BurningDaisies

The Archon Resonance

I'm working on a post right now. Hopefully, it'll be finished after I get off work tonight

The Archon Resonance

Kaalia

Eyes closed, arms folded, head bent forward, ears perked, and firm, stoic posture, Kaalia listened and waited for everyone in turn. Never saying a word, she resolved to remain silent. If one didn't notice her ears twitch periodically, she would easily be mistaken as asleep.

The reality, for those who knew, was in tight quarters the tiny, eccentric scents, sights and sounds tended to be overwhelming. It was often easier to cope by just closing off one of her senses, and relying on the others. Kaalia possessed preternaturally keen hearing, capable of perceive slight changes in tone and pitch which were useful in determining mood, intensity, and even posture. An open posture makes for an open, resounding voice, a closed posture delivers a muted voice, one which fails to project very far. Even the background ambiance of humming Resonant filled her ears, a strange and persistent noise which only she could hear.

Sylvia and Shae provided the most predictable responses; though she had served with each of them enough to have adopted certain expectations. Shae was upstanding to a fault and chivalry disagreed with Sigrund sensibilities; the iconic captain has always had Kaalia's respect at a professional level, the Shindani was an exceptional product of her homeland military, Kaalia admits this readily.

While entertaining, Sylvia's cutting words have never delivered the best of comedy. Admirable combatant, of this Kaalia knew well.

While she has never regarded either veteran agent as a "friend", her relationship with those two has always been more of a "soldier's bond". They would destroy each other enemies, cover each others backs, share a laugh in the heat of the moment, and while their connection amounts to little more than this, it runs deep. The thread that binds them together as fellow comrades is perhaps at its strongest in the field.

The scatter-brained girl she escorted in was amusing, but was in dire need of self-discipline. Kaalia made a mental note to "fix" that issue later.

Special notice was given to the juvenile quips exchanged between Indigo and Linta. If Kaalia hadn't already read through the new recruits' files, she would have a strong suspicion of a previous history between the two feren of Tengu Island. The two would work well together as a pair, but Kaalia was more concerned with their individual merits.

Doubtless the Harp would put all the recruits through their paces. She tilted her head slightly, sensing the Harp was about to speak.
"I'm aware that all of you have already been told that you will be grouped together today. And this meeting is both so that you can put faces to names and so that I can explain exactly what your team's purpose is." Obvious... "There have been some interesting levels of Lost activity recently." What do you mean by interesting? "I want you, as team, to get together and go see what's going on. It wouldn't hurt to reduce the Lost population either as the cities have been sending distress calls to us daily, more so than usual." Here it comes... "Your captain will be Shae Arca," Everytime. Every. Time! "...and your second in command, Kaalia Sigrund." Kaalia stifled an dissatisfied sigh "Please take their advice and listen to their commands. They are both well experienced Echo members and, I'm certain, will only lead you on the correct path."

Kaalia bided her time and waited until everyone filed out of the room. A nagging thought obsessively occuppied her attention since the Harp began its speech. She would question the scentless, masked enigma in due time, but speaking... "plainly" to a superior wasn't something she wanted to do in front of a large audience. She knew better and held her tongue, remaining defiantly in her seat until only she, Shae, and the Harp were left. Once the rest were out of earshot, she opened her eyes and directed her glare at Harp. "I'll be the first to say, I don't like it." With a set jaw, and unflinching expression, she delivered each word with a calm, crisp directness; the kind of pinpoint, hostile honesty only Kaalia can provide.
"The reassignment I can live with. And dealing with Lost is nothing new, but what's so interesting about their activity levels? And why do I get the feeling you want us to rile up a wasp nest just to see what happens?" Her frank manner of speech was nothing new. In all fairness, Harp should have expected it. She's well-known for it. "I'd appreciate your honesty in this matter."

Kaalia has always regarded Harp with a peculiar personal bias, lending absolute trust to the leader's decisions and posing unreserved suspicion to its motives.

