Liese was…odd. He was at once exactly what Dot had expected a noble to be like, yet also strikingly different. It seemed to her that he spoke like the mummers at court did to their audiences, with enough zeal and bombast to make up for every poor dejected sod that had been turned away, and he was almost stiflingly proud about it too. But, he wasn’t using that pride like she’d seen some of the other nobles do. Part of her had expected derision or blackmail, instead she got understanding, even empathy. She wondered what the young noble meant about being judged himself, but she wasn’t afforded much time to think on it.
To his last statement she nodded. His ambitiousness aside, he had motives she could certainly respect, and in fact fervently agree with. “I hope we do.” she said, and found she meant it. “And…thank you. For the confidence. I hope I can repay that trust.”
“Good morrow, gentlemen!”
Dot turned to the newcomer, smiling on instinct, until he introduced himself as Nathaniel of House Lowthren, and she realized she was now in the presence of not one but two nobles. It made sense of course. You didn’t fill the second seat at a table helmed by the prince with the ass of a nobody. But, then, why had it been Nathanial? Granted, Dot wasn’t versed in Grayle’s social hierarchy, so there was certainly a chance that House Lowthren was simply just that important, but after only a brief conversation with them, Dot found it hard to believe that Liese wasn’t important either.
Actually, hadn’t Nathanial been the one laid low by the Baker boy? Conversely, Liese had made short work of another noble in his own bout. By merit alone, should it not have been him commanding as second, or third? Adean would have scolded her for being presumptuous, but in the back of her mind, Dot couldn’t help hearing Liese’s words again. Perhaps the boy’s empathy had sincere roots.
Nevertheless, just as Dot knew it would have been rude to turn Liese away, she also knew it would have been just as rude to redirect that unused spite at Nathanial. Even if he was just being formal, there was a friendliness in formality that she was particularly starved of, and while her susceptibility to smiles and kind words was a bit worrying, she decided for now that she’d take them with grace, and reciprocate as best she could. Besides, she’d already been pleasantly surprised by Liese. Perhaps Nathanial would surprise her as well.
“Thank you, mister, uh…second seat. Nathanial. I look forward to learning from you. With your aid the Eastern House will surely flourish.” She bowed to them both, deep and proper like she’d seen the dancers do in the presence of their betters. “At your leave, then. I guess we’ll all be mingling again tonight once we have our quarters…and some food, hopefully.”
With that, she joined the rest of the gathering squadron, who seemed ready to make for the barracks. On the way she passed the blue-haired boy that was their third seat. Kaiser Underwall, another alleged noble from a House whose importance she could only infer from his position. His spar had been…interesting. Very straight forward. She admired it really, how brazenly he’d abandoned his weapon to run his opponent down, almost like a dog. Perhaps it was his intentional self-disarmament that kept him from being disqualified as she had. Regardless of all that, she’d been most impressed by the athletic feats he’d performed during the naming ceremony. She was worried her—admittedly nascent—style would get her ridiculed, but it was relieving to see one of their commanding members shared her penchant for acrobatic flair.
“That flip was really cool,” she said. Something about him didn’t put her on edge the same way the other nobles did. He seemed unkempt. Disarming. “Bet you could get over someone at ground-level with enough momentum, if they were, y'know, swingin’ low or something. Would be pretty sweet…uh, sir. Sorry.”
She bowed her head to him too and kept going, a bit embarrassed by her own informality. Knights were meant to be all prim and proper, what with all their codes and honor and such. But she’d always read how soldiers were chummy with one another, sometimes even their superiors. Was that allowed here? She’d told herself she wouldn’t care about offending nobles but now that she was actually here it was suddenly much harder to actually be rude.
In most cases, anyway.
Prince Rossweine was talking to the others one by one it had seemed. Getting to know his subordinates. Not exactly the mark of a tyrannical, egomaniacal leader. Nonetheless she found her jaw clenching the closer she drew to him, felt that hateful little flame flaring again, and beneath that there was undeniably fear curling her stomach. She tried to keep her eyes low, her face impassive, and whatever words were stewing in the back of her mind from boiling out of her mouth.
Dot passed the prince without stopping, burying herself in the vanguard of the group headed for the barracks. Food, she thought, intensely enough to distract her. Real food. Bed. Warmth. People. This was not a mistake. This was not a mistake.
Dot watched their numbers dwindle and began to worry. Even when so many had gone that she no longer needed the post to see the stage, she found herself anchored there, afraid that moving might be perceived as some kind of slight against the gods, and they would strike her name from the list, and then maybe smite her for good measure. She trilled her fingers on the wood in time to a song she couldn’t even hear in her own head over the pounding of her heart.
However, when she heard the prince’s name, Rossweine Lupus Grayle, it all seemed to quiet. Her eyes found him easily, he looked almost exactly like she’d expected royalty to look, right down to the demeanor. Down to the wire as they all were, yet he seemed so calm, picturesque, like the wind itself didn’t dare bother him.
Anger sparked within her, so suddenly that it took her by surprise. It caught kindling she didn’t know was there, and began to burn voraciously. Her lips pursed until she was chewing at them. Her fingers had stopped trilling, she was gripping the post so tightly now her knuckles were whitening. If looks could be weapons, she would have been hanged for an attempt on the prince’s life.
“Zenshin Ferros!”
Dot jolted, having only really caught the last name and nearly mistaking it for her own. Just as she was about to climb down, a beanpole of a boy stepped forward, and she realized her mistake. Her burgeoning fury was snuffed, and in its ashes she wilted. Perhaps she would be sleeping soundly alone after all—
“Dot Auferrum!”
Cruel, gods. Very cruel. This time Dot nearly fell off the post, only managing to catch herself an inch from even further humiliation. As she joined the rest of thirteenth squadron, a sort of fog descended upon her. That was it, she had made it after all. She wasn’t some wandering vagrant anymore, or a listless exile. She was a knight of Grayle—in training, anyway. It was as the man said: the kingdom needed them, and they were called to defend it.
