Autumn Flaxsong

Autumn Flaxsong (previously Autumn Saffworth) is the main protagonist of Animus Vitrum.

Appearance
Autumn is a fair-skinned teenage girl with deep red hair, angular features, and sharp golden eyes. She is often shown wearing a ribbon of some form in her hair, which is braided back in a sort of crown with her bangs left loose. Her hair is generally shoulder length and slightly wavy.

Casual Outfit
Autumn is usually seen wearing a white, wide-collared sweater underneath a rust-orange capelet with a golden clasp on the right and left sides. She wears this with black shorts over black tights and black boots, and often wears a harness to transport fabric between her sweater and capelet layers. She wears a white bow tying her hair back.

Stagfell Uniform
Autumn wears a white collared shirt under a brown blazer jacket with red, white, and grey patches with the Stagfell logo on the left breast and on the upper sleeves, with the right sleeve rolled up over a bandage. She wears black and grey plaid knee length shorts, calf length black socks, and black boots. She wears a white bow tying her hair back.

She occasionally wears her uniform with her capelet replacing the blazer, often with short sleeved shirts.

Funeral
Autumn wears a kneelength black dress with sleeves that is sheer near the neckline. It buttons up above the bustline and closes in shirtlike collar. She wears her hair more elaborately braided with a small black bow. She wears this dress with black tights and simple black heels with a strap across them.

Masquerade Dress
Autumn's mask is an orange and white domino-inspired mask evocative of a fox. Autumn's masquerade dress is a deep rust-orange color and bell-shaped near the skirt, with lots of fluffy underskirts. The top part of her dress above the bust line is darker and sheer, cutting off in flat lines at the neck and arms. She has a black ruffly bow around her waist that ties in the back. Autumn wears her hair up in a ponytail, with her bangs swept neatly to the side, with a black bow tying it off. She also wears long white gloves, black tights, and black calf-length boots with her dress.

Faeself
Autumn's faeself appears wearing a long, high-collared, short-sleeved dress made out of dripping blood that is split along both hips. She has bone accentuating her torso and neck in a pattern that loosely matches her actual collarbone, rib, and spinal column placement, as well as rib-like floating bustles near the splits of her dress. She wears this dress over a pair of thick maroon pants tucked into knee-length brown boots with vein-like markings along her right boot and artery-like markings along her left. Her hair is an amorphous, shifting cloud of blood. Her eyes are a pinkish-red and constantly leak blood in tear-like patterns.

Biography
Autumn was born to Blanche and Theros Saffworth on Year's Clash 8794 A.T.T. She had an unhappy childhood and was often neglected by both her parents and belittled by Winter constantly.

At the age of 12, (8806 A.T.T.) Autumn discovered the secret about the nature of her existence and ran away from home, though many of her memories relating to information about the secrets were taken by Theros before she left. She moved in with Scevola and Hemrolir Flaxsong, who raised her like their own.

Personality
Autumn is hot-headed and tends to

Autumn becomes more confident and cocky as she lives with Scevola and Hemrolir.

Autumn has a creative streak, though she's shy about sharing what she creates. She learns the basics of weaving and sewing from Hemrolir, as well as basic musical theory, but is reluctant to show even Vernon what she's learned.

Despite certain feminine aspects of her appearance, Autumn is verbally uncomfortable with many aspects of femininity and is visibly uncomfortable wearing skirts and dresses.

Autumn is a bad liar especially

Vernon Helfeather
Autumn is the first non-family friend that Vernon makes. They're very close friends. I'm sorry

Olivia Hart
Autumn was Olivia's childhood friend growing up. The two grew apart after Olivia's family was attacked, and Autumn felt hurt that her only friend had abandoned her. Autumn held onto this resentment throughout her childhood and into Stagfell, where she encountered Olivia again for the next time.

Autumn resented Olivia for being naturally more gifted and accomplished than her, but eventually realizes that much of her so-called talent and accomplishment is the product of the trauma of losing her mother and workaholism, and takes pity on her. Autumn also moves in with Olivia's girlfriend, Naomi, and is forced to be around her a lot even if she doesn't like it.

Eventually, due to being around Olivia enough, Autumn begins to realize that she was in the wrong for judging her so harshly for not remaining in contact and works to make it right with her. The two become good friends based on their previous and current shared experiences.

Scevola Flaxsong
Autumn is Scevola's younger cousin and from an early age looked up to him because of his kindness and willingness to talk to and listen to her. She considers him to be her favorite cousin, particularly of the Byron-Saffworths.

