Mandy Dauntless

"It's like they always say: I ain't afraid of no ghost!"

- Mandy, when asked for a catchphrase

Amandine "Mandy" Dauntless is the daughter of the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear. She is part of the staff at Ever After High, more specifically an assistant teacher, helping with Heroics 101 and Hero Training class-ics.

She's a PhD student, and seeks to learn from her experiences at EAH to write her thesis on the supernatural: ghosts, demons, ''mansters and ghouls! ''She's always keen to talk to demonic and dark fairytale characters; knowing all about the things that go bump in the night helps her bump back when she has to.

Born with a medical (or magical?) inability to recognize danger, Mandy follows in her father's fearless footsteps and is a trained paranormal investigator. However, unlike her father, she's shown no desire to understand what 'fear' is, as she thinks she's much better off without it.

She's always accompanied by her pet hellhound, Kirby (short for "Kereberos").

Personality
Mandy's, well, fearless. She's never been afraid of social conventions, people, or ghosts.

She's experienced enough to know not to go back for a cat, or play with mirrors in a dark room, or try on cursed Egyptian gold. A wealth of information about ghosts from her numerous encounters with them, Mandy's your go-to person if you're facing something sinister and supernatural.

However, not being afraid means she's never self-conscious. She can be ignorant and capricious, often telling people when they've talked too much, or interrupting them as they speak. Still, she's quick to realise when someone's in need, and more willing to solve problems in unorthodox ways (e.g. giving a rousing speech to pep someone up instead of comforting them, hugging a werewolf to stop it from attacking, etc.)

It's clear how compassionate she is. Like her father, she always seeks a peaceful solution in every paranormal encounter she makes. Her diplomacy and innate kindness has won her the trust of multiple supernatural entities, and many come around to help when she needs them. One of them, Kirby her hellhound, is always at her side.

Kirby watches out for her, since Mandy has a tendency to seek out dangerous things, and often finds herself in strange and terrifying situations. With little regard for her safety, she's injury-prone and often fights monsters more powerful than herself. Sheer luck, and a watchful demon dog, have kept her in one piece all this time.

She has an inventor's heart - much like her mother, who patented many tools used in ghost hunting. P.K.E Meters, Proton Packs, E.M.P recorders, they've built them all, and Mandy has improved on their designs to be more lightweight with time. She loves tinkering with machinery, but has little patience to explain her inventions or how they work to others.

Her trademark invention is a lens in her glasses. It flips down to see ghosts and looks through fairy glamours - hence her habit of interrupting conversations to follow what appears to be thin air, and wandering away to her next adventure.

Home
The current Boy without Fear lives in a colonial palace off the coast of Macau, once haunted by devils from the infinite inferno. He sent them back from whence they came by beating them with some sick card tricks and some rad righteous bowling moves.

His wife and sons are the public face to his business, which specialises in securing, containing, or destroying supernatural entities. Over the generations they have fought devils, gods, myths and monsters. Every so often, they punch a ghost.

They also have a large, green portal to the "ghost zone" active in their basement. (Where they banish the ghosts.) Mandy's fourteen year old brother may or may not have fallen into it once and came out with white hair.

Fairytale
"Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear" or "The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was" is a Grimms story, considered by some to be one of the earliest postmodern fairytales, it shows a hero stumble his way to victory as opposed to fighting for a happily ever after. It's often mistakenly classified as a hero fairytale, but is a different thing entirely.

How does Mandy come into this?
Mandy's the last descendant of the first Boy without Fear. Her family have been fighting monsters for generations, and all have a unique inability to process fear. They love danger and the thrill of the hunt, and Mandy is no different.

She's been raised to hunt ghosts all her life, and does it as a hobby.

Father
Mandy is a chip of the old block, having a carbon copy of her father's gullible nature, fearlessness and compassion. Eustance and his little girl are very close, and Mandy learnt the ghostbusting trade from him - alongside some other skills like card counting and how to cheat at mahjong.

Eustace may look like a chubby nerd who donates to the RSPCA a little too much, but don't be fooled. He lacks the ability to process fear, but is genuinely concerned for his family, and won't hesitate to protect them. (Who do you think taught Mandy how to stake her first vampire, anyway?)

Mother
Smarter than her husband and better with people, Mandy's mum has good manners and good breeding - allegedly, Muriel Dauntless is traditional Cantonese royalty, or at least that's what she likes to tell people. There hasn't been nobility family in Macau for decades.

Mrs Dauntless is the brains of the operation, making gadgets and patenting them on the side for cash. She also drives one helluva getaway vehicle. (A very useful skill when you're trying to outrun a werewolf!)

Adham
Adham Shadhavar-Behzadi is Mandy's boyfriend, a large intimidating dark unicorn with a taste for exploring the world. Together they've combined his hobby with Mandy's own love for discovering spooky and dangerous places and enjoy jetsetting across the world, Indiana Jones style, to find new treasures.

