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Ninety-nine bottles of bottles of bottles of bottles of bottles of bottles of bottles of bottles of bottles on the wall
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Welcome to Lemons' fourth year on RPGuild. PRAISE BE!
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In Lem's Stash 1 day ago Forum: Test Forum

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Physical Details
Quinn is a shortish girl, no more than 5'3" in height, with an extremely ordinary build. Despite that, she is extremely recognizable whenever she walks into the room thanks to a few very specific and unusual pieces of her appearance. And first and foremost is her hair. While dark gray streaked with yellow isn't exactly impossible, is is highly unusual. But moreso is the sheer volume of said hair. When tied up in a tight (if large) braid, it ends up going down to her upper thighs. Untied, it goes all the way halfway down her calves. Needless to say, she keeps it braided near permanently to avoid tripping over her own hair. She's reasonably athletic, another piece of her that is fairly average; but that average is applied to the average of a teenage girl, so she's not going to be running a marathon any time soon.

Next are her eyes. Or, well, her eye, singular. Only her left eye is intact, and it is a bright, sharp, violent yellow, wide and expressive, roving around with constant curiosity. By contrast, the other side of her face displays a black eyepatch, dyed here and there with goldenrod yellow. Faint echoes of scar tissue peek out from underneath, barely hinting at the mangled, mutilated mess that sits where her eye socket used to.

For the most part, she wears functional clothing; not out of any real desperate need, but simply because it's her taste. She's never really liked super restrictive fancy clothing. As a general rule, she likes duller, darker shades much more over bright colors or pastels. When asked for a reason, she simply claims that dull colors set off against her eye and hair a bit better, and that anything else would look weird.

Background Information
Quinn Loughvein's background is a bit mysterious, all told. With the exception of her parents, nobody really knows much about it, especially her. And she certainly doesn't want to spend much time around her parents. What can be loosely speculated is that she was born in Denver-Vegas in the summer of 2662, upon which her parents immediately tested her for NC compatibility. And upon discovering she was neurally compatible, they began feeding her and pumping her with a staggering array of neurochemicals and other morally dubious drugs in an effort to crank her neural compatibility up: to turn her into the ultimate NC pilot. She was steered away from ever leaving their sight; and so never being exposed to the world.

Unfortunately for her parents, working where they did meant working reasonably closely to Rebecca Darroux, the poster child of the jerk with a heart of gold. And, on top of that...canny. She noticed that there were some things wrong with the Loughveins; they were exceptionally cagey, so it took more or less eight years. But when she did notice, she decided to tail them with a drone to figure out exactly what was going on.

She did.

She called them in the next day and reamed them, tearing them apart for their mistreatment and giving them an ultimatum: either they give child up and forfeit parental rights, or she'd see them in court. With all the evidence she needed from the drone footage.

Of course, it was obvious to everyone that 'court' was a sham in a city like this. But Becca had a bit more cachet and notoriety; and thus, she made the rules.

It took a bit for parental rights to be ceded; and during the process, Becca decided to spend some time with the child to avoid leaving her alone with her parents. She didn't know exactly what had cause her to have an eyepatch at eight, but whatever it was, it was not good, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. But then...something interesting happened: She got attached.

Quinn's life changed unbelievably quickly as soon as she found herself adopted by Becca. She chose to keep the name Loughvein; it just felt wrong to leave it behind. She was a child, after all. And her life going forward was...nice. Sure, Becca had her share of detractors. But she'd never been anything but wonderful to Quinn, and as time went on, to Delia as well.

Rebecca hoped that she could keep Quinn out of the NCs permanently; completely disregarding that pilots typically didn't live very long, she didn't know the full range of effects that the drugs that Luke and Shannon had given her had. But it was fruitless, because Quinn gravitated to them in the end; and at 15, she became one of the younger pilots out there. The notably sensitive Quinn didn't fare too well on the battlefield, but she was a pretty skilled pilot, and DV probably wasn't going to let her go easy.

To make a long story short, Becca eventually bought her out of the military. It wasn't exactly cheap, and it wasn't exactly easy; but Quinn was much, much happier. But still...she loved piloting, but didn't want to be in the military. So...what?

It was then that Becca put in her head the idea--the contract was free now--to leave DV, and go freelancing.

So she did.

She's been doing so for a little while now, and has happened across Lost Hope.

(She still calls Becca every night).

Polaris Shift
Quinn's a little bit of a special case in the way she thinks about her Shift. Not only does it not bother her overly much, but...she actually likes it.

Quinn's Shift manifests as a voice inside her head. As far as anybody can tell, it's got nothing to do with personality drift regarding any old pilots of Ablaze, it has nothing to do with anybody else at all. More likely it's just a kind of persistent psychosis. But whatever the cause, the manifestation remains the same: there's another person inside of Quinn's head, or at least that's how she puts it.

