#character intro posts

[magitechbatt]

Kozakura Hisato

She/her • Kryptis Host • Imperial Guard • Bladesworn

A permanent host for one of the Twin Daggers of House Aurkus, Ostrelen. Despite a turbulent relationship with the Canthan Empire over the centuries, she continues to faithfully serve as one of the oldest members of Imperial Guard.

A more detailed background below the cut:

History

Ostrelen first came to Tyria with Kanaxai and her twin brother, Arthelen, and also became trapped beneath the Jade Sea. As starvation began setting in, and Kanaxai turned on his company, the demon twins sought for a way to escape. Arthelen was the first to do so - an act that Ostrelen perceived to be an abandonment. Some time later, she found the presence of a human girl within inches of her life through the jade. Injured as the girl was, it was easy for Ostrelen to abandon her own body and overtake hers, even starved and weakened as she was. She wasn't aware that this had been a gift from Arthelen, but it's doubtful that she would've cared, anyway.

While nursing her new vessel back to health, Ostrelen was vicious with her survival instinct, unwilling to trust and accept help from tyrians. A string of violent attacks and strange behavior caught the attention of local authorities around Arborstone and Kaineng, and Ostrelen was eventually captured and arrested.

While in prison, the original consciousness of the body, Kozakura, stirred. And because fighting for control was pointless, the two began to dialogue. Holding a conversation with a tyrian for the first time, Ostrelen slowly started to find the girl fascinating, and hesitantly relinquished control so that Kozakura could try to convince the guards that her possession had naturally subsided.

However, Ostrelen's tendency to have fight of flight (often fight) reactions to danger, she began to hijack Koza's body out of frustration or fear rather often. Even today, this impulsivity is something the two struggle with as they try to coexist.

They remained wards of the Empire throughout the eras of rulers, with varying levels of freedom, but got their big break during the Shiro's return. As somebody already possessed, Koza was found to be immune to the Affliction, which made her the perfect weapon against Shiro. She didn't particularly enjoy the campaign, but her and Ostrelen succeeded nonetheless, and were heralded a hero of the empire! She was given a proper title and job among the empire.

Emperor Usoku complicated things, and she had to seek refuge for a while. Kuunavang, the saltspray she'd saved, settled their debt by offering her a home out in the wild, and the three grew quite close. When Navan decided to join human society and work for the Empire, Koza and Ostrelen hesitantly followed her.

Court drama yuri ensued. Ostrelen is somewhere between their third and their platonic cat third-wheel.

Things were peaceful until Koza's brother, Tamotsu, possessed by the other twin dagger, showed up for EoD. Koza and Ostrelen both had some old beef to hash out. Both sets of siblings are still estranged in current day, but they're at least cordial during Tyrian Alliance meetings.

Personalities

Kozakura is dry and witty, and prefers to keep to herself. This, however, is mostly due isolation throughout childhood and most of her life. Once she makes a group of good friends, she lights up - A bit naive and insecure, but markedly more playful. Big fashion and takeout food enjoyer. She's not very good with her money and is struggling to keep up with technology.

Ostrelen was little more than a servant during her life in Nayos, and often lived in repressed fear. Once in Tyria, she felt emboldened to lash out, used to a dog eat dog society. She's since mellowed out, coming to appreciate Tyria, but she can still come across as a high-strung nagger with way too much snark. She's very curious and nowadays comfortable with asking questions, no matter how much they make her stick out, which has led her to take up research as a side-job. She despises authority, however, and hates that Koza is fine with being a dog of the empire. She sometimes fantasizes about tearing it all down... but that would be more trouble than its worth.

Dynamic

Unlike Arth, who has no real distinction between host and kryptis anymore, Koza and Ostrelen have maintained a division between themselves, and take turns controlling the body. Ostrelen primarily takes over for combat (meaning Koza kind of sucks on her own), but its not the only time she does so. Its not always obvious who's in control, but the keen observer can tell the difference by cadence, body language and minor physical changes. Ostrelen speaks with a faint accent, as well.

Koza's body can look more or less demonic at will, often corresponding to what's needed for combat. However, she never looks 100% human (sharp nails + teeth, tail, etc)

[starsailorstories]

Declaring it finally making intro posts for characters I’ve talked about for years week lol (feat. In this case art everyone’s already seen)

Lionna, full name and title Lionna Luneia Uluna filia Aelina Sola, Marchiesa Salferigae, is known to her subjects as a dutiful heir and steward of her people. She is known to high society on the Rings as a favored fixture of the imperial court. A few longtime acquaintances know her as a former incorrigible party girl and present self-destructive trainwreck, but they value their jobs and good names too much to say anything publicly.