Dot found it hard to draw any real sense of patriotism from that duty, but then again, this whole thing probably counted as treason. No going back to Alexandria now. She tried to let that feel like a good thing, and put Adean out of her thoughts, but that just made her feel guilty. So instead she directed her thoughts to their mentor’s parting question. As her squadmates began shuffling off for the eastern barracks, she followed, slowed less by her limp and more by her inability to find and answer.
What could she do for Grayle? All of the things that came to mind made her feel ill.
“Lady Auferrum.”
Despite the fact that the blonde boy had walked right up to her, Dot felt like she’d been smacked on the back of her head with a pole. Reflex screamed at her to clap a hand over his mouth, but she was too dumbstruck to manage even a quiet 'ShhHHH!' She just stood there as Liese Victoire of House Brendorn introduced himself, petrified, eyes flicking around in case anyone had heard the boy casually out her to the world. Well, halfway, at least. In all fairness, she had banked perhaps too heavily on the people of Grayle being as oblivious to foreign nobility as she was.
But Liese was different, like Rossweine. Both reeked of nobility, but where the prince had breezy ethereality, Liese was practically oozing with proud ambition. That alone made Dot’s teeth itch. She stared at the outstretched hand, and a bitter part of her wanted to refuse it, refuse the whole introduction altogether. But that wasn’t nice—Dot wasn’t the most experienced socialite but even she knew that much—and more important than that, it wasn’t fair. Liese might have been a noble, but he was being nice, or trying. And he seemed genuine, or at least she thought so. Assuming the best of others’ intentions had never done her well before, but she found her convictions harder to stick to when faced with friendliness.
She did want friends.
Dot shook Liese’s hand and mustered up a smile, though she couldn’t quite wipe the panic from her face. “Wow. I was kinda worried we’d be lacking enthusiasm, what with us being the last picks and all, but it sounds like you already know the road ahead of you. If your match is anything to go by, you seem pretty prepared for it at least. It's nice to meet you too.” Before they could continue on with the group, Dot stayed them a little longer, dropping her voice to a hush. “Ah, but could you…uhm…I probably could have gone about disguising myself better, but as long as it lasts could you just call me Dot? I’d really rather people didn’t treat me any different, not over silly stuff. For now I’m just, ah, one of the boys, you know?”
It had been a long day already. Dot was hungry, and sore, and she hadn’t slept properly in weeks, but tonight she was sure that wouldn’t be a problem. It had all been for this, after all, to be in this courtyard and to hear whether or not coming to Grayle had been the ultimate mistake. Part of her wouldn’t mind being denied. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d been found out, despite all the effort she’d put into disguising herself. Sure, she probably could have picked a better alias than her literal nickname, but only Adean had ever called her “Dot,” and he was an entire life away, now. If the knights turned her away, she would leave Grayle entirely bereft of coin and dignity, but at least she wouldn’t feel the need to sleep with one eye open.
But, no, she didn’t want to fail. Not really. This dream, soured as it might have been, had still taken nearly her whole life to realize. To simply throw it all away out of fear after everything it had cost her wouldn’t just be cowardly, it would be irredeemably stupid. Besides, there was no point in being disheartened over the future when there was already plenty for her to panic about in the now.
Dot lagged towards the back of the group as they made their way to the courtyard. She was nursing a limp from her opening spar, which wasn’t as bad now but still stung all the way through her shin. God, but it had been a bloody good kick. Damn near perfect; Adean would have scolded her for even trying, but he would have appreciated it anyway. From the neatly balanced dip to the rising twist and the picturesque snap of the kick itself, with just enough power to carry through the strike without torquing herself out of control. Even the landing could have made a dancer in a court of royalty blush. Everything had been just right, a perfect execution, except for the fact that she’d aimed too high and caught the other bastard on the hardened cap of his helmet, rather than his cheek. It had still put him on the dirt, but that wasn’t the point. “Killing blows” or disarms had been the rule for her match, and in the painful shock she’d dropped her waster. He was back up before she realized it, bloodied brow but sword still in his hand, and that was that.
What a way to lose. She’d almost rather the boy knocked her out, at least then she wouldn’t have had to deal with the shameful hobble back to the lineup, or the snickering that followed. “Little fairy boy,” they called her, “get you some twirlin’ ribbons, you can dance for the real knights.”
Next time she'd hit the face, and she wouldn’t drop the damn sword.
"...So... friggin'... hungry..."
Dot glanced over to the scrawny boy hopping up and down for a view of the courtyard. Yeah, she thought, ignoring the groaning of her own stomach. You and me both.
Someone else approached, an absolute giant who Dot at first mistook for one of the adults. Looking closer though, he was certainly an aspirant like the rest of them. He’d lost his bout too, she recalled, though he’d put up a hell of a fight. Now he smelled like food, good, hot food. Dot walked away before she could start drooling.
She found a thick fencepost near the back of the courtyard, pasted over with flyers and notices, and climbed up high enough to see over the crowd. The stage was still empty, but towards the front she spotted the glittering line of noble progeny, and scowled. All smug faces and confidence. No doubt the lot of them would be running things around here before too long. Just like everywhere else.
But Dot didn’t have the energy to be angry. She was too anxious. After all, for many of the aspirants, this was the first day of the rest of their lives.
Full Name – Dorothy “Dot” Auferrum Age - 14 Gender - Female Heritage – Born to an Alexandrian family that can trace its long and winding roots back to penitent Maria, and utterly soiled by the presence of Grayle blood in her parentage. Magical Affinity - Light
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P E R S O N A L I T Y
Sheltered Having done most of her growing up in a solitary block of her home, Dot does not boast a particular broad understanding of the world. Sure, she had tutors for writing and mathematics, but she never learned the fine details of international relations, and the dance of courtroom politics was one for which she simply didn’t have the rhythm. She knows things are tense in the world, and that Alexandria is, allegedly, so much better than Grayle, but in all honestly she doesn’t very much care for either of them. Why should she? They never cared for her.
Curious Of course, a disinterest in world politics doesn’t preclude an interest in the world itself. You can’t spend years in one place and not want to see what’s outside. Nor can you spend as much time interacting with very few people and not want to make friends. Dot sees friendship as a beautiful flower waiting to be plucked on the other side of a river—she just can’t swim yet. Solitude might have stamped her adventurous spirit into the dirt, but plenty of things can grow from dirt with a little time and a nurturing hand.
