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1 yr ago
Current Nine years seems a lot longer than it feels.
2 yrs ago
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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4 yrs ago
Biting Spider Writing
7 yrs ago
They will look for him from the white tower...but he will not return, from mountains or from sea...
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7 yrs ago
RIDE WITH ME, MY FRIENDS! WE DO NOT STOP 'TIL VALHALLA!
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For the past ten or fifteen minutes, Quinn had alternated sitting on her hands and pacing back and forth across the room at various intervals. She wasn't quite sure why Tillie coming to her room made her as nervous as it did; it wasn't even her real room anyway, right? And yet somehow she found her stomach boiling inside her, and every silent minute that went by made it roil harder and faster. But at the same time, it wasn't a bad nervousness, not really. Quinn wasn't too terribly used to the feeling of 'anticipation.' A pilot's lot was by nature unfriendly, after all, and her decidedly atypical childhood only compounded that. But it was the only word Quinn could think of to describe how she was feeling.

Clothed again in her new dress—who could blame her for wanting to show off to Tillie?—she rechecked for the umpteenth time everything she'd gathered from the workstation that the Casobani had gifted her: pens and notebooks, reams of extra paper both blanked and lined, and of course the laptop computer, which lay plugged in on the new low dresser that now served as a nightstand. After the childhood she'd had, with no contact with anything outside her one small room, she was nothing if not a skilled typist. She'd tried to look up some stuff about modiology on her own so she could impress Tillie when she got here, but she didn't make sense of most of it and so she gave that up before long (not to mention she ran across a few papers with the names Locke and Sansean Loughvein emblazoned on the front, and frankly didn't want to deal with it on her own). Satisfied again for the moment, she sat back down, watching the stars swirling out of her window.

And then jumped a foot in the air with an EEP! as the silence was shattered by a loud and elaborate pattern of knocks, and her heart jumped into her throat.

"C—coming!"

She whacked the button and the door slid open, revealing Tillie, holding an intimidating-looking stack of books. Mouth suddenly dry, she let Tillie in and winced at the sound of that many books being plopped down. Those must be heavy.

"So! Uhm! Don’t be intimidated by all the material." Quinn's lip quirked into a little half-grin. "I didn’t know what you might be interested in so I just brought a bunch of different stuff. Actually, where did you want to start? You don’t have to know anything specific, but if you have any vague ideas of what you might like to know, it’ll help me sorta, uhm! Steer, y’know?"

Quinn opened her mouth to reply, how does my Savior work? But before any sound came out, Tillie finally seemed to notice what Quinn was wearing, and the half-grin turned into a full bright smile as she gave a gentle twirl. "Isn't it? It just seemed like everyone on the Ange dresses so nice all the time, I wanted to fit in." She paused a moment before adding, "...And I never get to wear anything like this!"

Another moment to bask in the glow of Tillie calling her pretty before she gave her head a little shake and focused back in again, sitting down on her bed and opening up her laptop before turning to ask her first question: "Can you tell me how Ablaze works? How did they turn it from a Modir to a Savior?"
In Lem's Stash 4 days ago Forum: Test Forum


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Physical Description
Fujimoto Chou doesn't have a ton that sets her apart from any other young Japanese woman. Straight black hair, a slender build, a height of only about 5'1"; if one word could be used to describe her, it would be typical. Perhaps the only thing that really sets her apart is a single wisteria-purple streak that runs top to bottom in her hair, framing her face on the left side. Much of what makes Chou unique isn't her appearance, but her personality, and strange idiosyncrasies, such as her habitual tendency to speak nearly exclusively in extremely polite kenjougo keigo, regardless of the situation. She wears largely typical clothing, though she does have a particular penchant for wearing long coats when it's chilly out.

Papiyon, on the other hand, is very different in appearance, given that as a Pariah avatar, it stands as a manifestation of how Chou wishes she could be, an ideal version of herself. The single streak spread out into flowing pink hair that frames a pair of wide, kind violet eyes. A more buxom build. Significantly increased height: about 5'1" no longer, now reaching upwards of 5'7". Flawless skin. She thinks she looks SO cool. Instead of her skirts, blouses, and coats, she wears a close-fitting white leather-backed vest with gilt fastenings that trails off into long coattails that flow behind her. Enough to deflect a blow or two, though leather can only do so much. And finally, her weapon: a long-handled nagamaki, wrapped in fabric the same color as her hair. The blade is fine steel, and the handguard is fashioned after a butterfly.

