Rowen Marcella Oswald

the basics

full name ♦ Rowen Marcella Oswald
nicknames ♦ Ro', Row
age ♦ thirty-two
birthday ♦ July 3, 1986
occupation ♦ music teacher (specializes in voice and piano)
school ♦ Primrose
species ♦ human
ability/power ♦ Regenerative Healing
how the ability works ♦ Rowen possesses an accelerated healing factor, which means her cells are dividing at an accelerated rate. She can heal many wounds in a matter of hours, really bad ones in a matter of days, and it takes a lot for an injury to mark her permanently. Her cells divide quick enough that she can maintain a youthful appearance and will remain young in body for quite a while. This is definitely a curse more than anything else, and she generally prefers not to think about it.

For particularly nasty breaks, her bones have to be set to heal properly. Improper alignment can mean the bone heals wrong and must be broken again to set correctly. Even considering her above average pain tolerance, this can be an excruciating process. Anything that cuts off the blood supply to her brain will kill her, and though she has a good immune system, she is still susceptible to catching diseases, though she will recover faster. If damage comes too fast and too hard, she will be unable to heal in time.
gender ♦ woman, she/her
sexuality ♦ bisexual

the appearance

face claim ♦ Amelia Warner
height and weight ♦ 5’7” and 135 lbs
identifying features ♦ she has sad eyes
overall appearance ♦ Rowen feels every bit her age, but even with her dark circles and crow’s feet, she looks a bit younger than she probably should. Most of the time this is overshadowed by the sort of strange melancholy she holds in her face, even though her smiles. She mostly wears comfortable clothing and flats, remaining a little nondescript even in a place like Primrose. She already stands slightly taller than the average woman at five foot seven, but her shoulders sag slightly, giving her a diminutive appearance. Despite her trim body, everything else about her seems a little soft, from her eyes, her clothing, her manner.

the personality

likes ♦ children, baking, being out in the kitchen garden, playing piano and singing, places where people are having fun, the rain,
dislikes ♦ intense change, people who are rude to kids for no reason, people who yell for no reason, most rich, entitled parents
strengths ♦ good at hiding the worst of her emotions, durable, great with kids,
weaknesses ♦ passive, can become easily attached in one-way relationships,
dreams ♦ to find herself again, to finally find some peace some day and a purpose.  More realistically? to be a grounding presence for the kids at Primrose
fears ♦ being alone in the world, outliving her family
overall personality ♦ Rowen lives almost exclusively for her job and working with the students. She had never been a particularly incandescent, gregarious person, but time has worn her down to little more than a nub. The most sunshine she gets is when her students light up in her class, having discovered a new talent or finally conquered a new song. Those are the moments she feels dangerously close to alive, and her students definitely get the best sides of her. She often turns to aimless baking when she feels down enough, so her classes and get colleagues get plenty of plates of cookies and cupcakes, served with a smile.


But it’s always there - just behind her eyes, just on the edge of her smile. Everything she plays on the piano when she has personal time sounds like it’s in a minor key, no matter the intention. She’s always melancholy, a little lost, a little listless. It’s as though she has been autopilot her entire life, and no one has had the courtesy to turn her off. Even in the midst of moments she steals from bliss, it’s there, that sense that she has served out her purpose and now lacks any. This makes her incredibly passive when it comes to dealing with other adults, as though she does not care how they treat her. She’s durable, she knows, and perhaps, she feels, that is her greater purpose - to absorb all the bad, all the negative impact before anyone else has to.


At best, other adults read her as a bleeding heart, someone who is little more than a mass of raw nerves and mush. At worst, they read her as a target, which is less true. She keeps people at a distance for this reason. She lets them open up to her, but she has so much baggage herself. She never attempts to unpack it and has not really had a substantial anything since the death of her son. Others may come to her, but Rowen puts up the front of “smiling face, sad eyes” and lets nature take its course.


The only active things Rowen engages in are her extracurriculars. Picking up where scientists had left her, she continues their experiments and her own risky behaviors. Breaking bones, her body bouncing back, limits, she tests them all when no one is watching. She pretty much knows her boundaries, but the physical experiments give her something to do, give structure to the time not spent in class. They help pass the time, if nothing else.

the history

father ♦ Ian Beaumont Oswald II, 60, old money, owns ski resort
mother ♦ Marissa Clara Oswald, 58, old money, co-owns ski resort
siblings ♦ Nerys Rooney Oswald , 34, Sister, Primrose Headmistress
______ ______ Oswald, 30, Brother,
important people ♦ Ethan Garret Haynes, deceased at 19, fiance
James Trevor Haynes, deceased at 2, son
hometown ♦ Aspen Springs, Colorado
overall history ♦   [Trigger warning for this section: child neglect, death, death of a child]

Rowen was second-born to Ian and Marissa Oswald, and as they already had a girl, she was little more than spare change. She did not understand this concept young in her life, but the details of it become startlingly clear as she and Nerys grew. Even as they shuffled from house to house, luxury to luxury, Rowen was the one struggling to catch up. Nerys may have been only two years older, but the shadow she cast was long enough to dwarf Rowen for a long time. Nerys was introduced as “Nerys,” and Rowen “Nerys’s little sister.”

Rowen absolutely adored her sister. Nerys was fierce, relentless, everything Rowen felt she could never be. When their little brother was born, their parents’ love split further, and Rowen found herself with only the weakest of grasps. She fell through the cracks, and their love slipped through her fingers when she arguably needed it most. Nannies abounded, but their care could not fill the hole Rowen felt acutely. She received just enough parental attention to be relatively well-adjusted, but she didn’t receive a drop more. Most of the love and attention she did receive came from Nerys, for which Rowen is still incredibly grateful.