The net result is that--dissociated from all ambition, insulated from all ruin--Lionna is a person of deep feeling but little consequence. That changes when her umbralis (and, though again no one says it out loud, truest friend) finds the courage to draw her out of the halls of power and into a larger world. 

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Definite is an umbralis in an unusual situation. Assigned at fourteen quinturns to serve then twelve-quinturn-old Lionna, she influenced her lady as much as she was influenced by her, in spite of their power imbalance. It was the emotional fallout of all this that drove her to seek out the rebellion, where she lost what few illusions she had about the permanence of Lionna’s love for her. Yet her intimate knowledge of her lady’s secret failures and longings gives her reckless hope. She’s ready to risk her newfound freedom for love—but will it be worth it?

[starsailorstories]

Kicking off Vol. 2 character intros (I think there’s still some minor vol. 1 ones not done yet but whatever) with the second rogue crew of the Revelator!

L-R:

Sivi is one of Dovi’s daughters, who was only a little kid the last Lux saw her. She’s left the exclusive boarding school where she’s a lower-class “scholarship student” and taken to the via, ostensibly for a taste of freedom after years of keeping up appearances but also to get to the bottom of what happened to the Revelator crew. She shares her late auntie’s love of the Via and Andromedan spacefaring traditions, and following in her footsteps, she works to bring the new crew together despite their differences. At the same time, she’s only a kid, and as her world opens up, she’s faced with an outsider’s view of a system whose extent and destructiveness she’s never fully understood.

Baio Ai Fin Dor Taika is a teen runaway from a rural Persean system who’s been living on petty theft in the spaceport for a while when Rin befriends them and they join the crew at Lux’s reluctant go-ahead. It’s only once everyone is well out to space that the others find out they have a secret. Not like a tragic or dangerous secret. Just a weird, inconvenient, actually maybe kind of dangerous in the right situation, look I just don’t want to spoil this because it’s SUCH a fun reveal

[Rin and Lux you know by now, although I guess this is your intro to 16-year-old post-growth spurt Rin, lol]

Dr. Maristela Bleudot is an astronomer and astrobiological theorist, a consultant to SETI, and Rin’s Actual Biological Mom, not that she’s done much to acknowledge that last one in the past fifteen years. After leaving them in what she thought would be a more stable situation than she could provide, she’s come back to tie up loose ends--and when they announce they’re going to space before she feels the ends are tied, she stows away for the ride. Rin wants to just turn around and drop her off on earth--but Lux has other ideas.

Chivalry Vega is an especially wayward scionette of a branch of the pre-Hyperian dynasty Altamaian royal colony (her full name is Chivalry Sastiena Fortefemen Vega) who is nobility on her own motherworld but slightly disreputable everywhere else. In an effort to restore her family’s honor and the dignity of (what she’s always been told is) a lately corrupt and crime-ridden LGA, she’s taken her classical martial arts training and her shiny little sixteenth-birthday starfighter and tried in earnest to become a privateer and vigilante. It’s going a bit frustratingly so far, but she’s undaunted--until an inside view of the legacy of the rebellion shatters the worldview she was raised in.

Tilina, who presumably has a last name but has never used it outside of a tax form, is a mechanic-shop owner who did some of the initial rocket-engine and weapons-system mods that got the Revelator ready for her first mission as a rebel ship. Born in a rural system of the unabashedly capitalist and patriarchal Cadrian empire, she traveled to the galactic coast at a young age and carved out her niche in its rough-and-tumble, cosmopolitan community--an endeavor that’s given her grit, heart, and wisdom. She’s one of Lux’s closest friends outside the original crew and the only mechanic besides Teng who she ever trusted to touch the Revelator.

[starsailorstories]

Shaylorelle was an Ashtivan priestess who served Sheşrun Abbey and led several attempts to rise up against the imperial occupation there. She was a skilled martial artist and staff-maker who drew her inner strength from an intense connection to the tundra she was raised and trained in. Though she never taught her formally, her lessons to others, personal form practice, and the few explanations she indulged her formed the basis of the reconstruction of the Mirellor fighting style that Lux and Cepheid created.