This personality--who she says also wants to be called Quinn and so she that's what Quinn calls her--as far as can be gleaned, is rather different from the Quinn that most people know. That bouncy positivity is markedly absent. In the fragments of conversations that can be observed, she seems much more cynical and aggressive. But regardless, Quinn seems to put a great deal of stock into the other Quinn's opinions and thoughts. And not only that. Quinn has...

...She's made friends with it.

A small side effect of her Shift and this bizarre situation is that Quinn can sometimes have difficulty in knowing whether she's talking to her internal Quinn through thoughts, or spoken out loud. Sometimes she'll cut in and out of a conversation, bits and pieces of it out loud and the rest remaining unspoken. It can be someone disconcerting at times.

Personal Mission
Above all else, Sirona wants desperately to be safe.

Trapped for so long in so many ways, literally or figuratively, Sirona feels constantly exposed. Like she's always being watched, always been watched, and always deeply unsafe. Her past is full of shadows—the doctors from L1, the military of Fairbanks, the last look that she took at her sleeping sister—that loom over her like so many swords of Damocles. So her ultimate goal, even if she doesn't quite know it, is to lift those swords away, one by one. She may never be able to rid herself of them all. She may never feel completely comfortable. The past may always haunt her through her nightmares.

But it shouldn't need to control her any longer.
Quinn visibly cringed backwards at the first few words of Camille's response, expecting to be met with a reprimand the likes of which had been levied at Sybil. She hadn't really even been fully conscious she was being dishonest.

And so she was rather surprised when she didn't receive a dressing down. More just...a gentle warning. Was this the terrifying trainer that Cyril had been so frightened of? Yes, she seemed very critical about the Derisas. But something about her put Quinn at ease more than anything else, enough that, after another spate of silence while she wrestled with her thoughts, she was able to get herself together and reply, sincerely.

"I think passion is important," she began carefully, "and I don't think someone can be a good pilot without it. But on its own...Mmm. You need passion, but you also need..." Another hesitation, but less trying to avoid speaking. Simply trying to find the right word.

"...Determination. You need determination. You have to train hard for a long time. Being a pilot takes work. And..."

She took a long, deep breath as she imagined herself looking in the mirror back in her room on the Aerie. Camille was still looking at her in that same way. Not unkind, but not particularly kind either. Level. Appraising. Quinn met her eye to eye.

"...sometimes you just get lucky. I didn't work for my phasing speed or weapon. They just...happened."

Another deep breath, then a third, before she finally summed up what she was trying to say: "No. Just passion isn't enough."
Quinn was still rather winded for her part, pulling her hand through her bangs to get some of the sweat off of them. Reaching out for her water, she pulled the cap off again, tried to take a drink, and then remembered that she'd just drained it, and only the finest rivulet of water ran into her mouth. As Cyril began to speak, Quinn gently unplaited her braid. It had gotten messy, and demanded to be tied again. It was something that she'd gotten in the habit of doing after rigorous exercise, lest her hair get kinked. But she'd barely managed to get it down to her neck before the door shot open. Quinn jerked, yanking unpleasantly on the strands of hair she was holding, and turned her head to see...

...The vaunted Camille, wearing quite the uniform, and quite the expression. Quinn could practically smell the ice that she carried in her wake.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cyril...salute? Huh? Was that normal? Should she—

...Well, when in Casoban. After a moment, she lifted her own hand in a clumsy imitation of his salute, cringing internally as the nascent braid unspooled into nothingness with no hands guiding it. She must be an absolute sight. Should she say something now? Address her somehow? Should she call her Captain too?

But for the moment, at least, the question was dodged. Before Quinn could think about saying anything, Camille had started to redress Sybil. Tonight's sims were cancelled? There were sims? There was a schedule to keep? Anxiety shot cold and quick through her blood. Nobody had told her. She was beginning to understand why Cyril had seemed so happy to not exercise with, or even spend time around, this woman. There was something so crushingly intimidating about her.

A few moments later, she dropped the unnatural-feeling salute, and winced as Camille shredded Sybil in the most matter-of-fact way. Almost before she knew it the Derisas were leaving. When Cyril sent her an apologetic glance, Quinn matched it with one of her own. This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't showed up. Sorry.

And then she and the Captain were alone. A silent moment stretched out as Quinn nervously fiddled with the fringe of her unbraided hair.

"So, now you’ve seen them first hand. What do you think of Casoban’s heroes?"

