Celestina
Celestina Silvermoon
Celestina.jpg
Played By Alyssa Milano
Gender Female
Species Human (Witch)
Birthdate August 10th, 1945
Age 56
Zodiac Sign Leo
Aliases Tina Silverman
Birthplace San Francisco, CA, USA
Residence Los Angeles, CA, USA
Occupation Varies by time
Relatives Father (unnamed)
Mother (unnamed)
Boyfriend (Current) None, sadly.
Powers Eternal, Witch
First Appearance

Which witch is which? Celestina Silvermoon has been a lot of things in the last fifty years. Baby boomer, hippie, witch, bonded-to-the-moon-through-the-power-of-Hecate, Champion and advisor to Champions of the Powers That Be, and depraved and foul occasional contractee of Wolfram and Hart. Sound confusing? Try living it.

History

Celestina Silvermoon (birth name: Christina Silverman) is a prime example of why you should never, ever do magic that you haven't researched fully…it has this nasty, nasty habit of coming back to bite you in the butt.

Tina's story begins at her birth…which happened to be back in 1945. Unsurprisingly, she was a baby-boomer child; her father had served in World War II, while her mother was a stay-at-home housewife. As with a LOT of children at that point in time, Tina was born almost nine months to the day after her father returned to the States.

This, in turn, made her a child of the sixties. She was born and raised in California (San Francisco to be exact), and she got very much caught up in the spirit of the day. Yes, she was a hippie (shh, don't tell anyone!) It was then that she changed her name, and started going by the more hippie/new-age moniker of "Celestina Silvermoon". (This is purely an affectation; her name on all legal documents remains Christina Silverman…it was never legally changed.)

One interesting thing about growing up during the Age of Aquarius is that magic was a good deal more in the mainstream. Oh, to be sure there was a lot of scams, misdirection and flimflammery, but there was some real information and real practitioners out there too. And it turned out, when Tina bumped into some of them, that they picked up on her quickly…Celestina was a natural Witch, and a surprisingly powerful one, too. (Sort of the Willow Rosenberg of her day, as it were.)

Tina took up with a coven, and started learning the ways of magic, and for more than a decade, well into the 70's, she studied her craft, learning a wide array of magics, though transformation magic was where she truly shined; alterations of body and mind. As with many practitioners of the magical arts, she found a natural pressure to choose a side, and allied herself with the forces of good. During the late 60's and early 70's, she was responsible for stopping a number of demonic problems, and it was during this time that she relocated to L.A., which seemed to be at the root of a lot of the nastiness.

The thing was, she was getting older. Not old yet, certainly, but she'd passed 30, and though she looked young for her age, she could see the little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the bit of droop here and there…just the earliest hints of time doing its thing. This, for some reason, terrified her…the concept of her own death was enough to hit her with panic attacks, screaming and frightened.

So, she decided that since she was supposedly this badass witch, she was just going to find an alternative. She started researching, and started having to traffic with some dubious entities…immortality spells weren't exactly white magic. Finally, she came across a ritual that would supposedly make its caster "as eternal as the moon", binding their soul to the moon through its reflection in water, involving invocations to the goddess Hecate, tied to both moon and magic.

She worked the ritual, and it succeeded…just not in the way she expected. The spell separated her soul from her, binding it within the metaphysical realities of the moon. It did, indeed, make her immortal…from that day forward, she aged not a day. More, it even made her eternal. If something happened to cause her demise, she was reborn to life, unchanged, at the height of the next full moon.

The problem was that she was now linked to the moon, and to the reflection of her soul through it. When the moon was at it's halfway state, she was herself, as she had always been. But as it ascended to fullness, she found herself more and more driven to purity and goodness, becoming an almost saccharine-sweet Pollyanna-esque parody of herself by the full moon's light. And worse, when the moon began to wane into darkness, she found herself becoming more manipulative and evil, until at the dark of the moon she was capable of atrocities as foul as any demon, vampire, or other soulless beast.

That was thirty years ago. She's looked into a means of breaking the spell, but it was meant to be eternal, and that's not a word you use lightly in magic. The only ways she can figure to get out of it would involve her death, and that's something that still terrifies her; not an option. So, she finds herself a player for both sides, a cyclical agent who might as well be a multiple-personality, everything from purest and noblest good to foulest and darkest evil. She's worked with and aided the agents of the Powers That Be…and she's also worked with and aided Wolfram and Hart.

It all depends on that time of the month.

Personality

Half Moon

Basically, during the half moon, Tina is herself. This is to say that she's an ordinary person, who happens to be much older than she looks, and is experienced in matters supernatural. She's friendly, though she tends to keep a healthy distance from most people, mainly because she knows what happens to her in the New Moon. Still, she generally does what's right, is willing to thwart evil, and is a pretty average sort of person (if with some New Age/Hippie trappings).