Sureshina was another resident devotee at the Abbey, raised by the same forest-dwelling healer as her sister Shaylorelle. Mentored by Kinelebesh, she worked as her assistant and intended to take up her post someday. Sureshina was also one of the last to be trained in the arts of the Ashtivan death-priestesses, who served the community as combination hospice nurses, funeral directors, and spiritual mediums. 

Liorasha, though old when Lux met her, was the youngest of the abbey’s last devotees. She was revered as a masterful artist, musician, and storyteller, and as such played a key role in the abbey’s routines and rituals. Although she and her sisters were all very occupied with fighting to keep their world and culture alive, she notably made time to be a friend to Lux when she was little, and a lot of Lux’s more positive memories of the abbey, whether she realizes it or not, involve her.

Kinelebesh was the last oracle of Sheşrun Abbey. Like most oracles in the Mirellor province, she was blind, having sustained progressive vision loss after working all her life on the abbey’s famous prophetic and narrative tapestries. This, local legend held, was a sign that her soul had been entirely stitched into cloth, where it would live forever and, through the power of the patterns and sigils it formed, could receive knowledge from many unseen realms. When Lux was a very young child, Kinelebesh tried to entrust what she could of the tradition of priestesshood she had been trained in to what she knew might be the last survivor of their dying local culture. There’s only so much you can actually teach a three year old about a highly complex and abstract system of beliefs and rituals, but she had a few tricks up her sleeve.

[Image: a posed group shot of four Ashtivans--humanoid aliens with warm-grey skin and dark hair and softly glowing lights in the middle of their foreheads. All are fairly elderly and wearing ornate robes with bell sleeves and tight sashes at the waists. The first three from the left have their hair up in elaborate styles; the last, who is seated, wears hers down, long, and wild.]

[starsailorstories]

[EDIT: now with image captions; was aware that this is a frame of reference for what a bunch of different characters and frankly species look like, so I tried to be detailed.]

[Image: a colored pencil illustration styled to look like a blue-tinted photo in a stained, worn cardstock frame. It’s a group shot of the crew of the Revelator as they were about 10,000 earth years ago. All are humanoid aliens with lights on their heads and some assorted buggy features; individual descriptions will precede their intro writeups for ease of use.]

A million years ago I asked if there were any intro posts you guys hoped I would hurry up on, @awesomesquirrelstuff said the Revelator crew, I said omg yes!! in my head and then proceeded to procrastinate finishing this picture for literally I think 6 months. I am so sorry. Anyway. 

The rogue crew of the Revelator are, L-R:

Angia (ship’s medic): [medium height; medium-light eye and skin tones; comes across as fat, though she has an exoskeleton so actually she’s just shaped like that; two long fins hanging off the top of her head fall to rest on her shoulders. She wears a draped scarf and flowing dress and a pair of transparent, butterfly-shaped glasses.] A military surgeon from the imperially-annexed world of Aphacaria. Quite possibly the only sensible person in the bunch. Having immigrated to the rings as a 20something (in quinturns) and made her way through the mazes of respectability, she’s cautious about defying the system, but older memories--and new friends--push her towards rebellion. 

Bash (navigator): [tallish, though she’s bending her knees here and folding her arms to lean on Angia’s shoulder; she has a light skin tone and dark hair pulled into a thick, neat braid, and the Basillan feathery antennae; her facial features are severe and look a little banged-up, and she wears a military-style coat with a bomber collar and epaulettes over a wrap dress with a sash at the waist.] A young war vet from the atmosphere-mining colonies in the rings of Shali. Got involved with the mutiny purely to sort out an intensely personal grudge thinking she completely disagreed with everything they stood for and then found out she didn’t, she just found them all annoying. She still finds them a little annoying but they’re her family now oops

Consider (science officer): [she’s only just visible at the back of the group, but she’s a tallish, very pale Basillan with equally pale eyes, wearing a dark veil that covers her hair and antennae and a second, sheer veil that covers the lower part of her face, though you can see she’s smiling through it. Her hand is also just visible gesturing ambiguously beside her face.] A vestal and botanist from a slightly posh estate in a forested queendom on Glasmiri, sent to space as part of the Revelator’s original exploration mission. She’s the most educated of the crew by far, but also (having moved from a lent-out country lodge in the middle of nowhere to a prestigious school to a literal convent) doesn’t know much about the world outside of a book. Un/fortunately, she’s now surrounded by people who are determined to help her find out.

