to Norden, or even further down south to the renaissance fair they had yearly on Lake Tahoe. However, these trips took gas, and gas could be hard to come by, so these trips were few and far between. Besides, Willow also wanted her to learn how to be a proper Green Witch, and that took up a fair amount of time not spent in classes, or tending the farm.

It were these teachings that Alder loved best, mainly because learning about Great Grandmother and Green Mother was always so fun. Auntie (here used as an interchangeable term, since any woman who either had a daughter of her own or was over the age of 25 became Auntie) Juniper told the best stories about their histories, Auntie Thistle taught her how to care for their beasts and tend to the gardens, Auntie Mallow taught her to play the ocarina and the drums, and then there was Auntie Yew. Auntie Yew, who Alder called Baba, was her favorite because Yew was tasked with teaching her how to use the Green Touch. The times with Yew, learning how to ask and gently borrow energy from the world around her, are some of the most cherished memories Alder has, everything from her first sproutling coaxed out of its seed, to the time she nursed a fallen fledge back to health. Yew didn’t stop at just teaching her charge the Touch, however- she also taught Alder her secrets for earning the trust of the beasts of the forest, and how to properly care for them as well.

The lure of the valley was strong, and for a time she was loathe to think about leaving it. However, she knows it is tradition to set forth on her own journey outside of the Homestead, and the more she saw of the outside world, the more it drew her. She hopes she can continue to grow her Quirk, and become as strong as the Cousins and Aunties before her, and bring back more than she was given in her happy, quiet life.