Might as well do a judge meme to make what expressions for her I can! Reblog with 1-2 characters for her to give opinions.
Judgebacks are welcome but not necessary; your character may have heard of her as a traveling musician who wears animal masks and plays the harp and accordion, usually sticking to Alternia's more remote areas.
Little is known of the musician Harphare, who started traveling the wilder regions of Alternia about a sweep ago.
However, many who see her performances agree that she is a skilled harp player with a low ego and a whimsical sense of humor, so her hemoanon status and deflection of questions about her past may simply be part of the persona she has crafted to distinguish herself as an artist.
This is the seventh part of the Knights and Rooks plot. It is preceded by Dead Girl Walking.
Harphare | Present Night | Port Mina Fleet Base
Harphare coughed as she approached the ruins of the base.
It had burned so quickly that the fires were already dying, but clouds of smoke still billowed through the night sky.
The half-drone didn’t care, striding beside her as it looked ahead. Of course not; it didn’t have to breathe.
Her face mask wasn’t the right kind for this type of air pollution, and the sweat on her face was making her very itchy.
She had to ignore it for now.
Harphare managed to swallow before she spoke up again, voice rasping only a little.
“So. Who wants Orycto so bad they sent you to do it?”
It laughed quietly, looking at her with mild amusement as its silver-tipped black hair waved slightly.
“Would knowing help, Harphare? Do you want to dread the consequences of what will happen if you’ve been helping him after all?”
“I haven’t!” She spat, then coughed. “How stupid do you think I am? Blow up a fleet base, who’s the first person they’ll blame if they can’t catch him? Me!”
Phasma seemed to consider that, black teeth clicking slightly.
Frustratingly, she couldn’t tell if it believed her.
At least she wasn’t immediately dismissed .
“Unusually sensible for someone who was originally snared by him.” It retorted, amused. “My informants said you two were quite close.”
She rolled her gray eyes, then coughed before speaking again. Her throat was going to be hell later. The price one paid.
“People can learn. Change, even. Not that you’d know. You can be the same thing forever, and you’ll be fine. Not so much the rest of us.”
It turned its head to look at her, an unreadable expression swept over its face before disappearing swiftly.
Then Phasma gazed at the smoldering remains, close enough to see in detail now - melted metal, charred timbers, and warped plastic.
A few burned bodies lay scattered among the wreckage - part of the roof had burned away or caved in, leaving rubble to obscure parts of the corpses. But there was no mistaking the corpse stench, and Harphare’s eyes watered from it.
The hybrid’s own - half tech, immune to such things - narrowed.
It looked at the hemoanon, who fanned the air in front of her with a lightly gloved hand as the creature spoke.
“Orycto. You never knew his crime. But what did he tell you about himself? His goals?”
She paused, considering the question.
The fleet base sweeps ago. Whole, well-kept, shining with the efforts of cleaning droids. Seemingly full of promise and opportunity like the smiles on the officers’ faces.
Yet despite youth’s blindness - before a full understanding had developed - doubt had begun finding a quiet voice.
“You aren’t ideal.”
The usual statement.
“But just in case, you should get some practice in.”
Words that had accompanied an uncollared neck. Rare. A strange freedom.
Still, led along and expected to follow.
Solemn young faces looked back from the classroom.
All of them helm-grade psiionics.
“I know he came from some weird place called the Fishbowl. That he hated it there. But other than that…it was all about the music.” She murmured. “All about the songs.”
Her fingers twitched in a memory of plucking her harp strings, something she did almost every night.
As a hot wind blew through her hair, blessedly dispersing some of the smoke and fumes, she almost wished she could let her skin feel it properly, not muffled by all her layers.
“Wise enough to not let on what a rogue agent he was.” Phasma noted. “I suppose that’s why they finally sent me.”
It looked Harphare dead in her gray eyes, and she met its gaze evenly.
“No one’s actually seen him in sweeps…no one except you.”
The hybrid’s voice was pleasant, but had an edge to it.
“Look what I’ve paid for it.” She said, gesturing at the bodies, hand now over her face mask to further block out the scent of charred flesh as they made their way through the base.
“Me and everyone else.”