The Archon Resonance

( ( O ) ) ( ( O ) )

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

With the usual swagger in her stride, Kaalia stepped forward unperturbed and halted behind Isa, who turned and froze, awstruck upon seeing the fearsome veteran so close.

Indigo has always been praised for her courage and bravery, her alertness and her senses. While her mother was never around much, Indigo was guaranteed to recieve praise if she killed a large prey or found something extraordinarily shiny. And so, when an intimidating brunette Feren approaches the nervous bird Feren in front of her - Isa, if Indigo remembers correctly - she is immediately on high alert. The way she walks holds a confidence that Indigo herself posseses: the confidence of a predator. In the wild, when a Ground Dweller ever came too close to her, she would express herself through a snarl or a roar, through a threatening stiffness that warned the reptilian Feren that she was dangerous. And, for a moment, Indigo was back in the wild. Her mind had turned feral and her shoulders hunched over, her knees bent, and she snarled - loudly.

The frightening sound broke Isa from her trance, and she let out a meek cry. Caught between a rock and a hard place, she was at a loss for words.

At first, Kaalia made no remark about the needless rancor, just blithely blinked at the shorter, smaller, feren accosting her with incessant mewlings. Her expression was slow, deliberate, mocking. She saw no threat and expected the little critter to move aside as most have the sense to do.

Her open posture told a different story, however. Chords of muscle rolled beneath her skin, twisted with loose tension. Like a firm, immovable wall, she would be the impasse one is tasked to overcome if a fight were to start. Her stance was frought with openings, but her body was wound tight, ready to hammer any annoying fly willing to buzz toward her. Even if she didn't say it, it was obvious she would crush this feren without a second thought, if they came to blows. Kaalia's stature and presence made the hall shrink as she slowly drew in a deep breath, and everything else seemed insignificant.

"Should I get a muzzle, or will you quiet down by yourself?" She scowled at the uncouth youngster before her.

For a moment, Indigo forgot that words existed. Her mind had turned animalistic and when those words were said, her mind reared at the foreign-ness. Words were occasionally used on Tengu Island, but inconsistently, every few weeks at best, and it was like a rubber band snapped inside of her brain. Indigo's body straightened, though she remained tense and uneasy, her shoulders cocked with muscles beneath the surface. While no longer snarling, her teeth were bared and her tail lashed side to side irately. She did not take kindly to such mockery.

"I'm not a common pet, beast!" She spat.

The callow youth's words were met with only a hard stare, Kaalia's cold ruthlessnes behind it. For a moment, the power of her spirits welled inside, and she urged an oppressive thought into Indigo's mind: "Calm". It was not a request or a soothing suggestion, but a heavy, impending command. Leveraging the power of her Font, a faint glint of white streaked through Kaalia's eyes as she willed herself to be understood. The instrinic meaning flooded Indigo's conscious mind.

A wash of serenity fell over Indigo and her muscles relaxed. While her senses screamed danger, her mind realized that there was no danger to fear. Nevertheless, Indigo didn't quite like this woman - not one bit. As if she could close herself off, Indigo crossed her arms and leant on the back of her heels, glancing at the silent Isa.

"Shall we go to that meeting of yours, Eagle?" She murmured, glancing at the woman from her periphery.

"Yes, Shall we go, Isa?" Kaalia ignored the islander runt obstructing her path, and with a soft, comforting gesture, ginerly locked arms with Isa, and ushered the little avian along with her. "The meeting room is this way. You shouldn't make a habit of being late."

Between Isa's confused ramblings, Indigo's low growling, and Kaalia's deliberate silence, the short journey to the meeting room was an awkward and uncomfortable one.

