There were so many more people than she’d expected. Outside, the size of the crowd had been understandable; every year of students were mingled together, rushing through the courtyard and down the halls. But she’d thought—even hoped—that with them being divided by year, the groups would have been more manageably-sized. Now the seats were starting to fill towards the back, though, and people had begun sitting closer in her row.
A boy scooted past her, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. For all her worrying over the auditorium, she hadn’t even been paying attention to it, like her vision had blurred. Reflexively she rubbed her face, worried she might have just sprung another leak, but thankfully not. Just the idea that she might start crying again here was enough to make her palms ache.
“N-no, it’s not. I don’t think.” she answered, when the boy asked after the seat between her and the jelly-girl. She regretted that, in retrospect. It might have been easier to claim she was saving it for someone, and pray she could get through the ceremonies with a little space beside her.
As he rounded up beside her she noticed the bag in his arms, and a fruity smell touched her nose. She reeled a bit, trying to parse out what exactly he had in there, and then found herself instead wondering why he had it.
Before she could think better of it, she was leaning out to steal a peek into the bag. Her brow flattened.
“Is…that a pineapple…?” she asked, mouse-like, yet the sound of her own voice still made her cringe.
Have to work late tonight, won’t be back ‘til morning. Money on the counter for dinner. I know you’re gonna buy junk food so if you save me something chocolate I won’t tell dad.
Game night tomorrow, no cheating this time~
Loves. -Mom Kana didn’t realize her hands were shaking until the letter had nearly trembled out of them. She folded the paper by its years-old creases, with all the delicacy with which one might handle glass, or a baby, or a baby made of glass, and stuck it into her pocket. She’d done some Olympic-grade mental gymnastics to avoid calling it a lucky charm, but she still carried it with her anyway. Not for luck, she said, just motivation.
The world passed by through the train window, a world that was only tangentially familiar to her. She had been to Hokkaido before, when she was very young, but despite that the vibrant countryside had stuck with her, she felt like a stranger. That feeling, ironically, was more than just tangentially familiar. In Kagoshima, even in passing through Aomori, that sense of misplacement seemed to linger around her like a bad odor, repulsing the passersby at the station that glanced her way. The eyes she met were strangers’ eyes, detached and indifferent, but she could not help seeing reminders in them.
This is wrong.
Don’t do this.
In a stop between Aomori and Hokkaido, she’d spotted her mother’s face on a wanted poster. She was different, but not unrecognizable, and Kana suspected they’d touched the images up a bit to make them darker, rougher, more imposing. Every few months or so there’d be another story, another name—or a cluster of names. A call to action. They’d get letters at their home in Kagoshima from people looking for answers, demanding justice, or just coping with their grief. She’d see snippets from news articles, or blog posts from witnesses, and occasionally there’d be a picture of her mother there just like the one in the station.
It was easy to see the similarities between them, even in the faint reflection of the window. She could cut and dye her hair, she could dress however she wanted, but it was always her mother’s eyes looking back at her. Often—just like now—those eyes would blur, and the world would melt into a haze.
Dammit.
Kana rubbed her face, sniffling. Her cheeks were wet, her throat was tight.
Your eyes are gonna be red all day now, she thought angrily, as if she could will the tears away. God you’re such a stupid crybaby. You can’t just do this every time you…ugh. Get yourself together. It’s gross, and embarrassing. Stop.
Traversing Sapporo was easy enough. She’d spent the last few years navigating the maze-like slums of Kagoshima’s harbor, and before that she’d had to learn how to find her way around small, no-name towns in the dark. The cold snaked through her sleeves, prickled her skin with the precursor to numbness. It was pleasant, the cold. The winters in Goshogawara were a fond, if distant memory, and it seemed Hokkaido would be similar.
You knew it would be similar. You wanted it to be similar.
She wished she could have appreciated Ishin Academy more when she finally came to it. It was so grand in the brochures and the pictures online, so refined. That all held true, of course, but she couldn’t bring herself to admire any of it through the utter mass of a crowd funneling into the courtyard. Clusters of students and faculty were scattered, some standing idly, chatting, while others motioned those who were more mobile towards the auditorium. So many people, so many strangers. So many eyes.
Kana clutched her duffel bag tight, and kept her head low as she fell in with the students making their way inside. Again the would-be wonders of Ishin’s halls escaped her. Even with her eyes glued to the floor, she couldn’t so much as appreciate the tiling through her own panic.
Get a grip, seriously. Just don’t make a scene, and everything will be fine. They’re all nervous, just like you.
But they didn’t look all nervous. Sure, some of them seemed antsy, but perhaps that was just eagerness. For the most part, wherever she looked she saw confidence. She saw strength. She saw burgeoning heroes ready to embrace their destinies. And yet she felt none of that. Why? She’d taken the same tests, passed the same evaluations. She was here, wearing the same uniform they were, and yet she still felt like an imposter, like at any moment someone might notice her and say, “Hold on, you shouldn’t be here.”“This is wrong.”“Don’t do this.”
“I’m sorry,” Kana muttered, bowing her head as she turned away from the frontmost rows of seats, nearly bumping into a few of the students behind her. She made her way to the back, where only a smattering of people had decided to lay claim to the furthest seats, and placed herself at the end of the row.
There. Now she could bolt and it wouldn’t be an inconvenience to anyone. At any moment she could just get up and walk out. She could get right back on that train, and it’d be like she never left Kagoshima at all. It would be easy. No one would even notice.
