Maeriberi "Maribel" Hearn

Name Maeriberi “Maribel” Hearn

• Nickname Mary | Merry
• Alias “Dr. Latency” (thanks Renko)

Species Human

Age Early-mid 20s

Occupation University Student (relative psychology major), Paranormal Researcher (Girl’s Sealing aka Hifuu Club)

• Threat Level None
• Human Friendship Level High

Location Kyoto, Japan

Details

• Ethnicity “European” (likely Irish in heritage)
• Orientation Renko-- i mean Biromantic, Bisexual
• Alignment Neutral
• Known Languages Japanese, English

Lietmotif Mary the Magician

Relationships 

• Renko Usami. Physics major. An idiotic, reckless absolute genius of a physicist, the strategist and mastermind of their little club. Merry cares about her immensely, holding her in the highest regard.
• Yukari Yakumo. Uncannily similar to Merry in both appearance and power, but Merry is not aware of her existence. Series creator has confirmed they are linked, but has not confirmed exactly how.

Inventory On-hand

• a floppy, vintage-looking hat.
• Hand bag w/ everyday essentials.
• ‘Magic’ compact mirror. (not magical)
• Swallowstone Naturalis Historia magazine.

Canonical Souveniers

• Cookies from the Scarlet Devil Mansion.
• Bamboo shoots from the Bamboo Forest of the Lost.
• Unknown Disease from the satellite with its own unique ecosystem.
• Fragment of the Izanagi Plate after time-travelling.

RP Souveniers

• Haunted Furby with pitch black fur. Centuries old, voice activated, may or may not be a tsukumogami (it is)

BOUNDARY PERCEPTION. Quite literally, to see boundaries - the rips, tears, and gaps in space which separate one concept from another.

• For the most part, it manifests itself as the ability to view into other worlds - both ones supported by reality, and ones considered imaginary. She can locate and deduce where boundaries might lead to, or what lies beyond them.
• The gaps themselves look like literal tears or cracks, as if someone took an edge of reality and peeled it away to see what was underneath. Particularly unraveled ones may fracture out to look like cracked glass.
• A multitude of disembodied eyes might be witnessed within the gap by particularly unlucky viewers. Only Merry is able to see these cracks in reality naturally.

• This happens most often while asleep, but she has started to slip through while awake as well. Some boundaries are more resistant to being crossed over than others.
• She may appear within any point in time or space - It could be at any point in any past era, on abandoned space satellites, or other planes of reality entirely. Nothing is out of reach or off-limits - no matter how well-guarded it may be.
• She brings back “souvenirs” - usually small harmless items, but she has also brought back injuries or unknown illnesses as well. 
• If attacked during this state, Merry may scare herself into ‘waking up’ from the ‘nightmare’. This will subconsciously create a boundary that pulls her back into the safety of what she considers her own reality. This cannot yet be done at will, and is only done under stress or possible threat of death.

BOUNDARY MANIPULATION (limited). Merry’s powers are getting stronger and evolving the more she experiments with them.

• She is now able to travel across boundaries while awake, and is also taking baby-steps to open and create her own gaps in reality.
• Due to some experimentation, her abilities seem to be connected to liminal spaces - locations that seem thin in sheer reality - but especially to shrines.
• Going by the development of her abilities and what she's currently been shown capable of, she is very likely capable of also instigating short-range teleportation and clairvoyance via purposefully placed boundaries.

ASTRAL / IMAGE PROJECTION (in others). She can bring others with her across the boundaries, show them her own memories, or reflect their mental landscapes back at them. This is extremely straightforward.

• All she needs to do this is to be in physical contact, and have the intent to bring them. But as they perceive it as a dream due to their own disconnect - they don't perceive it as 'real' - they are only there in spirit. Not physically like herself.
• She can project her memories and thoughts - showing others the things she has seen, in her dreams or otherwise - by placing her hands over their eyes.
• If she has access to a mirror or similar reflective surface, she can ‘reflect’ the mental landscape of a person she is speaking with - letting them see whatever memory or image their mind has envisioned.