The Archon Resonance

((Whoops... double post))

The Archon Resonance

Theme Song

Name: Kaalia Sigrund

Age: Roughly 25~26

Race: Bear Feren

Nationality: Barallia

Religion: Native Traditionalist

Role: Tracker, Warrior

Fonts: Being host to three different spirits has warped Kaalia's original Font, causing it to manifest in an unusual way. At first, it merely enhanced her natural senses, but they have since been also cross-wired since her merging with two other spirits. Her eyes perceive scent in a wide array of color; to her ears, each color has its own peculiar sound; she can sense the shape and texture of something she smells. While useful in many ways, it's easy for her senses to become overstimulated, often leading to visual and auditory hallucinations; these illusions, although mild, are disorienting nonetheless.
Her spirits have also granted her a way to project her emotion or basic intention empathicly into a creature's mind. The message itself is often too intrinsic to put into words, but it is readily understood in a general way, such as, Enemy, Danger, Calm, etc.
An old earth spirit resides in her as well, the most powerful of the three, which grants her tremendous strength and the resilience of corundum. However, the power, like the spirit itself is lethargic and slumbers unperturbed. Unlike her other Fonts which are passive or require minimal conscious effort, this increased strength and durability comes gradually when called upon, slowly flooding her body over the course of a few minutes. The change starts in whatever parts of the body are closest to the ground and spreads from those points.

Color: White

Weapon: Two Samoan-style Iron Clubs

img

Her Iron clubs have a hollow shaft with a special chamber inside filled with Red resonant, allowing them to function as loading barrels for Resonant-based mortar bombs

Personality: Gruff and powerful, yet also sensitive and intelligent, much of her father's Feren traits were inherited, despite her predominantly human appearance. With a natural confidence and a larger-than-life presence, she requires a great deal of personal space, and when she enters a room the tension level rises immediately. Possessing a keen awareness and sharp-mind, Kaalia mostly succeeds through sheer force of personality. Rarely challenged to reach her full intellectual potential, she dominates conversation with her intense single-mindedness. However, she is unwilling to argue from a position that she doesn't truly believe in, which makes her a lousy lawyer.

Background: Kaalia has lived and breathed the Barallian frontier. Her family has guarded the old forest of Vastwood at the roots of Vindrell's mountains since the Archon Resonance. Trapping, hunting, gathering, the Sigrund family has carved out their existence in the Vastwood, where the air is so thick you can chew it. The layers of dead leaves and fallen fruit exude a deep earthy fragrance. Life thrives here under the protection of the Sigrund. Neither human nor Lost have staked a claim on this land unblemished by civilization.
Kaalia may be born of two half-breed Ferens, but she has proven the fiercest ranger of her generation, even among her stronger feren-blooded relatives. Her human appearance belies her predatory ruthlessness. Even her own family recognizes she is not to be trifled with.
Raised without any regard to her diluted Feren blood, she was steeped in the Sigrund family traditions from birth. Sayings like "Live for the land, Die for the land." and "The Sigrund is Vastwood, and the Vastwood is Sigrund" are commonplace. Stories of ancestors whose remains were buried under the roots of ancient trees are told during the annual solstice festivals; and it is the fate of every Sigrund to become one with the forest and guard it even after death.
She has not lived without tragedy. Many times have bandits, raiders, and poachers from Vindrell trespassed against her family and instigating long border conflicts. Her large family has been culled several times by bloody feuds. Having grown up in the midst of these frequent skirmishes, Kaalia was inured to violence and gore at an early age. She secured her first human kill before her coming of age ceremony in her 14th year.
Tensions have always been high along the Vastwoods, and while the skirmishes have always been small, they are incredibly brutal. This spurred Kaalia to join the Barallian Border Guard when she was old enough to leave the family territory. With a unstoppable single-mindedness, she marshaled a movement within the Border Guard to install check points and bolster the outposts, culminating into a large swath of militarized borderlands. While highly effective during her time as the Guard Captain for the Vastwood territories, she attracted the attentions of her political opposition in central Barallia like a blaring alarm that wouldn't be silenced. Being accused of misappropriating valuable Barallian supplies and ignoring legitimate threats in other volatile regions, she was met with overwhelming disapproval from the heartlands and was coerced to resign many times. These stalwart opponents were never able to officially oust Kaalia from her appointed office, but it did strongly polarize loyalties inside the Border Guard with "Brinkers" in favor of Kaalia and the Heartlanders opposing her. The tension within the organization rose to such heights that it threatened the Guard's ability to function as a cohesive group. Begrudgingly Kaalia appointed a trustworthy replacement to restore the fractured administration and left for parts unknown.
Three days after her resignation, she disappeared from the public's watchful eye. While a hot topic at the time, the news of her activities slowly faded from memory, and Kaalia vanished into obscurity for two years. However, she wouldn't stay forgotten for long. She received critical acclaim again when she lead a small resistance force of Hunters and Huntresses against a horde Major Lost in Tarcanis. Despite her group's small size, they were able to destroy the Lost without any casualties. She revealed herself then as a Huntress of Echo; her last two years of obscurity had been spent supporting the fledgling organization in their ongoing mission to combat and destroy Lost wherever they appear. The controversy of her time in the Barallian Guard simmers still, but most don't speak of it within earshot of her.
Now, four years into tenure with Echo, Kaalia is a well-known name, one that invokes a tinge of apprehension in everyone who has met her, but her moniker, "The Kodiak of Vastwood", instills fear in every enemy lucky enough to have survived meeting her in battle.