You would.
Kana set the bag in her lap, and pretended it was an anchor. She couldn’t leave now. She wouldn’t. She’d come to Ishin to become a hero, and even if that was idiotic, even if it wasn’t her destiny, something compelled her to try.
Kana is an unimposing presence. She stands just short of average, with the meager build of someone nourished on cheap food and scrap meals. Her sense of fashion is a flawless marriage between “punk” and “homeless,” complete with the high-necked, needlessly-belted boots and the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-garbage leather jacket. The things she can control though, like her hair and hygiene, she keeps in line. It’s hard enough for her to make friends without smelling like someone who only occasionally has hot water.
She has been told, often and unkindly, that she resembles her mother. She inherited her mirror-bright eyes and severe countenance, but the mannerisms—the unbowed stature, the habitual brow-cocking and cracking of finger-bones—these were learned, and to the people affected by her mother's terrible crimes, they evoke chilling, uncanny memories.
She was a kind, gentle woman. She had sharp, severe eyes, she gave warm hugs, she spoke softly even when she was upset. The people in their neighborhood liked her, people at her work liked her; she went out of her way for strangers that she’d never see again, because it was the right thing to do. She taught Kana that good people put others before themselves, that sacrifice was the foundation of heroism.
She was eleven when she learned that her mother was not a hero.
The months after she disappeared were blurry. Her father was brought in for questioning so many times that they practically lived at the police station for weeks. Reporters dogged them at their house, at the store, they even came to Kana’s school before she was pulled out. The few times that Kana was able to watch TV, she saw their names on the news. They were talking about her mother, and they were saying terrible things, calling her names, telling lies. They said she was a villain.
They left Goshogawara in a panic. People had begun coming to their house, people who claimed her mother had hurt them, or someone they loved. They came during the day, sometimes they came at night; Kana would see them through her window, pacing in their driveway or coming up to their door. They wanted answers, but Kana didn’t understand the questions. They’d knock for hours. When she and her father finally left, their was graffiti on the house, and the mailbox was smashed over.
It didn’t matter where they went. The news was fresh, the names were publicized. For a while there was no true anonymity, only the brief silence of temporary homes, and the confused sense of humiliation that followed them like a bad odor. They wound up across the country, living in a seedy span of Kagoshima before they found respite, and it had been over a year by then.
Things were almost worse once everything had settled down. They were practically out of money, and ostracized by a community of strangers who wanted nothing to do with them. Kana’s father found work stevedoring in the port at night, and while it was enough to put food on the table, they lived meagerly.
Against her father’s insistence, Kana began experimenting with her Quirk again, as she had once done under the caring, cautious tutelage of her mother. It was a fearful thing, and painful, but it was also all she had left of her. In the dead of night, muted beneath the monolith groans of the ships moored in the nearby harbor, she would grit her teeth and let the aching burn of her Quirk flood through her. Mother had always told her not to be afraid of pain, but it was hard. It hurt. She kept on though, in secret, because she would have wanted her to, and even if honoring the would-be wishes of a villain seemed wrong, and guilty, Kana felt compelled. She wouldn’t deny the things her mother had done, but a part of her couldn’t let the kind memories go.
She made her desire to be a hero known, and her father fought tooth and nail to quell it. The reasons were plenty, and strong, but they were all things that Kana had already faced herself, and though they scared her, they didn’t scare her enough. When it became clear she wouldn’t be deterred, her father tried to get her to look elsewhere, perhaps overseas, where the family’s shame was unknown, and where it wouldn’t resurface again. Kana wouldn’t consider it. The shame was grave, and demoralizing, but it wasn’t what scared her either. She was what scared her.
Ishin Academy’s reputation was universally brutal, the students it accepted became heroes without exception, not villains. There she could be forged into something good, something people didn’t fear or revile, something she could be proud of.
Something the mother she remembered could be proud of.
Character Development & Conceptualization
Kana is a walking identity crisis, and an embodiment of the phrase “the sins of the father.” An inability to reconcile her mother’s gruesome villainy with the fond and gentle memories she has of her, has left Kana perpetually anxious about her own fate. The optimist in her is sure that she can make something good out of herself despite, but the pessimist is convinced that she’s doomed to follow in her mother's footsteps. Can she be a hero? Is it even right for her to try? In a world full of people trying to live up to the legacies of their parents, Kana is desperate to leave her's behind.
I wanted Kana’s struggle with heroism to be something she can’t avoid, something that’s constantly looking her in the face and asking her “is this really what you want?” So I baked it into her Quirk. “No Pain, No Gain” has and is still molding Kana’s perception of what it means to be a hero. To her, being a hero is all about sacrifice; the hero suffers so that others don’t, period. At the same time, she has to live with a Quirk that will eventually evolve into something horrific, something that would reward selfishness and sadism. Every time she activates it, she has to choose between taking the easy path to power, or the hard one. She has to choose to suffer for people who don’t want her, who hate her, even, and that’s not an easy choice to make on a hero’s constant and demanding schedule.
Excitedly, I don’t know where I want Kana to end up. Does she maintain her ideals of heroism, and put the well-being of others—even those who despise her—ahead of herself, or does she follow the path of her mother, and give in to her Quirk’s sadistic temptations of power? Ultimately this depends on her time at Ishin Academy with her fellow students, and their shared growth as would-be heroes.
