archimágeiras; professional chef
verse: → jonathan morgenstern // archimágeiras (v. — professional chef)status: open, default forout of fandom interaction.
Jonathan never knew his mother growing up - after his parents’ bitter split when he was less than a year old, he was raised by his father in a remote village on the border of France, Germany, & Switzerland. He was diagnosed with moderate hemophilia when he was young, which limited his ability to keep up with his father’s outdoorsmen lifestyle.
Cooking was something her learned out of necessity - his father believed largely in self-sustainability, & Jonathan learned quickly that if he wanted to enjoy what he made himself, he’d have to teach himself how to make that happen. He spent hours after school in the library reading anything he could get his hands on.
When his father passed away shortly before he started college, he took advantage of his dual citizenship & moved to New York City to start at the International Culinary Center-New York, New York. He completed the requirements for an
Currently works at
verse-specific notes
- Because of where he was raised, he speaks French, Italian, & English fluently, as well a German & Romansh passably.
- Classes he took include Food Styling for the Media.
- Because of the generous estate left to him by his father, he additionally completed an intensive sommelier course.
- He lived in Modena for four months during his externship, living in the city & working in
-
- In this verse, Jonathan was raised by Jocelyn after his parents’ nasty divorce. He lived with his father for some time before showing up on the doorstep of his mother’s Brooklyn home without warning, surprised to be greeted by his younger sister that he had only somewhat knew existed.
- Jonathan went into culinary arts shortly before his sister went into art school, wanting to stay close to his family but also wanting something that allowed him to exact the control he strongly felt he needed to have. Cooking felt like the perfect combination of his needs & creative impulses.
- Currently, Jonathan works at the trendy restaurant, Per Se, owned & operated by Lilith Duvall. As the owner of the top restaurant in the city, Lilith only takes the best & the brightest with the highest potential, but the cost is steep - one year of working for her will net anyone any position they want in their world, but only if you can grind it out the entire time.
- Jonathan’s signature style is finding new & creative ways to incorporate spices into dishes. Given that he collects cookbooks, he’s always researching new recipes & new ways to ‘spice up’ dishes - literally.
- One of the people whose style & work he’s followed extensively is
He took a sabbatical from
in February of 2019 to join his former externship supervisor in opening
in W Dubai - The Palm on Palm Jumeirah. Later that year, in May, he was also present for Massimo's opening of
, a 12 room guesthouse with a dining venue in Modena, Italy - not far from where he first got started.
decoro; makeup artist
verse: → jonathan morgenstern // decoro (v. — make up artist)status: open for interaction.
There's a certain feeling of power, a rush that comes with the simple act of creation. Seeing that creation on stage, knowing the whole world is watching? It's powerful like nothing else. His sister had been accepted into art school following a review of an incredibly diverse portfolio. Jonathan had never even submitted one. In truth, he can't even remember what he had originally gone to school for but he'd dropped out when the boredom set in. His... condition didn't help. Feeling desperately bored & creatively blocked, he'd dipped into a different medium from his sister.
Eventually, that creative outlet consumed him & he found himself re-applying, this time to the E.I. School of Professional Makeup. Life in California was exiciting, but graduating was even better. Jonathan exploded onto the scene after finishing his education & started working for some of the up&coming in the industry. His first few years were a whirlwind of travel, but the lifestyle quickly wore down his body. His health didn't make it easier, & after a scare that landed him in intensive care, he scaled back is work.
Now, as one of the most prolific MUAs in the industry, Jonathan takes strict contracts, working on films, or for touring artists one a time. He gives them his art, & they give him the sense of stability he needs without overexerting himself.
verse specific notes
-
; Jonathan suffers from moderate hemophilia.
chaîne; ballet
verse: → jonathan morgenstern // chaîne (v. — ballet)status: open for interaction.
Born abroad to a ballet dancer mother & a choreographer father, Jocelyn fled the abusive relationship when she found out she was pregnant a second time, packing her bags with the intent to flee to Paris & eventually, New York. She intended to take Jonathan with her, but when she returned from the practice studio to gather her things & head for Paris, Valentine & Jonathan were already gone, leaving her heartbroken, pregnant, & alone.