Hang It All Disillusionment was sewn into Dot very early, and its roots grew deep. What was once a starry-eyed thirst for glory and adventure has devolved into a bitter cynicism befitting someone much older and world-weary. Dot hasn’t seen the world, but as far as she’s concerned, people are the same pretty much everywhere—they look out for themselves, and will bury anyone for the sake of their own ambitions.
She harbors a burning resentment for the aristocracy, with a particular disdain for royalty. In her dreams their castles lay in ruins and their thrones sit empty. And yet, she cannot shake her fascination with knighthood, for which she blames Adean’s own fixation with honor and battle. Knights, she thinks—prays, even—are the exception. They live by codes, they don’t just fight for who’s in charge, they fight for good. They help the innocent. They right wrongs. They bring justice to the unjust.
Dot wouldn’t mind meting out that justice herself.
S K I L L S E T
Isolated Training Dot could write her name with both hands at the same time, backwards. Whether this skill was learned or came naturally is uncertain, but being cooped up at nearly all hours of the day left her with plenty of time to develop it. Coupled with a keen sense of hand-eye coordination, this made for phenomenal groundwork when her brother began training her in swordplay. Adean’s teachers were many, and skilled, and Dot accepted the funnel of their collective knowledge voraciously. She learned quickly, fixating on every lesson, working the hobby into a passion over years of practice. Unfortunately, she never got the chance to put her training to use at home, but Adean was proud of her progress, and that was enough for her.
Presently, Dot favors a rapier in each hand, and tends to prefer offense to defense.
Dancer Dot’s room was very close to where the court entertainers would practice, and so she frequently found opportunities to observe, listen, and occasionally dance along to the music. Over time this frivolous hobby grew into practicality; in addition to building lean muscle, Dot displays a phenomenal sense of balance and agility, able to move unencumbered in frilled dresses and patched-up rags alike.
Naturally, she incorporated this into her training with Adean, despite his protests. According to him, dancing was elegant but too pretty, and fighting was supposed to be ugly and brutal. Of course, Dot was more stubborn than sensible, and while she ceased trying to pirouette in their sparring bouts, she never gave up the grace. Amateurish and unorthodox as she may be, there is an undeniably effectiveness in the bedrock of her style, it just needs some time and proper training to unearth.
Disgraced by Light While some of her hobbies were indulged, the one thing Dot was always forbidden from meddling with was her affinity for Light magic. Her father wouldn’t stand to see it, and her mother, not wanting to upset him further, stood with him. This, of course, did not dissuade Dot, who couldn’t envision a world in which she was somehow more of a disappointment. So with tremendous effort and more than a few harsh punishments, she managed to eke out a meager study in what few light incantations she could get her hands on, but even then her results were mixed at best. Magic was hard, go figure, and it was far beyond Dot’s capabilities to teach herself its complexities by candlelight in the wee hours between dusk and dawn. With the right tutelage, she’s sure that will change.
Physical Description
Of average height, slight but leanly muscled, toss a little dirt on her cheeks and Dot looks the part of a rugged youth, despite having grown up in a literal castle. Her dark hair is chopped short, and she possesses a stony yet serene countenance, cracked only under pressure, or when given something sweet. Like her siblings, she carries almost none of her father’s hard features, and knows that before long she will look very much like her mother—a thought that thrilled her once, but no longer.
Her clothes are not quite rags, but are still simple and offer ease of movement. She wears cloaks often, having always favored the flowing nature they granted to her dancing, and now preferring how they obscure her movements. Hoods, gloves, and boots are also not uncommon, mainly because she owns little else, and she’s been instructed that more coverage is better.
It would be hard to see nobility in Dot at a glance, but in motion she displays a sort of grace unbefitting of street urchins. She doesn’t move like a knight, nor entirely like a dancer either, but rather in some awkward amalgamation of the two. Time and training may yet refine it into something effective and beautiful.
Character Conceptualization
Lord Heron Auferrum was a proud man, with a proud lineage and a proud legacy. He wore his family’s colors with pride, he ruled his subjects with pride, he combed his moustache with pride. The people of the Ferrous Shore were proud to call him lord, his sons were proud to call him father. At night he would stand in front of a mirror and tell himself just how proud he was to be Lord Heron Auferrum, and then he would climb into bed and dream that penitent Maria herself would descend to pat him on the head and say that she was proud of him too.
At least that’s how Dot imagined it from her hole in the castle.
Often times the lastborn child of nobility is doted upon, shirking all responsibility, but still managing to bask in the glory of their name and reap all its benefits. In a way that was true, Dot’s third brother was lazy and witless and did next to nothing and yet he would be recorded in the Auferrum records with beautiful marks.
Unlike him, though, Dot was a bastard.
Not Lord Heron’s bastard, no. His wife, the venerable Lady Lesca, had been exchanging love letters with an anonymous member of the Grayle family, and on a certain diplomatic visit to their neighbors, sealed them with a kiss.
At first this was not a problem. Despite Heron’s strong bloodline, all of his children most strongly resembled their mother, and Dot was no exception. It wasn’t until the discovery of her magical affinity that things took a turn for the worse. Her father was crestfallen, her mother was mortified, and two of her brothers were quick to write her out of the family. Adean, the middle brother, felt sorry for her and still called her sister, but as second in line his say was ignored.
Blessedly, no one outside of the immediate family knew, and Heron was desperate to keep it that way. He had his daughter confined. At the age of five, Dot’s world shrank to the size of her room, expanding only occasionally to other cramped areas of the castle. Her only visitors were the guards that brought her food, the tutors who disappeared if she told them her secret, her mother—though that became less and less frequent over the years—and daily visits from Adean. With few feasible hobbies, Dot spent a lot of time daydreaming about being free, seeing the world, living out the adventures in the books she hoarded. But eventually those dreams soured. Childlike wonder withered early for her, and she became moody and resentful of everyone, even Adean—though she always felt guilty when she snapped at him, and he always came back the next day anyway. Adean tried to ease the gloom. He taught her swordplay, and brought her to dance while the musicians practiced, when he could sneak her out, but for every bright moment he gave her, there were always hours of silence to follow.