Im (communications officer): [short--just a little taller than Lux, who’s like 4′11--and slim, although she has wide hips and legs which are kind of suggested by the lay of her circle skirt. She’s an Aeverellan, with a round face, darker skin tone, button nose, and four eyes arrayed in a radially symmetrical pattern--the lower pair are dark, the upper pair are bright blue. Her hair is a short afro and she has short antennae that bend at the top. She’s also wearing a vest over a dressy blouse and a tie, and posing with her hand around Lux’s waist.] an Aeverellan student who was tagged along with the Revelator mission by her well-to-do Basillan matrona to receive training as a secretary. She has no intention of ever becoming one; if the rebellion hadn’t come along, she would have taken the first opportunity that did--she’s a big geek with much bigger dreams. She misses her family and her world a lot, but she understands that there’s not much there for her. And she understands all too well that that’s the Hyperians’ fault.

Lux and Cepheid are introduced elsewhere :) [Cepheid is actually the second-tallest of the bunch but she’s leaning down to rest her chin on Lux’s head. She’s a Caesuran, with long gossamer antennae, shiny dark-toned skin, and wings (which in this pic are just a blur because she’s fluttering them). She has a buzz cut and you can just barely make out that she’s wearing a full-skirted party dress. Lux is very small and thin with a dark brassy skin tone and light colored hair, smiling and gazing directly out to the viewer, one hand reaching around to touch Cepheid’s shoulder and the other stretched out holding her staff. She wears a long white bell-sleeved top with a two-buckled belt.]

Teng (ship’s engineer): [small, fairly muscular; lighter skin tone and medium-toned hair styled in an absolutely wild quiff pushed up with a pair of goggles; wearing a white tank top with open sides with trousers and a bulky leather belt hapazardly laid over a long sash. She’s Melwar, an isolated astraea species, and has long, thin, featherlike eyebrows rather than the more typical astraea feathery eyelashes and a fine covering of somewhat reptile-like skin over her exoskeleton.] a former factory tech who was born in the insular Melwar enclaves of an Andromedan colony in the Milky Way known as the Fuscus Swarm. She went to sea with conflicting hopes of eventually getting to visit her people’s ancestral star system, and of finding a niche outside of her super-traditional colony. Teng tends to be brutally practical, bluntly honest, and kind of a troll, but she’s loyal, and a surprisingly deep thinker when you hang around her long enough. She’s playing it close to the chest about any other motives for sticking with the mutineers.

(top) Holiok (turret gunner): [Over 6′ tall and extremely skinny; medium skin tone, undercut hair divided into a slicked combover and a short ponytail. Holiok is an Esmrrrderian, another more isolated type of astraea. She has a long, insectlike jaw which she has pierced with a ring and a beaky-looking upper lip with a labret piercing.You can only see her from the shoulders up, but she’s wearing a leather bomber jacket and resting her elbow on Cepheid’s back, and has her mouth open like she’s in the middle of saying something. Also, she has long eyelashes like most astraeas, but has them gelled together so they’re not so soft and fluffy looking.] a career spacefarer from a shipbuilding town on Esmrrrder that continuously held its own against the exploitation of the empire mainly via labor organization. Her intention wasn’t to start any sort of movement in space, but she’s there to back up her friends and doesn’t mind getting into it with people. She’s also like...Cepheid’s anger translator.

Mag (sail deck hand): [medium height; Basillan with Basillan antennae, one of which is permanently crooked after being broken off in a fight; light skin and eyes and wild, medium-toned hair just past shoulder length. Wearing a wide-collared duster coat and a hip holster and a scarf tied around her head behind her antennae. Hanging off of Dovi and playfully slugging her in the side with a goofy smile.] Formerly of a pirate ship, recently in prison, assigned to work on the Revelator with a bunch of other convicts--most of them just debtors and pickpockets who they dropped off at a spaceport to figure things out as they wished. The only one in the bunch who’s actually Down For Murder was also the only one who wanted to stay (because she had enemies at that particular spaceport). She never really stops being openly chaotic neutral, but she’s also found the first group of friends she’s ever had who she actually trusts and relies on.