Jonathan began dancing when he was roughly three, was hindered from starting a year earlier because of his medical diagnosis. His father - a choreographer - pushes him hard, & by the time he was in high school it was obvious that college was out of the question - he’d join a professional troupe. He already attends practice six days a week, unknowingly following in his mother’s footsteps.
Valentine, an internationally recognized choreographer, took Jonathan & made for Moskow on invitation from the
His break came when his father died under mysterious circumstances, & Jonathan took the opportunity to liquidate his father’s estate & leave. Tracking down his mother, Jonathan showed up on the doorstep of where she was living with his sister in Paris. He began dancing for
until the family relocated to New York City. He now dances for the
, often dancing against backdrops painted by his mother & sister.
pherein phonon; persephone
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // pherein phonon (v. — corrupted persephone )
they've always maintained the balance - one from each world, twin souls, destined to find each other from one lifetime to the next because of the contract signed & sealed in blood & pomegranate seeds. one mortal, destined to enter this world & leave it, falling back in with the immortal soul they were twined to - their soulmate. but the bond has to be renwed every thousand years, & that deadline is drawing close.
it doesn't help that this time, someone else found him first.
reborn into this world to Valentine Morgenstern, this time fate had delivered him right into the hands of someone who sought to break that carefully crafted balance for their own purposes. realizing his son's destiny even before he did, valentine sought to upend that balance, tipping the scale in the hopes he could use it to crush downworlders entirely.
instead of being allowed to find the other half of his soul, valentine twisted him into something that could be used as a weapon - something he hoped would be too demonic for hades to accept. when that failed, he sent his son to Lilith, hoping she could break the bond. when that, too, failed, jonathan was cast out & left to wander.
now, he just hopes that instead of finding the other, as he has for so, so many lifetimes, the other will remember their first, & find him instead.
oceanus; mermaid
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // oceanus (v. — mermaid )note: verse connected to @createshope's mermaid verse.
it wasn't always like this. there had been music & laughter once, but that was before. no one had seen the sea witch in over a thousand years since she had been banished from the realm. there was peace, at least, there was until valentine summoned her BACK to help with his uprising against the atlantican elite to take control of all oceans. jocelyn, realizing what he intended to do, escaped to the surface. with the help of lucian, a human, opposition was lead against valentine & the uprising was crushed.
valentine seemingly escaped in the aftermath, stealing the royal family's trident only to be killed when his grotto collapsed, trapping him & his young son in the rubble until it supposedly crushed them to death. grieving for her son but suspicious, a pregnant jocelyn left for the surface world & stayed away, knowing that couldn't possibly have been the end of valentine & his schemes. whatever he was planning, their unborn daughter would have no part of it. the bodies of valentine & his son, as well as the trident, were never recovered. wherever valentine had hidden it, he had seemingly taken the secret to his grave.
unbeknownst to jocelyn or the others left in atlantica, jonathan & valentine had not died in the cave in. instead, the collapse was orchestrated by valentine to hide their tracks. he then took his son to the edges of the kingdom & raised him in THE TRENCHES on the very edge to the abyssal zone, forbidding his son from ever going to the surface, or beyond the dark depths of their home.
jonathan, however, had been just old enough that the holes his father's stories bothered him. as he grew older, he took to escaping their home in the darkest hours of night, making his way through the trenches until he found the edges of atlantic. he dares not go much further, but every night he comes a little closer to answering the question of their banishment & finding his way home.
exspiravit; haunting of hill house
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // exspiravit (v. — hill house)
Am I walking toward something I should be running away from? Jonathan Morgenstern had been normal once. Raised in the remote
The horror started to slip through the cracks in the smallest ways. Jocelyn, who had been uneasy ever since setting foot in the manor, recoiled when her oldest was born with pitch black eyes & left. she took the knowledge of Jonathan’s little sister with her & leaving Valentine alone with his grief. That grief would drive him mad inside those walls, pushing him to uncover secrets that should have been left to rot.
in pushing his experiments further, Valentine awoke something evil in that house, something that pushed him harder & further than he ever had before.