"I—" There was a telltale nervous tremble in her voice, and she took a moment both to crush it down and to collect her thoughts before she continued. Camille seemed like the kind of person who you didn't want mad at you, so she did her best to sum up what she thought as concisely as possible. "...Cyril's fun. People seem to like him. He has to learn to keep his guard up better. Sybil..." God, what was she going to say about Sybil?

"...I didn't talk to her much until now, but..." ...she should be spending more time in here. But her voice caught in her throat before she said that last part. Camille was training them. And she didn't want to make Camille mad at her. So after an awkward moment of silence, "...she keeps trying to fight like Cyril and it's not working." Another silence that stretched out for longer than was strictly comfortable.

"...um, Captain."
Ahhhhh, sweet air conditioning...

Aoife's eyes were at half-mast, still basking in the afterglow of Polka's music. The pain had largely retreated and would be reduced for some time yet. She felt so much more like herself; breathing deeply no longer send a knife of pain to her lungs, and she could stretch her arms above her head without feeling like they were tearing or pulling themselves out of their sockets. So she was sitting in the same chair she'd been in before, though much more comfortably, when Earthspirit arrived.

As a person, she wasn't the most open with her emotions, for a number of reasons. So though the fact that they'd been unable to find Nur rankled at her to a surprising degree, her face was still largely expressionless. Perhaps a little bit more solemn than usual. The only one in the clinic that she tended to share her emotions with to more than the sparsest degree was Polka. And would you look at that: Earthspirit wasn't Polka. So the fact that her brows began to furrow in distant confusion and later anger at the entire field of Sargonology was both indicative of the intensity of her emotions and, to those at all acquainted with her, rather surprising. For a few moments, the clinic was washed with silence, and her face grew only stormier, until...

"So, if I am to understand correctly," She spoke suddenly, shattering that tenuous quiet, "the Victorians are here to plunder from the people and culture here, for the sake of finding a weapon that may exist, but might just be a story?" She made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat, and for the next few words, her voice dripped with scorn. "What a surprise. It makes more sense now why Aisha was so upset with him now, at least." She took a long breath—thankful for her renewed ability to, without causing herself pain—before muttering under her breath: "If she hadn't bashed him then I might've."
Quinn couldn't help but feel a wide grin spreading over her face as Sybil threw another punch at her. Her form was already better. Maybe she wasn't overthinking it so much? Standing at least a little bit side-on instead of uncomfortably stiff full forward. The punch wasn't as wide, and when it cracked into the glove with a sound like a gunshot she was pleasantly surprised: that fist hit a lot harder than she thought it would, though she didn't actually have many benchmarks to measure it against. She couldn't keep the genuine enthusiasm out of her voice as she gushed, "that was a solid hit! Throw me another one!"



By the time Quinn stepped back off the mat again, a good chunk of time had passed. She wasn't quite sure, since she didn't know exactly when she and Sibyl had started; but it was long enough that the palms of her hands were throbbing from repeated hits, and she was sore in a few more places. She grimaced as she rubbed her collarbone where she'd bruised it against the obstacle course yesterday. That was gonna sting for a while.

Still, she was better off than Sibyl was. The girl looked super drained. Quinn couldn't blame her, of course, when she'd started she could barely go for half an hour with Dahlia without taking a break, and she thought it must have been at least three times that. She'd given her some advice on how to throw a solid punch (complete with demonstration on Sibyl's glove), where to keep your hands to make sure you had your guard up, how to stand to make sure you wouldn't get taken aback and overbalance yourself, and so on and so forth. Things like that: stuff that Dahlia had told her those months ago. It was her first foray into being the teacher, and she found it...surprisingly fun, actually.

Shaking out her hands with a hiss, she popped the top on her water bottle again, mildly surprised at how much she'd chugged over the course of only a few drinks. Must've been more dehydrated than she thought. She nearly drained the thing, then she gave a long breath as she looked back at the older girl, organizing her thoughts.

"I think your biggest problem is that you're trying to fight like him. Similar stance and all. Which isn't inherently bad, he is a good fighter." She nodded to Cyril off to the side, somewhat surprised he'd actually stuck around. "But, different people do better with different ways to fight. Like how I use my legs more because my depth perception isn't so great," she tapped her eyepatch lightly, "or how Dahlia—er, St. Senn weaves in and out more than most so she doesn't take unnecessary hits since Dragon is kinda fragile." She gave a little shrug. "I'm not psychic, obviously, but it feels to me like it just doesn't super fit you."

Flexing her fingers—they were a little stiff—and cracking her knuckles, she gave what she hoped was an encouraging smile. "Try something new next time you spar. Not something anyone can really teach you, just gotta figure it out on your own. Might be worse at first, but I'm sure it'll pay off when you find what you're looking for!"