Abilities & Talents
Quirk Type
Emitter
Quirk Description
Dubbed No Pain, No Gain, Kana’s Quirk, inherited from her mother, allows her to enhance her physical attributes in correlation with her own pain. Activation inflicts her with a dull yet constant ache, which gradually worsens with prolonged use, raising her strength, speed, and even durability to potentially drastic degrees as a fight carries on.
Kana’s minimal conditioning has limited the Quirk’s usefulness. As well, deactivating No Pain, No Gain “resets” her heightened abilities, but does not immediately alleviate her, making it extremely difficult to weave in and out of using.
Her mother’s mastery of the Quirk allowed her to fuel No Pain, No Gain with the pain felt by those near her, especially pain that she herself had inflicted. While Kana currently does not possess this ability, she dreads that she one day might, as it conflicts outright with her entire philosophy of heroism.
Other Talents & Attributes
Minimalist: When you don’t know whether your next meal is coming today, or the day after tomorrow, you pick up some frugal sensibilities. Living off scraps in Kagoshima’s briny harbor has taught Kana how to pinch pennies like a professional, which could come in handy with Ishin Academy’s “your time, your dime” policies. She doesn’t indulge much, if ever, and may occasionally sneak leftovers home with her.
Scrappy: Expectedly, school was a nightmare for Kana, and while most of her peers steered clear of her, the braver kids—often ones with Quirks who saw her as an opportunity to play hero—steered right into her. She can play rough, and she can absolutely play unfair, and while she’s much better nowadays at turning the other cheek, there’s still a short, childish temper buried beneath those layers of anxiety.
Academically Lacking: A strong sense of determination and the gumption to study on weekends aren’t always enough. A combination of a spotty schooling schedule, a lack of funds for tutors, and just not really being all there up in the headspace, have rendered Kana a middling academic, especially compared to the scholarly elites at Ishin Academy.
Kana is an unimposing presence. She stands just short of average, with the meager build of someone nourished on cheap food and scrap meals. Her sense of fashion is a flawless marriage between “punk” and “homeless,” complete with the high-necked, needlessly-belted boots and the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-garbage leather jacket. The things she can control though, like her hair and hygiene, she keeps in line. It’s hard enough for her to make friends without smelling like someone who only occasionally has hot water.
She has been told, often and unkindly, that she resembles her mother. She inherited her mirror-bright eyes and severe countenance, but the mannerisms—the unbowed stature, the habitual brow-cocking and cracking of finger-bones—these were learned, and to the people affected by her mother's terrible crimes, they evoke chilling, uncanny memories.
She was a kind, gentle woman. She had sharp, severe eyes, she gave warm hugs, she spoke softly even when she was upset. The people in their neighborhood liked her, people at her work liked her; she went out of her way for strangers that she’d never see again, because it was the right thing to do. She taught Kana that good people put others before themselves, that sacrifice was the foundation of heroism.
She was eleven when she learned that her mother was not a hero.
The months after she disappeared were blurry. Her father was brought in for questioning so many times that they practically lived at the police station for weeks. Reporters dogged them at their house, at the store, they even came to Kana’s school before she was pulled out. The few times that Kana was able to watch TV, she saw their names on the news. They were talking about her mother, and they were saying terrible things, calling her names, telling lies. They said she was a villain.
They left Goshogawara in a panic. People had begun coming to their house, people who claimed her mother had hurt them, or someone they loved. They came during the day, sometimes they came at night; Kana would see them through her window, pacing in their driveway or coming up to their door. They wanted answers, but Kana didn’t understand the questions. They’d knock for hours. When she and her father finally left, their was graffiti on the house, and the mailbox was smashed over.
It didn’t matter where they went. The news was fresh, the names were publicized. For a while there was no true anonymity, only the brief silence of temporary homes, and the confused sense of humiliation that followed them like a bad odor. They wound up across the country, living in a seedy span of Kagoshima before they found respite, and it had been over a year by then.
Things were almost worse once everything had settled down. They were practically out of money, and ostracized by a community of strangers who wanted nothing to do with them. Kana’s father found work stevedoring in the port at night, and while it was enough to put food on the table, they lived meagerly.
Against her father’s insistence, Kana began experimenting with her Quirk again, as she had once done under the caring, cautious tutelage of her mother. It was a fearful thing, and painful, but it was also all she had left of her. In the dead of night, muted beneath the monolith groans of the ships moored in the nearby harbor, she would grit her teeth and let the aching burn of her Quirk flood through her. Mother had always told her not to be afraid of pain, but it was hard. It hurt. She kept on though, in secret, because she would have wanted her to, and even if honoring the would-be wishes of a villain seemed wrong, and guilty, Kana felt compelled. She wouldn’t deny the things her mother had done, but a part of her couldn’t let the kind memories go.
She made her desire to be a hero known, and her father fought tooth and nail to quell it. The reasons were plenty, and strong, but they were all things that Kana had already faced herself, and though they scared her, they didn’t scare her enough. When it became clear she wouldn’t be deterred, her father tried to get her to look elsewhere, perhaps overseas, where the family’s shame was unknown, and where it wouldn’t resurface again. Kana wouldn’t consider it. The shame was grave, and demoralizing, but it wasn’t what scared her either. She was what scared her.
Ishin Academy’s reputation was universally brutal, the students it accepted became heroes without exception, not villains. There she could be forged into something good, something people didn’t fear or revile, something she could be proud of.
Something the mother she remembered could be proud of.