No one will come near the Manor, after all - no nearer than the nearest small town beyond the woods that border the Manor. It’s... different after dark, almost
When Jonathan was older, Valentine began to realize that one day he would leave the house - leave, just as Jocelyn had, & never return. This realization, coupled with the delusions he’d begun to descend into, drove Valentine to shackle the boy in a secured room deep within the mansion. It seemed to work for a time - despite how Jonathan would scream, thrash against his restraints, he never managed to break them.
His boy was safe - safefrom being
The night it happened, there was a storm so bad it rattled the very foundations of the house. Jonathan had managed to escape, dragging himself up only for his father - lost in some sort of nightmarish haze - to find him.
Grabbing Jonathan, he dragged him to the
You see the ghost of someone who could have been,
that is all.
The problem with the Manor is that what is dead doesn’t staydead. Now, Jonathan wanders the halls as ghost. His body lays at rest in the
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
praestolatio; terra nova
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // praestolatio (v. — terra nova)
in 2149, overdeveloped and polluted earth is dying. with no way to reverse the damage done to the planet, a group of scientists finds a way to open a fracture in the space-time continuum. this creates a portal to prehistoric earth, leading to a last-ditch effort to save the human race by correcting mistakes of the past.
by the 22nd century, it has become so damaged by pollution and war that humans needed to wear rebreathers whenever outside due to the large amount of carbon dioxide in the air. the moon was also no longer visible, as it had been covered up by all the smog from the cities. plant and animal life had become increasingly rare due to the extreme pollution. the majority of the world's population lives in crammed housing, while some of the wealthier citizens have retreated into domes that block out most of the pollution. because of the recent wars, it is also possible that there is danger of radiation in some areas.
Jonathan has seen the best & the worst of his world. There was a time he believed in his fathers words, his father's rhetoric, but that was before one wrong slip up in a job had landed in in Golad. By the time everything had been untangled, he'd served two years in the worst air quality. Most only survived six months. To make up for the seemingly wrongful charges, Jonathan was given a compassionate release to spend the rest of his days somewhere where he could have a fighting chance.
except not all is paradise in this new world 85 million years in an alternate past. some people have OTHER ideas for how to best utilize this new land.
jaeger; pacific rim
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // jaeger (v. — pacific rim)
Former Jaeger pilot. Jonathan & his twin sister Seraphina were recruited to the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. after showing considerable talent. Seraphina was recruited first, showcasing show-stopping talent, but her training stalled out when she developed a reputation of being incompatible in the drift with virtually everyone. Jonathan was brought in as a last resort & out of desperation, despite his erratic behavior & seeming tendency towards mental instability. These things apparently balanced out when paired with his sister, allowing the two of them to function without issue as rangers, even if they couldn't be paired with anyone else in the cockpit.
Things seemed to be going fine until a field exploration mission to scout the areas surrounding the Breach ended badly. They had been investigating the Breach after abnormal data was intercepted by LOCCENT Mission Control. When they approached the Breach, they were hit with a pulse resembling a transient electromagnetic disturbance/EMP that temporarily disabled the Intercept.
Accounts vary after this point - Jonathan claims something came out of the Breach & ripped apart the Jaeger, dragging Seraphina through the breach (& into the Anteverse), but Breach activity being tracked by diligent calculations by the K-Science division seemingly proves this would be impossible as it would mean a never before seen isolated event. Instead, the PPDC officially labeled the event as a large-scale equipment failure & Jonathan was retired from the field due to injury, trauma, & suspected pressure-induced psychosis. Some went as far as to speculate he attacked his own sister & caused the damage in a psychotic episode, but that, too, cannot be proven or disproven.
What is confirmed is that Jonathan was taken out of the field following this attack, officially because it was on paper he was incompatible with anyone outside of his sister. With her gone, entering the Drift was largely impossible with anyone else. Now he works as a LOCCENT Officer in the shatterdome, responsible for being the eyes & ears of the pilots. He has a unique knack for identifying Kaiju after they exit the breach but before any other signs are present.