Eventually he decided enough was enough. Dot wasn’t sure how exactly it happened, but her brother managed to leak her secret to the court, and from there it spread like wildfire. Lord Heron Auferrum, proud descendent of the penitent witch, renowned knight of Alexandria, had been cuckolded by the fucking Grayles. Mockery and contempt rained down upon their house, and in a matter of weeks their standing had begun to crumble. Heron raged, demanding duels from all those who darted impugn his honor, and though he managed to lay a few hecklers low on the field, the rest simply ignored him.
It was too much. Heron had his wife exiled, and in a fever of newfound hatred for his countrymen, sent Dot “back where she belonged.” Adean and the rest of her brothers were now the ones confined to the castle, until he could manage to find them suitable prospects for marriage so that he might, slowly, begin to rebuild the Auferrum name.
Armed with a humble pouch of coin, Dot was sent to Grayle as a “Grudge-Born-Gift,” which seemed in all practicality to be synonymous with “soon-to-be-prisoner” or, perhaps like her mother, “exile.” Alexandria despised her, and Grayle, she was sure, would carry no love for a bastard whose mere existence called the royal family’s honor into question. The only thing saving her from the gutters, or worse, living in another small room as a political hostage no one wanted, was her affinity for Light magic. Regardless of her dubious birth, turning away a rare gift, even one given out of spite, was surely unwise.
Dot found little resistance in her decision to try for knighthood. It seemed girls joining was something of an open secret, discouraged but not rigorously policed. “Cut your hair, wear baggy clothes,” they said, “and don’t piss around anyone.” It didn’t sound so tough, and for a brief moment Dot felt the world open up just a bit more.
But the feeling didn’t last. Dread was more familiar. She was used to closed doors, and it was only a matter of time before this one shut, too.
Other Information
Questions of Dot's parentage travel briefly up the chain of command before being stonewalled. Though her roots in the Grayle bloodline are undeniable, it would seem someone is protecting the identity of her father—or perhaps, protecting themselves.
Full Name – Rain on My Skin, Ice in My Mouth Age – 15 Gender – Female Vocation – Warden Nationality – Scila
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Angry—Like, Really Angry Few are the people Rain doesn’t greet with a scowl, and it is only by the draconian training of her youth that she no longer compounds those scowls with threats and occasionally acts of physical violence. Usually. Anger was what the Locke Institution wanted, and it’s what they got. They coaxed it out of her, stoked it like a hearth until it grew into wildfire and set it loose. Sure, sometimes it’s more than they bargained for, but she’s been taught well enough to direct her anger at what matters
A Sharp Claw, a Dull Tool Rain does one thing well, and a lot of other things very not well. Sic her on a voidbeast and all the stars, see, they just align. She can formulate plans on the fly and her reflexes could make a Ldrant warmaster blush; it’s when things deviate away from fury-murder that everything kinda blurs. Lacking pretty much any formal education, Rain is functionally illiterate and utterly oblivious to much of the world’s politics, aside from the fact that she was told often and loudly how cool and great Scila was. Doesn’t bother her, though. Let the nerds waste time scribbling stupid lines on maps and smooching with their precious equations. If it doesn’t bleed, scream, or threaten to engulf the world in cold oblivion, it can’t be that important.
Ironic Autophobe You know what would be funny? What if you took this irate, unsociable, idiot child with exactly one purpose in her miserable little life, you teach her to conflate pain with affection, and you saddle her with this crippling fear of being alone and unloved. She won’t understand it, she won’t know how to deal with it, she won’t even know how to ask for help. She’ll just blindly seek companionship in people who are disgusted by her, or who can’t stand to be around her, and when they inevitably leave she’ll be stuck with this ruinous pit in her soul that just gets wider and wider and deeper and deeper until there’s nothing left but her and the empty loneliness she’s so afraid of. Oh my god. Holy shit. Hilarious.
G I F T
Furnace It’s going to hurt—endure it. That’s love.
There’s a reason Locke’s Hunters got their nickname and it’s not pretty. As a result of their streamlined creation, their embered souls sit a little closer to the surface than other Hunters’, and they all have the exact same Gift—they burn.
As a young pyromancer, Rain’s abilities were markedly unremarkable. As a hunter, however, things are a little different. See, turns out, fueling fire magic is easy as shit when you have an eternal engine pumping agony into your veins eight days a week. With her newfound resistances and her apparent inability to fucking die, Rain’s Gift sees her turning herself and the air around her into a whirlwind of searing hot misery. She’s made stone into puddles, swords into soup, and has on more than one occasion required excising from melted suits of armor, which was fun for literally no one.
In addition, by building up and expelling heat, she can create bursts of flame to skirt around the battlefield, because what’s worse than a fiery, angry creature? A fiery, angry creature hurtling at you at alarming speed.
There is one caveat. Being that she has to stoke her inner ember to fuel this Gift, usage enflames that natural, torturous burning all hunters abide with into a real whopper of pain. The longer she goes, the harder she pushes, the worse the pain gets. But that’s okay, she can take it. Pain means she cares. Like, if you aren’t a seared, shuddering wreck wailing in silent agony at the end of a fight, were you really even trying?
E Q U I P M E N T
Hunter’s Claws Not exactly fancy, nor particularly expensive, but at least these babies can keep up with the heat. Utilizing a magically-receptive metal she can neither spell nor pronounce, and an enchantment for heat-resistance, Rain is able to channel her Gift into the clawed gauntlets to turn their razor-sharp edges white-hot; and, since she has to apply this enchantment herself, in theory it should be able to match her no matter how hot she goes.
Physical Description
Rain is an even 5’0”, but has only ever had it described to her as “short,” and “no, you’re probably not getting any taller.” She possesses the build of someone who spent most of her childhood kicking other kids in the teeth for scraps of meat, and the complexion to suggest there wasn’t a lot of sun where she was doing it. Aside from being a pallid, wiry imp, her hair is about waist-length and settled about as neatly as an avalanche. Many of her teeth, filed before her procedure, are much sharper than they ought to be. But hey, at least she’s hygienic.