Adham's oddly tolerant of Mandy's many idiosyncracies - when they first met, Mandy shone a torch down his throat and complemented his uvula. She adores his unicorn form, as it's a perfect cross between a demon horse (a creature she's learnt to fight) and a unicorn (something inherently good and pure). It's quite possible Mandy might learnt to shudder yet, it's obvious she cares for him!

"Kirby"
Short for Kereberos, Kirby is a shapeshifting Hellhound - better known in some parts of the world as a Moddey-Dhoo, a Black Shuck, a Grim, or simply, a Demon Dog. Kirby's default form is a shaggy, bow-legged Irish Wolfhound, with a single floppy ear. However, he's also capable of turning into a large three-headed dog with a fan of snakes for a tail and hellfire burning in his eyes.

You're hard-pressed to find him in 'attack mode', however. In Mandy's own words, Kirby's "a right coward," and needs to be bribed with snacks to do anything remotely scary. He's a voice of reason for Mandy, and often pulls her out of situations that could kill her.

Kirby is trained to stiffen and assume a 'pointer dog' position at supernatural entities, being able to see them because he's one himself. Mandy uses him to hunt and track down ghosts and demons, though she usually has to feed him a "Kirby Snack" to motivate him first.

Kirby speaks in broken english with an accent that puts the letter 'r' in front of most words. ("Ruh-Roh, Randy!") Because of his speech impediment he prefers miming out what he wants to say, usually in fearful babble.

Appearance
Mandy has dark grey-black hair, sharp features, and tanned red skin. She's willowy and tall, accentuated by her preference for pencil skirts. Being myopic, she needs glasses, but the lens of her good eye is replaceable by round lenses that flip into place to see all manner of spooky scary things.

She like outfits that wisp and billow like the sheets of a ghost. Her accessories include chains, and motifs from her story: black cats, skeletons, and coffins. Kirby the hellhound will usually wear collars to match her outfits. {| class="article-table" !Art !Outfits
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Default
Her usual outfit. She's suaully seen with billowy sleeves, a tummy sash, and two hissing cats on her skirt. She accesorises with chains on her necklace and her boots.

Kirby wears a chain link collar.
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Through the Woods
Mandy's invite to the Blue Moon Forest Fest came as a prize in a raffle. She has a capelet with skull clasps and bones along the hem, and bone clasps on her boots. Her handkerchief dress is accentuated with a chain-link belt.

Kirby wears a dog tag shaped like Scooby Doo's.
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Date Night
Mandy wears a smart lapel jacket and an accessory shaped like a sternum-and-ribcage.

Kirby wears a similar accessory for a collar.
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Curriculum
""Amor et Marte; Love and Valor""

- Motto of the Ever After High School of Heroism

Heroics 101 (compulsory in year 1) is a prerequisite class-ic to Hero Training (optional from year 2 onwards). Mandy lectures in both classes on her area of speciality: "Supernatural Foes and How to Fight Them".

Full-time Professor Knight and Professor King Charming control the syllabus, which often includes the following: Mandy prefers to teach theories and not practical heroism - which is just as well, since the last time she was allowed to manage a gym class, she summoned Cthulu for the kids to fight. It did not end well.
 * "Dragon Riding and Slaying"
 * "Professional Damsel-Kissing"
 * "Smithing and Weapon-craft"
 * "Competitive Jousting"
 * "Hand to Hand combat"
 * "Emergency Bomb Defusing" (HINT: it's never the red wire)
 * Bat-themed Vigilantism: "So Your Parents Are Dead?"
 * Swordsmanship
 * Chivalry
 * Byronic Heroism: "Perfecting your Angst"
 * "Frying Pans: Who Knew Right?"

Because of the sheer number of boys in her class (they outnumber the girls five to one), Mandy has a "Swear Jar" for the occasions someone inevitably says something vulgar. ("Talk shit get hit... and when you're fighting a poisonous Manticore, getting hit will REALLY hurt!")

Trivia

 * Mandy's one of Death's many godchildren, largely because God and the Devil and Death asked, and her father figured: "Why the hell not? The one with the skull looks trustworthy enough."
 * Death appears to her as a skeleton with a strong Jamaican accent,  'mon. He's apparently pretty good at limbo dancing.
 * A traditional chant the Dauntless family uses when they fight ghosts? "Yu mo gui gwai faidi zao!"
 * Mandy is ethnically a Cantonese, and her family make their home base in a modified military building that was once a palace
 * As part of her destiny, Mandy owns a pack of cards that are guaranteed to let their owner win every game. Similar decks are a common sight in Macau. Her family allegedly won them in a casual bet against the devil, and have had them for generations.
 * Mandy's flatmates are a pair of skeletons with questionable London accents. They live in her closet.
 * They both fought in the Napoleonic Wars, and one wears sweatpants and the other has a tracksuit. I hear they have quite the Mythstagram following.
 * Mandy's sort of a love letter to early-millennial supernatural cartoons. And, well, Scooby Doo. Ask if you'd like to be friends. :3c