Eventually he's pulled back into the program far after the integration of digital technology, nullifying the risk of radiation sickness from core exposure. His new Jaeger,
, ran up a bill that was was reported to be more than ten times the cost of a nuclear aircraft carrier.
incantatio; hogwarts professor
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // incantatio (v. — hogwarts professor)
Born the eldest child to the last of a long line of a powerful wizarding family, Jonathan Morganstern's name had been down for the school since he was born. Not much was known about the Morgenstern childen, but the rumor mill churned, anxious & thirsting for any sliver of gossip about the children of one considered to have been the most powerful & dangerous Dark Wizard of all time;
Jonathan had been barely old enough to remember his father before he had fallen, wearing the marks of his father's twisted ideation of love on his back in the form of ragged scars from an acromantula venom-coated whip, but that was a different lifetime, one the family had left behind when Jocelyn had taken her children & left for Paris, & then again for Brooklyn following Valentine's failed uprising against the Ministry.
Because of this, Jonathan & his sister had some knowledge of the wizarding world, but for the most part their lives were oddly normal, mundane even as they lived out their young lives in an artist loft in Brooklyn. They were raised to do reading, writing, & arithmetic -- not potions, charms, & transfiguration, so it was a small shock when the letter shot through the mail slot addressed to Jonathan C. Morgenstern, the bedroom overlooking the courtyard.
That summer, Jocelyn braved Diagon Alley to take her eldest shopping for the things he would need, & it was there, nestled on a shelf nearly forgotten in a back corner of Flourish & Blotts, that he found a book that would help him get through the next few years, detailing the known deeds & dedication of Merlin. It was because of this book, not because of his heritage, that Jonathan allowed the sorting hat to place him in Slytherin.
The first few years flew by like a dream, but Jonathan had so many questions - & so few answers, particularly about his absent father. His third year, he began having dreams & nightmares, warping his sense of reality. This only progressed further during his fourth year as he learned that his father, far from dead, as he had been lead to believe, had broken out of Azkaban. When Jonathan went missing as he was supposed to go home for Christmas break, it became clear that Valentine's desire for an heir to carry on his legacy still lingered.
By the time a team of Aurors managed to retrieve the boy, & drag Valentine back to the depths of Azkaban, the damage had been done. Jonathan became a quiet, more withdrawn soul, shying away from his once-favorite subject of Defense Against the Dark Arts & withdrawing fully into the more quiet talent he carried for Potions. It would be that new-found love that would shape his fifth, sixth, & seventh year at the school.
After graduating with outstanding marks (N.E.W.T.s of 'Exceeds Expectations' or higher in the subjects of Transfiguration, Potions, Charms, Herbology & Defence Against the Dark Arts), Jonathan worked as a Mediwizard while he studied further to become a Healer at St. Mungo's. These plans were derailed with the retirement of Horace Slughorn, & Jonathan was invited back to the corridors of his childhood in quite a different fashion.
Now, Jonathan teaches Potions as
for a list of his curricula, look here!
for a list of verse-specific headcanons, look here!
indominus; jurassic world
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // indominus (v. — jurassic world)note: unless otherwise plotted, this verse is connected to Alec's indominus verse, where Alec is the operations manager for the park. you can find info for his incarnation of this verse on his popup, if curious!
Far more reclusive than his father, Jonathan prefers to let other, far more capable experts run the subsidiaries & he's spent no shortage of time & resources to make sure each person selected to lead them & the teams under them is the best possible choice. While his public appearances are few & far between, he makes it a point to personally keep tabs on all parts of his company, taking specific care to check in on his park as well as personally monitors guest experiences to ensure that not only are his employees well care for, but so are his assets, & the guests as well.
verse-specific headcanons
-
- Jonathan has three primary residences;
-
Morgenstern Manor , in Idris/a small village in Europe.- A flat in New York City that he uses between travels to keep up with the doings of his father's empire.
- A penthouse suite on Isla Nublar, near the downtown tourist hotspots.
- there's also rumors of a fourth residence somewhere in London, but this is unconfirmed.
-Jonathan hasn't been photographed in public since Valentine Morgensterns funeral.
- He had never wanted to inherit the company. Instead, he'd wanted to go to culinary school or perhaps medical school. Both of those paths were denied to him on his father's passing, but he still indulges his interests by taking cooking classes & reading medical textbooks in his downtime.
asshai under the shadow; asoiaf
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // asshai under the shadow (v. — asoiaf)
The Stygai. The haunted
In the time since he left Asshai, he's traveled to more lands than written record could keep track of only to return home. Now he seeks for Oldtown, & something hidden among the records there.
verse-specific headcanons
- Jonathan can speak the Common Tongue, High Valyrian, & the tongues of Asshai.