The young lowbloods were already being trained to keep silent and not show fear. Trolls without lusii, minor mutants, trolls caught red-handed for small crimes - anyone the empire could offer a second chance to.
A second chance to serve it as a battery.
Their unease - muted, covered - still pulsed under their other feelings. Boredom, worry, anticipation, irritation.
Sometimes the question came - do you feel overwhelmed by your powers?
No.
Sometimes it wasn’t enough.
An empty glass, unfilled to its peak of potential.
Emotions were power.
Emotions were life.
Phasma’s eyebrows raised.
“Mm. ‘Everyone’. My sensors tell me these are all highblood corpses. Where are the lowblood soldiers? Did they receive forewarning?”
Harphare shrugged as it continued, its still body and neutral expression at odds with its increasingly agitated tone.
“We saw none on the way here. Or in town. My sensors aren’t picking up anything. So where are they?”
It grabbed her suddenly, holding her up by the chest with almost no effort.
“Where are they? You know something. You know!”
Its face twitched again, and it went rigid.
Interesting, she thought. As if it’s fighting itself. Or…
Pull on their feelings, the command came.
So rough. It wasn’t like that.
Not mostly.
Bravery. Fear, but with the desire to impress, to overcome. Simply wiping away fear did not make a troll brave.
It also didn’t suit the empire. They didn’t need suicidal soldiers; ones who survived to be of further use were ideal.
The children blinked. Faces hardened. Fists clenched, backs straight. Bolstered. Confident.
Attacking the teacher.
Gunfire.
No more other feelings.
No more children.
“We have two choices.” She said calmly.
“Serren, or trying to track the lowbloods. We might find him with them. We might not. But he could be trying to lead us off, Phasma. Distract us. I learned sleight of hand from him.”
She produced a coin, seemingly from nowhere, and then made it disappear again. The drone’s silver eyes followed, though she had no idea what it was feeling now.
“He was always good at that. Making something seem like something else. Guiding your eyes to where he wanted them to be. It figures he managed to kill a bunch of eggs. Why did he do it, though?”
Phasma placed her back down on the sand with curious gentleness, the polar opposite of its rough initial grab.
She rubbed at her chest - hard to feel under her layers - but she didn’t think it had drawn blood.
Not that she had too much to worry about if it did. It would make things a little more complicated, but nothing she couldn’t talk her way out of.
It spoke after a few moments, though it began walking through the wreckage, not looking at her face.
Harphare followed, hand over her mouth as smoke still wafted around the pair.
“No one knows.” Phasma finally said as the pair approached the most intact part of the building: the entrance to an underground bunker.
It was likely thinking that the lowbloods had potentially escaped down there.
“He escaped the Fishbowl during the culling, but if a distraction was all he wanted, there were easier ways. Those eggs were under heavy guard; what he did must have taken perigees of planning. Then he vanished.”
Now it looked at her again. Her gaze swept over some melted computers, half turned away from the creature, but she could feel its eyes on her.
“Until we found traces of his presence from your association. Curious that he chose to trust you with his real name.”
She scoffed at that. “Trust me! He was baiting me. Waiting until he had my affection before he ran for it. It was all a game to him.”
“How did you meet him?”
A mirror. A cave. A makeup kit.
The harp, strings singing under her fingers like nothing ever had before.
“From faults, favors, failures and the truth, that love alone, love alone isn’t enough.”
She murmured the words more than sang them, careful of breathing too hard among the fumes.
Phasma looked at her curiously, clicking its dark teeth.
Such a different look in its eyes now. It could have been a full troll, an intrigued audience member at a performance.
“I could tell you a dozen stories.” She said. “Sing you any song about it. Know this: we met because in that moment he needed me, as much as I needed him. He wanted to be seen again under the moonlight. He wanted to perform.”
“Then he shouldn’t have culled those eggs.” Phasma said mechanically - truly mechanical in tone, instead of its flat affect that still held some character.
She was learning to tell the two voices apart. To hear the subtle difference in letter stresses, pronunciation, where it paused between sentences and for long.
“Maybe not.” The hemoanon said, fingers rubbing over her neck absentmindedly.
“But maybe he felt he didn’t have a choice.”
Phasma’s eyes twitched, and Harphare was sure then.
