Occupation: High school student and aspiring future local journalist / photographer

Bio – Merlin:

Merlin’s mother was the eldest of three sisters; while the younger two both fell into sin and debauchery she devoted herself to the Church, and thus became a far more tempting target for the Devil. When, having been pursued by her youngest sister’s lovers and barricaded herself in her room, she fell asleep without saying her prayers for the first time since the Devil’s interest in her family began he seized his chance, and sent an Incubus to impregnate her. When she awoke to find she’d lost her virginity without any memory of how she sought the advice of her priest, and took holy orders.

Merlin grew inside her womb, and when she grew too big to conceal the pregnancy she was commanded to identify her lover or face death by burial. Of course she could not. Her priest, while failing to get the execution stayed altogether, managed to force a stay until the child was born and old enough to feed itself, and so Merlin came into the world in a dank prison cell and was baptised as soon as possible to free him of the Devil’s influence.

Eighteen months passed, and Merlin learned to walk and to feed himself, and so it was judged time to carry out the sentence. It was at the trial that Merlin revealed some of his powers, speaking with the eloquence of an adult, revealing secrets about his own origin and about the judge’s mother, and making predictions about the future of all involved. The salient details were proved true, and his mother acquitted. They fled to Wales, along with the priest who had saved her life before and who went on to accompany Merlin and chronicle his adventures, and Merlin grew up in the forests, befriending the young huntress Nimue / Niniane, who later became the Lady of the Lake.

Several years later, King Vortigen was trying to build a castle to keep the Saxons back. Each night, however, the sections built during the day would collapse. His elders, fearing Merlin’s prophetic powers, told him that the blood of a child with no father, mixed into the mortar, would prevent the walls from collapsing. When he was brought before Vortigen Merlin scoffed at this advice, telling him that the real reason was that the castle was built above an underground pool, beneath which a red dragon and a white dragon were fighting.

After this advice was also proven to be true Merlin became a favourite advisor, overseeing the construction of Stonehenge, dictating military strategy, and, finally, using a mix of magic and drugs to make Uther look like Duke Gorlois so that he could sleep with Gorlois’ wife, Igraine, with whom Uther was infatuated. In that night Arthur was conceived, and Gorlois slain.

Arthur was the price Merlin demanded for his part in bringing Uther and Igraine – who Uther had then married – together, and he took him at birth and had him raised in obscurity by Sir Ector. Upon Uther’s death it was he who brought Arthur forward to draw the sword from the stone, and he who advised Arthur in his first battles. When that first sword broke, it was he who took Arthur to meet the Lady of the Lake, from whom Arthur received Excalibur, and he who designed and constructed the famous round table. Thereafter he functioned primarily as a prophet, overseeing the Grail Knights in their efforts.

Shortly after the wedding of Arthur and Guinevere he was reunited with the huntress Nimue / Niniane when she was rescued by Gawain and Pellinor, and an obsession he’d been nursing since childhood blossomed into what he thought was love; she, seeing how he was in her thrall, offered to stay with him as long as he taught her his magic secrets. For many moons they dwelled together in a magic tower she had constructed, until she had learnt enough to surpass him, entombed him in a rock under a tree and replaced him as Arthur’s advisor.

Bio - Enfys:

Enfys’ mother likes to think of herself as a lonely soldier, last of the true hippies (Enfys prefers the term ‘batty old relic’) complete with psychedelic flower-daubed VW Combi in which she conceived, delivered and raised her daughter as she wandered from town to town, taking part time work where she felt like it and supplementing this income with abysmal palmistry, woefully inaccurate tarot readings and other minor acts of dinner-parlour mysticism, never staying anywhere long enough to put down roots. If she ever knew who Enfys’ father was she never said precisely, and Enfys hasn’t pushed the issue.

When they reached Britannia the Combi that had served them so faithfully shuddered, whined and gave out. Unperturbed, Enfys’ mother rented her first non-mobile home since hitting the road in the early 70s with the intent that they’d stay only until she saved up enough from working in the coffee house and her usual tricks to mend the Van and move on. Weeks became months, and Enfys turned 13, enrolled in the local high school and settled into ‘normal’ life; months became the better part of a year, and Enfys decided that she didn’t really want to leave Britannia behind – it had become home, and in some strange way felt like it always had been. Her mother, who wanted desperately to believe that her daughter was one of the so-called Indigo Children, seeing Enfys’ conviction on the issue and linking it to the strange dreams her daughter had been having for the few weeks previous to their intended departure, resolved to settle down at least until she graduated and moved out of the ‘family home’. That day hasn't yet come, though it can't be far off.

Personality:

Enfys was a precocious child – when others were tentatively approaching ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ she was flying through ‘The Once and Future King’, and skipped right over ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and ‘Pat-a-cake’ to recite sections from The Mabinogion – and remains a ferociously intelligent young adult, though her intellectual bents have left her with a very formal vocabulary and mode of address which often discourages people from lengthy conversations; at best, she is seen as a ‘teacher’s pet’ or a ‘nerd’, at worst the other party is left feeling patronised.

It seems that she has resolved to be the antithesis of everything her mother hoped for in a child; where Mom is flighty and pseudo-mystical, she values logic, routine and a scientific approach to things, and where Mom wants a simple travelling life she's into 'the latest mod-cons'. If it's a 'new technological breakthrough' then Enfys has to have it, and her room is filled with gadgets and trinkets and past-fads. If her intellectual side gives her one foot in the past, then her love of things techie plants the other squarely in the future. Things which don't fit into this clear-cut scientific cause-and-effect view of the world frustrate her; for example, these dreams she's been having. There's got to be a rational explanation, right? This scientific approach hasn't won her many friends either; most people, it seems, prefer empathy and emotion over a cold, clinical critique and being told they're intrinsically irrational. It's been suggested that both sides of her problems relating to people, along with her love of confined spaces and favouredness of routine, are evidence of a wider personality disorder, but her mother holds no truck with that sort of talk.

One thing she does care passionately about, without really knowing why, is Britannia. If you need someone to collect signatures on a petition to save some obscure local landmark, she's your girl. It's this interest which has lead to her photographic / journalistic aspirations, as she'd like nothing more than to sign on to the local paper and document every little happening in what she sees as 'Her Area'.

Journal: rainbow_prophet

Played By: Marian Call