- Jonathan's father is Valentine, a powerful but mysterious sorcerer from Asshai who went missing shortly before Jonathan was found wandering the ruins of Stygai. He doesn't know of his mother, or his younger sister.
lucerna; hocus pocus
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // lucerna (v. — hocus pocus)
Born in the late 1500s/early 1600s just before the hysterial of witchfraft trials hit its peak within continental Europe, Jonathan was the son of a prominent member of the church who practiced unlawful dark magics & experimented in ways outlawed by his very office in private. In fact, Jonathan was his very first experiment - Valentine made a pact with the demoness Lilith before he was born, offering him her own blood so that she could have the one thing that had always escaped her - a child. When Jonathan was burned, it’s said she reached through the fires to bring her boy home, & he resides in her realm until he’s summoned back by the candle.
When this was discovered, Valentine passed the blame for everything on his son - who had grown difficult to control & contain as he’d grown older - so that he might continue this practice in secret. Jonathan was burned alive for his supposed crimes. As he burned, he cursed his father, saying that it wouldn’t matter if it took a thousand years, he would crawl back from the hell he’d been cast into.
Out of guilt, his father gathered his son's bones after the burning & buried him secretly, tying him to a black flame candle that, when lit by a virgin on all hallow’s eve, would bring his son back. He never had time to light the candle himself - he was seized by the church’s inquisitor & the candle was locked away along with his other possessions. When it broke that Valentine had been a practitioner of the dark arts, doubt was cast on his son’s sentencing, & his name was eventually cleared but the family name was struck from church history.
The candle ended up in the church archives, locked away with a note it was not to be lit, & eventually rediscovered when the artifacts of the European witchcraft trials were donated to a museum.
headcanons
- Jonathan is a warlock by the very nature of his blood.
- When lit, the candle grants life back to him but only for the single night unless he can learn to love & be loved in return. After that night, the candle will vanish & reappear elsewhere where the pull of magic is strong so that someone else might eventually find it.
nautilus; aquaman
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // nautilus (v. — aquaman)
Jonathan is son of Valentine & Jocelyn, the rulers of Atlantis. Before he was born, Valentine experimented on the boy using blood from the Queen of the Trench, Lilith. Upon finding out the extent of Valentine's experimentation, & fearing for both her son & her unborn daughter, Jocelyn fled Atlantis for the surface. She was rescued by Luke Garroway, a lighthouse keeper, who stayed with her as she gave birth to a daughter named Clarissa.
Jocelyn was eventually forced to return to Atlantis, where she faced execution for treason by way of being sacrificed to the Trench. Even under the threat of execution, she refused to give up the location of her son, nor would she tell Valentine of their daughter. Before her sentence, she entrusted one of the advisors with the mission of training her son & her daughter. She left her trident to her eldest son.
Jonathan would go on to be raised aware of not only who he is, but what role he might yet play.
verse-specific headcanons
-
- He can telepathically communicate with marine life.
- this power relies on encouraging & compelling the subject rather than full control. some species are more compliant than others.
- His body is adapted to live & thrive in the harshest of underwater environments. He has the ability to breathe underwater and possesses a superhuman physique. He also possesses the ability of
- Many of these abilities are limited in use to underwater, only. Above water, his enhanced strength & endurance are only moderately above that of a fit human being & he retains his ability to see in the dark.
- Lead exposure blocks his hydrokinetic & telepathic abilities
- Jonathan, additionally, has a higher chance of becoming dehydrated. Especially in harsher environments.