Character Development & Conceptualization
Kana is a walking identity crisis, and an embodiment of the phrase “the sins of the father.” An inability to reconcile her mother’s gruesome villainy with the fond and gentle memories she has of her, has left Kana perpetually anxious about her own fate. The optimist in her is sure that she can make something good out of herself despite, but the pessimist is convinced that she’s doomed to follow in her mother's footsteps. Can she be a hero? Is it even right for her to try? In a world full of people trying to live up to the legacies of their parents, Kana is desperate to leave her's behind.
I wanted Kana’s struggle with heroism to be something she can’t avoid, something that’s constantly looking her in the face and asking her “is this really what you want?” So I baked it into her Quirk. “No Pain, No Gain” has and is still molding Kana’s perception of what it means to be a hero. To her, being a hero is all about sacrifice; the hero suffers so that others don’t, period. At the same time, she has to live with a Quirk that will eventually evolve into something horrific, something that would reward selfishness and sadism. Every time she activates it, she has to choose between taking the easy path to power, or the hard one. She has to choose to suffer for people who don’t want her, who hate her, even, and that’s not an easy choice to make on a hero’s constant and demanding schedule.
Excitedly, I don’t know where I want Kana to end up. Does she maintain her ideals of heroism, and put the well-being of others—even those who despise her—ahead of herself, or does she follow the path of her mother, and give in to her Quirk’s sadistic temptations of power? Ultimately this depends on her time at Ishin Academy with her fellow students, and their shared growth as would-be heroes.
Abilities & Talents
Quirk Type
Emitter
Quirk Description
Dubbed No Pain, No Gain, Kana’s Quirk, inherited from her mother, allows her to enhance her physical attributes in correlation with her own pain. Activation inflicts her with a dull yet constant ache, which gradually worsens with prolonged use, raising her strength, speed, and even durability to potentially drastic degrees as a fight carries on.
Kana’s minimal conditioning has limited the Quirk’s usefulness. As well, deactivating No Pain, No Gain “resets” her heightened abilities, but does not immediately alleviate her, making it extremely difficult to weave in and out of using.
Her mother’s mastery of the Quirk allowed her to fuel No Pain, No Gain with the pain felt by those near her, especially pain that she herself had inflicted. While Kana currently does not possess this ability, she dreads that she one day might, as it conflicts outright with her entire philosophy of heroism.
Other Talents & Attributes
Minimalist: When you don’t know whether your next meal is coming today, or the day after tomorrow, you pick up some frugal sensibilities. Living off scraps in Kagoshima’s briny harbor has taught Kana how to pinch pennies like a professional, which could come in handy with Ishin Academy’s “your time, your dime” policies. She doesn’t indulge much, if ever, and may occasionally sneak leftovers home with her.
Scrappy: Expectedly, school was a nightmare for Kana, and while most of her peers steered clear of her, the braver kids—often ones with Quirks who saw her as an opportunity to play hero—steered right into her. She can play rough, and she can absolutely play unfair, and while she’s much better nowadays at turning the other cheek, there’s still a short, childish temper buried beneath those layers of anxiety.
Academically Lacking: A strong sense of determination and the gumption to study on weekends aren’t always enough. A combination of a spotty schooling schedule, a lack of funds for tutors, and just not really being all there up in the headspace, have rendered Kana a middling academic, especially compared to the scholarly elites at Ishin Academy.
Sybil looked around the rest of the meal hall one last time, struggling to hide how desperate she was for literally anyone else to make an offer, before she reiterated to herself: Stomach over discomfort. So, with a scoff at the noble boy’s folding, she made the short, haughty stride to his table.
Rather than sit, she placed a boot up on the bench and snatched up the bowl, heedless to the little that spilled over. The spoon she flicked aside, then angled the cusp to her lips and drank. Cold, gritty, tasteless, like swallowing a mouthful of chicken spit. She didn’t care. Food was fuel she could burn before having to burn…well, herself, she supposed.
She’d gulped down half the bowl when the perfumed little shit decided to be smart with her. Sybil lowered it briefly, just long enough to stare him down—not that he had the guts to look her in the eyes. Coward. He had his nose pasted to the parchment on the table, though it didn’t seem to her like he was making much progress. On instinct she tilted her head to get a better look at the words, but that didn’t do much for her considering she wasn’t particularly literate. She’d had to learn how to read and sign her name when she turned her father over, and she recognized the names of a few towns and cities on the roads, but nobody in the old band had been known for their linguistic expertise.
Which was all to say that she wanted to bean him with the bowl, or snatch the paper up and blow her nose in it, but she didn’t. When Daumm wanted something, and someone gave it to him, he—usually—didn’t bully them for it, he went easier on them. Of course, that only ever went for the people in the band. Everyone else got their heap of bullying whether they gave him what he wanted or not. But, as she’d been trying to convince herself, the Blackwardens were essentially her new band.
So instead she finished drinking down the soup. Eventually Thomas did speak up again, and she ignored him until she was finished. When the bowl was practically empty, she dropped it back onto the table, spit out a chunk of vegetable stuck between her teeth, then leveled her eyes at him again, though he still had his head down. The longer she stood there, the more she realized that, even though he was sitting, they were still practically at-eyes with one another. Not a good look.
“Me?” She asked, sitting down with her back to him, elbows propped up on the table. “Sure. I’ve handled plenty of shit whether I was ready for it or not. You, though…I dunno. Unless you’re gonna read the monsters and marauders to death, I’d be worried. But I’m not. Worried. About me.”
