#tsw!addie

[thessalian]

★★★★★

* TSW!Srina is honestly only with the Illuminati because she knows exactly what would happen if she left, and because the Phoenecians (where she suspects that she’d feel more at home) may or may not be working for people who want to end the world. (”Still, at least Team Purple has target acquisition beyond, ‘go there, see if something needs blowing up’…”)

* TSW!Astrid has the kind of Third Age tech that most people would kill to have a look at in her flat. A fair bit of it. …In all honesty, it’s the equivalent of a home entertainment centre, but she refuses to downgrade to current-gen technology unless she has no choice.

* Addie’s first job was very a much under-the-table graveyard shift at a convenience store. They kept a shotgun under the counter and when the Templar recruiter found Addie there, Addie’s response was to point the shotgun at the recruiter’s face. When the recruiter responded with a smile, a nod, compliments to her reflexes and “Yes, that’s about what we’re looking for; just different targets”, Addie was finally derailed enough to listen.

* Mychae eased through the whole ‘being beed’ thing fairly easily; she was used to channeling a lot of mental energy and this seemed to follow the same pattern, so she ended up channeling all of that anima power into her project at the time - a battle robot for the Robot Wars competitions her university’s robotics club ran. It ended up sentient and way too powerful, and Mychae blacked out most of Manhattan building it. That was what alerted Illuminati recruiters.

* TSW!Lira brought her pet lynx Socks to work one day to make friends with the Temple Hall cats. Surprisingly, it worked.

[thessalian]

On mobile but 5 stars for 3 of your characters on their abilities hobbies and histories,?

…five facts each for three characters … from a list of over two dozen … with no narrowing down. …whatever I did to make you want to punish me, I apologise… :P

* Despite having been born pyrokinetic, TSW!Addie’s weapons of choice for the most part are the hammer, the shotgun and the chainsaw, and on the whole she likes guns. There’s some other creepy shit she’s technically capable of, but she will never, ever admit it until someone she cares about is up against a wall.

* While raised in Texas, Addie wasn’t actually born there. By birth, she’s British. The only one who knows is her mentor and whatever Orochi personnel still have access to her files; she doesn’t even really know.

* At age 16, Addie set her entire tiny town on fire - which is sort of okay because it was full of Morninglight-affiliated death cultists. She spent two months homeless on the streets of Dallas before a Templar recruiter tracked her down. The Illuminati are still kicking themselves for missing that one.

* Addie is a lot smarter than anyone with her utter lack of education has any right to be, and she hides it most of the time. She does a lot of reading on military history, though is not much of a fiction reader no matter how many people throw Harry Potter and such at her.

* Her other interests include Firefly, Disney movies in general and woodwork.

* Mychae in the TSW!verse grew up in a tiny backwater in Washington State that thought she was weird and not worth her time, with a not overly well-off family who also thought she was weird and not worth their time. She responded by basically giving a big ‘fuck you’ to everyone by doing exactly what she wanted with no regard for anyone’s sensibilities, ever.

* Her primary talents are all on the techie side - computer programming, hacking and security circumvention, robotics … tech in general, really. Also anything to do with electricity, up to and including elemental magics largely involving lightning. Her Palpatine impression is something to see.

* Mychae is double-jointed and bends in some fairly improbable ways. Quote: “I AM A TETRIS BRICK”.

* Oh, also she’s a colossal geek. She calls the interns in the Templar Archives ‘Jawas’, filled the kitchen with Star Wars and Doctor Who-themed utensils, maintains a huge cosplay closet and keeps gaming rigs for her and her husband that rival professional set-ups.

* Mychae was an Illuminati. She defected to the Templars nearly two years ago but was only recently removed from the Illuminati kill list because of how badly she fucked up certain Templar-related intel on the Illuminati servers. Cassini still wants her head. Zurn misses her, though.

* Jallira essentially grew up in Temple Hall and is the only person Gladstone will talk to without going … weird. Even Dame Julia will occasionally be seen making small talk with her, though Jallira’s very careful not to call her ‘Auntie Julia’ anywhere but at home.

* Essentially a Doogie Howser-style child prodigy, Jallira got her doctorate at age 14. She excels at healing on the magical scale as well, and picked up all the theory of combat magics as well as melee combat and ranged weapons as fast as her mentor could teach them. Sometimes faster. She can’t actually do much more than claws, all forms of magic and occasionally the sword, though, because she’s too tiny to lift a hammer, the recoil on even pistols makes it hard for her to hit her target and shotgun kicks hard enough to knock her over.

* To explain that - Jallira stands at 4′10 and weighs about 95 pounds. She’s tiny.

* Jallira cooks very, very well. She learned from her nanny and lady’s maid, Mary-Alice, and improved from there. She can also tell your favourite dish after maybe five minutes. It’s just innate, like her way with animals.

* Yes, she has a lady’s maid, because Jallira is formally known as Lady Jallira Elizabeth Grey, and she is minor nobility. She’s generational Templar, but she is the only bee in the family. Her father would be a lot prouder if she didn’t hang out with ‘those weirdos’.

[thessalian]

★ (Little Smilers), ★ (children's chewable vitamins), ★★★ (any subject you want!)

* Mychae runs a Little Smiler Rescue Shelter. She rescues ones that aren’t too Filth-riddled, patches them up and gives them a new home in a scrapyard in Washington State near a blajini colony that was established nearby. This is partly to be nice to the poor Little Smilers and partly to drive her parents crazy, as her father runs an auto body shop near the scrapyard and she has now added happy Little Smilers going ‘bwoo’ to the blajini that keep turning up at the Qiin doorstep offering copies of their manifesto.