- He uses a black trident as a melee weapon.
bestia; beauty & the beast
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // bestia (v. — beauty & the beast )
grief is a powerful. after being cast out of the garden, lilith wandered the earth & was found by sammael. filled with grief, & envy, she allowed the fallen archangel to corrupt her, turning her into the mother of demons. she vowed revenge on the people she believed to have betrayed her - vowing that death & despair would come to their garden, & that they too would know what it was like to be barren & alone. her rage, & her pain, grew into something monstrous & eventually she brought a war against alicante.
her way in was pure chance; in an effort to discover some way in which the nephilim could be enhanced in order to carry out his extremist views, valentine morgenstern summoned lilith & asked for her blood so that he might use it on his unborn son. curious & desperate for a child of her own, lilith allowed it. once the boy was born - healthy, a perfect fusion of nephilim & demonic bloodlines - lilith realized that she shared a deep connection with the boy she would go on to call her son.
she would continue watching him for some time until by chance, his father took him to alicante. because of her blood in his veins, lilith was able to possess the young boy when he stepped into the city & used him to render the wards around the city temporarily useless, allowing a demonic hoard to descend on the city while its defenses were lowered. the assault resulted in a brutal, crushing defeat when sammael was slain by glorious, a sword imbued with heavenly fire, & she was thrown back into the void - even further stripped of her humanity & cut off from even the demonic creations she called her children.
however, her curse would be realized in that same moment; when glorious pierce sammael’s heart, the polarizing forces of heavenly fire & demonic energy overwhelmed the city. in response, the city’s demon towers reactivated & effectively sealed the city off from the rest of the world in an effort to contain the demonic forces within.
while many nephilim had fled the city when the battle started, many remained trapped - suspended between worlds. those who had fled would remain near the city in state of enchantment - only partially aware of their past life within alicante & separated from friends & family still trapped within its walls. valentine, in a vain effort to undo the enchantment, tried to summon the angel raziel using the city’s sacred artifacts, but the summoning ritual backfired; raziel, angered by valentine’s actions, informed him that the enchantment could only be broken if the curse brought about by valentine’s experimentations could be broken; his son, burned & deformed by the heavenly fire must learn to love & be loved in return. only then could lilith’s curse be broken & the nephilim be reunited in their city of glass.
after this proclamation was delivered, raziel banished valentine from the city so that he could feel the effects of the curse like the others, cursing him that if he ever returned to the city, he would die. jonathan was left to grow up largely alone within the walls of the cursed city, turning into abeast of legend until someone might find a way to break the curse.
verse-specific notes
- in this verse, jonathan wears a full face mask & a cloak or shirt with a hood to cover the extensive burns caused by the heavenly fire & his demonic blood.
- he has until the last petal on a white rose falls to break the curse, or the city will be swallowed into edom.
briar rose; maleficent crossover
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // briar rose (v. — maleficent )
two different realms, together but apart, residing right at each other's doorsteps. that's how the kingdom of idris & the neighboring moors could be seen. people might travel through her paths, but the secret trails deeper into her wood remained hidden from all but those blessed by the inhabitants of the moor itself. the morgenstern family had grown up on the fringes of those same moors, & valentine was no stranger to the hidden paths & secret trails. he had a gift for exploring where he shouldn't, & one day it finally took him too far; after exploring the rivers that flowed through the moor, he came to a sheltered glade housing the most beautiful of flowers & pools of water that held precious gems. reaching to steal a gem from the pool, he was stopped by one of the wood-warders, poised to strike the insolent nephilim for trespassing.
lilith had lived all of her long, long life in the moors, barred from ever setting foot in the neighboring kingdom because of the old magic laced into her blood. she'd always been curious about the travelers who had come through the wood, particularly the young ones. there were no children in the moors, no youths or babes to be seen. the magic didn't allow for it - it preserved, but it did not create. nor had it, since the two realms where cut off from each other. laying eyes on valentine, it was the first time she had seen another who seemed even remotely like her in centuries. stopping him from taking the gem, she naively distracted him with stories of the flowers found deep in the moors that were the true treasure, thinking no such soul could ever venture that deep into the woods, nor would he remember her words after he had left the moor. she escorted him to the edge of the moor, but he made her promise to meet him again. desperate for connection, she agreed, & they met up many more times, each time with her telling him of her home deep in the moor.
years passed, & valentine rose in rank within the kingdom. the peace between the two realms was strained as the clave started to penetrate the moors for valuable resources - largely known to them from valentine's tales learned from none other than the protector of that realm herself. when an ambitious raiding party, made up of valentine's very family, was slaughtered within the woods, valentine confronted his once-seeming friend. while he could not kill her, he cut her with an adamas blade, spilling drops of her blood into the rare white flowers around them. furious at the betrayal, lilith cursed valentine & told him him to leave the moors; it would be his death if he returned.