...It took her SO long to save up for it.

Character Conceptualization
Vizera probably doesn't like you.

Or, well, that's what she lets on. Which might make you wonder why she spends time around you, because she sticks around for some weird reason. And it probably confuses you for quite some time, since she seems to...well, she doesn't seem to have the energy to hate your guts, but she seems like she would if she did.

But then you realize a couple days in when you're on a dangerous dungeon delve that gives you literally no loot and Vizera insists on accompanying you--and you can see her resisting being closer to you when you're moving through the dungeon--that Vizera probably doesn't dislike you. Or, well, she doesn't dislike you as much as she can not dislike anybody. No, what you end up realizing halfway through this lootless dungeon after Vizera stays close to you instead of wandering off searching for whatever someone might have missed is that, past her layers of irritability, annoyance, and bullshit, Vizera is desperately lonely.

And yet--in a seeming contradiction that might leave you confused if you don't understand what's led her to that point--she really seems to hate it when attention is on it. To DESPISE it in a truly fantastical way. She'll nose into your life, sure, but if you ask her a single thing about herself, either in game or IRL, she clamps her mouth closed in record speed and moves on. The insane pressure that has been placed on Cecilia for most of her life, and certainly all of her adult life, gives her an intense aversion to being the center of attention, and this carries through into Vizera just as strongly. She's done things that some would balk at to avoid being known; she monitors her position on the DPS leaderboard OBSESSIVELY, and whenever it breaks into the top five thousand slots she goes on a rampage of terrible group dungeoneering, throwing herself into hordes of enemies without building up her Heat and barely making it out in time to be healed. She throws entire dungeon raids into the garbage for the sole purpose of making as few waves in Pariah's overall community as she possible can. After all, better to be 'that one shitty DPS that ruined our raid' than a celebrity here too; one that will inevitably burn out once again.

She also seems to be online a lot more than most people are. She'll log time into Pariah for over ten hours a day, and that's part of the reason that she's managed such a specialized build and such a high level, despite only playing for a couple months at this point.

Recently, she's found another way to avoid notice; despite her trash position on the boards, she's managed to finagle her way into a guild called the Gloro Inquisitors with a couple well-done raids, and remains near the very bottom of the guild. After all, goes her rationale, who are paid less attention than the worst members of a good guild?

Other Information
Quinn hadn't known what to expect from the CSC's pilot captain. From what little she'd heard from the Derisas, or the ever-so-brief snippets she'd caught now and then online, she'd thought she was going to be absolutely draconian. A cruel taskmaster, ever-ready to crack the whip out of sadistic glee. Possibly—probably—with horns growing out of her head to boot. And since the first time Cyril had mentioned her...was it at dinner, yesterday? She couldn't quite recall...Quinn had been building her up in her head as a figure of terror.

In reality, though, the truth was...

...weird.

She spoke in such a matter-of-fact way it was throwing Quinn off. And not just her tone of voice: Quinn understood very well that tone of voice didn't necessarily dictate emotion, especially if the person was a good actor. No, what she was saying at its core was extremely level and balanced. Not an admonishment, but a warning. So all she could do—and, she was pretty sure, all she SHOULD do—was nod.

And as Camille strode out of the gym, lift her hand up in a salute that wasn't quite right and say, quietly, "Captain."

She would need to ask Sybil and Cyril for their schedules, she thought as she busied herself putting the pads away and carting the container against the wall. Maybe not now, though. She had a feeling Sybil would punch her in the face if she tried, combat training notwithstanding.

And she also didn't want to see either of them right now, she thought as she finished her work and stared out into space. She barely knew them, so it wasn't like talking about Dahlia. But she still found it difficult to square herself with the idea they might die. Despite being a pilot and thus working closely together with death, and despite the vast exposure to death she'd had on that October night, it was still mostly a stranger to her: something she knew about, she'd seen, but didn't think about, ignored as best she could. But after that conversation, such as it was, she found herself staring the idea in the face, and a well of bottomless anxiety yawned open inside of her as it stared back.

Sober and pensive, she walked over to the door and smacked the switch, then walked back to her room, deep in thought.

...Only to be blindsided by the dresser that was suddenly next to her bed. Right. She'd ordered that. Because she was a pilot.

We’re afforded many things as pilots, but we're never given time.

Well, she had enough time for one thing, at least. Letting the door slide shut behind her, she sat down on the bed, put her head in her hands, and softly cried.
In Lem's Stash 23 days 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 2 mos 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
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.

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