The Archon Resonance

Kaalia

Theme Song

Name: Kaalia Sigrund

Age: Roughly 25~26

Race: Bear Feren

Nationality: Barallia

Religion: Native Traditionalist

Role: Tracker, Warrior

Fonts: Being host to three different spirits has warped Kaalia's original Font, causing it to manifest in an unusual way. At first, it merely enhanced her natural senses, but they have since been also cross-wired since her merging with two other spirits. Her eyes perceive scent in a wide array of color; to her ears, each color has its own peculiar sound; she can sense the shape and texture of something she smells. While useful in many ways, it's easy for her senses to become overstimulated, often leading to visual and auditory hallucinations; these illusions, although mild, are disorienting nonetheless.
Her spirits have also granted her a way to project her emotion or basic intention empathicly into a creature's mind. The message itself is often too intrinsic to put into words, but it is readily understood in a general way, such as, Enemy, Danger, Calm, etc.
An old earth spirit resides in her as well, the most powerful of the three, which grants her tremendous strength and the resilience of corundum. However, the power, like the spirit itself is lethargic and slumbers unperturbed. Unlike her other Fonts which are passive or require minimal conscious effort, this increased strength and durability comes gradually when called upon, slowly flooding her body over the course of a few minutes. The change starts in whatever parts of the body are closest to the ground and spreads from those points.

Color: White

Weapon: Two Samoan-style Iron Clubs

img

Her Iron clubs have a hollow shaft with a special chamber inside filled with Red resonant, allowing them to function as loading barrels for Resonant-based mortar bombs

Personality: Gruff and powerful, yet also sensitive and intelligent, much of her father's Feren traits were inherited, despite her predominantly human appearance. With a natural confidence and a larger-than-life presence, she requires a great deal of personal space, and when she enters a room the tension level rises immediately. Although alert and intelligent, Kaalia mostly succeeds through sheer force of personality. Rarely challenged to reach her full intellectual potential, she dominates conversation with her intense single-mindedness. However, she is unwilling to argue from a position that she doesn't truly believe in, which makes her a lousy lawyer.