She took another long, deep breath—which, after the day she'd had, transmuted into a yawn—then turned over to Cyril, looking at him a bit apologetically—he'd stuck around this long, he clearly cared and she felt bad for assuming the worst—and finally taking the time to address his own major error. "You probably would've gotten me, honestly. Just got a little too aggressive, and it left you just open enough for me to get a kick in." She leaned against the wall, then slid down to sit on the floor, shucking the gloves off and tossing them over towards the basket. And missing. She'd pick 'em up later. "If you'd kept your hands closer in and your guard up better I'd prob'ly have been on the floor."

"This was fun. We should do it again soon."
Quinn nodded, half to Sybil and half to herself. "Mhmm, I thought so." Dropping her water bottle back down, she stepped back on the mat, wearing a smile that she thought might've been comforting, though she wasn't exactly sure. She wasn't used to wearing comforting smiles and was mostly imitating the rest of her family and Safie. She paused for a moment before she answered Sybil's question: "'Cause you're fighting like I did." She left out the part about growing up in isolation, of course.

"When I first started fighting, I was really bad. So bad. Way worse." She pulled her leg back and made an intentionally sloppy wide kick, the kind she hadn't made in a long time. She was so unused to it she overbalanced, tottered, and fell on her ass with an oof! She laughed a little in embarrassment, scraped herself off the ground, then continued. "If Dahlia had just punched me in the face and knocked me down every time we sparred," she gave Cyril a sidelong look, something like a glare. Sybil had clearly expected her to hit back, and hit back hard. "I wouldn't have learned much at all. Before I started fighting I needed to learn how to fight."

She let that hang on the air for a bit, then looked back at Sybil, unable to help seeing herself from a few months back now. She hoped she didn't sound condescending. Then, trying to remember what Dahlia had done when she'd first started, she held her hands out, not as fists, but open: an invitation.

"So hit me!"
In Lem's Stash 1 mo ago Forum: Test Forum
S H Y S C A A U S L E Y
S H Y S C A A U S L E Y

"Everything's different now. I don't understand. Is this the Divine Aeter's path for me? Was the Virtuous Mother lying to me all along?"
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
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C H A R A C T E R N O T E S
C H A R A C T E R N O T E S
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Shysca Ausley is a young half-elf Cleric who swore herself to a faith that worships an entity known as the Divine Aeter, and was gifted powerful divine magic. She doesn't need any kind of focus, but she finds that it helps her think more clearly if she uses a long metal staff colored white to match her clothing. Why metal? Well, in addition to a kind of spellcasting focus, it's also surprisingly useful for whacking a stubborn adversary over the head.

Speaking of her magic, it's very supportive in nature these days; healing, shielding, curing, reviving. While she can unleash the smite of the Divine Aeter in a flash of white light and flame, she very much prefers not to do that, firmly believing that violence should be the final recourse.

---

"I love you so much, my little light."

It feels like it's been a lifetime since then.

"Oh wow, Shysca, did you make that all on your own?"

Like a whole world has come and gone in the time it took to blink the memories back behind her eyes.

...Had it really only been ten years?

The cool morning air smelled of the past. Of early morning dew and early spring frost. Of strawberry pastries and pinecones, and the wide bank of the river. It smelled of the stones that she used to skip over the gray water. She breathed deep and closed her eyes, savoring this old simple joy, and all thoughts of guilt and redemption evaporated like mist in the sun as she walked lightly through Ardenfel like a great weight was gone, like she'd never known it was there.

As she walked, she saw the children that she knew so well. Danyl on the other side of the street. Lyndii would be reading, probably, even on a day like this. A kind of foolish pleasure seeped through her as she smiled. Her beloved Mary was walking in the other direction towards her, and her heart swelled. She opened her mouth to call out when another smell undercut the blissful haze.

Smoke?

She blinked, and the world was suddenly a blur. Fire. Steel. Screaming that she didn't realize was her. She looked around frantically and found everyone gone except her sister. And as soon as she started towards her, her hands ignited in searing pain. She looked down in panic and found them livid with a seething white radiance that soon spread over the rest of her body as she fell to the ground, twisting in agony. She looked up, trying to find MARY again through the white light,a nd onl y f oun d h e r s e l f--
C H I L D H O O D I N A R D E N F E L D
C H I L D H O O D I N A R D E N F E L D
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Shysca's first memory is of the road.

She remembers little enough of it; just faint flashes of her mom carrying her down a gravel path in a forest, snuggling up against her an inn's bed. Only the vaguest of images, now, but enough to remind her that wherever she was born, she would probably never know. But that doesn't matter, she tells herself. Though the vague flashes of town and wilderness nip at her heels now and then, Ardenfeld was home. An end to the traveling; a roof over her head; a warm fire every night; a father; and most important of all, a sister. Who she loved dearly. They were only half siblings, of course, but she didn't fully understand the concept at the time. All she knew was she had a little sister now, and she was the best.