valentine thought nothing of it, returning to idris & the woman he would eventually marry. he stayed there for the next long stretch of years, raising to prominence within the city. it seemed fine - he had a good life, all they had wanted was a child. it had seemed like such a simple thing at the time - until jocelyn fell ill with a sickness not even the court physicians seemed able to cure. after all this time, the tale of those rare white flowers came back to him, & valentine thought nothing of slipping out to the moors in the dead of night to gather them & make a draught that might strengthen her.
even so, after so many years away, the paths had changed, had become overgrown with briars & dark with neglect. he wandered too far & gathered too many of the precious simbelmynë, lingering too long in a place he had been bound never to enter again. lilith woke with a fury, & she didn't take kindly to nephilim trespassing in her domain to steal the flowers that awarded her her perpetual youth - especially not the one she viewed as TRAITOR. still, the memories they had shared so long ago kept her from killing him. she sent him away with a warning that he might take those precious sun-drop flowers that night, but she would take her payment in due time.
a boy was eventually born to the couple, & the kingdom could breathe a sigh of relief. a christening was the be held, with invitations going out far & wide beyond the borders of the small kingdom, to every corner of their little world... save one. the night of the christening, lilith slipped into the court to steal a lock of hair from the boy, intent to keep it in place of her stolen flowers, but the white-hot glow faded the moment the hair was cut from his head. realizing that the essence of her sun-drop flowers now resided in the boy, she gathered the boy up just as valentine & jocelyn came in to bring their boy to his christening. to show that i bear no ill-will, i too, shall bestow a gift on the child. her gift was thus; valentine would never see his son again. jonathan would grow strong, & graceful, but should he ever enter the kingdom again, he would fall into a deep, deep sleep that could only be broken by the power of true love's kiss.
with that, she stole the child away, taking him deep into the moors as the rest of the unknowing court celebrated with floating lanterns. jonathan was raised deep in the moors, kept restrained near the heart of the wood, cut off from all but the briefest glimpses of life beyond the moors. to further the divide, a thick fog rolled over the barrier between the realms, cutting them off to all but those who might discover the hidden pths by chance. lilith raised him as her own, having him learn the incantation that would activate the magic in his blood & perpetuate her youth, & her powers. he would grow up surrounded by this magic, learning it & developing an affinity for it, but every year he'd look to the sky & see the lanterns, wondering what might lie beyond his dream-like cage in the moors.
sequestrum; star wars
coming soon
via infinito; final fantasy x
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // via infinito (v. — ffx)
When he was four years old, an attack close to home decimated one of the temples, driving his mother to take up her staff again & resume the pilgrimage she had temporarily put on hold. By the end of the year, she had achieved her goal; Sin was defeated, the Calm had arrived… & brother & sister were left without their mother & the father who had given himself over to perform the final summoning.
Madeleine Bellefleur, one of his mother’s friends, came to the city & took him & his sister away to Kilika so that they might live a quiet life. The Fairchild Calm was much needed, but fleeting. By the time he was eight, Jonathan decided to dedicate his life to becoming a summoner just as his mother had before him. He became full-fledged summoner on his eighteenth birthday when his prayers to the Fayth were answered & he was able to summon Ifrit, the Aeon of the Kilika temple.
verse-specific notes
- If he hadn't become a summoner, Jonathan would have willingly found a way to turn himself into a Fayth.
- He travels with his sister as his primary guardian, unless plotted otherwise.
eternal calm; final fantasy x-2
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // eternal calm (v. — ffx2)
After learning much of the truth following High Summoner Yuna's departure from Yevon & subsequent defeat of Sin for good, Jonathan returned to Kilika to help his islands repair from the damage caused by Sin's earlier attack. He stayed there for a year, helping rebuild a large amount of the residential area before heading to the temple to see what else he could possibly do to help.
It was in Kilika that he found a troubling sphere left by the founder of New Yevon, Trema. In it, he found something that lead him to suspect Trema was not who he claimed to be, but an unsent with ulterior motivations. People must rid themselves of the past to become stronger. In his quest to verify his suspicions, he once again returned to Bevelle. Deep in Bevelle's archives, he found something that worried him even more than the truths he'd learned regarding Sin.
