unicorn Licorice Whip [ready]

[Windwright]

Name: Licorice Whip
Sex: Male
Age: stallion
Species: Unicorn
Eye Colour: Teal
Coat: Dark Blue, with a light blue muzzle
Mane/Tail: light blue mane with lapis stripes, and a dark blue tail
Physique: Average build, a little on the short side
Residence: Mostly Canterlot (see special talent)
Occupation: Guard
Cutie mark: Generally covered up by either a cloak or armour, but it's a magnifying glass made of licorice.

Early on in his school career, Licorice was playing this game with his friends when he heard the sounds of a kitten in some distress. After determining that it had fallen into the sewers, Licorice tried to reach the kitten through conventional means, but couldn't fit through the openings to reach it, and since he had never seen the sewer or the kitten, didn't trust himself to pop there just yet. Rather than panic, or find an adult, the colt closed his eyes and thought hard. He knew this kitten was small, and in a dark place. He knew it was a cramped space, and that it was a little bit wet and a little bit cold, and that the kitten would be in trouble if he didn't rescue it soon. So he did something brave. He Stepped based on the contextual clues and hoped. It took him four tries, the first had him in somepony's basement closet with their full grown cat, who was not happy at having her nap interrupted; the second found him in a sewer, but with no pets; the third dropped him into a well with a lost puppy; and the fourth brought him to the kitten he'd found originally. He saw him illuminated briefly in a flash of light as his own cutie mark materialized for his deductive efforts.  He Stepped back up to the surface with kitten and puppy in tow and after relinquishing the poor pets to a veterinarian and getting a good look at his flank, Licorice wandered the streets to decide what to do.
Unique Traits:

Licorice has a light blue patch at the end of his muzzle and some slight mottling on his inner flanks. His signature spell is a form of teleportation called Stepping whereby he can, by focusing on a location or person, move through nothing to reach them. This takes time, depending on the strength of the image that he's got in his head and the metaphysical nearness his current location is to his destination. If the Step fails, he'll instead be shunted to the closest conceptual match to his intended destination, regardless of geographic distance. This spell relies primarily on visual cues, but can be strengthened by auditory or olfactory information. Early on, it was rare for him to reach his intended destination on the first go, but as time went by he grew more adept. Now he's more likely to end up at his intended destination, especially if he know is well, though mistakes still happen. As a result of this method of transit at his disposal, he's remarkably unflappable in most circumstances, though he has been known to interrupt things that his intended destination would rather he not know about. Officially he lives in the barracks of the Solar Guard, but it is not unheard of for him to spend evening out in exotic locations, intentionally or otherwise. 
 

Poison Joke Reaction: Any time he tries to cast any spell, he gets teleported to a random, embarrassing location
 

History:

Born in Phillydelphia to two confectioners, Licorice knew he had a talent for finding ponies from a very young age. Even before he learned his signature spell that allowed him to literally pop right in next to others, he had a knack for ferreting out where others were based on contextual cues and knowledge of the ponies or dragons in question. In fact, he is to this day the reigning Chestnut Hill hide-and-seek champion, since he tries to go back twice a month to 'defend his title' as a sort of youth outreach program.
When he rediscovered his spell in his first year of magic kindergarten, the nature of the neighborhood game shifted from everypony trying to find each other to trying to find ever more creative ways of hiding from Licorice, resulting in some of the more embarrassing fashion and mane-styling trends to crop up in that area. However it was mostly in good fun.
Licorice was the first to find his cutie mark in his class, having had it almost five moons before the next classmate to get it, and nearly a dozen before most had theirs. Rather than cop to it, though, he developed a penchant for coats and cloaks around this time that he carried into adulthood, being somewhat embarrassed to have a cutie mark so early, and later for having one made of a candy he didn't actually like, even though his father made it.
Given his proclivities for locating and helping ponies in need, most of the Phillydelphia residents expected Licorice to go into the police department, and his courses during high school leaned strongly that way as well, though Licorice himself was characteristically tight-muzzled about it. He even joined the Academy, so it came as quite a shock to most when he was granted an entrance exam for the Royal Guards with an outpost in the city, one for which he'd apparently applied numerous times.
He was rejected, but that didn't stop him from continuing to apply and routinely show up for the examinations, losing each heat to somepony with a longer service record. Then one day, something happened. The proctor for the exams postponed them one day, because he'd had a family emergency that turned out to be a missing foal. Licorice found a few pictures of her on the proctor's desk, asked a couple of questions, and then did something the examiners hadn't seen him do before. He vanished in a puff of black smoke.
A few minutes later, he reappeared with the missing foal riding safely on his back, a bit rough from her ordeal and babbling about something she'd seen while they were teleporting, but otherwise safe.
A letter of commendation was written and passed up the chain of command, and finally Licorice Whip was accepted as a Royal guard, for both his willingness to serve and for his apparent unflappability in the face of the bizarre. These same traits allowed him to, in the fullness of time, move up to a post in Canterlot itself, generally guarding low-ranking diplomatic offices, retainers' quarters, or functionaries.