Her new sister Mary was a handful, certainly; disappearing for hours at a time, showing up bruised and dirtied and causing Shysca no end of worry. But despite the struggle, she took to it like a duck to water. Patching up a hurt knee here, trying to keep her from running off into the woods there, singing some of their moms' old songs to help her when she was having trouble going to sleep: anything and everything she could do to help. And somehow, she just couldn't bring herself to be mad. Maybe a bit chastising; mom and dad were worried, after all. But then Mary would say something sweet, and press a pretty stone that she'd found near the lakeshore into Shysca's hand, and she was all smiles again. She would line the pretty stones and strange branches next to the fire, right against the wall on the left side.

Perhaps some are still there, even now.

And of course, though it started with Mary, it certainly didn't end there. Shysca had gotten a taste of caring for people, and it stuck. Before she knew it, she'd become a pseudo-older sister to many of the other kids in town too, with careful hands and a gentle smile. She never knew where her mom came from, and where she came from either. She never asked; she simply didn't care much. She didn't remember much of where they'd traveled, given her age, and she had new family in Ardenfeld. Leaving it was out of the question.

That said, by the time she was eight or nine, she came to the realization that her ears were shaped different from the rest of her family. Her mom, dad, and of course Mary all had nice round human ears; but hers were quite pointy, more than enough to recognize. Unlike the whole rest of her family, Shysca was an elf (well, at least half of one). It brought a host of conflicting feelings with it; isolation, pride, fear, intrigue, confusion. Over the course of the next few years, she eventually untangled these feelings, coming to the childishly simple conclusion that it really didn't matter, because even if she wasn't the same as her family—she even looked different, even from her mom—they were still her family, they loved her, and she loved them.

Though perhaps she should've gotten used to that feeling of isolation and fear

Because then, the bandits came for Ardenfeld. And just like her life on the road, there are—mercifully—only flashes. Scattered, fractured images.

The warm fire in her memories, now consuming everything like a ravenous beast.

The roof that she'd come to rely on crashing into itself.

Her mother running out to fight and not coming back.

Her father's slumped body.

She remembers Mary's tiny hand trembling, cold as ice against her own. She remembers running. She doesn't remember quite where. The horrible feeling of her whole life crashing down around her. Everything was just...gone.

L I F E A T T H E O R P H A N A G E
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Everything except Mary.

Mary, and the other kids that had survived the attack. Who had also seen their entire lives shatter. And Shysca made a resolution, hard as it was. She was the oldest, and she was one of the few—if not the only—who hadn't lived her whole life in Ardenfeld. So she had a responsibility to them now. They needed someone they knew to turn to, she thought. Someone from home that wasn't crying. Stability. Comfort She didn't know what the family who owned the orphanage were like when they first got there, so, quite simply, she devoted herself wholeheartedly to making everyone's lives better. She threw herself into it and didn't look back. All smiles, all the time.

She tried to talk things through with Teth, even when she didn't want to listen. She spent hours around Danyl; he always seemed to lean on her so much, after all. She spent a whole year like that. It wasn't a particularly good life. It CERTAINLY wasn't a comfortable one. But it was all that she needed in the end, right?

And above all, her sister.

The sounds she made during her nightmares broke Shysca's heart every night, and the flames that would race over her during them had her worried sick. So whenever she would fall asleep, Shysca would creep over and lie down next to her, stroking her hair like their mom used to. A horrible hollowness ripped at her whenever she thought of home, but she could not let it eat her. Not while Mary was still here.

Then came that horrific night, when the last leaves were shaking themselves free from the skeletal trees outside. When Shysca fell asleep early by mistake, too tired after a long day to keep her eyes open. She'd awoken to Mary's nightmare-torn cries, and to phantasmal fire rippling over her body. And, guilt tearing at her for not staying awake, she rushed over to try and shake her sister awake.

And the fire had lashed out.

She remembers screaming in sudden agony and shock as her arms and forearms were eaten by the flames and horribly burnt. The blinding fear, rendering her senseless to anything else as she shrieked until her voice grew ragged. The matron of the orphanage desperately trying to help her, and so delirious was she in her panic she thought that mom had come back.

Her memories of the next few weeks, like so many others, are mercifully just the thinnest torn shreds of what they were. Horrible pain in her hands, that somehow grew only worse. A foul smell. Fever. A priest kneeling over her bedside, speaking indistinctly to the matron. Drinking something foul-tasting.