Sybil couldn’t help staring up at it. It rose so high that the torchlight didn’t reach the top, and the light piece dangling from a chain, arrayed with a dozen candles, didn’t either. It was just…black, up there, and no one could say with absolute certainty whether there was stone above, or just nothing. She’d seen all manner of southron creatures emerge from darkness like that, some she could kill, some she could outrun, and some she just didn’t stand a chance against. Obviously nothing was going to drop out of the ceiling in a Blackwarden castle, but, still, it begged attention from someone who’d only ever seen the low ceilings of roadside inns, and commandeered farmsteads.
It was also a better sight than the rest of the meal hall.
Sparsely populated as it was, Sybil hadn’t had much issue pinning the other initiates. Anyone who wasn’t bussing plates, peppering food, or who didn’t have spine-bending hunches and brows low enough to make a Neanderthal jealous, seemed like a safe bet. She counted two, maybe three, but she was also shit with math. It hadn’t quite settled with her yet whether she was meant to think of them as companions or competition, nor did she know which she’d have preferred. Competition? Sure. Kick some ass, she could do that. Easy. Ass-kick was her middle name, which was particularly impressive since she didn’t even have a last name.
But companions? Her kneejerk reaction was along the lines of “gross,” especially considering one of the initiates looked like she’d been hurled out of a swamp orphanage, and the other looked like nobility. That skeeved her out a bit. She’d robbed plenty of nobles—most indirectly, through their couriers or trade routes—had she ever lined her pockets with his family’s gold? Was that something to feel bad about?
Fuck the nobles. That’s what her father had always said, but she still thought it anyway. She might have been a piece a of shit, but that meant she could recognize other pieces of shit. Or, she thought reluctantly, she was being presumptuous, and this was precisely the sort of thinking she was trying to get away from. And sure, maybe. But fuck the nobles.
Sybil gnawed clean the last bone on her plate and finally brought her eyes down from the ceiling. On their way into the Vólkerben someone had remarked on it being their first time in a castle—fellow initiate or other passerby, she didn’t remember. In response, Sybil mentioned that she’d been in a castle once, much smaller, poorly guarded, more like a fort, really, when she thought about it. She’d found the minor lord of the property on the shitter, heard the fear drop right out of his guts. Now she was sitting alone. Alone, and still hungry.
She got up and headed for the little cove the cook inhabited, leaving her sword propped up against the table. Among bandits, or at least in her father’s band, the only people who left their things unattended were the ones who weren’t afraid they’d be stolen. Here, well, that wasn’t really a worry, but in her mind it was still a power move. In her mind she was also an even six-foot, and the maids swooned when she passed by. Someone had to think highly of her, might as well be herself.
“Garçon,” she said with as much pomp as she could muster, slapping the iron plate down onto the cook’s table. “Your finest…I dunno, something with a bone in it. The closer it has to a pulse, the better. Really just, just the bloodiest—”
“You got your share,” the cook said grimly.
Sybil blinked, eyes flicking to the rest of the food he was preparing. He noticed, and his demeanor didn’t lighten any at the implication.
“Ain’t meal hours. You get what was prepped for you, this is for later—for the real wardens. You want more? Maybe there’s someone you could steal it from.”
The twist in his words was…unsubtle. She licked her teeth to bite off whatever nasty and ill-minded retort was bubbling up in her throat, and merely huffed out “fine,” before turning to the rest of the feasting hall.
“Okay,” she called out, arms wide. “Who’s feeling charitable today?”
Her eyes swept the room, searching not only her fellow initiates, but even the veterans. If it was worth doing, it was worth overdoing, and she’d be underdoing if she left out the grizzled old bastards just because they outranked her—or could kick her ass.
She walked by the tables, swallowing down the taste of distaste at interacting with people. People she didn’t know or cared to know. Stomach over discomfort. Growing up as she did might have taught her a lot of unsavory things, but it had also instilled in her the value of a good meal.
“Doesn’t have to be charity, if the word offends you,” she said with faux-amicability. “You’re just as welcome to call it ‘self-preservation,’ hm? How’s that? Anyone feel like doing themselves a favor?”
▼ B A S I C S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Height – 4’11" ► Weight - 100 lbs ► Build - Slight Runner ► Hair Colour - Black ► Eye Colour – Dun Gray ► Origin – Unnamed or Unknown, Southern Confederacy -
▼ S K I L L S E T ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Swordsman ship – Relentless harasser, ferocious and formidable ► Blood Magic – Blood for Brawn, understanding of the nature of sacrifice ► Dauntless – Voracious in the face of adversity, unblemished by fear -
D E T A I L E D A P P E A R A N C E
Sybil is much bigger on the inside than she is on the outside. She stands a head or two below her peers, even in greaves, and has a habit of lugging things around that put her size into an unfavorable perspective. Her physique is wanting for the focused muscle of a would-be warden, and instead she bears the build of someone who spent their life walking, and often enough, running. Otherwise, while not shying from exercise, she’s never put much stock into it. It’s not as though muscle would make her any taller.
To compensate, she has mastered the art of the glower. The glare, the scowl, the knives-in-the-eyes-and-soon-in-your-spine stare, and it’s just about bolted on. She keeps her soot-colored hair in a short bob, her face framed by blunt bangs and dirt, neither of which lend her any disarming qualities.
Her attire is a motley collage of southron culture, crossed with all the chic of a hedge knight with no money. Patchy cloths and dark leathers shift and chafe under joint segments of armor. The sword she carries stands nearly as tall as she does, and when it isn’t strapped to her back, she’s dragging it along like a dead animal. She cleans them when she cleans them, which just happens to be past the threshold most people do—people who don’t understand the value of a dirt sheen.