LIE DETECTION. Merry is able to pinpoint whether or not someone is lying to her, and accurately judge whether or not a story she is being told is true or false. No matter how outlandish or realistic the story may seem, Merry can accurately judge whether or not what she is hearing is true.

• The origin behind this one is unclear, whether it is Merry herself viewing beyond the boundary of Truth and Lie, or simply the result of her being trained as a psychologist. Regardless, it’s still shown that she can be relied upon to do this accurately.

NAME. Her real spelling of her name is actually ‘Maeriberi’, pronounced ‘maeriberī’. It’s apparently hard to pronounce, so she will also respond to ‘Maribel’, and the short versions of ‘Mary’ and ‘Merry’ to avoid this difficulty.

FUTURE. Merry is from the future! Exactly how far into the future is unknown, just that it’s ‘near’, and that it’s reached the height of provable scientific progress. I’d probably pin it down as a couple of centuries or five, give or take. Check the Settings tab for specific information on quirks of her timeline.

HERITAGE. Merry’s country of origin is unknown, only that she’s definitely a foreigner. She has no relatives living in the country with her, but there is very good possibility that she shares some sort of ancestry with Lafcadio Hearn. This makes it highly likely that she’s Irish.

WITNESSED. Merry’s abilities have been witnessed publicly, with paranoid doctors having on at least one occasion quarantining her to a sanatorium for further study, under the pretext of considering the girl to be suffering from delusions.

NO FLIGHT. Unlike most people in her series, Merry is not able to fly.

FLOWER. She dislikes the lycoris flower (spider lily) due to finding them creepy.

ALCOHOL. Merry cannot handle old-world alcohol! If apple cider is strong enough to make her drunk, then she’s definitely not able to handle anything else!

QUANTUM YOUKAI. While writing the Swallowstone, she theorizes that youkai follow the laws of quantum physics, and are invisible creatures that exist close or parallel to us, appearing by fluctuation. Thus, they can be explained on the Schrodinger’s Cat principle. By this concept, they should exist if they are observed. We just choose not to observe them, and the youkai faded away since they were unobserved.

AUTHOR. Renko and Maribel have released a book entitled ‘Swallowstone Naturalis Historia’, with Dr. Latency as Merry’s pen name. No-one is aware that she is the author of this book, and there are frauds taking credit for it.

YUKARI. While Merry’s relationship with Yukari is... admittedly unknown, she does resemble the elder youkai - uncannily so. Any muses who have met a Yukari Yakumo may be unsettled by the resemblance, do a double-take, or perhaps even mistake her for Yukari either at first glance or from a reasonable distance.

EYES. Merry’s eyes are a color-changing type of hazel! Specifically, it’s shown that they naturally range from dark grey to (more commonly) gold, but they may appear blue under the right lighting. However, bright yellow, red, and purple are not normal eye colors for her, and if they ever are, it may be best to treat her with caution.

SENSITIVE. She’s sensitive to places of supernatural origin or happenstance, and may feel physically ill or disoriented in places where a very strong boundary exists. (ie: aokigahara, during the train incident)

UNSTABLE. Merry suffers from a mild Butterfly Dream, and doubts whether or not the reality she sees while awake is real, or if the true reality is the place she sees while asleep. Renko is encouraging her to make BOTH into her reality, and is currently acting as an anchor to stabilize her sanity. Without Renko’s presence, she may risk losing her grip on which reality is real, and end up disappearing to endlessly wander through worlds.

FOOD. The food in Merry’s world is… subpar. It’s extremely healthy, but natural ingredients have gone extinct or have been made obsolete, as society favors synthetic ingredients. She will be absolutely fascinated by food from other worlds, which has not been processed halfway to hell.