And then, the church.

The strange, vaulted ceiling above her, and the fear. "Who are you? Where am I?" And then, chief in her thoughts:

"Where's Mary?"

They let her ask. They let her scream. They let her cry. And only once she was done did the monks tell her with solemn voices that her sister had been corrupted by demons. The sickness that had gripped her—cured, now—was the grip of infernal fire. And then a final awful revelation: when her sister had been corrupted, her hair had turned silver-white, and her eyes a burning yellow-orange.

...Just like hers.

She was under threat of corruption as well, they said. The only way to hold it under was to follow the righteous path of the Divine Aeter and purge the rest of the demons from the world. She didn't want to believe it. But they had saved her life, they said, and stopped her from being corrupted like her poor sister. She had a duty to them now. They said it over and over.

Until—still a child—she eventually believed it.

O N W A R D: A N E W P A T H
O N W A R D: A N E W P A T H
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But she didn't remember that for long. Threw herself into her duties as a member of the Church of the Virtuous Mother until she forgot, and all that was left was the knowledge that she had to do this. And...she did.

Over those ten years, Shysca is unsure of how many people she cleansed with the divine fire of the Divine Aeter. Things that she would've been horrified at not long ago, she barely noticed, she was so thoroughly indoctrinated into this cult. It was like she had only half a mind of her own. Word began to spread about her, slowly bubbling through pockets of people: stories of the wrathful black-clad cleric with the burn-scarred hands...

And yet...

As much as she knew she had to for reasons she could no longer remember, she couldn't ever bring herself to imagine Mary as anything but her baby sister.

And not long ago, she remembered something that she'd nearly forgotten. Old friends. An old promise she'd made to meet with them again. People—children then—whose faces she could still see ever so clearly, so much she felt she could almost touch them. And as she thought about their smiles, an intense and sick revulsion rose in her throat.

They would never smile at her again, if they knew what she had done.

With no warning to the Virtuous Mother or any members of the church, she dropped the amulet that marked her a member into a mountain chasm beside the monastery, tore apart her black church robe and replaced it with a dress of pure white, then fled off into the night to return to her old home, see the old faces. Perhaps it is only when she does that she'll resolve the crisis of faith that swirls inside her skull, and the horrible nightmares that have again to begun to plague her will perhaps abate.

And though the Church is behind her, she knows what she'd done will follow her to the end of her days.

So all these long years later—no longer a child by her mother's side—Shysca takes to the road.

In Lem's Stash 1 mo ago Forum: Test Forum

A M I E M O T H W A X
A M I E M O T H W A X

"Mmmnnn, hush...I just woke up..."
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
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C H A R A C T E R N O T E S
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The chronically-sleepy Amie Mothwax has a tendency to appear stoic and emotionless, eyes blank and unfeeling. She speaks relatively little, and when she does, it's usually flat in its affect. You could be forgiven for thinking she has no emotions at all.

Which, of course, is quite far from the truth. She has an emotional range that's plenty broad, just as much as anybody else. What she doesn't have is a particularly good way of displaying that range. While those that don't know her wonder if perhaps she's been abused and that's why, that couldn't be more wrong. She's just...like this.
---

"I love you so much, my little light."

It feels like it's been a lifetime since then.

"Oh wow, Shysca, did you bake that all on your own?"

Like a whole world has come and gone in the time it took to blink the memories back behind her eyes.

"Of course daddy is proud of you, my little light. How could he not be?"

...Had it really only been ten years?

The cool morning air smelled of the past. Of early morning dew and early spring frost. Of strawberry pastries and pinecones, and the wide bank of the river. It smelled of the stones that she used to skip over the gray water. She breathed deep and closed her eyes, savoring this old simple joy, and all thoughts of guilt and redemption evaporated like mist in the sun as she walked lightly through Ardenfel like a great weight was gone, like she'd never known it was there.

As she walked, she saw the children that she knew so well. Danyl on the other side of the street. Lyndii would be reading, probably, even on a day like this. A kind of foolish pleasure seeped through her as she smiled. Mary walking in the other direction towards her and her heart swelled. She opened her mouth to call out when another smell undercut the blissful haze.

Smoke?

She blinked, and the world was suddenly a blur. Fire. Steel. Screaming that she didn't realize was her. She looked around frantically and found everyone gone except Mary. And as soon as she started towards her, her hands ignited in searing pain. She looked down in panic and found them livid with a seething white radiance that soon spread over the rest of her body as she fell to the ground, twisting in agony. She looked up, trying to find MARY again through the white light,a nd onl y f oun d h e r s e l f--
C H I L D H O O D I N A R D E N F E L D
C H I L D H O O D I N A R D E N F E L D
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Mr. and Mrs. Yarrel and Talulah Celicantha (but please, call her Lulah) were fond of calling themselves the best bakers in Ardenfel. And they were very, very good at it; people would walk from the other side of the village to avail themselves of a fresh hot loaf, or a fruit pie baked to perfection. They were masters of their crafts; and though they were small town bakers that obviously didn't know how to make the delicate pastries that you might see in the big city, they were no less skilled for it.