At a glance Sybil may look like someone’s grumpy, ill-tempered niece, but in reality Sybil doesn’t have any aunts or uncles.
---P E R S O N A L I T Y
There’s something unsettlingly vicious about Sybil, from the way she speaks and carries herself, all the way down to her personal ideologies. She has a low tolerance for socialization, and an indiscriminate temper that often leaves people with a low tolerance for her, and that’s all before the garnishing of sadistic tendencies and a wicked napoleon complex.
Missing from this vile mixture, and perhaps her saving grace from true villainy, is the textbook narcissism and arrogance. Sybil possesses a candid self-awareness, and admits her own shortcomings as freely and as bluntly as she points out the mistakes of others. If it’s her fault, she’s the first to rat on herself, and she’s quick to avoid making the same mistake twice. To her, there’s a million things to shame people for, but learning isn’t one of them. This has made her a rather productive learner, and an apt student.
But there are some stains the wardens can’t wash out. The body can be scrubbed, the mind can be polished, but dirt on the soul tends to never have been dirt at all, but intrinsic. This belief has been the cornerstone to Sybil’s reflection upon not only herself, but the Path as well. Nature rules man, Evilness lingers in all men, Know oneself. Do these tenants better the soul, or do they simply justify the soul’s behavior? Is change possible, or is it simply a matter of being repurposed?
Does she care, or is she just making excuses for why she's always favored killing men over beasts? Perhaps there are questions she isn't ready to ask herself.
---O R I G I N
The wardens really will take just about anyone.
Sybil was born to a bandit and raised in banditry. Her father, a man named Daumm, roamed the marshlands with his band of reprobates, terrorizing traveling merchants and plaguing the trade routes between lordships. He knew no boundary to self-indulgence, and spared no thought to foresight. This recklessness made him excellent at marauding and debauchery and generally any activity which could stand to debase the good name of men, mankind, and people with black hair.
It made him terrible at pulling out.
Sybil’s mother, according to her father, had set out from whatever hole-in-the-dirt town she lived in and found him on the road. She stormed right past his men, stared him in the face, and shoved a bundle into his arms. Not her problem, she’d said. Well fuck, said he, because it ought not to be his problem either. Daumm never danced around that idea—that Sybil wasn’t wanted, that she was a mistake and a burden and every other easy jab he could make to get a rise out of her, until he got bored, or she got used to them.
It could go without saying, but should be said regardless, that Daumm was an abysmal father. None of his qualities even orbited the loosest definition of the word “parental.” In many ways, in fact in most ways, Daumm was no different from any other bandit. He was unruly, greedy, sadistic, a violent drunk and seemingly allergic to hygiene and good manners.
But in another, important way, he was very different.
He was a mage.
More specifically he was a blood mage, a particular discipline of blood mage, but nonetheless. He never considered Sybil a protégé, but he did see an opportunity in training her. After all, one blood mage had gotten him this far, and if it worked once it would certainly work twice. Daumm never considered the potential fallout of teaching his daughter everything he knew because, as demonstrated ad nauseum, Daumm didn’t think ahead. Instead, he took the meager little girl that spent her days gnawing charred meat off bones tossed in the pit fire, told her the whole world hated her more than he did, and gave her a weapon.
At a young age Sybil went from observing violence to partaking in it. It felt…good. At first. Luckless as she was, she’d inherited some of her father’s worst qualities, namely being late on the uptake for things like “compassion” and “empathy.” So for a time she delighted in the power her magic and lifestyle allowed her to exert over others. This was just the way things were, Daumm had said, this was their nature—the nature of all men, magic or otherwise. The savage life of banditry took hold of her, the violence, the power, became her passion. For a time the bloodshed brought out something in Daumm that she’d never seen before, something that fueled her and yet, in retrospect, sickened her deeply. It was pride. Pride in who she’d become. This was who she was, and she would never change.
Eventually, she changed. It was in no grand way, and it certainly didn’t happen quickly, but eventually those foreign concepts of humanity did come to her. Their roots were shallow and lethargic, and she fought them off for a while, but once they had settled, she couldn’t shake them.
Soon she had lost her passion. The violence, especially violence against people who didn’t want it, or worse, stood no chance against her, lost its thrill. She began to feel…bad, for what she’d done. Regret came quickly and burrowed deep. The sleepless nights and miserable days took their toll, until Sybil made the unsettlingly easy decision that she wanted peace more than she wanted a family.
So she struck a deal with one of the petty lords. Her father for her freedom. Hands were shaken, writs were signed, and the trap was set. It wasn’t a particularly elaborate trap, but still, no one was surprised when Daumm fell helplessly into it, nor when he went raging and wild into custody. He invoked meaning in their relationship that there had never been, that he’d been certain to remind her day in and day out could never be. Yet when she left with her freedom, she did so bitter and ashamed.
Freedom without purpose was nearly worse than regret. She longed for the thrill she’d felt before, but knew she needed a different avenue to it. Something new, something, daresay, honorable, that would accept her despite herself. Despite what she’d done. What she was even in the wake of change.
The Blackwardens didn’t even bat an eye.