Background: Kaalia has lived and breathed the Barallian frontier. Her family has guarded the old forest of Vastwood at the roots of Vindrell's mountains since the Archon Resonance. Trapping, hunting, gathering, the Sigrund family has carved out their existence in the Vastwood, where the air is so thick you can chew it. The layers of dead leaves and fallen fruit exude a deep earthy fragrance. Life thrives here under the protection of the Sigrund. Neither human nor Lost have staked a claim on this land unblemished by civilization. Kaalia may be born of two half-breed Ferens, but she has proven the fiercest ranger of her generation, even among her stronger feren-blooded relatives. Her human appearance belies her predatory ruthlessness.
Raised without any regard to her diluted Feren blood, she was steeped in the Sigrund family traditions from birth. Sayings like "Live for the land, Die for the land." and "The Sigrund is Vastwood, and the Vastwood is Sigrund" are commonplace. Stories of ancestors whose remains were buried under the roots of ancient trees are told during the annual solstice festivals; and it is the fate of every Sigrund to become one with the forest and guard it even after death.
She has not lived without tragedy. Many times have bandits, raiders, and poachers from Vindrell trespassed against her family and instigating long border conflicts. Her large family has been culled several times by bloody feuds. Having grown up in the midst of these frequent skirmishes, Kaalia was inured to violence and gore at an early age. She secured her first human kill before her coming of age ceremony in her 14th year.
Tensions have always been high along the Vastwoods, and while the skirmishes have always been small, they are incredibly brutal. This spurred Kaalia to join the Barallian Border Guard when she was old enough to leave the family territory. With a unstoppable single-mindedness, she marshaled a movement within the Border Guard to install check points and bolster the outposts, culminating into a large swath of militarized borderlands. While highly effective during her time as the Guard Captain for the Vastwood territories, she attracted the attentions of her political opposition in central Barallia like a blaring alarm that wouldn't be silenced. Being accused of misappropriating valuable Barallian supplies and ignoring legitimate threats in other volatile regions, she was met with overwhelming disapproval from the heartlands and was coerced to resign many times. These stalwart opponents were never able to officially oust Kaalia from her appointed office, but it did strongly polarize loyalties inside the Border Guard with "Brinkers" in favor of Kaalia and the Heartlanders opposing her. The tension within the organization rose to such heights that it threatened the Guard's ability to function as a cohesive group. Begrudgingly Kaalia appointed a trustworthy replacement to restore the fractured administration and left for parts unknown.
Three days after her resignation, she disappeared from the public's watchful eye. While a hot topic at the time, the news of her activities slowly faded from memory, and Kaalia vanished into obscurity for two years. However, she wouldn't stay forgotten for long. She received critical acclaim again when she lead a small resistance force of Hunters and Huntresses against a horde Major Lost in Tarcanis. Despite her group's small size, they were able to destroy the Lost without any casualties. She revealed herself then as a Huntress of Echo; her last two years of obscurity had been spent supporting the fledgling organization in their ongoing mission to combat and destroy Lost wherever they appear. The controversy of her time in the Barallian Guard simmers still, but most don't speak of it within earshot of her.
Now, four years into tenure with Echo, Kaalia is a well-known name, one that invokes a tinge of apprehension in everyone who has met her, but her moniker, "The Kodiak of Vastwood", instills fear in every enemy lucky enough to have survived meeting her in battle.

The Archon Resonance

I don't remember where it's from - pretty sure nobody does - but its a popular saying. I think it's a band, too.

@Apokalipse

Well actually....it's an Australian thing

The Archon Resonance

You guyz are a-dork-able~ :3

RWBY-esque RP

Depending on how your world-building shenanigans unfolds, I'd be interested! Moreso where the faunus are involved. I like the persecution/civil rights aspect. (・ω・)

Seeking Passionate Casual/Advanced Writers

Character exploration is usually the point of story-telling, isn't? xD
Besides, I like to clearly establish the characters' "why", their.... instrinsic motivator, I guess? It helps maintain a good momentum, even if the characters or we as writer's falter.

"What are my ultimate limits?" and "Who am I?" could both easily be explored in a sci-fi setting with other transhumanism concepts thrown in. At least, that's the first thing my mind went to.
Yet.... I'm usually steeped in sci-fi stuff, so I'm more inclined to try a setting with low-level technology.
We could just as easily do something sports-oriented and/or deal with the pressures of fame and how the public's expectations affect a celebrity psychologically (and vice-versa).

This is usually a good question to start with:
What setting sounds like the most fun to you, right now?

(If you happen to be craving sci-fi/cyberpunk stuff, I will totally jump on the band wagon. I've just been doing a lot of that recently.)