But then everything changed, once their daughter was born.

Even Lulah didn't know that she had elven heritage. And Yarrel certainly had no idea at all; having hair that pale was unusual, but not impossible, obviously. Not until Shysca's birth. The hair that later grew on her head could be excused just like the mother's. The slightly oddly-colored eyes could be played off in any number of ways. Every odd quirk of her appearance could be explained away, save one. There was no getting around the sharply pointed ears. And Yarrel did not appreciate the idea of there being elf in his family.

Talulah loved Shysca enough for both parents, and made sure she grew up knowing that she was loved. But as she aged and her elven traits became more distinct, well, Yarrel grew what you might call...distant. He didn't grow violent, not until she was ten or eleven, when Talulah started to take ill. But moreso he just...neglected her.I t was like she'd lost her dad. Or, more accurately, like she'd never had one at all. Like she was a ghost to him. And so her mother's kindness became the most important thing in her life, and she began to mantle it. From that point on, she tried her best to be something like a mother--or, more likely, an older sister--to all the other kids in Ardenfel, or at least the ones she knew. After all, maybe if she acted like mommy then daddy would listen to her, right?

No. Obviously.

Once Yarrel started hitting her, that smile came less often. But, given she was in her double digits, that certainly wasn't the worst thing that would happen soon,would it?

Because then, the bandits came.

L I F E A T T H E O R P H A N A G E
L I F E A T T H E O R P H A N A G E
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In the Landeil orphanage, though...the smile came back in full force. It needed to be. She knew these kids. She'd played with them in the street. She'd patched them up after they'd scraped their knees. She'd heard them talking about their parents. She knew those kids; she loved those kids.

And what those kids didn't need was another person crying.

They needed someone they knew to turn to, she thought. She didn't know what the family who owned the orphanage were like when she first got there, so, quite simply, she devoted herself wholeheartedly to making everyone's lives better. She threw herself into it and didn't look back. All smiles, all the time. She comforted Mary when she had nightmares. She tried to talk things through with Teth, even when she didn't want to listen. She spent hours around Danyl; he always seemed to lean on her so much, after all. She spent a whole year like that. It wasn't a particularly good life. It CERTAINLY wasn't a comfortable one. But it was all that she needed in the end, right? Even after Mary ran away, leaving Shysca's hands and lower forearms marred with a large and encompassing burn that turned into a painful scar, even then, she kept trying. There were still kids that needed her help.

But then the Church of the Virtuous Mother stopped nearby.

She didn't know much about them. Didn't know anything, really. But just out of curiosity, she went to listen to the sermon. Just once wouldn't hurt, right?

And then Shysca was transfixed. She fell hard, and fast.

All thoughts of responsibility fled her mind as she heard them preach, and she felt a fire stoke in her heart. After the sermon, she approached them and explained: she had just come to hear them speak, she felt as though she'd been born anew. She lived in the nearby orphanage, could she leave with the and join the Church? And they acquiesced and lifted her out of the orphanage to return to their monastery with them, and live her life anew.

O N W A R D: A N E W P A T H
O N W A R D: A N E W P A T H
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It was in the Church of the Virtuous Mother--a monastery high in the mountains, a long way away--that Shysca first learned of the Divine Aeter, the grand embodiment of all light and purity in the universe. And though she had some doubt at first, she became something of a zealot in a relatively short period of time. The Virtuous Mother and, by extension, the Divine Aether became beloved in her eyes. An idol.

And the problem with idols is that you stop really thinking about what they're doing.

Over the past ten years, there are numerous times that Shysca, using her newly-learnt holy divine magic, 'brought nonbelievers into the Divine Aeter's light' in the most permanent way possible. Things that she would've balked at not long ago, she barely noticed, she was so thoroughly indoctrinated into this cult. It was like she had only half a mind of her own. Word has begun to spread about her, slowly spreading through pockets of people: stories of the wrathful black-clad cleric with the burn-scarred hands.

Though...she did keep one secret from the Virtuous Mother. When Mary had fled the orphanage, Shysca had seen horns on her head. She'd seen the phantasmal flames that had writhed around her in her sleep back then. She knew that there was something demonic going on with her. She should report it, and she should be brought into the Divine Aeter's light. But...