Rain prefers comfortable clothes, but that’s not really her call. As a representative of Scila (pause for the sound of Scila collectively grinding its teeth,) she can’t just run around wearing her old pit-rags smudged with dirt and grime and the blood of little rats that were pretty quick yeah but not quick enough. What she wears now isn’t a uniform per se, she still has to fight in it, but it lends her an air of formal conventionality that on literally anyone else might look nice, but she somehow manages to ruin that too.
Character Conceptualization
Oh, Scila. Land of industry. Land of ingenuity. A land of people unbroken by slavery, and emboldened by their independence. Truly, if any nation could face the void and, in response, be dissatisfied with survival without power, it would be you.
You bastard.
Then again, as someone who lived through thralldom and liberation, as well as the Great War and the world-ending Eclipse that followed it, Locke knew a thing or two about the value of power. He knew how it worked, he knew its many forms and the ways it could sway and influence others. He knew how easily power corrupted, but he also understood its necessity—without it no man, or king, or kingdom could stand. But most importantly, he knew what a power-play looked like.
When the Kethiline Order created Hunters to fight against the void, and subsequently chose to keep its methods largely secret, Locke saw it for what it was. A damn good power-play. He didn’t know what angle those dusty old zealots were playing at, but he could respect it. He could also disrespect the hell out of it, and violently tear their secrets from their shriveled, grasping hands. Not real violence though. Knowledge violence.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
This isn’t Locke’s story, but he’s gone out of his way to make himself damn near inseparable from it so here we are. Locke didn’t just pop up from the ground one day and decide to open his own little Ember Farm, his rise began even before Scila broke free from Ldrant. As a young and immensely talented pyromancer, he helped solidify Scila’s national defenses, and later founded an institution—named after himself, of course—inspired by a Ldranti custom called “Ember Hunting.” His goal was to increase the number and quality of pyromancers at Scila’s command by studying the offspring of the magically-affluent. The research would take generations to complete, and necessitated the creation of a small academy to ensure that whatever pyromancers were produced were also properly trained. Efficiency was key, after all.
Unfortunately, Locke didn’t have decades. War erupted between Midnos and Aulrithia, and to the surprise of literally no one anywhere at any point, Ldrant set its sights on reconquering Scila in the chaos, as well as Prentis. The Ldranti were nothing if not ambitious. Things at the Institute are fast-tracked, lessons accelerated, and research stalled for what was optimistically referred to as, “as long as it takes to win this fucking war.”
Now, it’s probably bad taste for someone to be relieved about the apocalypse, but, really, that’s about as gourmet as things are going to get from here on.
With the founding of the Algaeon Hearthfire at the Institute, Locke found himself suddenly inundated with both funding and the opportunity to spend that funding on morally gray and ethically repugnant research. Kethiline created the Hunters, kept their secretes, blah blah we’ve already tread that ground. Here’s where the violence started.
Getting his hands on any information about the Hunter procedure was incredibly difficult, but Locke wasn’t simply resourceful, he was also, frankly, a genius. He didn’t need the whole picture, he only needed pieces of it, then he could damn well paint the rest of it himself. And with Hunters slowly beginning to crop up in other nations, it was clear that paint was going to run dry before too long. Sure, the world was ending, and perhaps on the surface that meant petty things like “wars” and “border conflicts” were pragmatically shelved, only a fool believed they couldn’t be just as quickly plucked up again. To Locke, the apocalypse was a backdrop, a stopgap between conflicts no different than any other time of peace, accept for the part where there wasn’t any. Kethiline had invented living weapons of mass destruction, and on the other side of this dreaded eclipse, whoever had the most would hold true power.
And “most” was indeed the keyword for Locke. As far as he could tell, the success rate for Kethiline’s procedure was dramatically low, to the point that it was practically a death sentence for those who underwent it. That wouldn’t do. Inefficient. It also appeared that the process required mages from multiple elements, which was also inefficient. By and large, Hunters used fire to fight the Void, it was pyromancy at the forefront of things and though Scila didn’t have a surplus of aeromancers and geomancers Locke had ensured that it had at least a minor surplus of pyromancers. And a whole slew of their children, some of which could be useful. Others…
When all you have is a match, everything looks like kindling. Nothing is as efficient as fire.
There, we’re done with Locke now, we can move on to Rain.
Though, technically speaking, before she was “Rain” she was “L.I.-23, Group Four, Number 13,” or, sometimes, “The one that keeps making the other kids swallow her baby teeth after they fall out.” But, for clarity’s sake, Rain will do.
Thereabouts a decade into the Eclipse, Rain was born at the Locke Institute to exactly zero parents who would ever know her name or see her face, alongside a whole gaggle of similarly spawned lambs-to-the-inevitable-slaughter. Growing up, the rules were simple: kids who showed magical aptitude got to leave the “pit” and train to become super cool fire-throwing badasses. Kids that didn’t got to stay in the pit and hate each other. If you didn’t show some worth by the time you weren’t a kid anymore, you got the boot. Allegedly.
By the time Rain’s match was struck, she was ten. She had to leave all her teeth-trophies and rat bones behind, but that was okay, because she also got to meet Papa Locke.
I lied, we’re not done with him at all.
When he brought her up out of the dark, and gave her the first hug she’d ever received—that wasn’t a precursor to being thrown onto the dirt—Rain knew instantly that she loved her papa with all of her heart, and would do anything for him.
The next eight years she spent training under the Institute’s best pyromancers and weaponsmasters. Some days she would make progress, and papa would tousle her hair and praise her and she would feel like a shooting star against the black sky. Then there were tough weeks, or months, where she struggled or plateaued and papa wouldn’t even look at her. It made her whole self shake, made her sick, made her never want to leave her cot. Eventually the bad lessons outnumbered the good ones. Eventually she stopped progressing altogether. The last years were lonely, and very, very hard.
