some of the kim chats have fed further into some aspects of my drifters characterization + how they fight (and kill) and im very normal about it. putting it under cut for spoilers and because it got long.
anyway kim chat spoilers for some of roathes chats + info dumping about my drifter, how they fight and why they use the warframes they do.
first off, their spiral was anger. anger was and still is, their main defense, and their biggest shame. even though it's been a while since they escaped duviri and are better at coping, they still struggle a lot with their anger issues. and while they are better at not acting on their anger, it is still so hard for them to let go it, because it feels good. anger feels better than fear or sorrow or envy, sometimes even better than joy. anger makes them feel less helpless, because it lets them act. and it's hard to let go of one of the only things that ever gave them a sense of control.
second, knowing duviri was made of them and everything they are is something they struggle with a lot. yes the void takes from imagination too, but no matter how anyone twists and turns it, duviri was made from them. and that has to mean that some part of them has always and will always to be capable of those things. those things primarily being everything lodun and thrax are/were capable of doing.
if thrax and lodun were capable of such cruelty, it means they are too. in some ways, they did do it all to themself. the thing they can't say out loud, is how part of them is convinced they are inherently evil. it doesn't matter how many lives they save, how many people they help, how much they care for those around them, how kind or good they are. they cannot kill that little voice telling them it's all an act, and the only things they're truly capable of are death and rage.
drifter sees their immortality as their penance. they can't change the things they did to survive. can't change who died for them. and they can't change the fact that part of them is convinced they're nothing but the flawed and inhuman voidmanifestation based of that child left on the zariman. they have their powers, they have their immortality. there's one thing they're good at: fighting and not staying dead. so even if every act of kindness is an act, every feeling of guilt or love just what they think they should feel, isn't it still better to try? maybe it doesn't matter what they truly are, if they can at least do something good with it.
so, getting this chat with roathe was interesting:
first, him telling them to retire and pick up farming if they can't accept what they are tasked with doing?
yeah, farming is what they started doing when they began finally settling in with the hex. growing life, making things, instead of only killing. when lettie suggests a greenhouse on the rooftop, drifter has already been filling the backroom with life and they think it's a great idea. they have caused so much death and destruction, and growing things and giving back to the people around them makes that just slightly more bearable.
and then he ends it with not only mentioning how "glorious" it is to watch them work (aka fight/kill) but how flashy it is and how they make the battlefield "fun"?
they do fight flashy. while the game won't let them fight with anything except for their gun outside duviri, in my heart they fight the same way in the origin system as they do in duviri. but combined with like jumping in and out of their warframe to use the element of surprise, and mainly use melee based frames.
as for the way they fight in duviri; i've been using edun since i got it, and the stance drifter use is flashy. spins and swirls and lunges and strikes, and my personal favorite, the low crouch slide swipe. it looks more like a performance than a fight sometimes. and i know, video game logic, has to look fun. but im making it part of them now. they learned how to fight with it by watching (and later fighting) the dax soldiers based off a fairytale. flashy, glorious and not the most efficient, kinda makes sense.
so while they sometimes jump out of their warframe just to knock back enemies or armor strip, they will also grab their melee weapon out of their warframes hand as they do and fight with it. their favored warframes are valkyr, gara, garuda and kullervo, all to some degree flashy i'd say. valkyr less, but still.
anyway i'll get into the specifics of their used warframes further down, but it kinda also ties into this chat:
although i would've liked for it to be a bit differently phrased, like without the "the more the merrier", but still, it works.
since they use melee weapons for the most part in duviri, i hc that's just what they're more familiar with, but i also think part of why they stick to that still, is to keep it personal. not for enjoyment, but the opposite. to keep their opponents real, remind themself of the lives they take, and to not get numb to it.
it's easier to kill with distance. what if that's the thing that will finally make them go numb to all the death they cause? but again, they learned to fight and kill in duviri where their opponents were thrax dax constructs. they weren't real, permanent deaths. they learned to kill with no consequences, and for so long death wasn't actually real (and the zariman was a very long time ago compared to everything, and something they try to forget). so i think part of them sometimes struggle to actually fully grasp that. and it scares them.
so yes, they fight up close. they have to. and hey, maybe part of them hopes their opponent will get a good hit in too. maybe it wont kill them. it probably wont even leave a mark, not after they got their void powers back. but they feel it, and maybe they need that too. and while their need to have tangible proof of well, anything really (after duviri left them with nothing but the scar on their chest), i think they partially use it as punishment too. they killed their parents, they tortured and killed themself over and over again for millennia, they don't even belong in the universe they're bound to now, and at the moment, they are keeping a group of people they love stuck in another time loop. it's for their own good, right? but isn't that exactly what thrax did to them? after all thrax came from drifter, everything he is came from them.
