#burnt out gifted and talented kid pre-burnout

[monsterinthemountain]

hey so tell us about your new oc

YEAAHHHHH BUCKLE UP

renate lives in a world where dwarves only really get magic from the spirits of their ancestors -- people who did some amazing feat in the past and now are revered by their society. renate comes from a family that is directly descended from one of these ancestor spirits, renate (original flavor). she was named after her ancestor in some "look how great our daughter is going to be" way. so. pressure.

but she thrives under the pressure. she has an older brother -- age difference just small enough to live at home together for a little bit but large enough to not be close -- she watches him sail through life being Perfect at everything, effortlessly connecting with and getting magic from renate (original flavor), and she thinks "yes, this is achievable" and gets to it.

so she goes through her teens and into early adulthood determined to be the Best at Everything, and she is. except it doesn't come easy. she spends all her free time locked away in her room studying and practicing and pretending that she's not. she lies a lot to make it look easy, but she doesn't consider it lying, really -- it's aspirational. it's harmless. it's what she is in her head.

and then she gets to the point where she decides it's time to start reaching out to her ancestor, and spends hundreds of hours working on a LARGE intricate stone inscription (one of the only things she does that she actually really loves) lovingly depicting the history of her ancestor's greatest feat -- defeating an archfey goblin king that was terrorizing her people. and renate tries every. day. to connect to her ancestor. and every day she can't. and maybe she spends a little too long carefully carving the face of the archfey adversary -- it's only because if you revere a hero, if you believe what they did was remarkable, you have to believe in the power of their enemy.

so when renate connects to Something, she assumes it's her ancestor and runs to her community to celebrate. but the magic is just a little off. the color is just a little bit too sickeningly greenish alongside the copper of her brother's. not enough to really worry, but hey, she's only level one.