---E Q U I P M E N T
Arms and Armor ► Greatsword ► Morning Star ► Leather Cuirass and Spaulder ► Mottled Iron Gauntlets and Greaves ► Black Leather Jerkin ► Daumm’s Cloak
Misc and Utility ►Paring Knife ►Unsavory Rations (7 days) ►"Water" Flask ►Whetstone ►Assorted Blood Vials, All Labeled "Normal Jelly"
---O T H E R
Utilizing her father’s unsurprisingly poor teaching, Sybil has learned a particular style of blood magic called Burning. This allows her to enhance her physical strength in exchange for blood. The greater the enhancement, the greater the cost, and for someone of Sybil’s build and stature, there’s a higher buy-in just to break even with most people. Because of this, she suffers in prolonged engagements, but can be quite deadly in bursts.
As well, Sybil generates blood at a quicker pace than is natural. Not enough to make a difference in combat, but enough for her to regain in hours what may have normally taken days, or to offset the cost of burning to lug her sword around.
▼ B A S I C S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Height – 4’11" ► Weight - 100 lbs ► Build - Slight Runner ► Hair Colour - Black ► Eye Colour – Dun Gray ► Origin – Unnamed or Unknown, Southern Confederacy -
▼ S K I L L S E T ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Swordsman ship – Relentless harasser, ferocious and formidable ► Blood Magic – Blood for Brawn, understanding of the nature of sacrifice ► Dauntless – Voracious in the face of adversity, unblemished by fear -
D E T A I L E D A P P E A R A N C E
Sybil is much bigger on the inside than she is on the outside. She stands a head or two below her peers, even in greaves, and has a habit of lugging things around that put her size into an unfavorable perspective. Her physique is wanting for the focused muscle of a would-be warden, and instead she bears the build of someone who spent their life walking, and often enough, running. Otherwise, while not shying from exercise, she’s never put much stock into it. It’s not as though muscle would make her any taller.
To compensate, she has mastered the art of the glower. The glare, the scowl, the knives-in-the-eyes-and-soon-in-your-spine stare, and it’s just about bolted on. She keeps her soot-colored hair in a short bob, her face framed by blunt bangs and dirt, neither of which lend her any disarming qualities.
Her attire is a motley collage of southron culture, crossed with all the chic of a hedge knight with no money. Patchy cloths and dark leathers shift and chafe under joint segments of armor. The sword she carries stands nearly as tall as she does, and when it isn’t strapped to her back, she’s dragging it along like a dead animal. She cleans them when she cleans them, which just happens to be past the threshold most people do—people who don’t understand the value of a dirt sheen.
At a glance Sybil may look like someone’s grumpy, ill-tempered niece, but in reality Sybil doesn’t have any aunts or uncles.
---P E R S O N A L I T Y
There’s something unsettlingly vicious about Sybil, from the way she speaks and carries herself, all the way down to her personal ideologies. She has a low tolerance for socialization, and an indiscriminate temper that often leaves people with a low tolerance for her, and that’s all before the garnishing of sadistic tendencies and a wicked napoleon complex.
Missing from this vile mixture, and perhaps her saving grace from true villainy, is the textbook narcissism and arrogance. Sybil possesses a candid self-awareness, and admits her own shortcomings as freely and as bluntly as she points out the mistakes of others. If it’s her fault, she’s the first to rat on herself, and she’s quick to avoid making the same mistake twice. To her, there’s a million things to shame people for, but learning isn’t one of them. This has made her a rather productive learner, and an apt student.
But there are some stains the wardens can’t wash out. The body can be scrubbed, the mind can be polished, but dirt on the soul tends to never have been dirt at all, but intrinsic. This belief has been the cornerstone to Sybil’s reflection upon not only herself, but the Path as well. Nature rules man, Evilness lingers in all men, Know oneself. Do these tenants better the soul, or do they simply justify the soul’s behavior? Is change possible, or is it simply a matter of being repurposed?
Does she care, or is she just making excuses for why she's always favored killing men over beasts? Perhaps there are questions she isn't ready to ask herself.
---O R I G I N
The wardens really will take just about anyone.
Sybil was born to a bandit and raised in banditry. Her father, a man named Daumm, roamed the marshlands with his band of reprobates, terrorizing traveling merchants and plaguing the trade routes between lordships. He knew no boundary to self-indulgence, and spared no thought to foresight. This recklessness made him excellent at marauding and debauchery and generally any activity which could stand to debase the good name of men, mankind, and people with black hair.
It made him terrible at pulling out.
Sybil’s mother, according to her father, had set out from whatever hole-in-the-dirt town she lived in and found him on the road. She stormed right past his men, stared him in the face, and shoved a bundle into his arms. Not her problem, she’d said. Well fuck, said he, because it ought not to be his problem either. Daumm never danced around that idea—that Sybil wasn’t wanted, that she was a mistake and a burden and every other easy jab he could make to get a rise out of her, until he got bored, or she got used to them.
It could go without saying, but should be said regardless, that Daumm was an abysmal father. None of his qualities even orbited the loosest definition of the word “parental.” In many ways, in fact in most ways, Daumm was no different from any other bandit. He was unruly, greedy, sadistic, a violent drunk and seemingly allergic to hygiene and good manners.
But in another, important way, he was very different.
He was a mage.
More specifically he was a blood mage, a particular discipline of blood mage, but nonetheless. He never considered Sybil a protégé, but he did see an opportunity in training her. After all, one blood mage had gotten him this far, and if it worked once it would certainly work twice. Daumm never considered the potential fallout of teaching his daughter everything he knew because, as demonstrated ad nauseum, Daumm didn’t think ahead. Instead, he took the meager little girl that spent her days gnawing charred meat off bones tossed in the pit fire, told her the whole world hated her more than he did, and gave her a weapon.