When she was eighteen, papa came to her after another failed lesson. He wasn’t upset, but he didn’t tousle her hair and didn’t have anything particularly nice to tell her. All he had was a proposition. “Undergo this procedure,” he said, and she didn’t even hear the “or,” or even what it was. The moment he asked, she decided to do it, she didn’t need to know. They strapped her to a table and the next thing she did know was pain, pure and blinding and all-consuming. But in the back of her mind, she had her papa, and she knew that if she could just bear through it, he’d be so proud of her. He’d love her as much as she loved him—maybe even more.
No one seemed particularly happy when it was done, especially not Rain. The pain hadn’t stopped with the procedure, it had stuck with her. It was stuck in her. Always. Day and night, burning, burning, burning it was like her blood was molten and even when it wasn’t awful it was still bad. Drinking water didn’t do much, chewing ice was a little better. Whenever it stormed, she would stand out in the rain and that took the edge off enough that she was almost comfortable. Almost.
Papa hadn’t told her about this. About the pain. He hadn’t even come to see her when it was done. He just went back to the pit, and the other kids just striking their matches, and she was taken off the institute’s hands along with all the others who had gone through the same pain and woken up on the other side. There were lots of them, all just like her. The pyromancers called them Hunters, and sent them off to fight the Void, because apparently that’s what Hunters did.
They asked her name. She told them, and they said, “that’s not a name, that’s a bunch of letters and numbers,” which didn’t make much sense to her because that’s what all names were. They told her to pick, and she almost picked “Locke,” but then decided that, no, she didn’t like that name at all. In fact, she hated it.
So they told her to pick something she did like.
Other Information
Rain and every other Hunter to come from the Locke Institute was created using the sufficiently-narcissistic “Locke Method.” Eschewing involvement of the other elements, the Locke Method focuses entirely upon pyromancy to meld soul and eternal ember together. The procedure is much quicker and carries an exponentially higher success rate than the Kethiline method, however, what it boasts in quantity it suffers in quality.
These Hunters, sometimes referred to as “Melters,” are notoriously short-lived and are often the first to die on whatever battlefield they’re sent to. Their embers are unstable, and coupled with their generally lackluster training, it’s no wonder pyromancers, and even other Hunters, tend to view them as fodder.
Still, their numbers and their propensity to die in place of other, more valuable Hunters has seen them begin to find a place in Scila's defenses in the handful of months they've been around.
don't mind me just dropping the bastard off at school in another country.
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P E R S O N A L D E T A I L S
Full Name – Dorothy “Dot” Auferrum Age - 14 Gender - Female Heritage – Born to an Alexandrian family that can trace its long and winding roots back to penitent Maria, and utterly soiled by the presence of Grayle blood in her parentage. Magical Affinity - Light
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P E R S O N A L I T Y
Sheltered Having done most of her growing up in a solitary block of her home, Dot does not boast a particular broad understanding of the world. Sure, she had tutors for writing and mathematics, but she never learned the fine details of international relations, and the dance of courtroom politics was one for which she simply didn’t have the rhythm. She knows things are tense in the world, and that Alexandria is, allegedly, so much better than Grayle, but in all honestly she doesn’t very much care for either of them. Why should she? They never cared for her.
Curious Of course, a disinterest in world politics doesn’t preclude an interest in the world itself. You can’t spend years in one place and not want to see what’s outside. Nor can you spend as much time interacting with very few people and not want to make friends. Dot sees friendship as a beautiful flower waiting to be plucked on the other side of a river—she just can’t swim yet. Solitude might have stamped her adventurous spirit into the dirt, but plenty of things can grow from dirt with a little time and a nurturing hand.
Hang It All Disillusionment was sewn into Dot very early, and its roots grew deep. What was once a starry-eyed thirst for glory and adventure has devolved into a bitter cynicism befitting someone much older and world-weary. Dot hasn’t seen the world, but as far as she’s concerned, people are the same pretty much everywhere—they look out for themselves, and will bury anyone for the sake of their own ambitions.
She harbors a burning resentment for the aristocracy, with a particular disdain for royalty. In her dreams their castles lay in ruins and their thrones sit empty. And yet, she cannot shake her fascination with knighthood, for which she blames Adean’s own fixation with honor and battle. Knights, she thinks—prays, even—are the exception. They live by codes, they don’t just fight for who’s in charge, they fight for good. They help the innocent. They right wrongs. They bring justice to the unjust.
Dot wouldn’t mind meting out that justice herself.
S K I L L S E T
Isolated Training Dot could write her name with both hands at the same time, backwards. Whether this skill was learned or came naturally is uncertain, but being cooped up at nearly all hours of the day left her with plenty of time to develop it. Coupled with a keen sense of hand-eye coordination, this made for phenomenal groundwork when her brother began training her in swordplay. Adean’s teachers were many, and skilled, and Dot accepted the funnel of their collective knowledge voraciously. She learned quickly, fixating on every lesson, working the hobby into a passion over years of practice. Unfortunately, she never got the chance to put her training to use at home, but Adean was proud of her progress, and that was enough for her.
Presently, Dot favors a rapier in each hand, and tends to prefer offense to defense.
Dancer Dot’s room was very close to where the court entertainers would practice, and so she frequently found opportunities to observe, listen, and occasionally dance along to the music. Over time this frivolous hobby grew into practicality; in addition to building lean muscle, Dot displays a phenomenal sense of balance and agility, able to move unencumbered in frilled dresses and patched-up rags alike.
Naturally, she incorporated this into her training with Adean, despite his protests. According to him, dancing was elegant but too pretty, and fighting was supposed to be ugly and brutal. Of course, Dot was more stubborn than sensible, and while she ceased trying to pirouette in their sparring bouts, she never gave up the grace. Amateurish and unorthodox as she may be, there is an undeniably effectiveness in the bedrock of her style, it just needs some time and proper training to unearth.
