30 in 30: Days 23-29 - The Pleiatic Seers

Okay so I've been working on a set of seven characters which took longer then I thought to work out some things with them so that's why I haven't posted for a while. I'm not going to post the individual bios though, I'll just add links to their pages on the 30 Characters website.

The Pleiatic Seers - Curseiverse (State Line Road)

The Pleiatic Seers are a group of the seven most powerful and pure oracles in the world. Once every thousand years seven seers are chosen to be part of the creation of a set of prophesies for the next one thousand years. The gathering is called the Prophesy of the Whole and is held on the summer solstice. The ruling constellation of the ceremony is the Pleiades for mythological reasons (the original seers were the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, hence the name Pleiatic Seers.) The event is signaled by the birth of a child that contains all seven of the oracle powers - Sight, Touch, Smell, Head, Heart, Spirit-Light, and Blood, who is known as the Pleiona (the mother of the Pleiades in the myth) who is in charge of choosing and gathering all the seers together (this Cece Montgomery, she's mentioned in other posts here). It can take years to find the right ones and then wait for the ages to align correctly - each seer must be a virgin woman between the ages of 7 and 49 (7 years apart each), with a single, specific, and powerful oracle ability.

Each ability is linked to a specific sister (ie star) in the constellation and each seer, once found, is often referred to by that name rather than their real one.

Although it's a great honor to be chosen (technically pre-destined) as a Pleiatic Seer, and it brings great rewards and fame to the seer and her family, it's not an easy life once chosen. Seers can never marry, have kids, or even have sex - not even relationships since dating is tabooed in order to preserve their physical purity. To preserve their spiritual purity they can never receive material compensation or gain from using their powers and have to spend most of their time learning, training, and practicing their powers in order to achieve the maximum level for the ceremony. They are compensated for all this by having all their expenses, including housing, paid for by International Seers United, a group set up, funded, and controlled by the Grand Council (the global council of the most powerful and elite sorcerers). It may sound like a sweet deal, but the seers work hard and are often lonely, being separated from their families most of the time, and also from each other. None of them meet until three days before the ceremony starts.

The Prophesy of the Whole ceremony involves the seers being fed booze and halucingenic drugs to get them into an altered state of spiritual conciousness and then they spend seven days and nights (straight with no sleep) tripping, communing with the Fates and the Universe and writing a big book of prophesies that include all the major global events, chosen people, etc. over the next one thousand years. As you can imagine the ordeal is intense. In fact very few seers survive it. No more than three of the seven seers has ever survived the ceremony and the Pleiona, the "mother" and eighth seer who leads the whole ceremony always dies. Certain seers have always died at the conclusion of it, including the oldest and youngest seers and the Odorata seer. So all the women go into the ceremony knowing that they will probably not live through it, which is part of the reason they are made comfortable in the years leading up to it and those who survive and the families of those who die receive great rewards including wealth and fame.

The powers are divided into three categories: Sensa, Anima, and Sangua (Sense, Spirit, and Blood)

The Sensa powers are Touch (seeing the past and future by touching people or objects), Sight (seeing the past and future by looking at people or objects), and Smell (seeing the past and future through smells and tastes)

The Anima powers are Head (seeing the past and future through dreams, reading minds, etc.), Heart (feeling what the past and future, and present through emotions), and Spirit-Light (communicating with the dead and seeing the souls of living creatures through auras.)

The Sangua power is Blood (seeing the past and future through the sight, sound, smell, taste, and texture of blood. Someone who reads animal entrails is a Blood Oracle.)

The Pleiatic Seers have to be women, but there are some male seers - although most of them are Blood seers. Also there are Dark Seers, or Rogue Oracles that misuse their powers for personal gain or other evil or misguided reasons.

Whew! That's a lot of info. I've been working on this basic idea for well over a year, but I never sat down and made up the characters for the Pleiatic Seers, so this was a lot of work but a lot of fun.

Links:

Sheridan:

http://www.30characters.com/2011/11/30/23-sheridan-mcdonnell/

Nakimera:

http://www.30characters.com/2011/11/30/24-nakimera-somersby/

Priya:

http://www.30characters.com/2011/11/30/25-priya-chopra/

Eztli:

http://www.30characters.com/2011/11/30/26-eztli-ortiz/

Iris:

http://www.30characters.com/2011/11/30/27-iris-starshine/

Wakanda:

http://www.30characters.com/2011/11/30/28-wakanda-fulton/

Aiko:

http://www.30characters.com/2011/11/30/29-aiko-ushiba/

Oh, and a costume note (cause it's me) - their "ceremonial" outfit is what they wear under their uniform style formal robes. Since none of these women were allowed to get married and some weren't even allowed to go to dances, etc. most women choose to wear either a wedding gown, a prom dress/evening gown, or a traditional costume of their country or family. Those who are smart wear something that's comfortable as well as nice. Cece opts for comfy pajamas under her ceremonial robe, cause she's that awesome (and smart).