Unicorn Touch Stone [ready]

[RainbowFoxxy]

Name: Touch Stone

Gender: Female

Age: Young mare

Species: Unicorn

Eye Color: Ice Blue

Coat: Her coat is shining ivory white fading to grey from her knees to her hooves

 

Mane/Tail: Touch Stone’s mane and tail are both cobalt blue with ice blue highlights.

Her mane and tail are long and flowing, with light curls at the ends of them. She keeps them brushed and properly maintained at all times. She has been known to band up the middle of her tail to keep it out of the way and occasionally pushes up her forelocks with her glasses, so they can rest between her ears.

 

Physique: Touch Stone is slender and lithe. She keeps her body extremely trim which compliments her petite bone structure well. Her legs are a bit longer than most ponies and she carries herself with grace and ease.

 

Residence: She resides in an upper story apartment above a flower shop in Canterlot. She doesn’t mind living near the flowers as it makes her dwelling smell sweet and fresh all the time.

 

Occupation: Touch Stone’s main love and focus in her life revolves around working with fine gems and making jewelry. As her name suggests this unicorn is quite gifted in being able to recognize various types of gems and minerals. She is also keen on being able to assign the worth of these precious materials.

She currently works as an apprentice at a well off jeweler’s shop in Canterlot. Though she has a knack for knowing precious gems, she is still learning the fine art of making beautiful jewelry out of them. She hopes to one day run her very own jewelry shop. She dreams of ponies coming from far and wide to buy her fine hoof made jewelry.

 

History: Touch Stone was born and raised in the foothills to the east of Canterlot. Her father Iron Might, is a miner who often travels from their home into the far hills near Solstice Heights to work the mines. Though it is hard work, he very much enjoys it. Touch Stone’s mother, Paisley, is mainly focused on her trade of knitting and sewing fine fabrics to be sold in the city.

 

Touch Stone was raised to be quite ambitious, learning to use her hooves in areas where she is gifted. Even from her young days Touch Stone would beg her father to take her to see the mines. She did not get her wish for quite a long time as the mines are a dangerous place for a young filly. However, she was eventually invited to accompany her father on one of his shorter trips.

 

It was during this trip that Touch Stone got her first real look at precious gems. The mine her father was about to work in had already turned up quite a few gems. Her eyes glimmered as she looked over the multi-colored stones. She asked the miners, including her father, which gems were what and was amazed with their answers! All the minerals and stones had such lovely names. She wanted to know more about them away! When she returned home she told her mother she was anxious to learn the names of all the wonderful stones!

 

Her mother took her to the Canterlot library and helped her find some books on gems. For the next few weeks the young unicorn poured over the books, learning the names of precious gems. Amethyst, tourmaline, diamond, turquoise, and too many others to list. She was sad to take the books back to the library, but it had to be done.

 

On the return trip to Canterlot, Touch Stone looked in the window of a local jeweler and was able to readily identify the gems set into the fine craftsponyship. The store owner heard her and being a kind soul, offered to take Touch Stone on as an apprentice. Her parents thought this was an excellent idea and soon made plans for their daughter to work as a young apprentice.

 

By her second week in the shop, Touch Stone knew she had found what she loved! She was gifted with her new found abilities. Though she needed practice, she had the raw talents needed to cut gems and set them into jewelry!

 

Cutie Mark: The process leading up to receiving her cutie mark filled Touch Stone with great joy. She had recently learned all the steps taken to prepare a gem for being set into jewelry. It made her feel so proud to be able to weigh out the value of the gem she was working with. It was a rather large amethyst crystal that had been found in a mine not far from her family's home. Every step in making the deep purple stone ready for setting was interesting for Touch Stone, but she most enjoyed the precision she was able to use in cutting the gem into the right shape. When she placed it down for the master jeweler's final appraisal, she felt her flanks start to tingle! To her great pleasure her cutie mark had appeared! A silver grey touch stone with the scatches of various metals and gems etched into the top.  She had found her true calling in life! She was destined to work with gems, both cutting them and determining their worth.

 

Character Summary: Touch Stone’s main talents are still being discovered but they lay in the area of designing fine jewelry and working with precious stones. When she is at work she maintains a quiet demeanor so that she can focus. Outside of work she is bubbly and very much enjoys laughing with her friends. Her talents of course also include some sort of magical skills as she is a unicorn. Touch Stone’s magical abilities lie mostly in being able to make things move around. She can pick objects up, set them down, and slide them around. Basic telekinesis magic techniques are commonly used to help her in her line of work. A more unique magic trait she has developed is to make the inside of various gems glow. This helps her to be able to determine their type and quality without cutting into them.

 

She is motivated by her drive to become the best jeweler she can possibly be! She feels like it is her duty to do the best by the gems she works with that she can! Secretly she dreams of designing a crown fit for an Equestrian princess to wear. Touch Stone hopes to some day open her own jewelry shop in Canterlot.