Now Jonathan spends the bulk of his time studying the ancient history of Spira, piecing together what Trema must have destroyed & studying the weird glyph left that seems to lead to the very depths of the temple-city itself.
verse-specific headcanons
- Jonathan does utilize a garment grid. While he has primary abilities of a white mage, owing to his time spent as a full-fledged summoner, his default garment is actually the Festivalist dressphere. Effectively, his equipment would look like this;
- Garment Grid: Supreme Light, with Festivalist*, White Mage, Black Mage, & Mascot.
- Accessory 1: Minerva's Plate
- Accessory 2: Ragnarok
- He's built to be a magic-casting powerhouse.
magesterium; final fantasy xii
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // magesterium (v. — ffxii)
678 OV, Jonahan ('Bastien') Morgenstern of House Morgenstern was born to Judge Magister Valentine & his Rabanastran wife. He showed exceptional talent from an early age, partially owing to both his own innate talents & the Occurian blood-influence Valentinos bartered for before his birth. His talents were notable enough that he was made a judge at 17, after he witnessed the failed uprising of the Emperor’s oldest-born sons. He watched how it was cut down & they were executed for treason. At the time, he was unaware of his father’s role in orchestrating this uprising.
A year later, he was sent away on extended military training exercises to survey the arias Jagd territories. It was during that time his talents were made even more apparent, alongside his inherent brutality as the Mist in those territories boosted his abilities through his blood-connection to the Occuria.
He was supposed to spend two years surveying each territory, but given what was discovered during his survey of the Jagd Diforhr, his work was cut short & he returned to Archades with Doctor Cid in 700 OV where he was granted the title of JUDGE MAGISTER, becoming the youngest Magister in Archadian history.
Upon his return to Archades, Jonathan was visibly changed from his exposure to the pervasive Mist of the Jagds. As others outside of himself & Cid could not see Venat, there were rumors he’d gone entirely mad, talking to himself & acting out in violent, unpredictable bursts as the defected nethicite he’d been exposed to slowly drove him insane over the next four years.
Despite this, he became close with another Judge during this time — an old childhood friend turned lover who he coaxed into leaving the judicial life as the Mist took a deeper hold of him. Watching Ffamran leave him behind was harder than enduring Cid’s continued experimentation, so he sought out distraction after distraction to keep him occupied. He stayed suspended in this limbo until Judge Zecht unleashed the power of the Midlight Shard in Nabudis.
The Midlight Shard's power discharged in a massive explosion that turned Nabudis& surrounding environs to rubble, sinking the land & creating a thick mist to fill the valley that resulted in many dangerous monsters moving into what was left. The area became a no-man's-land known as the Necrohol of Nabudis & Nabreus Deadlands. The Midlight Shard, its power expended, was retrieved & handed off to Cid, & with its depletion, Jonathan finally started to rein himself back in & keep himself largely under control.
Without the influence of the Midlight Shard & its Mist, Jonathan’s usefulness to Cid’s research lessened. He was given the duty of protecting one of the other noble Archadian families - a young charge of rising importance, & largely left to his own devices until a certain sky-pirate caught to reclaim some of his own hidden treasure.
verse-specific headcanons
- Jonathan was born in OV 678 to an Archadian Judge & his Rabanastran wife. Jocelyn left Archadia to return to Rabanastre with Clarissa shortly before the little girl was to be born.
- Jonathan doen't have a relationship with his sister because of ths.Jonathan's preferred weaponry is swords. He has a broadsword, as well as two short swords. When he's out of his judge's armor, he uses the shorter blades more often.
- His blood is laced with Occurian blood, giving him an edge in combat but also near-uncontrollable rage.
- He was made a judge at 17, & a judge magister at 22 after returning from surveying the jagd diforhr with Dr. Cid.
- His exposure to deifacted nethicite has both enhanced his abilities & driven him to a point of near instability. He can see & converse with Venat, as well, because of this.
- He only started regaining control over himself after the Midlight Shard was exended over Nabudis.
- Jonathan retains his ability to cook, but has little to no use for it in this verse.
oprichniki; grishaverse
tag: → jonathan morgenstern // oprichniki (v. — grishaverse)