When Autumn ran away from home, she began living with Scevola and his husband, Hemrolir. They grew even closer, and Autumn came to see Scevola as her actual father, though she struggles with calling him that.

Autumn sees Scevola, as someone else who managed to escape the Saffworth family, as a sign of hope for her and her situation, yet struggles to reconcile with the fact that they left the family for different reasons. She urges Scevola to turn down Mortimer's invitation to the funeral, which he accepts. This temporarily causes conflict between the two due to Autumn's distaste of her family and Scevola's perceived violation of her trust by forcing her to interact with them. Eventually, Scevola helps her realize that he wasn't encouraging her to be around the Saffworths for her own reasons, but for him and Mortimer.

Blanche Saffworth
Autumn is Blanche's daughter. After Autumn was proven to be nonmagical, Blanche dismissed her and refused to acknowledge her existence, save to disparage her. Blanche publically played favorites between Autumn and her niece and ward, Winter.

Once Autumn comes into her powers as the Bloodmaker, Blanche begins to take more notice of her. She initially offers her power and connections as an heir to the Saffworth name and fortune, and is rejected. Then, she offers her guidance in her abilities, and is rejected. Finally, she offers her recognition and motherly love. This angers Autumn, as love was only a commodity offered to her once she became useful to her. They fight, and Autumn ends up killing Blanche, but not before Blanche forces Theros to turn Autumn's mindscape into a nightmare.

Theros Saffworth
Autumn is Theros's daughter. Theros played more of a passive role in Autumn's life, and scarcely ever interacted with her outside of family functions. Similar to Blanche, he also neglected her as a child, but out of apathy rather than of spite.

When Autumn ran away from home, he took away her memories of the events that spurred her to do so, and held them there until she took the back during the funeral.

After Blanche is killed, Theros begs for his life, and for reasons unbeknownst to her, she spares him, turning him over to law enforcement.

Winter Carthmarrow
Winter is Autumn's cousin, and the two share an extremely dysfunctional sibling relationship. Autumn would often be compared to Winter in terms of their achievements, particular in terms of magical ability. Winter enjoyed this form of positive attention, and would take it upon herself to rub it in at any given opportunity.

Autumn found herself the easy victim to many of Winter's fits, and spent much of her childhood at Winter's mercy.

Autumn and Winter both faced abuse from their parental guardians, which they had a odd form of camaraderie for, but did little to mend their relationship.

After Autumn ran away, the two met again at Stagfell Academy, where Winter had also decided to attend despite the Saffworths' wishes. They initially had a turbulent, conflict-filled relationship that developed into an uneasy truce as Winter grew as a person and Autumn moved on from her childhood. The two never became friends, but had a strong enough professional and combat-based relationship to trust one another as allies.

Combat
Autumn is a naturally dirty fighter and tends to cheat during combat-oriented situations to tilt the odds in her favor. She lacks skill and tact outside of unorthodox methods, but what she lacks in skill and luck she makes up for in grit. Her temper causes her to be even more extreme during combat, leading to her making poorer decisions but more stubbornness that keeps her from surrendering. Once she enters combat in this state of mind, she does not come out unless she's won or unless she's been fatally injured and can no longer move.

Blood Manipulation
Autumn manipulate and solidify her own blood at will, usually using another medium to give it additional shape and structure. Autumn usually uses the two "tails" on her capelet as easy appendages for her blood, often using them as tentacle-like arms. As she develops this ability, she discovers that she can even go so far as to make semi-autonomous flesh creatures. This development initially terrifies and sickens her, but her lack of control over it forces her to practice with it until she becomes accustomed to it.

Other Magic
Autumn has a passing knowledge of the bardic arts due to her relationship with Hemrolir. She enjoys learning music and storytelling as a method of self-expression, but she is too shy to perform in front others.

Autumn has a strong disdain for general spell-based magic taught in class born out of a hatred for Winter (who was talented at it) and out of frustration at her own ineptitude at it.

Weaknesses
Autumn initially does not have enough control over her blood manipulation to heal wounds properly, giving her a weak constitution that can cause trivial injuries to develop quickly into fatal ones.

Trivia

 * The first version of Autumn was initially more submissive and self-deprecating, and was haunted by Winter (who then was a tulpa created from her insecurities) and Midsomnir (then Summer, who was a tulpa created from her impulses). Winter and Somnir developed into too interesting of characters to be largely imaginary to all but one member of the cast, and the idea was scrapped.