SOURCE MATERIAL. Touhou knowledge is not necessary to follow or roleplay with me - Merry is exclusive to the short stories and is a quite literal outsider to the rest of the setting. She is essentially her own standalone character, and works amazingly as a fandomless. For those of you curious about her canonical short stories, links to all of them are under History.

BAD ENDS? This isn’t a risk for you guys, for once - this is Merry’s inevitable outcome. Without Renko around to sooth her fears and anchor herself to a clear reality, there’s a clearly stated risk that she may not come back from her wanderings and become an unsolved missing person’s case.

Tl;dr: Unless major efforts are taken to prevent this from occurring, she will likely become an inhuman creature that embodies the sheer concept of missing persons cases. She’s just a sweet human with a knack for disappearing now, but she is basically fated to become the monster she fears.

CROSSOVER-FRIENDLY. Merry is a world-hopper (albeit accidentally). This is canon! Understandably, this makes her incredibly flexible for crossovers - she acknowledges the possibility of multiple other realities, worlds, and other such universes via quantum physics, and is able to discover their boundaries and cross them.

• Her world-hopping tends to be more akin to a horror story or urban legend, rather than like an Isekai. Please treat her accordingly.
• Merry is more likely to visit your muse’s setting than the other way around.
• Seriously, the girl is basically a cryptid encounter in human form. Have fun with that. Turn your back on her and she’ll get into places she shouldn’t be.

UNCANNY EYES. Merry’s eyes can be ‘uncanny’ to look at and are likely to cause shivers of fear in those who see them, once that viewer is aware of her abilities. This is a passive supernatural ability due to humanity’s fear of the unknown, and upon realizing that Merry herself is supernatural induces an instinct in others that makes Merry herself feel equally unsettling and inhuman. Merry herself has no control or awareness of this byproduct of looking into her eyes, so please respond appropriately when dealing with her.

SHIPPING. Ren and Merry are either two very good friends, or two ‘very good friends’. Understandably, this blog is generally RenMerry hell. However, I’m not exclusive to it! As long as the build-up and chemistry is there, then I’m game. I am not an exclusive roleplayer, so multishipping is the standard here.

• For Renko RPers: My biases aside, when it comes to actually interacting with a the partner in crime, then Merry and Renko’s relationship DOES NOT have to be romantic. They’re very good friends first and foremost, and that is the aspect I’ll always run with regarding them. For sake of everyone’s sanity, I’ll assume they’re ‘just good friends’ unless we actively decide to plot otherwise. I’ll take your lead on what you’d like their relationship to be.

A girl who showed up on Chaldea’s radar one day, flickering back and forth from one reality and the next. Existing on neither side but between, as if she had been lost for some time between time and space… or maybe, perhaps, as if she was from that space to begin with?

Whichever world she came from, she cannot remember. Nor does she know how to find her way back - for all she knows, she may come from a doomed timeline.

It’s debatable that she’s even still human.

Exactly how long was she lost?

NAME. Maribel Hearn

SPECIES. Human(?) / Servant(?) / Phantasmal(?)

TITLES. Mary the Magician

OCCUPATION. Wanderer

CLASS. Foreigner

ALT. --

ARMAMENTS: --

STR. C END. C AGI. B

MANA. A LCK. C NP. B

HEIGHT/WEIGHT. --cm・--kg

SOURCE. Urban Legend

REGION. Kyoto, Japan

ALIGNMENT. Chaotic・Neutral

GENDER. Female

TRAITS. Humanoid, Human, Female, Servant, Weak to Enuma Elish

SKILLS.

• CLAIRVOYANCE (BOUNDARY) (EX). What may have once been some type of Mystic Eye, this ability can see the rips and tears in the seams of reality, and can see the boundaries making up her enemy’s defenses.
• (Increases buff/debuff rate, ignore invincibility.)
• DREAMWALKER (C). She wanders through realities, as if she were some sort of dream-bound phantom. But she’s very, very real, and she’s not alone.
• (Self-taunt. Defense down [Demerit])
• SCHRODINGER’S EXISTENCE (B). The gaps in reality shroud the true existence of what lies within. When within the gap, Merry is neither in existence nor not in existence.
• (Three turn invincibility.)