Character Personality:

As a very young foal Licorice was boisterous and outgoing, but when he Steps he sees strange and confusing things, and had trouble anchoring the experiences in his day to day life. Rather than letting these experiences break him, he developed a stoic unflappability that has served him well in adulthood. He's calm and reserved, thinking twice before saying anything, and double checking himself before he says that. He often comes off as distant until he speaks his mind, revealing his analytical nature. He's not emotionless by any means, and is deeply empathetic to those around him, he just refrains from either hasty judgement or comment. Once he opens up, he isn't afraid to show his playful side or his sharp mind, and the foals of his hometown know well his reputation for accepting and sometimes perpetrating pranks that are nearly local legends in and of themselves. On the other hoof, it's widely acknowledged that Licorice has no sort of luck, no sense of timing, and that he tends to show up at the worst possible moment for him to logically do so unless the situation is dire. This includes him having materialized, among other places, on top of a teacher's desk while she was grading his mid-terms, inside several prison cells, directly above a swimming pool while in full parade armor, directly below a waterwheel, into the gap between a bolt of lightning and a roof, onto his mother's hospital bed (which she thankfully wasn't in at the time), under a police chief's desk, behind Celestia's throne while she was holding court, and into no fewer than seven batches of his father's licorice while they were drying.
Character Summary:

Unflappable and collected, clean cut and professional, Licorice is the very image of a sentinel mixed with a hard-boiled detective. His soft side isn't hard to see if you look, but if you aren't careful he'll pop right into your good graces with a gentle smile and a kind word or a prank of such magnitude and scale as to be nearly as much a source of gossip as his near legendary lack of luck.

[RainbowFoxxy]

Hi there Sorry for the delay in reviewing this one...

Anyway, this looks great other than this one issue:

"This spell relies primarily on visual cues, and generally carries him through part of Discord's demesne."

Teleporting is fine as long as it's his one focused method of using magic. However, using Discord's realm as the Between will not work. It isn't necessary that it is Discord's realm that he travels through. It is encroaching onto any player of Discord to have another character able to enter this realm.

Please do an update on this detail and then I'm good with passing it for a second review. Let me know here when you've had a chance to update.

[Windwright]

The episode we're introduced to Discord's domain we see a normal mail pony in it. I actually usually just route him through a generic Void Between filled with generic horrors though, so I can modify that when I get back home. 

[RainbowFoxxy]

Ok, once you modify just let me know

[Windwright]

Modified

[RainbowFoxxy]

I'm good with this  sending it up for second review!

[Blueblood]

After reading through this... I'm still not sure why or how Licorice got the cutie mark that he did.  The teleportation character concept is alright, but the cutie mark design doesn't quite seem to match.

[Windwright]

The licorice part is a combination of his name and his family being candy makers. His dad in particular makes licorice. The shape comes from a 'hide and seek'/'investigator' sort of tack. Licorice eventually joined the Guard, but his specialty is finding ponies and being at hoof when needed, since it's hard to lose somepony you can get near without too much trouble after having met them once or twice. The idea is that his Stepping is an ace in the hole if the dignitary he's guarding goes missing, but his stoic demeanor means he's also not bad at just being a guard.

[Blueblood]

Right.  I would like you to spell out that parallel a little better in his cutie mark story; giving the paragraph it's own section would help in that regard.

[Windwright]

Added a full paragraph describing the event.

[Blueblood]

I'd like that paragraph to be moved under the "Cutie Mark" section; it makes it a little easier to find, and that's standard for how apps are usually organized.  Once you do that, I think we'll be good!

[Windwright]

And done

[Bellosh]

After conferring with my other colleagues, we've agreed that you should scrap all mentions of the Between or any other sort of pocket dimension accessible via teleport magic. We are not comfortable with the idea of an OC who uses a special snowflakey method of teleportation that isn't true to such spells depicted on the show. If we permitted this unorthodox teleport method in WoE, that would open the door for other players to attempt to sneak in other bizarre teleportation methods that deviate from show canon.

Let us know if you need assistance in making adjustments to this OC. ^_^

[Windwright]

I've been working on this in my head for the last few days, and I'm honestly having a lot of trouble figuring out how to do that. The stuff he sees on the way to his destinations is a large part of what makes him unflappable and stoic, which is a major part of his personality.

I can appreciate the need to stick to canon, but I don't know how I can make Licorice work without his teleportation moving him through somewhere with weird happenings.

[Bellosh]

Hmmmmmm, perhaps Licorice Whip would be a bitter fit for FFA then. As a worldbuilding concept, the Between is something that will never jive well with WoE's universe anyway.

[RainbowFoxxy]

What would you like to do with this app?

Please respond here within five days as to the direction of this app. If no post is made within the time limit it will be moved.

[Windwright]

I edited the application. Can someone take another look?

[RainbowFoxxy]

Took another look for you.

Our lore doesn't allow for characters to be able to teleport for long distances as you have in the app. The only teleporting we allow is short range like moving quickly from one side of a pony to another.

Another edit will be necessary to make this character ready for WoE play.

[Bellosh]

Hmmmm.......upon having the chance to think things over, I'm going to overrule RainbowPony and take it from here (thanks for all your hard word Rainbow ^_^ ):

I'll be fine with something to the effect that says Licorice sees weird blurry things or whatever every time he teleports, just as long as you don't outright claim in the app that he can go through other dimensions. Verifying the true nature of your OC's teleportation visions is something I'll let you leave for actual RP. Make that edit, and I shall stamp this app.

[Windwright]

Made the requested edits and clarified (a bit) just how frequently he fails to get to his intended destination in one go. Thanks for being willing to reconsider on this. I went over it with a fine-toothed comb but I may've missed something still.

[Bellosh]

It's been a long journey, but here we are!