Gibbous Moon

During the Gibbous Moon, Tina becomes markedly more extroverted. She's somewhat "larger than life" here. She enjoys being the center of attention, and she's very sociable, animated and energetic. She's far more of a Champion for good at this time, and honestly, this is when she does the most good…she's still enough herself that she can temper energy and goodness with her normal self. This is very much her "crusading Champion" state.

Full Moon

The Full Moon is in many ways as much a curse as the New Moon. During the Full Moon, Tina's at her most "good", but it's that sort of bombastic, intolerant good that tends to alienate people. Others are chastized for their lack of virtue and actions, whether real or imagined, and no matter how much someone has done or how good they are, it seems Tina can always find something to find fault with. This is the sort of "close-minded" good that people associate with the Religious Right, and really, she's more of a caricature here than a fully-realized person. Drink your milk, pray to God (or Goddess), live a virtuous life, and never, ever, accept anything less than perfection.

Crescent Moon

Basically, the Crescent Moon is sort of an apathetic bitch. Personality-wise, the closest analog would be Faith during most of the time we see her; more than willing to do violence if pissed off, and not particularly nice, full of cutting wit and snide remarks. At the same time, though, the Crescent Moon doesn't really have the ambition to go out and work serious nasty. This is where most of her mischevious magic and/or curses happen…when she's easy enough to piss off, but not evil enough to just outright kill someone.

New Moon

New Moon is just as polarized and caricaturish as Full Moon, but in the opposite direction. In this mode, she's basically as wicked and soulless as they come, and is not only willing to do evil, but actively seeks it out and revels in it. She's the sort of person who would enjoy hanging out with Darla and Angelus in this time of month, and she's just as capable as the same kind of atrocities. Needless to say, Wolfram and Hart knows that if they want to get in touch with her, this is the time of the month to do it.

Abilities

Eternal

Tina is eternal. She doesn't age, and while she can be killed by any method known to kill humans, she will return to life, in pristine and unchanged condition, at the light of the next full moon. The magic is even capable of recreating her body if it has been utterly destroyed. The one exception to this, the loophole in the spell, is that she can be killed normally during a lunar eclipse, when the moon is blind to the Earth, mystically speaking. Tina is aware of this loophole, but killing herself to get out of the spell is unacceptable to her. Also, keep in mind that this in no way makes her more resiliant than a normal human. She can be beaten to death, stabbed, shot, have her neck broken, whatever…and then she's dead for anywhere up to several weeks. Sure, it stops her from being permanently killed…but not so useful in the day to day vein.

Lack of Reflection

Because the spell cast her soul into the reflection of the moon on water, the only time and place Tina casts a proper reflection is in water, under moonlight. At any other time or place, she lacks a reflection utterly, like a vampire. This, combined with her unaging nature, has caused her to be mistaken for a vampire more than once by rookie hunters.

Telekinesis

Tina has the ability to move things with the power of her mind. While most of the time this is limited to moving odds and ends about her home, she is capable of moving weights up to about 300 lbs., though doing so for a prolonged period of time or repeatedly is likely to cause her killer migraines and ruin her concentration. Why does a spellcaster have telekinesis? Cause this is the Jossverse, and according to Joss, natural Witches (a la Willow and Tara) have telekinesis.

Witchcraft

The biggie; Tina is a natural Witch, and moreover, a powerful one at that. She's also had forty years worth of practice and learning magic. On the other hand, she's also been somewhat overhyped by the people around her, and convinced that she's more powerful than she really is (which is sort of what got her into this mess in the first place). Magically, in general strength, she's similar to Season 4 and early Season 5 Willow…pretty darn scary, but not pulling off Season 6 Darth Rosenberg stuff.

Without going into painfully long expository nature (which would eat up pages and pages and pages of content that really is of dubious necessity on a consent-based game… :) ), suffice it to say that Tina is capable of all the same sorts of mojo we see Willow pull off in the show, circa Season Four. Her specific area of speciality lies in transformation magic; people into rats, people into acting like their teenaged selves, things like that. As with all such magics in the Jossverse, the casting speed and effectiveness work at the Speed Of Plot (TM) and the Effectiveness of Consent, which is to say that if it's good for the story for the magic to happen fast, it can, and if it's bad for the story, it takes a long time. Similarly, whether a given spell works right or not is ultimately up to the targets given the consent-based nature of the game.

Because of this, I haven't detailed in painful minutia every possible application of her magic, since that's not really the way Jossverse-magic works…Jossverse magic is "Plot Device on legs". I'll certainly end up doing certain specifics, but that shouldn't be construed as being all she can do; as with these things in story, it all depends on if it makes a better story for her to be able to do it or not.

Timeline

Relationships

Quotes

Media

Trivia

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