Dovi (boatswain): [medium height, broad-shouldered and sturdy, medium-dark skin tone and hair color with light eyes. She has the Basillan feathery antennae and a very sculptural, swirling hairstyle, and she’s wearing a utilitarian jumper-skirt over a frilly blouse with the sleeves rolled up and affectionately eyerolling all the other shenanigans in this picture.] is a settled, respectable middle-class mom (well, aunt) from the Rings who dabbled in political activism in her younger days and literally decided to become part of the rebellion because she and her wife had promised each other they wouldn’t become lukewarm boot-kissing suburban center-liberals. In her defense, she forgot about getting past her quarter-life crisis pretty fast once it became clear the crew needed a steadfast, supportive older sister.

[starsailorstories]

Starting at the very beginning with, gentle readers, YOUR POV PROTAGONISTS!

Rin Bleudot is a nine-year-old earthling whose main occupation in life is doodling with sharpies on everything they own. They live down the road from Lux and visit her a lot when their family isn’t around, which is often because their family consists of their mom--a scientist who left her family without a trace when they were a baby--and their dad, a classics scholar who tends to avoid reminders of his various failures, Rin included, at all costs.

They’re a precocious thinker and a fantastic artist, but they’ve struggled a lot with school pretty much from day 1, and they understand full well that that’s not something people accept easily from the prodigiously creative child of two PhDs. They’ve pretty much shaped their personality around looking reasonably able to meet adults’ expectations of them--except where they can’t.

Lux has helped them find a place in their world, mostly by not being from anywhere near it (and being willing to google “learning disabilities” when nobody else wanted to “label” a mostly introverted and well-behaved kid). But her help can only take them so far, and the longer they spend around her, the more they realize that she needs their help too. Learning her story and those of the other lux units they meet makes them realize that they can’t fake it forever--which would be helpful, if they even knew which things were fake.

Lux is a starship pilot from the Andromeda galaxy--for nearly a thousand years, that’s all anyone on Earth knew about her. She lives in a disrepaired old house in the Santa Ynez mountains and writes pulp novels, mostly romances, supposedly for a living--but mostly just to pass the time, if she’s being honest.

Her being is constructed around a contained fusion reaction in her head that behaves like a tiny star, taking in atmospheric gases and burning them to create energy that sustains her life and allows her to receive and interpret electromagnetic waves. What this basically means on earth is that she can usually hear the radio playing in her head (unless she blocks the signal with a soup pot).

But when a signal from space that her light can’t interpret suddenly interrupts the chatter, she’s forced to reveal to her four “students” (info forthcoming) that she’s not a typical astraea or “star-maiden.” “Lux” is simply a term that refers to a class of mass-produced workers (it refers to “light” as in the light of their lives, the same way the phrase “hired hand” refers to the body doing the work)--identical, nameless, and believed to possess sentience without a soul. Lux units are expected to subjugate themselves completely to the will of a commander and be grateful to her for giving their inherently unholy lives direction.

Lux, obviously, didn’t do that. The question is why, and how.

[starsailorstories]

Bolt was once an “old-fashioned” umbralis who led a relatively sheltered life before being suddenly passed off to an assignment in a fast-paced and dangerous factory following a Scandal of ambiguous nature. She’s one of the oldest on the team, a natural nurturer and sort of the ‘team mom’, although she can also be very naive and flighty in spite of that role. She’s a hopeless romantic and a relentless optimist--both of which can be troublesome things to be in her place, but they eventually come to serve her well...after she’s accepted everything changing.

Deadeye is the other ex-umbralis on the cabin crew, and like Bolt, she ended up on an assembly line after she was disgraced--although her disgrace was a failure to complete her “final duty” and accompany her mistress to the afterlife (the only circumstance, legend has it, under which a clone may receive a name and a soul). There’s a lot she seems to know but not say--including the origin of the secret writing system she taught to the others. A very guarded person with good intentions but an extremely harsh view of the world.

[starsailorstories]

Shade is an umbralis--a personal handmaid sworn to a relationship of absolute loyalty, complete obedience, and chaste courtly love; considered an extremely privileged position for a lux--to the captain of the Anthesphoria. She’s also a “non-uniform” unit--due to variabilities in the manufacturing process, she’s a slightly different color rather than matching the rest of the set. She got her position by the skin of her teeth and will do almost anything to keep it, so she can come across as extremely strict and ruthless, although it’s not hard to catch glimpses of the fact that she’s also terrified. She considers herself the voice of her lady in her absence after the ship crashes with only the all-lux cabin crew on board, and tries her best to keep them in line until some contact can be made. She’s...not all that successful.