Somewhere far away, someone was controlling the hybrid against its will.
Someone was observing her every move through its shining silver eyes.
Watching the half-drone pry the bunker door open with a grinding of metal, occupied by her own thoughts and concerns, Harphare only felt the slightest waft of air as a small mechanical bug flitted by, which she put down to a mild night breeze.
She wouldn’t have known enough, even if she’d seen the metallic insect, to call it a damselfly.
Harphare, if you had chosen a different instrument to learn and perform with, would you have gone with a different alias? Like, say, Flutehare? Keyboardhare? Contrabasstubahare?
“Heh.”
It seems she finds this a little funny.
“Tambourinehare. I own one of them too. My lusus is an indigobird. Guess I could’ve gone with that too. Harpbird.”
The bird in question is nowhere to be seen, however. She left it before she went to Port Mina.
This is the fourth part of the Knights and Rooks plot. It is preceded by Sucker and followed by Fuel for the Fire.
Harphare | Present Night | Port Mina
Port Mina: an incongruous name for a place so long landlocked that only highbloods could remember when that hadn’t been the case. Surrounded by walls to keep out zombies and the like, guarded by bored trolls who were fortunately not too hard to charm with a song and a pinch of flattery.
Its people had the wariness all small-town folk needed and sometimes over-fed to survive, but they also craved excitement, entertainment, any novelty that made for a change to their routine.
Harphare had finished her performance not long ago, and taken to the warm and moonlit streets for an errand. Many pairs of eyes followed her - some obvious, some less so.
The small desert town was so rustic, a hemoanon’s gray stuck out like the sorest of thumbs.
Curiosity. Suspicion. Wariness. Eagerness.
A light and expected sampling of familiar colors and tastes. Mild blue, the slight spice of orange, cold white, a dill green.
If only she really could eat them. Imagine what she’d save on food.
Not that she was suffering, she noted with amusement. Her stomach was soft and somewhat rounded underneath her loose gray layers, her limbs hale from good meals and the effort of moving and playing her instruments.
She whistled, noting the crack of her lips from the dry desert air. Lip balm - now that wasn’t too expensive, not unless you were bougie as a fish.
Only one to be found here, on the fleet base a scant few miles off.
But they were none of her business. A sideshow. A failure. General Leoffe had oh so carelessly let two Lepuses slip through their hands and into an early retirement.
“The leverets, they slipped away, and live to fight another day! The wiles of the swift and sly triumph long, when all’s passed by.”
No, no, no. That didn’t mean anything. She scowled under her mask - one of her casual full-face ones instead of an animal, for she wasn’t performing right now. She had to do better than that.
“Interesting song.”
Panic. Confusion. Dread. The emotions sprung up around her as the deep voice spoke, sharp and tangled and dripping, gleaming in dark hues of inner gore.
Harphare turned and tilted her head.
A half-drone stood behind her, and the streets had emptied.
No one dared scream, even though it lacked a red trident symbol.
Port Mina was - almost to a troll - lowbloods.
Port Mina, as a town - a fearful, many-minded beast - knew everything and anything they did could get back to the nearby fleet base.
No one would help a wandering musician.
“Sorry! Afraid I’ve given my concert for the night. Ask me tomorrow, Mx. Drone.” She said cheerfully, voice carefully pitched up as it had been when she was singing. It was second nature now.
The half-drone’s silver cyborg eyes glinted.
“What do you know about Serren Orycto?”
Harphare stiffened.
“Why?” She let her voice become hurt, suspicious.
“What do you want to know about him for? After what he did to me?”
“Is he why you wear the mask?” The half-drone drawled.
“With all due respect.” She said, voice trembling, but adding some frightened defiance. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business. I’d rather forget about him. Forever.”
“Mm, no can do.” Replied the half-drone evenly, stepping closer to her.
Harphare took a step back. As most people would do.
“What do you want? Information? Fine! But then leave me alone.”
Scared, scared, folding in the face of death right in front of her. The musician quails, despite her best efforts. She knows she is no match for this creature, for all her cheery bravado.
Sometimes plain words were the best lyrics of all.
The creature draws closer. Calm, unhurried. One who believes they hold all the power.
