Unexpected Inspiration Character Backstory: Camille & Rosalie


Much like Etri and Sol, who never had a word for "brother" or "twin" until recently, Camille and Rosalie never knew what to call each other. The Sanctuaries of Shadow and Light, the temples in Montglace where all four grew up, forbid closeness and relationships of any kind. This didn't matter at first to Camille and Rosalie; they were strangers when they were sent together on a task to bring back the escaped twins. As time passed, however, they found themselves having to trust and take care of the other in the strange and unfamiliar places they traveled through. It wasn't until they began learning the other languages of the continent that they found a word to describe each other: family.

They never really bothered to figure out the specifics beyond that. They don't see each other as sisters, although it's possible they may have decided on this option had they ever truly understood a sibling dynamic. The twins frankly baffle them. On the other hand, the two of them aren't together, although they're incredibly close and many people have mistaken them for a couple. They do tend to prefer the term "partner" to "friend," although whether than comes from being partners on their mission, partners in exile, or partners in another sense, they probably couldn't tell you.

When they first met, Camille was iffy about Rosalie. She was unaware of the real reason she was sent from her home and thought it was an honor to be assigned an important task when she'd so recently been ordained as a priestess. It felt degrading to have Rosalie, almost a decade older and with far weaker magic, as her partner. But young though she was, Camille wasn't stupid. Before too long it became obvious that both of them were chosen because they weren't wanted back home. The high ranking priest/esses wanted Camille out of the way because she was too inquisitive, too inclined to question tradition, too willing to try things without approval. Rosalie, with negligible magic and no particular skill or talent that would aid the Sanctuary, was expendable.

As their eyes opened up to the world outside their home, they both lost interest in tracking down the twins. What they would do next became their complication.

The catalyst came in the form of messages they regularly received from the high priest/esses. These instructions sent via light and shadow elementals were conflicting and strange. So many different voices, so many different orders. No two consecutive messages matched. The only assumption Camille and Rosalie could make was that a rapid-fire turnover of people in command was taking place. A logical guess when Montglace picks "death" as a means to almost any end, but never had it happened so quickly. Something was clearly wrong. Camille, never a fan of how things were done in the temples, decided that the best solution would be to become High Priestess of Light. In that role she could stop this ridiculous flux of command and make the place far less terrible. She couldn't possibly make it any worse.

But doing this alone never crossed Camille's mind. If she was going to become high priestess of her Sanctuary, it would be with Rosalie by her side as High Priestess of Shadow. Rosalie originally liked this idea. It is, after all, the dream you're supposed to have as a priest/ess: reach the top, prove how powerful you are, knock out the people you dislike along the way. Even as Rosalie began to develop her own dream-- to stay far away from her restrictive and dangerous home and live a normal life-- she couldn't bring herself to tell Camille no. She knew that Camille would bring positive, if somewhat bossy, change to their home, and she was willing to sacrifice her own freedom to achieve it. She tried her hardest to improve her control over shadow elementals, ultimately figuring out that being kind to them worked far better than the cycle of summoning/commanding/banishing. This appealed equally to Camille, who never liked the idea of hurting elementals any more than using elementals to hurt people. Still, friendship and kindness could only get Rosalie so far and Camille feared that her partner wouldn't be able to protect herself enough to make her way through the ranks to high priestess. Camille decided the best way to protect her would be to learn how to control shadows herself, something a light priestess should have no business doing. This she practiced in secret, worried that if Rosalie found out, she'd either try to stop Camille in case she got hurt or think Camille didn't trust her enough.

Back and forth they went, never fully telling the other what they thought or felt, and never fully realizing what they were doing wrong.

When the twins unwittingly cross their path and the elementals "helpfully" alert the Sanctuaries, the clock begins ticking. Now there's a deadline for returning to Montglace because the priestesses can only stall for so long. While Camille attempts to be the worst kidnapper known to man, Rosalie continues Camille's research on how to better control elementals, at least until she gets stuck on the archaic language in the texts. Feeling that there has to be a better, easier way to protect them once they return home, Rosalie goes in a new direction. The small glass globes currently interfering with Concordian magic could quite likely also interfere with the magic of, say, other priest/esses and dangerous elementals. Rosalie works up the courage to try to convince her partner that this is a good idea-- and that clock suddenly stops, winds back, and hurls her forward.

CONVERSATION

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