#( cd.

[business-markers-spouse]

[whimmortal]

Does your character have a type? What is it? (Romantic, platonic, and sexual relationships are all valid for your answer)

[meta] PLATONIC Jenny is used to friendships being kind of transactional and backstabby, something she engaged with as well back in the city. Among the (children of the) powerful and the rich, there was always an aspect of hoping to 'gain' something from connections. I think that desire has kind of dwindled since coming to town, but it's definitely still somewhat present. On a more real, sincere level, Jenny looks in friends for people who will support her (even when wrong) and share her sense of whimsy. She likes the artistically inclined, especially when it comes to poetry/literature, but can find other topics of conversation if that's not an issue. She likes people who have a sense of whimsy and spontaneity with them. It doesn't need to be silly all the time, but there needs to be room for silly. If it's only seriousness, she will wither and get annoyed. And feel stupid. So that doesn't tend to work well. Truth be told, Jenny wants to be liked by everyone, but that sometimes tends to mean she becomes defensive (if not offensive) if she feels someone does not. She's shown this uglier side before. But, combine that with her general outgoing nature and I do think Jenny can make surface level friends easy with a lot of different people... she just isn't always good at being a bad weather friend. ROMANTIC A bit similar to the above, especially if we think about the dating kind of romance. Jenny also does tend to go for looks at times, and can be shallow. In a romantic partner, she looks for someone who respects and sees her whole. Someone who can make her feel grounded but who also just has fun with her. Someone who doesn't feed her insecurities (of her being shallow, or stupid). Someone who challenges her. She has had a string of exes that have met and not met these criteria. I do think she tends to go for people who make her feel good on a shallow level and who don't get her. I think that's also part of the space she was in before, where so much was about that power and money struggle versus the more sincere relationships that can apparently exist here. She's a bit of a romantic mess. SEXUAL

We've all seen Jenny's tastes in action. They are sometimes questionable, sometimes very good. Jenny likes sex. Sex is fun! Sex is adventurous! Sex is confirmation that she is wantable and fuckable and hot. Sex isn't that deep but it is, you know? For her it's usually casual, but there's a level of yearning to be seen and held and caressed that is deeper. It's like a grounding exercise, a way to balm her insecurities (with very varying results) and also just a way to have some genuine fun. Jenny likes people who take charge. She likes a bit of danger. She likes people who feel unattainable and then getting fucked by them anyway, because that's like a power trip to her. She likes someone who will hold her afterwards, but who doesn't show that gentleness during per se. Yes, she likes biting. Shocker, the fangbanger likes biting. There's more kink but you can imagine probably. She likes people taller than her, people she thinks prettier than her, people who take their time flirting. God, she loves flirting. She loves a lingering touch, a sweeping gaze, all the loaded chatting. She prefers friends with benefits situations over a string of one night stands, I think, though she's done both. Sex with feelings is superior, but scarier, so rarer. Quick sidenote about Baz: it would have been totally fine if they had slept together early in their friendship, but now that they've made platonic miles and Care For Each Other, there's no more room for casual sex. Now it'd be loaded. Now it would be sex with Feelings. Sex is usually breezy and fun, but it has a different dimension when you add that deeper attraction.

[echoingmuse]

A quick guide into Cleo's former aos sí.

Chor Gléow has existed for millennia, claiming to have gone back to the very first instances of human music and dance. That might be myth, but all the same is held as truth. They were there. Their influence runs deep.

Chor Gléow is old English for a musical dance. None of the current members speak old English though.

Historically, the aos sí has always lived close to humans and moved through their communities. That much is considered necessary to not only feed but also make something out of their feeding. They tend to move with cultural trends, living a nomadic life that sticks mostly to cities where musicians or other artists flock to. They are currently situated in Atlanta.

Tend to acquire their living spaces and the like through binds and have quite a lot of fun whenever they move. Scouting a new place, making sure they can move in somewhere where they are relatively safe. They tend to go for either a group of apartments (former tenants suddenly very motivated to move out) or a few larger houses in the suburbs together.

The muses in this commune are mostly musicians and dancers, and focus humans with those skills as well. They can form an orchestra as a community and often do, spending much of their time not around humans making music together. Cleo has fond memories of vocalizing with her siblings and cousins, or playing the violin in the orchestra. These days they also tend to group in small bands, jamming together and trying to find new sounds.

Art is considered something of a higher power, or at least the highest cause there is. Humans are an instrument to reach this, a means to an end. The muses like their humans, but they see them as lesser than. As vessels with potential that they can make bloom. And if one is to die at the end of that, then that is how it is. Art, however, was made. That is what matters most.

There are a few claims to fame in the aos sí, amongst classical musicians and even pop stars. How true these are is debatable, but the fae certainly believe their influence in the music world stretches far. In some cases, there is some truth to it.

There is certainly room for negative emotions, but they must serve art. Some of the best pieces of music and dance were made with a broken heart, or in the aftermath of tragedy, after all! When a muse in the community die, they grief heavily and loudly, but always with the intent to make something of it. To be bogged down by grief, to wallow in it, is frowned upon. Suffering has to lead to creation, otherwise it is a waste of time.

That is a big part of why Cleo left. There was no room for her grief. She could not make anything out of it. She could not be around these people who, for lack of better words, kept asking 'have you tried not being sad?'

The aos sí does tend to work in tandem with some other fae species. They tend to find fauns around (or vice versa), and like to have mutually beneficial relationships with pixies.

Have had some spats with Wardens over the years, considering the amount of mysterious musician/dancer deaths that happen around them. Some of the aos sí members have been murdered by wardens, which has led to angry pieces of music and attempts at more protections. They are still not very good at cleaning up bodies, though. That is not at all artistically stimulating!