so maybe it's also to remind themself of their violent nature, because they're still convinced that they deserve all of it. they don't deserve to forget or move on. it's a form of self harm, make every kill real and personal. more blood on their hands, to add to their guilty conscience. to feed that little voice in the back of their head they just can't kill: look at you, reveling in your violence. this is what you are.
obviously they have a lot of shit to work through still, between the survivors guilt, duviri and the war, honestly kinda just everything really. and they don't cope very well, all while still being stuck in their guilt, and i guess shame too.
anyway, for the continuation of the convo, i appreciate how drifter can state again, that they do not find joy in having to kill.
i don't like them trying to make customizing you appearance something canon (a thing in it's own for another time), so i chose to take it more as a general loadout/equipment. like their warframes of choice all being melee based, using weapons they're personally familiar with outside their warframes too etc.
but i can also turn this into more lore for them, so i will.
their 4 primarily used warframes are all melee frames yes, but they share other things too. they're all driven by something, and the way they kill and fight is bloody and violent. valkyr and garuda with their claws, gara with her glass shards, and kullervo with his blades. while gara on the outside kinda seem less idk scary and violent than the other do, i feel like the reality of her abilities are pretty horrifying. like her entire thing is slicing people with millions of tiny glass shards. so, bloody and violent too.
valkyr is the first frame they use (outside of briefly using excalibur during the duviri paradox) - valkyr being the operators main warframe too. and at the end of the day, drifter and operator were the same person once. drifter getting stuck in the spiral of anger in duviri, and the operator feeling an immediate kinship with valkyr and her anger isn't a coincidence. at their cores, they will probably always have the same base traits and flaws.
valkyr is hot rage and hatred, she kills with her bare hands in a state of blind rage. there is no pause or doubt or hesitation, there is only action. her abilities are centered around her constantly tearing through her enemies to keep her invulnerability. stopping means death. and it's almost freeing, to let all of that rage and hatred loose. to drown out the helplessness from having both their fates, lives, bodies, in the hands of someone else. in valkyr the two of them both found a kindred spirit, someone who also had to endure the cruelty of others. and it changed her, but it didn't break her.
kullervo is guilt, anger and rebellion all in one. obviously he's a mirror to drifter: he's chained to duviri by his own guilt, and a lot of his crimes mirror drifter's own actions. he fights with the very daggers impaling him, sending them out to seek his foes, healing him if they strike their targets, but pierce him if they don't. he chains his enemies to each other, making them share the pain, and rains down daggers. in some ways, when no one if around for him to fight, he turns it all towards himself. and like valkyr and garuda, in order to keep his passive, he needs to keep moving, to keep killing.
garuda is cold and controlled rage. she not only uses the blood of her enemies, but her own. there is gore and death yes, and while you could argue that it's rooted in cruelty, i think it's more about precision and control. too much bloodletting or at the wrong time, and she just made her opponents job easier. it requires self restraint and a clear head. she has to keep fighting to keep her passive active, but where valkyr is in a state of blind rage, garuda keeps her composure. and i realize they finally teased some upcoming garuda lore, and if it turns out to be completely different than this idc, took them too long, my city now.
gara, despite the violence of her glass shards, there is more to her than mindless slaughter. she surrounds herself with shards that cuts her foes, slashes through them with her shattered lash and traps them within her mirrors. but the same glass that she kills with, she can use to protect. she surrounds her allies with the splinters of her armor to keep them safe. the same glass that traps her enemies, she can shape into a barrier to keep them at bay. and where the others need to keep killing to maintain their momentum (passives), she renews splinter storm by casting her protective barrier.
she is not only focused on keeping herself safe, but those around her too. a protector. a weapon and a shield.
and as much as the first 3 warframes still calls to drifter, them starting to use gara during their time with the hex, is them beginning to move forward. they have people they care about*, that watch their back, that they want to keep safe. they're no longer on their own. but also, they don't need to rely on just their anger and guilt to keep going. it's okay for them to want, to feel, to be more than just that. and maybe, they don't need to keep punishing themself over and over again.
eventually with valkyr and kullervo they begin leading with compassion. instead of the former kinda letting their own feelings mix with theirs - they obviously still get affected due to how transference works - but they get better at doing it the "actual" tenno way, where they calm them, help carry the burden and ease their pain, but no longer feed into it. i'm not sure where that leaves them with garuda atm tho. maybe the new lore will make or break my hc so we'll see d:
*they obviously care deeply about the operator, but still in a way where they would set themself on fire(or you know, stay behind on the ship that traumatized both of them, or travel to the past...) if it meant sparing them all of this and keeping them safe. so until they begin healing a little, their relationship with the operator is still tainted by drifters guilt and need for penance.
there's some more chats kinda related to all this, but i'll save them for another time because this got looooong lmao
does my latest ttrpg character have a name yet? no. have i finished her character sheet? also no. have i done ANY final touches on her? nope. am i making a playlist for her anyway? absolutely.