At a young age Sybil went from observing violence to partaking in it. It felt…good. At first. Luckless as she was, she’d inherited some of her father’s worst qualities, namely being late on the uptake for things like “compassion” and “empathy.” So for a time she delighted in the power her magic and lifestyle allowed her to exert over others. This was just the way things were, Daumm had said, this was their nature—the nature of all men, magic or otherwise. The savage life of banditry took hold of her, the violence, the power, became her passion. For a time the bloodshed brought out something in Daumm that she’d never seen before, something that fueled her and yet, in retrospect, sickened her deeply. It was pride. Pride in who she’d become. This was who she was, and she would never change.
Eventually, she changed. It was in no grand way, and it certainly didn’t happen quickly, but eventually those foreign concepts of humanity did come to her. Their roots were shallow and lethargic, and she fought them off for a while, but once they had settled, she couldn’t shake them.
Soon she had lost her passion. The violence, especially violence against people who didn’t want it, or worse, stood no chance against her, lost its thrill. She began to feel…bad, for what she’d done. Regret came quickly and burrowed deep. The sleepless nights and miserable days took their toll, until Sybil made the unsettlingly easy decision that she wanted peace more than she wanted a family.
So she struck a deal with one of the petty lords. Her father for her freedom. Hands were shaken, writs were signed, and the trap was set. It wasn’t a particularly elaborate trap, but still, no one was surprised when Daumm fell helplessly into it, nor when he went raging and wild into custody. He invoked meaning in their relationship that there had never been, that he’d been certain to remind her day in and day out could never be. Yet when she left with her freedom, she did so bitter and ashamed.
Freedom without purpose was nearly worse than regret. She longed for the thrill she’d felt before, but knew she needed a different avenue to it. Something new, something, daresay, honorable, that would accept her despite herself. Despite what she’d done. What she was even in the wake of change.
The Blackwardens didn’t even bat an eye.
---E Q U I P M E N T
Arms and Armor ► Greatsword ► Morning Star ► Leather Cuirass and Spaulder ► Mottled Iron Gauntlets and Greaves ► Black Leather Jerkin ► Daumm’s Cloak
Misc and Utility ►Paring Knife ►Unsavory Rations (7 days) ►"Water" Flask ►Whetstone ►Assorted Blood Vials, All Labeled "Normal Jelly"
---O T H E R
Utilizing her father’s unsurprisingly poor teaching, Sybil has learned a particular style of blood magic called Burning. This allows her to enhance her physical strength in exchange for blood. The greater the enhancement, the greater the cost, and for someone of Sybil’s build and stature, there’s a higher buy-in just to break even with most people. Because of this, she suffers in prolonged engagements, but can be quite deadly in bursts.
As well, Sybil generates blood at a quicker pace than is natural. Not enough to make a difference in combat, but enough for her to regain in hours what may have normally taken days, or to offset the cost of burning to lug her sword around.
“These are pilots. They are here to bring the threats against New Anchorage to heel, and, if they stay, they may have to lay down their lives for it. These people are not here to be our friends. If you’re going to judge them on their physiques, it should be in regards to how well they can handle themselves in a fight. Even then, that hardly matters compared to how well they can pilot.”
“That one’s cute, too!”
Eli pinched the bridge of her nose. “Vera this is not appropriate behavior for a pilot.”
“Well, like you keep telling me, I’m not a pilot yet,” Vera said. There was a little bite in her voice, but she was still smiling. She stuck her tongue out playfully at Eli and turned back to the newcomers.
They didn’t look like much. It was hard to tell the weather-beat of a veteran from the grime of needing a shower and a washing machine. Then again, none of them here had ever been much to look at either. Raschke was, generously speaking, a “man of the people,” the pilots and staff were nobodies, some of whom weren’t even natives. Even Sophia had been a haggard woman, blown into her role like an icy tumbleweed, and gone just as quickly. No, she thought. Not gone. Deserted. She left us.
Eli regarded the newcomers more heavily. If only she could know from a look who meant to help them and who, like Sophia, would betray them. These people would sign their names and make their pledges, but those were words only, and for all her shortcoming’s in understanding people, Eli knew better than to trust them by their words.
Or, she thought, eyes falling upon the commander. Their ranks.
“Ohmigosh,” Vera said, sitting up in her chair. “Hey, I think that one’s a kid. Lizzy, look, that one—she’s a kid!”
“I see.”
Vera’s smile twitched. She searched for something in the air, and then her eyes went wide. She hopped out of her chair, said something about practicing sims, and then scurried off.
Eli was tempted to follow out of concern, but she’d have had no luck voicing them. It was all Vera talked about nowadays, piloting. Whether it was simulations, speculating about her own NC, worrying over her own capabilities, or, perhaps worst of all, waxing about her conversations with Stein, there was no escaping it. Eli had no issues with piloting, and by all accounts she should have felt proud of how much effort Vera was putting into it. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. All she felt when they talked about the future was dread, and guilt. One day, sooner now than later, Vera would do for New Anchorage exactly what Eli expected of every pilot: she would put her life on the line.
Eli got up from the table, unfocused. She cast one last glance over the newcomers, then left for the hangar.
Lemons
Master EffeX
Alby47
Obscene Symphony
Asura
Nallore
Kuro
Abstract Proxy
Stern Algorithm