[bladesbounties]

Meta: How would you describe your character's moral alignment?

[meta] I think it would be an oversimplification to call Daiyu neutral evil, though by all descriptors of the alignment chart I suppose she is. She certainly considers herself evil and has for most of her life, though it is something she is variably disgusted by. It's hard to really talk about morality and a moral compass with Daiyu, as she tends to outsource her moral judgment. Of course, yes, there is something inherently immoral about the violence she perpetrates and the fact that she makes a buck off it, but if you start looking into the why of her bounty hunting I don't think it's necessarily an 'evil' motive. A cowardly one, maybe... she's just scared to face the things she does and why she does them. She'd rather play only executioner, the judge and jury role do not befit her. And there's the necessity of it; she needs an income, and she thinks herself too ruined a person to hold a normal one. This too, ultimately stems from cowardice. At face value, Daiyu is evil. She kills. She maims. She is not a good friend. She severs body parts of her prey and sells them on a black market. But beneath it all, I also know that there's that kid who wanted to be good and didn't know how to be. Someone who still wants to help humanity, even if she thinks that humanity is ruinous and horrible, just as she. Sometimes, she refuses to finish up a hunt. Sometimes she spares someone, and while it's often at the right prize, she still does it. She's stuck. She cannot accept her own ability towards goodness (see: helping Guillermo, for example) and that goes hand in hand with her refusing to accept that there's goodness in humans. Her nihilistic and narrow viewpoint of the world are limiting because they are comfortable. If everyone is bad, then it is less bad to be horrible. If she starts putting a moral judgment on her actions, she will drown in all the badness she's caused. So maybe Daiyu is evil with a potential slide towards neutrality, an edging into moral grayness. It isn't like she takes pleasure in any of the violence she perpetrates, for example. She isn't a sadist. She doesn't like to prolong suffering, even though she causes it. The current overarching plot could contribute to this slide: it does offer ample opportunity for some team work and her using her skills for a greater good. As for the chaotic-lawful scale, it feels intuitive to put her in 'chaotic', as she's rather unpredictable. But I do think that Daiyu has some rules she abides by and doesn't follow pure instinct. She follows the bounty boards and the highest bidders. She's more neutral in that regard. So, neutral evil. And she agrees. But I think she has so much potential towards moral grayness, if not anti-heroism. So we'll see.

[bountyhaunter]

a quick guide into the Volkov family

HEAD'S UP, this write up contains mentions of child abuse of the hunter variety.

Both the Volkov and Chen families are proud hunter families, dwelling from the other side of the world. The Volkovs from a frosty part in Russia, the Chens from a similarly cold area in China — and so they’re most well-equipped for hunting in frosty places. Neither family is particularly tied to their places of origin, though, preferring an existence where they go where the hunt takes them. Still, you won’t find them in very hot places very often.

Xifeng and Alexei – Daiyu’s parents – were not quite in love when they married, but they were greatly attuned to one another. Both Rangers, both ambitious and both vicious, there was little that stood in their way. One might say that they came closest to loving one another was after a successful hunt, washing the blood of one another. 

They set to raise their children similarly to they were raised, another team effort. Soon after they marriage the pair relocated to the West coast of the US, where they’d begin their children’s training on the outskirts of Seattle, in the thick woods. Xifeng never got to quite settle into this role, dying right as her eldest was about to turn eleven and her youngest was five. And so parenthood fell onto Alexei’s shoulders. It suited him fine, or so he’ll always claim. He looked at his brood and saw potential. Vissarion, his eldest, a son who hung onto each of his words. Inna, his middle, a daughter with a mind so sharp that she might one day rival his own. Daiyu, small and fierce and violent, even at five years old.

The three siblings grow up in those woods, near that city. They attend school, but spend their weekends and breaks hunting. During summer, they attend camp, where they are closer than they ever are at home — at home, their father prefers to pit them against each other to bring out the best in one another, but among strangers they are supposed to show a united front. Daiyu cherishes these summers most.

The Volkovs are particularly good at hunting lamia, and the story of aunt Katya getting eaten whole still circles around them. The Chens are more adept at hunting werewolves. None of this is to say that the family doesn’t hunt beyond that scope — they’re skilled at hunting any kind of beast that roams the climates they’re used to.

There is something similar between the hunting trips of the Volkovs and those of other upper-class human families. Expensive gear and garb, a tent pitch on the edge of the forest, a ceremonial drink beforehand and aplenty after. They’d extend invitations to other ranger families on full moons, spend three nights in the woods and return home with werewolf remains and perhaps a live one, if they got lucky.

Because not every creature is killed. Their code demands viciousness and no mercy, but there is wiggle room. There has to be a profit, doesn’t there? There has to be a way to subsidize the comfortable way of living. There are people out there willing to collect, willing to watch beasts fight. Researchers who’d pay a pretty coin. This doesn’t protect humans in the way killing a beast might — but it still keeps them away from the outside world where they can roam free.

The Volkovs are not unlike poachers. Not just hunting to maintain some kind of balance and protect those animals and humans without powers — but for profit and glory as well. For bragging rights. For power.

The Volkovs are controlling. Well-off, but using money as a means of control. Using ambition as a leash around the neck of their children. Competition is the fuel that drives their hunts, collaboration only permitted if it yields results — but backstabbing encouraged. They raise hunting dogs, just as they raise their children. There isn’t much of a difference. 

[ohwynne]

listen to the lamb and the foal HERE. (c) bex.

[nightmaretist]

listen to inge's playlist here.