Ceridwyn Banks-Labelle

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Ceridwyn Banks-Labelle (known throughout the story as "Puddy") is a short, pudgy girl with curly red-blond hair. She was Mackenzie's first roommate at Harlowe Hall, sharing room 417^[1]. Mackenzie considered her to be her best friend at school for many chapters, despite the abusive nature of their relationship.

1 Biography
2 Character Speculation
3 References

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and Family

Little is known about Puddy's childhood, though a theory about her character states that she comes from an abusive environment. Her family name is hyphenated, suggesting her parents may have split. The only definite clues to her character before she came to MU come from her allegedly diverse ancestry.

Due to her human-style last names and general appearance, she is probably part-human. She is a cousin of Carrie La Belle, who is believed to be human. One of Puddy's great-great-great-great grandmothers is/was a dwarf, making her 1/64th dwarven (enough to claim dwarven racial bonuses under Imperial law). One of her great-great-grandmothers was a hamadryad, giving her 1/16th nymph blood (again, enough to claim nymphly racial bonuses). She also claims sidhe, giant and dragon ancestry^[1]. The fractions of those races in her heritage is unknown, but since she is remarkably short for a part-giant, and has no outward resemblance to a dragon, they are likely to be small. These outlandish ancestry claims have not been corrobated, though they are lent credence by her incredible strength (the pillow-smothering episode shows she is stronger than at least one half-demon, and her gladitorial performance on Sunday, Calendula 11th^[3] backs this up).

Her alleged dwarven ancestry saw her granted the right to drink from the age of twelve, and she continues to enjoy the privilege of being allowed to drink on campus. Her nymph blood gives her the right to visit the boy's dorms after dark^[2]. It is unknown whether the presence of other races in her ancestry gives her additional rights.

Puddy's three main principles are "Never eat anything you don't want to... never let 'em see you bleed.. and never, ever let anybody take what's yours."^[4] To date, she has followed these three principles very closely.

Puddy seems perpetually unintimidated by whatever situation she finds herself in. She was impressed by Mackenzie's ability to set herself on fire at will^[1], calmly talked Raquel and Hissy out of further attacking Mackenzie after the half-demon bit off Raquel's finger^[5], and argued loudly with Coach Jillian Callahan during the Gladiator tournament^[3]. Her loyalties seemed to be with Mackenzie all through the student election despite her abusive nature. She has almost never compromised with anyone, except with Celia, when the nagakin refused to sit anywhere but at a wall-adjacent table during lunchtime protests^[6]. Puddy viewed it as a lesser of two evils: Either Celia doesn't participate in the protest and, being the "most inhuman" of the participants, the effect Puddy is trying to create is effectively ruined; or, the protest's effect is what Puddy wants it to be, but not as visible due to the location.

[edit] School Life

Puddy was accepted to MU on a variety of racial scholarships and grants. Like her childhood, there is little known about her academic ambition. She claims to want to study whatever she finds interesting, for the sake of learning, instead of using MU as a stepping stone towards a career^[1]. The only confirmed class she has is Apportation and Conjuration^[7], the time, place and teacher of which is currently unknown. It is assumed that Puddy has at least one WP class, but which one and with whom is not known. At the very least, she isn't in Mackenzie's Mixed Melee class.

Puddy is currently in the Gladiator fighting league, in the heavy division. She has enough fighting skill to have received a bye into the second round of her first University-level tournament^[3]. It is not definitively known whether she had any experience in anything of the Gladiatorial sort before she came to MU, but at least, she knows how to fight.

[edit] Personal Life

From the first day, Puddy was and is loudly and proudly lesbian, though as she points out, her nymph heritage forces her to "bounce up and down on a cock" every so often. She was often seen making loud and vulgar advances on other female students in the early chapters of MU^[1]. Almost immediately, she began sleeping with the Sylph, Mariel, both figuratively and literally^[8]. She is only seen in her and Mackenzie's room rarely, and did not sleep there except once, when she came in and passed out^[9]. About a week into the story, she officially moved out of Mackenzie's room and into Mariel's^[10].

Puddy spent a large amount of the first two books trying to seduce Mackenzie, usually resorting to simply molesting her. She seems to have some part of the nymphly divine ability to know what people want, sexually, given her correct assumptions about Mackenzie, but seems incapable of perceiving the difference between wanting something generally and wanting something immediately.^[7]

She immediately supported the claims by Celia and (mistakenly) Mackenzie of racism by setting up a lunchtime protest at the student union and Mackenzie's failed Student Senator bid^[12]. She seems genuinely concerned about the University's "Seperate but Equal" policy.

