“Just once in her life, she’d like people to actually listen to her attempts to educate them. It’s hard to be twice as smart but half as old as everyone else.”

Age: 10
Occupation: child genius, honorary assistant professor
Likes: learning, books, her dad, rules
Dislikes: eye contact, heights, disregard for rules, most kinds of smells

Father: Professor Jonas Darkstone
Mother: Peregrina Darkstone

Half: Elf

All: Genius
Brain: Not like your brain

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Likely one of the smartest members of the Darkstone clan ever born in Realmgard, Antiqua Darkstone — long for Annie — is the Half-Elf daughter of a professor of archaeology at the University of Porthaven and a dressmaker. Her keen intellect and her strange habits both quickly become apparent even after a short meeting with Annie.

Thanks to her father’s position as a faculty member, Annie has been visiting the University of Porthaven for as long as she can remember, and its library has been her favourite place in the world since she first started reading.

Her parents like to joke that she spends more time in the library than at home.

Annie has read more books in her ten years than some libraries are able to hold, and never seems to forget anything she’s read.

Due to her young age, combined with her personality quirks — her aversion to eye contact, fondness for touching flat surfaces, and insistence that every must be just so (the fork goes on the left) — Annie often has difficulty being taken seriously, despite usually being right. She’s learned to live with it.

And has learned to be magnanimous in victory when she is inevitably proven right.

When not following her various scholarly pursuits, Annie often spends her time assisting in the adventures of her cousins, Kat and Dunstana, avoiding eye contact all the while.