Disgraced by Light While some of her hobbies were indulged, the one thing Dot was always forbidden from meddling with was her affinity for Light magic. Her father wouldn’t stand to see it, and her mother, not wanting to upset him further, stood with him. This, of course, did not dissuade Dot, who couldn’t envision a world in which she was somehow more of a disappointment. So with tremendous effort and more than a few harsh punishments, she managed to eke out a meager study in what few light incantations she could get her hands on, but even then her results were mixed at best. Magic was hard, go figure, and it was far beyond Dot’s capabilities to teach herself its complexities by candlelight in the wee hours between dusk and dawn. With the right tutelage, she’s sure that will change.
Physical Description
Of average height, slight but leanly muscled, toss a little dirt on her cheeks and Dot looks the part of a rugged youth, despite having grown up in a literal castle. Her dark hair is chopped short, and she possesses a stony yet serene countenance, cracked only under pressure, or when given something sweet. Like her siblings, she carries almost none of her father’s hard features, and knows that before long she will look very much like her mother—a thought that thrilled her once, but no longer.
Her clothes are not quite rags, but are still simple and offer ease of movement. She wears cloaks often, having always favored the flowing nature they granted to her dancing, and now preferring how they obscure her movements. Hoods, gloves, and boots are also not uncommon, mainly because she owns little else, and she’s been instructed that more coverage is better.
It would be hard to see nobility in Dot at a glance, but in motion she displays a sort of grace unbefitting of street urchins. She doesn’t move like a knight, nor entirely like a dancer either, but rather in some awkward amalgamation of the two. Time and training may yet refine it into something effective and beautiful.
Character Conceptualization
Lord Heron Auferrum was a proud man, with a proud lineage and a proud legacy. He wore his family’s colors with pride, he ruled his subjects with pride, he combed his moustache with pride. The people of the Ferrous Shore were proud to call him lord, his sons were proud to call him father. At night he would stand in front of a mirror and tell himself just how proud he was to be Lord Heron Auferrum, and then he would climb into bed and dream that penitent Maria herself would descend to pat him on the head and say that she was proud of him too.
At least that’s how Dot imagined it from her hole in the castle.
Often times the lastborn child of nobility is doted upon, shirking all responsibility, but still managing to bask in the glory of their name and reap all its benefits. In a way that was true, Dot’s third brother was lazy and witless and did next to nothing and yet he would be recorded in the Auferrum records with beautiful marks.
Unlike him, though, Dot was a bastard.
Not Lord Heron’s bastard, no. His wife, the venerable Lady Lesca, had been exchanging love letters with an anonymous member of the Grayle family, and on a certain diplomatic visit to their neighbors, sealed them with a kiss.
At first this was not a problem. Despite Heron’s strong bloodline, all of his children most strongly resembled their mother, and Dot was no exception. It wasn’t until the discovery of her magical affinity that things took a turn for the worse. Her father was crestfallen, her mother was mortified, and two of her brothers were quick to write her out of the family. Adean, the middle brother, felt sorry for her and still called her sister, but as second in line his say was ignored.
Blessedly, no one outside of the immediate family knew, and Heron was desperate to keep it that way. He had his daughter confined. At the age of five, Dot’s world shrank to the size of her room, expanding only occasionally to other cramped areas of the castle. Her only visitors were the guards that brought her food, the tutors who disappeared if she told them her secret, her mother—though that became less and less frequent over the years—and daily visits from Adean. With few feasible hobbies, Dot spent a lot of time daydreaming about being free, seeing the world, living out the adventures in the books she hoarded. But eventually those dreams soured. Childlike wonder withered early for her, and she became moody and resentful of everyone, even Adean—though she always felt guilty when she snapped at him, and he always came back the next day anyway. Adean tried to ease the gloom. He taught her swordplay, and brought her to dance while the musicians practiced, when he could sneak her out, but for every bright moment he gave her, there were always hours of silence to follow.
Eventually he decided enough was enough. Dot wasn’t sure how exactly it happened, but her brother managed to leak her secret to the court, and from there it spread like wildfire. Lord Heron Auferrum, proud descendent of the penitent witch, renowned knight of Alexandria, had been cuckolded by the fucking Grayles. Mockery and contempt rained down upon their house, and in a matter of weeks their standing had begun to crumble. Heron raged, demanding duels from all those who darted impugn his honor, and though he managed to lay a few hecklers low on the field, the rest simply ignored him.
It was too much. Heron had his wife exiled, and in a fever of newfound hatred for his countrymen, sent Dot “back where she belonged.” Adean and the rest of her brothers were now the ones confined to the castle, until he could manage to find them suitable prospects for marriage so that he might, slowly, begin to rebuild the Auferrum name.
Armed with a humble pouch of coin, Dot was sent to Grayle as a “Grudge-Born-Gift,” which seemed in all practicality to be synonymous with “soon-to-be-prisoner” or, perhaps like her mother, “exile.” Alexandria despised her, and Grayle, she was sure, would carry no love for a bastard whose mere existence called the royal family’s honor into question. The only thing saving her from the gutters, or worse, living in another small room as a political hostage no one wanted, was her affinity for Light magic. Regardless of her dubious birth, turning away a rare gift, even one given out of spite, was surely unwise.
Dot found little resistance in her decision to try for knighthood. It seemed girls joining was something of an open secret, discouraged but not rigorously policed. “Cut your hair, wear baggy clothes,” they said, “and don’t piss around anyone.” It didn’t sound so tough, and for a brief moment Dot felt the world open up just a bit more.
But the feeling didn’t last. Dread was more familiar. She was used to closed doors, and it was only a matter of time before this one shut, too.
Other Information
Questions of Dot's parentage travel briefly up the chain of command before being stonewalled. Though her roots in the Grayle bloodline are undeniable, it would seem someone is protecting the identity of her father—or perhaps, protecting themselves.
Seele didn’t like the implications of what Artemis said, but they were fair. She didn’t think it was an accident, personally—it was too targeted, too…intentional—but the idea that they might be looking for a what rather than a who had not escaped her. Part of her hoped for it, even. Some kind of intelligent creature going after mages would ease her conscience over actual people doing this to each other. But this wasn’t about her conscience, and her mind was still set on this being the work of someone awful.
Sif explained it well enough. Clever one, her, good head on her shoulders and a good track record as a player. Probably. Seele had never looked too closely into those things, but she’d made it through that dreadful dungeon at the start so that counted for a lot.