Their emotions are muted. She doesn’t like that; never has. But only a minor problem, ultimately.
“You’re coming with me to the base.”
Then its face twitched, grimacing. Only for a moment. It put a brief hand to its head before letting it drop.
It made no acknowledgement of what just happened.
Harphare didn’t let her brows raise, even under her mask.
Her own curiosity would have shone a vibrant azure to anyone who could see.
“Chain me, then. You’ll have to, or I’ll run away.”
She offered her hands up. The drone looked incredulous, black teeth clicking.
“You think you can outrun me?” It asked with amusement, huge insectoid wings extending from its back.
“The hare jumps through the fire so quickly she is not burned.”
It snorted.
“Talking nonsense won’t help you no -“
Distant explosions sounded.
The hybrid’s eyes narrowed.
“That’s the base. What did you do?”
She blinked.
“What did I do? I’ve been in town all night, drone. Flattered you think me so capable - really, I am - but I’m a musician. You haven’t even said what you want me for. Being gray in public?”
“Serren. You were close. Before he betrayed you.”
It leaned in.
“Don’t you want him dead? This could be easy. You could make it so easy.”
Harphare scoffed, then bit her lip. Indecision - no hemoanon would cooperate so easily.
“What’s in it for me?” She said at last. “I help you and you let me go? I don’t buy it. Even if you mean it…him dead wouldn’t help. The damage is done.”
She sniffed quietly, a scorned and hurt woman.
The half-drone shrugged.
“The price on his head is what matters. Lead me to him, and you’ll be free.”
It sniffed the air.
Both of them looked into the distance where the base burned, wisps of far-off smoke wafting their way.
The hybrid looked back at Harphare.
“How quick are you, Harphare? How fast can you take me to the criminal who killed a generation? Gasp away - your little affair is the least of his crimes; Orycto slaughtered a city’s eggs and grubs alike. Feeling more compliant?”
Harphare had flung her hands over her mouth to muffle a sharp, shocked exhale.
“How could I know…?”
Then she paused.
“No. I believe it. This is him.” She said, viciously gesturing to the burning building, an indistinct glow in the night.
“Likely.” The creature agreed. “Following you still.”
Its bright silver gaze pierced into her dull gray one.
“We can find him. Tell me everything you know, and I will set you free.”
Harphare could appreciate a good acting job when she heard it. Give the thing credit; she hadn’t thought half-drones could sound that genuine.
“All right.” She said after a suitable pause. “All right. But what do I call you, if we’re going to be traveling together?”
A wandering hemoanon musician who sticks to Alternia’s more wild and rural parts, avoiding any city or town too big or imperial.
While she discloses little about herself, she is not unfriendly, and enjoys playing with other musicians as well as people-watching.
She always wears a mask, be it one of her animal-featured performance ones, or a casual one for everynight activities. The only skin she shows is that around her mouth, her ears, and the tips of her fingers.
Name: Harphare. She doesn’t mind if people shorten it to ‘Harp’ or use a nickname like ‘Harlie’.
Online Handles: rhapsodicResonance
Age: 12 sweeps (25 years)
Gender: She/her pronouns.
Caste: Hemoanon
Height: 5’10
Weight: 220 pounds. Harphare is chubby, though not particularly broad. She has some muscle from picking up and handling her harp, among other things.
Lusus: Harphare travels with an indigobird lusus.
Psi: Harphare declines comment on whether she has psiionics or not.
Strife: Harphare isn’t one to fight if she doesn’t have to, but that doesn’t make her any less adept with the martial arts she knows and the protective bracers she wears that can redirect kinetic and psiionic energy.
Sylladex: A highly secure set of cards. They’re keyed to specific sensory memories.
Hive: None. She travels.
Constellation: She wears Lyra.
Interests: Music - Her signature instrument (and the one she is best at) is the harp, but Harphare can also play the accordion and tambourine well enough and enjoys pulling out both for casual jam sessions with other musicians.
Sleight of Hand - Harphare will sometimes perform small acts of stage magic to go with her music; she might also theme pieces around them, with titles like ‘Disappear’ and ‘Illusionary’.
Theater - While not a thespian herself, Harphare enjoys watching stage plays and comedy acts.