[edit] Weapons, Armor, and Fighting Style

To comply with the university's weapons policy, Puddy carries a battleaxe^[13]. The requisite enchantments on it are unknown, as the axe has never been described in detail by anyone. It was used in a Gladiatorial bout, but the enchantments were either not used or were not obvious enough to be noticed. Due to the speed and ease with which she is able to swing her axe^[3], it may have a lightening enchantment placed on it. Due to her heritage, it may be Dwarven in origin.

She wears no armor around the University, unlike some of the Skirmish "jocks" in Harlowe Hall. During Gladiatorial matches, she wears gold full-plate that Steff believes is second-hand from the University and has no useful enchantments applied. She also wears a gold helmet with a brush-shaped crest^[3].

Her fighting style seems to consist of misdirection, at least at the onset. Descriptions of her first Gladiatorial match show her "bounding across the ring" in loping strides, "smiling like a cherub, with a few curly wisps of her reddish-blonde hair poking out from under the bill of her helmet ... She looked like she was on top of the world". This allowed her to put her opponent on the defensive even before reaching him, and gave her the opportunity to get the first swing in when she swung at the extreme edge of her range, holding the very tip of the axe in order to get the most distance out of it. Later in the fight, she switched to a more direct, puddy-like approach to what should have been a confusing maneuver by her opponent, using an enchantment to split himself into two copies: She simply hacked both in half with one swing.^[3] This led to a controversy about how she was able to pull off such a feat, but regardless, it showed a tendency to get to the heart of a fight and deal with it as quickly as possible, a fighting style that reflects her personality.

Her second fight was not shown in any detail, but according to Steff, "...it was a lot closer"^[14].

The third fight, against Pala Asgeirsdottir, ended in a loss. Puddy showed a willingness to do whatever it took to win, forsaking her honour in the process. When her normal tactic of "run in and hack at the opponent" failed to be effective, she put her weapon down, a move that prompted the extremely honourable Pala to do the same, and after a few moments of hand-to-hand combat, tried to take Pala's weapon and use it against her. The weapon discharged a huge lightning bolt that threw Puddy from the ring and ended the match^[15].

Her current Gladiatorial record is 2-1 with one bye^[3]^[14]^[15].

[edit] Character Speculation

It has been been suggested that Puddy probably comes from an abusive environment, possibly with her mother being the abusive figure. This passage supports the claim:

Puddy had gone back into full-on Angry Mom Mode, but there was more to it than that. It was like I was looking at her and seeing somebody else looking back at me, somebody strange and alarming who had crawled beneath her skin from the outside... or else up from somewhere deep inside her. I don't mean like she was possessed or something... I've seen that shit, and it's different, trust me.

Strangely, I found myself wondering what Puddy's mom was like... how much of what I was seeing came from her.

"You got that?" she repeated angrily. When I didn't immediately answer, she slapped me again, reminding me that it wasn't Puddy's mom that I had to deal with.

"Why do you have to do things like that?" I asked her, wincing.

"Because in this life, if you're not on the top then you're on the bottom," Puddy said. She stood up. "I like you, Mack... I really do... but when I came here I made up my mind that I'm not going to be on the bottom for anybody." She crossed her arms. "I'd die first."

— Tales of MU, 16: Power Struggle

Puddy's last two sentences suggest that she had come from a place in which she was frequently "on the bottom", and being away from there, she resolved never to put herself into that situation again.

Her physical strength is also a mystery. She claims both giant and dragon blood, but by looking at her, the two races seem to make up an insubstantial part of her heritage. She also claims dwarf, but again, the percentage is small enough not to account for it. There has been speculation that she is a hybrid similar to what Callahan is believed to be, an Ogrelf (half-ogre, half-elf, or near enough) crossed over with a Dworc (half dwarf, half orc, or near enough). Again, though, her physical appearance doesn't seem to account for such a mix. A different theory states that she had super-strength enchantments worked into her helmet, as in the chapter in which her strength is really shown^[3], she is seen to have removed her helmet and threw it across the stadium before she was scanned for illegal enchantments. According to Mackenzie, however, putting a super-strength enchantment on a helmet would be much harder than to do so on a more obviously connected piece of equipment, such as the armor, weapon, or a ring^[16]. It's also possible that it's a potion of superheroism, which Puddy asked Celia about in Chapter 12.

Due to Puddy's request to get Mackenzie out of the arena for her next fight, there is a theory that her weapon's previously unknown enchantment is divine in origin and thus would cause Mackenzie harm. The request has also raised the question of how Puddy knew Mackenzie was in the arena in the first place^[16].