 

Touch Stone loves to spend time at the jeweler’s shop seating at her assaying table. From here she weighs out the gems she will be working with. Nothing makes her feel better than to be able to see the worth of a gem in its raw form. She also loves to go visit her parents in their home at the edge of Canterlot. When she is there she will sit with her mother for a while and then accompany her father to nearby mines that might have precious gems.

Her hobbies include flying kites, walking outside, and making special presents for her friends and family. These presents vary from jewelry for special occasions to cards decorated with the dust ground off from shaping gems in the shop.

 

Touch Stone has a hard time concentrating on more than one thing at a time. She can have single tracked mind about various issues and takes much persuading to see anything outside of her own view points. She is working on this though and takes the constructive help of her friends in seeing other views than her own. She can also retreat into herself if left alone to concentrate at the shop for too long. This results in her being fairly quiet until somepony brings her out of her shell again. She is also meticulous about details, so having things unorganized or not structured right is hard for her.

She can be fearful of not living up to other pony’s expectations. At the moment, in her current position as an apprentice, she does worry that the head jeweler at the shop she works at will not be happy with her work. She dearly wants to learn all she can so that she can open her own shop.

 

Touch Stone is an interesting pony to know. She has lots of information from various lines of work including mining, fabric design, assaying, and of course jewelry making. She is welcoming to other ponies and does not have much troubling making friends.

[Elderflower]

Hey there FireFoxx! I'm the helpstaffer who's going to be lending you a hoof with your app. I have to say, I like what I see already! You've clearly given loving care and attention to this character, and she's just about ready for me to hand her up for SRP inspection. I only have a few minor suggestions for you before I do just that.

I'll start off with very minor housekeeping issues: it's in your best interest to follow Rarity's Application Form. It's designed this way to make the application process easier for us staffers by keeping things organized, so it's always good to stick to the format! This simply means rearranging what you already have written and then seeding the details about your character's magical talents elsewhere in the application as opposed to adding a new section for it.

I feel like your cutie mark story is a little bare bones. You've put great effort into your history and character summary, and I feel like you should give that same attention to the cutie mark section of the app. Since getting a cutie mark is important for ponies, it would help round out your app by describing how your character felt working with gems and getting her cutie mark and what her mark means to her on a personal/emotional level!

The last thing I would like to mention is how Touch Stone couldn't learn about identifying gems from her father or his fellow miners. This feels a bit unrealistic to me. Miners work very closely with the product that they pull from the earth, and as someone who's worked in a mine herself it just doesn't make sense to me that they wouldn't know how to identify gems at all.

Just brush up these small details and I'll have no qualms sending Touch Stone's app up the chain of command. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them! It's what I'm here for.

[RainbowFoxxy]

Hi Elderflower! Thanks so much for your help! I appreciate your time in looking this app over. I've made the changes you have suggested Please let me know what you think.

[Elderflower]

No problem, that's what I'm here for!

There's just one final thing now that you've updated your cutie mark story. You added a section that isn't fully clear in its relevance to your cutie mark story:

Her mark expands beyond just working with gems. Touch Stone has a knack for knowing how ponies are thinking. She sees the worth of others and very much likes to be there to help others out and to make others feel wanted and valued!

How does this relate to the mark that Touch Stone earned? You should explain that, because at the moment it feels tacked on. Once you do this I'll pass you up to SRPH.

Just some additional advice for your next app and when you roleplay in the WoE boards: there are still some flaws in your grammar and wording that you can take this opportunity to brush up on. And while your cutie mark story rounds out your character enough for me to approve your app at this level, just adding that second paragraph feels a little unnatural as you are repeating things unnecessarily. You could easily merge the two paragraphs so that instead of saying what happened in one paragraph and then telling us how she felt in another, you could tell us how she felt as things were happening. Good roleplay is structured with good vocabulary and grammar and letting fellow players know how your character feels and acts as things happen within the thread. Always proofread before you post!

[RainbowFoxxy]

Ok, made another cutie mark story edit. Thanks again for your help.

I RP on various sites but this is my first experience with pony role playing. I mostly RP anthro characters on Redwall based sites. I think that might be partially why my posts seem a little choppy thus far. I am working on this and I do hope to see improvement in my writing once I get a good handle on RP styles on this site. I'm thinking a little more proof reading and some more practice will do the trick!

[Elderflower]

Okay, with edits made to your cutie mark story I feel ready to pass this up now. I think, though, that in the next character app you should lend a little more care to this area of the form.

I would also like to take this chance to remind you to always carefully proof-read your applications and posts alike for any errors in grammar, spelling, or wording. As your app stands, it certainly shows us that your character is ready for World of Equestria, however roleplay is a team sport and it makes things much easier for those you play with when you edit to reduce as many technical errors as you can. It's a good thing to always be conscious of when you roleplay!

Good luck with the next step! Thanks for your cooperation.

[RainbowFoxxy]

Thanks so much for helping me get this ready. I sent you a PM for details.

[Bellosh]

In the future, you ought to keep the cutie mark story and descriptions in different paragraphs, so users can more quickly figure out your OC's cutie mark. Anywho, have fun with this character!