The day Rowen broke her arm was terrifying. The fact that it was her first major injury was vastly overshadowed by the time it took her to heal, which was really no time at all. She had known about her parents’ powers since she was old enough to understand; her own had seemed like a far-off horizon. Nerys’s would have come first; she should have come first. The terminally shy Rowen was no match for the attention that came to her after the development of her powers. She had never had much control over her life, but that day proved just how little she could steer her own life. Though she was terrified of the power and of what Nerys would feel because of their development, she could not refuse the invitation to Primrose. She signed a bit of her life away that day and has arguably never recovered since.

After the development of her powers, her mother and father paid her a bit more attention, but it was always in a precursory way. They wanted to know her limits and her secrets, and their methods frightened the young Rowen. She often accompanied them to places that poked and prodded her, measuring her and her special power. When Nerys received her powers at thirteen, Rowen thought it would be the break she had always wished for, but Nerys was promised to Primrose without so much as a single blood test. Defeated, Rowen accepted her fate as a guinea pig.

When it came time to attend Primrose, Rowen was grateful. Finally, she thought, somewhere she could be left alone. She was happy down there for approximately one week before she was hauled into a sterile setting once more. She realized too late she had traded one gilded cage for another, and by the time she had come to Primrose, Nerys was a rising star who had no time for her. Rowen all but gave up, going back and forth from testing to school, the luxury of Primrose all but lost on her.

Nerys graduated when Rowen was 16, and even though they had not been close at Primrose, Rowen found she had another hole in her life. At this point, she started staying more at the hospital, and the tests got more physical. Rowen had always been a bit of a sissy when it came to pain, but as her limits were stretched, bones broken multiple times, enduring wounds, gashes, cuts, she found her tolerance growing. She became comfortably numb until she met Ethan Haynes, ostensibly a boy visiting his sick father. He was the first boy, or really any person, who showed a genuine interest in Rowen. Unsure how else to translate it, Rowen felt it must be love.

Ethan talked Rowen into a lot of things before she was ready, and shortly after her seventeenth birthday, she found herself pregnant. Ethan told her that he would always be there, and she believed him: hook, line, and sinker. With her parents seething at the absolute embarrassment, she finished her last year at Primrose pregnant, which only seemed to excite her medical team. Shortly before she graduated, nearly ready to pop, they took her in full-time. She completed her work and earned the high marks she had always earned and waited for Ethan to be at her side as she gave birth. The normally dreary hospital was almost exciting as she prepared to build her own family.

He came one day in the late third trimester, and she confessed her secret to him, breaking her fingers before him. When they healed before his eyes, she expected Ethan to run, to fear her, but he didn’t. He loved her all the more, and blinded by that, she was on cloud nine in the days leading up to the birth. Ethan, however, was never destined to make it to the birth.

Shortly before her son’s birth, news came to her that Ethan, having a history of suicidal ideations, had jumped from a local bridge into the lake, where they had to fish him out. Blinded by grief and rage, Rowen never believed the story. They had done something to him, she told herself. The birth of James was a solemn affair to follow, but the instant and ever-lasting love of a child filled the entire void Rowen had been nursing her entire life. The whole Ethan left would always be there, but their son was a balm to her soul. Still, now that she was a young mother and responsible for a child, the hospital saw less reason to keep her, especially since the experiments with her blood were not conducive to curing cancer or anything else.

Without familial support but finally free of the hospital, Rowen was turned out with James. The two had no assistance and fell on hard times. Despite Rowen’s world-class education and natural smarts, most places weren’t looking for a heavily damaged teenaged mother. Rowen and James just sort of bounced around from place to place, crashing with strangers at times. Still, as long as Rowen had her baby, the world seemed brighter than it ever had in her life.

The one thing Rowen never accounted for was her own rotten luck. After her nineteenth birthday, she had a job opportunity and a hardship scholarship locked and loaded in another state, so she loaded her and James in the car and made her way there. Along the way, an eighteen-wheeler never saw her tiny, beat-up car. With her power, Rowen survived, though she was hospitalized for a long time to correct the way her body had quickly healed. The child, however, never stood a chance. She came out of the hospital a few months later, all alone.

Grief fueled Rowen’s next few years. She returned back to Louisiana, took a waitress job, and lived a seemingly quiet, unassuming life for a long time. In her off time, however, Ro was finding her own limits, pushing her pain tolerance, and engaging in generally risky behavior to at least give herself something to do. It wasn’t until she was nearly 25 that she felt like even trying to do something with her life. She went to college, and once more having a goal, she started to come out of her long withdrawal from the world. She decided she wanted to teach and be around to help children like herself. She received her teaching certification in music, something she had always enjoyed, and put out a pity line to Nerys, who was once more enmeshed in Primrose. Using connections, Rowen was able to find a place among the faculty at Primrose at age 29, returning to the only place that offered her a bit of freedom in her life.

She has been at Primrose for the past three years, using music as a form of therapy for herself. She sees her son in the face of every child, no matter their level of entitlement or power, and though she remains nearly permanently depressed, she tries to put her best face on for the students. With the difference in her and her sister, people rarely connect the two as related.

the role player

alias ♦ bree
age ♦ 23
pronouns ♦ she/her
code ♦ the one in the rules
other characters ♦ if any