PASSIVE SKILLS.

• EXISTENCE OUTSIDE THE DOMAIN (C). She appeared from between the cracks in reality - the world she originally came from is unknown.
• (Gradually gain crit stars, Increase own debuff resistance)
• DIVINITY (--). She speaks of the gap between worlds as if it were alive…
• (Increase own damage)

NOBLE PHANTASMS.

• KAMIKAKUSHI. anti-unit. The gap between worlds rips open, and tries to drag in whatever or whoever is closest within reach. That thing shouldn’t have arms....
• (Random chance of inflicting a variety of Debuffs.
• Inflicts Terror for one turn.)

HISTORY (wip).

Magi stemming from the Hearn clan have always retained the ability to locate and see boundaries, an ability exclusive to them. But very few are able to see past them - Maribel Hearn was the exception. An ability discovered on accident while she slept - able to drift through them, manipulate them, visit the places beyond. Truthfully, the Hearn clan can’t call themselves entirely human. It appears that an unknown entity added itself to their bloodline at some point, leaving a shred of its power within the clan… and Merry’s abilities seem to be the strongest among them yet.

A trait which Merry would ultimately keep to herself.

It always was in her nature to keep secrets. Even among her family, she was an outsider to the crowd. As such, the true extent of this ‘Boundary’ magecraft has yet to be seen… if it can even be called that. Something is quite odd about it - the boundaries she crosses cannot be replicated by modern Magecraft, after all.

Perhaps it’s best if the Clock Tower is left unaware of the extent of her existence? Though, it’s really a matter of who discovers what first - if the Mage Association becomes aware of the extent of her abilities… or if Merry herself gives in fully to her Instinct Impulse. Becoming drawn to the boundaries like a moth to a flame, if she crosses a boundary she cannot come back from, if she spirits herself away. If she crosses the boundary between Human and Other, and becomes another instance of the Phantasmal Species which started her bloodline.

She’s come so close to that boundary as it is… it may be too late to come back now.

What lays between the boundaries is not easily found…. but a certain organization which traverses time and space may draw in someone who appears awfully similar. This odd Foreigner Servant isn’t a traditional one - much closer to the likes of Musashi, or Chloe, or Seig. Someone who simply appeared, rather than was traditionally summoned.

She does truly seem to be the missing Maribel Hearn… but something still seems off.

Is she really truly still human? Or was she found too late?

• Mixed Blood (the entity which Spirits Away)
• Elemental Affinity (Unknown)
• Origin (Boundary)

QUIRKS.

• Her aptitude as a Servant is either extremely low, or the system can’t classify her correctly. As such she is a 0* Foreigner. Though she IS related to Lafcadio Hearn, she does not retain his spirit origin. It is more appropriate to consider her a servant based on a well-known phenomenon or concept than a historical figure.
• This Merry is split off from her Eternal Dream verse, meaning she did not have a Renko to anchor her existence. Either Renko never met her, or they simply never got close - it would be one of the two. Either way, Merry is on her own.
• As a servant, Merry excels in survival - she is a Taunt and Evasion servant. Though weak offensively, actually pinning her down is a difficult task to achieve. She easily directs attention towards herself, masquerading as bait or a perfect hostage, but then slips between their fingers as if she never existed, hiding within the gaps.
• This is a Merry who has an easier grasp on how to manipulate boundaries - but not to the same degree as a Yukari, of course. She is a Baby youkai, not an Elder one. Consider her something akin to a Proto-Yukari, a younger or weaker version, so her powers are downgraded accordingly. Yukari Lily, you could say.
• These gaps can be weaponized - random items may fling out of them at opponents, including stop signs, tennis balls, vintage antiques, and the occasional man-eating monster. I may roll a die to decide what happens, though of course you are allowed to take control of their shenanigans as well.
• Look into the gap and the gap stares back.