But she couldn't. It just felt wrong.

Not long ago, she remembered something that she'd nearly forgotten. Old friends. A promise to meet. People--children then--whose faces she could still see ever so clearly in her mind's eye. And as she thought about their smiles, she felt a revulsion rise in her throat.

Would they ever smile at her like that if they knew that she had killed?

With no warning to the Virtuous Mother, she dropped the amulet that marked her as a member of the Church into a mountain chasm beside the monastery, replaced her black church robe with a dress of pure white, then fled off into the night to return to her old home, see the old faces. Perhaps it is only when she does that she'll resolve the crisis of faith that swirls inside her skull, and the horrible nightmares that have again to begun to plague her will perhaps abate.

The Church is behind.

The road awaits.

There was a cruel catharsis about watching the newly-named 'Aisha' bash the Cautus over the head, and Aoife found herself trapped somewhere between a grimace, and a smile that bared a few too many teeth to be innocent. A piece of her truly empathized with the Sargonians; the predatory grasping of Victorian hands was something a native of Tara knew all too well, after all, and she'd enjoyed watching that baton smack more than she'd let on.

The moment passed, and she realized that the direction her thoughts had plunged was unbecoming of anybody, let alone a Rhodes Island operator. Yes, Victorians had burned her family home to the ground and killed her family. But that wasn't an excuse. She needed to be better.

...Ah. Aisha was staring at her. Possibly because she was staring at Aisha. She had the grace to look embarrassed as she averted her eyes, then coughed self-consciously. Which she then regretted immediately, as she felt a bolt of pain to her chest, tasted something odd, and realized that her embarrassed cough had in fact just turned into her coughing up a small amount of blood.

Well. Talk about embarrassing. Her eyes remained averted, head inclined in respect, as she murmured with a soft, flat voice, "Do so. I would like to talk to him more. When you contact us," She lifted her head again, regaining eye contact for just long enough to finish the thought as she pressed her hand to her chest by way of introduction, "Ash Girl."

She might've spoken more, and she rather wanted to push harder. But this was a woman, she thought, who would only make their life more difficult if they tried to bypass her. Best to let her handle this for the moment.

And besides, by this point she was quite thoroughly ready to be done with talking.

And so she glanced at Minimalist and Balthasar, then stepped back behind them, giving one more nod to Aisha. Not fair that only she got to talk, after all.
As Cyril got back up, Quinn relaxed her stance. Her shoulders heaved as her breaths came in sharp gasps. He wasn't as good as Dahlia, but he was certainly pretty good. She let out a little chuckle when he and Sybil had finished speaking, and she reached up to rub her chin. "Shot to my chin hurt, don't you worry." She paused for a moment, choosing her words to give him advice on how he left himself open and that let her close the space she needed. But before she could say anything, they started again. She was going to fight Sybil now, she supposed.

She blinked a few times at hearing Cyril talking about the terror of Camille's training again. It seemed as though it afflicted him with some primal terror. The whole thing was a little bit absurd, and she found herself muttering, "is it really that bad?"

But shaking her head, she dismissed the thought from her mind, and squared up for Sybil to step on the mat. Though something felt kind of...odd, about the whole thing. She really seemed like she didn't want to spar. And she could see why, she hadn't started looking forward to her training sessions with Dahlia for a good long while after they'd started. But at the same time, she'd been a...special case, given how she'd never really exercised in her life.

And the instant Sybil stepped out in front of her, she immediately understood why. Cybil was new to piloting, but clearly not to combat. She wondered if maybe that boxing ring out on the rec center had something to do with that. But clearly, Sybil was new to both piloting, and to combat. Which seemed strange to Quinn at first; in order to fight Modir you needed to fight, but she'd been deployed, and she was still here and alive. So—

—Aaaand she was running at her now, swinging a punch so wide and slow it seemed like she was trying to punch a Savior, not its pilot. For that split second, Quinn wondered what she should do. Should she just do it, knock her to the ground? No, that would feel awful, for both of them. Grab the punch and start talking? No, that might be even worse. So...?

As the punch swung wide, Quinn stepped out of the way, holding her hands up in the universal 'time out' T. "Wait wait wait, time time!" She held her hands up, ready to dodge any more poorly aimed shots that came her way. "You mind if I get a drink?" Truth be told, she was feeling a little parched. She'd had a weird day so far, and somewhere along the way she'd stopped drinking. And she could feel it now, in the hoarseness of her throat.

Stepping off the mat, she jogged over to her water bottle, mulling over what she was going to say as she took a long drink, savoring the sweetness of the water. Somehow it never got old.

She capped the bottle again, and a moment passed.

"...Is your weapon ranged, Sybil?"
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