Ok basic Silent Hill verse concepts I have in mind:
She’s the daughter of a high priest in the Order. No clue who her mother is; she vamped after Skarlet was born. Her father was one of the main people instrumental in the ritual that was performed on Alessa years ago, and he has obsessed over his near-success ever since. His obsession extended to Cheryl/Heather, and he believed that she would be the great savior of the world that brought forth the Order’s “god” in a fanatical manner that was not-so out of place in the cult. Skarlet, however, felt neglected and was utterly deprived of parental affection due to her father’s fixation on Alessa, Cheryl/Heather, and the latter’s prophesied return.
She never quite fit in with the Order and lacked true faith in their beliefs, and though she tried to hide it, her irreverence emerged often and got her into trouble, leading to her suffering a number of abuses over the years characteristic of the Order’s preferred “methods of instruction”.
By the time she reached young adulthood, Skarlet had grown desperate to end her outcast status and earn her father’s approval. She broke into his study to access his archives of occult knowledge and attempted to perform a ritual on herself to turn herself into a new savior for the Order in hope to supplant their need for Cheryl/Heather and refocus their veneration upon herself.
Though the ritual was successful, it did not have the desired effect, as she had in fact used the incorrect ritual due to her lack of understanding of what had happened to Alessa in the first place (whether because either she was not born yet, was too young to remember, or simply did not rank high enough in the order to know the truth about Alessa; I have not decided which circumstance yet because I haven’t decided when Skarlet should have been born and when she performed the ritual.)
She *did* bind one of the lesser deities of Silent Hill to herself (Xuchilbara, the Red God, who I do personally believe is “The Crimson One” mentioned in the Book of Crimson Ceremony) but not in the same manner as “God” was tied to Alessa and later Cheryl/Heather. While the ritual that tied “God” to Alessa/Cheryl/Heather was meant to lead to the entity’s birth into the real world, the ritual that tied Xuchilbara to Skarlet imprisoned the deity within her soul meaning that it could never be born and reunite with “God”, it’s master. Thus, Skarlet’s intentions to make herself a new savior for the Order led to her profaning their deities and undermining their ultimate goal. So this made things worse for her.
They could not kill her for this act of unintentional heresy as doing so would kill Xuchilbara, so instead they have forced her to serve instead in hope that her performing the duties of Xuchilbara will eventually lead to the deity growing in power enough to devour her soul and free itself. She is utterly despised and ostracized by the Order now whereas before she was just considered to be a troublemaker, and her own father will no longer talk to her. The only members of the Order that willingly deal with her without fear of being “tainted by the god-consuming she-devil” or something like that are the higher ranking priests who give her daily commands and “prayers”, as they call them.
They’re not entirely wrong about it, either. While it’s not happening as they imagine, i.e. Xuchilbara “devouring” her soul to free itself, her consciousness is gradually merging with that of the entity, as evidenced by her personality changing and her slowly gaining more access to the knowledge and power of Xuchilbara as time passes. Xuchilbara is not destroying her soul; she is becoming Xuchilbara.
Abilities are basically the same as in her canon. Blood magic, inter-realm teleportation, sway on mentality, etc. In terms of how this translates to Silent Hill, she can perform various rituals involving blood (the most extreme and rarest of these being the Crimson Ceremony which she has only performed once because of how badly it exacerbates her merging), she can shift between all the worlds of Silent Hill at will, and she can influence the various worlds somewhat depending on whose “world” she’s in (for example, she could probably influence what someone like James or Harry sees but not someone like Alessa or Walter because the latter examples shape their own worlds while the former are mostly bystanders in their own nightmares thus cannot fight back for control).
[body horror tw] Her physical form does not change much through the different worlds. Nothing changes in the real world regardless of whether or not she is tapping into Xuchilbara’s abilities; she appears as a normal human. In the fog world, only a small change occurs when she uses Xuchilbara’s abilities, and it is that her eyes change to red pupils with black sclera. But this does not always happen; it depends on how complex her usage is, and she can hide subtle influences easily. In the otherworld, her form is far more monstrous but not to an extreme degree as she is still recognizable. Her eyes change as mentioned, and her entire body below her shoulders becomes wrapped in black liquid tendrils with thick, faintly-glowing red “veins” twisted underneath and visible through gaps. Blood coats her arms and legs and pours from her eyes almost like tears, but the droplets that fall from her seem to never hit the ground.
[body horror tw] The psychological elements presented in her demonic form center around the imagery of a person being utterly engulfed by darkness and despair. Blood is on her hands; blood she never meant to spill. The blood is power to her, it represents the demonic strength of Xuchilbara, but it also represents Skarlet’s greatest mistake and the consequences she’s suffered because of it, thus the pouring tears. The tendrils are wrapped around her so tightly that you can make out her feminine form, and combined with the retention of her human face, this represents an illusion of beauty. A silhouette of what she had envisioned; the glory that she wanted to bring upon herself. Idealized, yet corrupted beyond intention, and despite holding a resemblance to herself, she is slowly becoming something unrecognizable to who she once was. Even more, the tendrils represent a loss of agency. She is constrained, every inch of her, and tied to a will that is not her own. The glowing red “veins” that show through the gaps in the black tendrils are a similarly ugly truth; no matter how she tries to change herself to earn approval, no matter how she presents herself, the truth of who and what she is will always make itself known eventually, and she can never escape the fate she has damned herself to. The blood that drips from her will never touch another person nor her surroundings, as her burden is for her alone and cannot be passed on to another. Her suffering is entirely her own. She cannot so much as touch someone with her own skin. She is isolated. She is all but strangled by the strings that puppeteer her. Xuchilbara may nor be destroying her, but Skarlet is being devoured nonetheless.