“Seele, you're out of your damn mind.” you sleep too much
Fair point, she probably was, but she listened anyway. Siegfried was a sweet boy, well-intentioned if a bit excitable, and even when he was nervous he still managed to speak sense. What if things went wrong? She didn’t want to think about it, but the hard truth was that they didn’t really know how much time these missing people had. Failure here could mean another day, or week, or month they didn’t have, or worse, it could put whoever was really behind this into a panic. Who knows what they’d do to the victims then.
“If this doesn’t work, you’ll deliver all of this theory to the fraternity, or the queen—someone who can do something about it—and hope they’re fast enough to stop it before anyone else gets taken.”
She’d dodged his real question, and not artfully either. The reality was that she didn’t know what to say. Was she afraid? It was impossible to think of things going wrong without imagining the worst case scenario, and the thought of being tortured to death, or left to rot in a cell, or any number of other terrible things did scare her. But they had to do something, and while it might have been hypocritical of her to insist on putting herself in harms way when she knew that, had anyone else proposed to do it, she would have fought them tooth and nail not to, it also just…made sense. It was practical, in a way she couldn’t explain to them.
After all, who better to take the risk than someone with literally nothing to lose?
promise me
“I trust Graves,” Seele said, rounding back to Siegfried’s question, and once more she shot the blood hunter a smile. “And we can’t get much more south than Thorinn anyway.”
Meal Hall, Fortuna | In Transit February 21st, 3061
“Whole day’s full of luxuries, doc. ” Mox chimed, popping another cube into her mouth. Chewing and swallowing without pulling a face was an exercise in discipline. “It’s just about jumpin' the lil’ gaps between them.”
Life on the Vox Fortuna could be tumultuous in the best of times, but that was the lot, right? If the worst thing that happened to her today was that her food needed more salt, well, that’d be just peachy.
It would also be a fair sight better than what William’s day was shaping up to be. She listened to the doc pitch her latest medical scheme to him, and he, of course, ate it all up without a second thought, or so much as an inkling as to what it actually was. That did more to test Mox’s composure than a plate full of bland gray cubes. Theirs was not a tight ship, beholden to the rules and regulations of proper civilization. No one was going to slap doc Thompson with a malpractice suit for…going a few extra miles. She was a smart woman, no doubt, and every synonym for cunning, but there was something in the way she handled herself, how she fit into the shoddy little world around them that seemed off.
It reminded Mox of people she didn’t know anymore. In a way, it made her hate Andrea Thompson, deeply.
“Don’t prick’im too hard, doc,” Mox said with a flawless grin. “Heaven knows we need the lil’ chicken-bot out there.”
Well, there it was. She’d laid her plan out, winded herself in the process, and blessedly enough had not been struck down by embarrassment, mockery, or divine intervention. If nothing else, she’d managed to get through the whole thing without confusing herself, so she hoped that clarity had translated at least somewhat to the others.
To her relief, it seemed to. At the very least no one was completely lost; in fact it looked like Graves understood her intentions completely. That was good—Seele wasn’t so sure of them herself, and someone probably ought to be.
Artemis lamented her own lack of sleep, which was something that just about everyone at the table, and perhaps in all of Pariah could emphasize with. Seele felt a flutter of panic when the jittery girl volunteered herself, the same kind she felt at the prospect of any of their group putting themselves in danger. Some people might have called that pathetic, being so protective of someone she just met, but she didn’t think so. And, evidently, neither did Graves.
“Graves is right, hun. You’ve been through a lot already, and we’re not about to put you in any more danger. We’re gonna look out for you just like you are for us, alright?”
you’re a liar, Missy.
She turned her attention to Graves, and found the answer stuck just a bit in her throat. Ready? To be honest the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. The plan had come to her in such a manic blur, she’d never stopped to consider the potential…downsides to putting herself out as bait.
But, no, she had to have considered it. She’d drawn blood for it, she’d committed. In the midst of her rabid plotting and scrawling, she must have decided that the risk was worth it. She must have decided she trusted Graves.
Which, of course, she did.
“I am,” she nodded. “I’ll walk whatever route we decide on, and fingers crossed that whoever’s doing this will take the bait. Now, if they do, we’ll want to…oh, jeez, uhm…well, you know, I want to get my hands on these jerks just as much as anyone else, but I think in the interest of finding all the missing folks, it would be better if we followed them back to wherever they go…” She didn’t say ‘after they take me,’ partly because it seemed implied, and partly because, well, being kidnapped was still flat-out scary.
“Thankfully, Graves has a reputation for being a pro at this sort of thing, so you all shouldn’t have any trouble tracking us down.” She shot the bloodknight a wink. “That is if you can smell anything but rat fur and sewer water yet.”
There, a little levity now and then never hurt. Seele had a sinking feeling there might not be too much of that in their immediate future.
It was through sheer force of will alone that Kanna did not reflexively fastball her notebook into the shadow realm. She had the heart of a rabbit, and its urge to suddenly sprint until that heart exploded, but that same willpower managed to keep her anchored to the grass.
She almost shrieked, too, which was stopped less by will, and more by her attempt to clap her casted hand to her mouth. Fiberglass wasn’t as gentle as flesh, and rather than smother her shout it simply replaced it with a muffled: “ow—fuck!” but, hey, close enough. She almost bloodied her own lip but whatever. Not the real problem.
The problem was Yun. Trouble. Not like Shiori and Ogre-san, or some of the other more enterprising students in their class, but trouble nonetheless, and especially now.
“Nothing. Notes—nothing. I’m eating my lunch,” she said. The remains of her sandwich had not been as lucky as her notebook, and were now scattered on the dirt. “Was eating my lunch. What are you even doing here, did you follow me?"
She peeked back around the corner in time to see Shiori cave and fork over one of her cigarettes. That was…surprising. Almost surprising enough to write down, until she remembered she had company.
“God—look, just be quiet and don’t blow my cover...not that I’m doing anything that needs cover.”
Lemons
RPM
Supermaxx
Zeus23
Yankee
Raijinslayer
SkyeOfStars
Not a Sayan
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