* In this country, children’s chewable vitamins actually come in gummy form, and there are some that are vitamin-balanced for adults … which is why Astrid always includes one in the bags of gummy sweets she sneaks into people’s houses. She figures a little more vitamin never hurt anyone, and who’d say no to a raspberry-pomegranate gummy sweet?

* Jallira’s animal affinity extends to Pokemon. She is essentially a walking Pokestop; wherever she goes, Pokemon just flock. Once she figured this out, she started trekking around the globe via Agartha, focusing largely on rural areas where people weren’t getting out enough to get decent Pokehunting done. She sets up with her snack wagon and a sign that reads “Pokemon free to good home” and charges a small fee for the snack wagon snacks, all proceeds going to the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

* Addie knits … but not overly well. The first time she tried knitting protective runes into a scarf, they came out wonky and the whole thing ended up attracting rakshasa. She had to bludgeon twenty of the things to death before she finally just set the scarf on fire. She’s improved since then.

* Srina basically took over Sam Krieg’s lighthouse as a sniper’s nest for three days. Krieg was not impressed but she just pointed out that the lighthouse wasn’t his any more than it was hers and she’s better connected than he is. Closely followed by, “Your work is shit, by the way.” But she did leave him some canned goods before she packed up and left.

* Mychae is still Queen of the Mole-People.

[thessalian]

"describe your oc’s bedroom" for Addie "Wildfyr" Calvert.

Addie used to live in a broken-down one-room borderline squat in Darkside. Then her mentor stepped in and now she lives in a modest little one-bedroom flat above the coffee shop. It took her awhile to get into anything that even remotely resembles decorating, but she’s making some strides.

Addie’s bedroom is small, but it’s not really sparse anymore. The furniture isn’t antique, exactly; it’s rescued. She gets it from second-hand dealers or from curbsides before garbage collection day; a scarred and battered wardrobe, a chest of drawers with the drawers gone crooked, a bedside table with a missing leg … or at least, that’s what they looked like when she brought them home. She’s spent hours painstakingly repairing her furniture - new drawer runners, a change of hinges for the wardrobe doors, new leg for the end table, a coat of varnish and so on. None of the wood exactly matches, but it’s all close enough to walnut as to work out reasonably well.

There’s a desk over by the window (when she found it, the back panel was cracked, the drawers were missing handles and it was covered with cigarette burns that she spent days sanding off), with the computer Chris got her set up on it. The desk chair used to belong in some corporate office and she had to get Mychae to do the repairs on that one. She also reupholostered it in a sort of russet leather because the black vinyl crap it was originally covered with didn’t really fit her decor. The computer looks hugely out of place in a room that’s largely ‘rummage sale chic’ in its decor.

There’s a certain element of ‘country chic’ to the room too; mostly in the pieced quilt in autumn shades on her bed and the gingham-ish curtains on the windows. The floor’s wood too, sort of - wood tile with a similarly mismatched air as the furniture. There’s a latch hook rug that almost matches her quilt on the floor by the bed, and a coat stand where she hangs her bathrobe.

On the bedroom wall, she’s got one of those ‘art nouveau Firefly’ posters (Kaylee) and a John Singer Sargent print (Home Fields). There’s a digital photo frame on the bedside table, by the (ancient wind-up) alarm clock, filled with pictures of her little quasi-adopted family (Chris, Mychae, Vincent, Reaver etc).

Basically Addie takes the broken and beaten things nobody wants and gives them a good home. Kind of like her cat, Reaver.

[thessalian]

And another one because it's 3am and I've had entirely too much caffiene, but I'm going to bed after this I promise. Which characters are the best at video games, or their setting's equivalent thereof?

1) TSW!Mych. All the way. Hands down. No contest. She’s also one of those ones who lets on that she’s a girl in co-op and takes great pleasure in fragging the ass of every sexist dickbag who gives her one tiny speck of shit.

2) TOR!Srina. Partly because one of her aliases codes video games and she’s got a good eye for level and boss design.

3) One you haven’t met yet - TSW!Addie. She ended up being entirely too good at TF2 thanks to a certain mentor tossing an entirely OP gaming rig at her when she barely knew how to make her phone work…

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Gaki

Last night was my first run through actual story content in TSW in awhile. Unfortunately, it involved two of the storyline bits I really, really HATE.

We began with the oni camps, and chasing Imbeda into the sewers. To be entirely fair to myself, I did way better than I did the last time, but that one series of traps just before an Indiana Jones moment (the hell dimension one, I mean) ... gnaaaaaaaaaaah. Thankfully if you’re close enough, the reset of the anima well happens for the whole group, so I only had to do it like three times before @true0neutral moved on far enough to get me past. And I managed to not get trapped behind a gate this time during the last fight, so hey.

Afterwards, @generalmaximus had a Halloween bag opening party, so we went to that as a bit of a break. People were so generous and it was awesome. Thank you so much, @generalmaximus - it was a great idea and I am so totally organising whole bunches of these when Yule rolls around.

Getting all the shinies and having the break with the awesome folks did have one ancillary benefit, though. It cheered me up so that what happened next wasn’t so grumbly-inducing. Look, after the bag-opening party, we went to see Inbeda. He sent us out on a mission to pay for information that we needed. I had a bit of a flashback to my first trip through Kaidan and the first words off my fingertips were: “Waitaminit IS THIS THAT FUCKING PARKING GARAGE?!?”

...Yep. Gaki. Bless @true0neutral, he tried to get me to run around and get the lore out there, assuring me he had the Gaki, but my comment was, “Fuck the lore; I just want OUT.” It’s not that I’m not used to creepy little girl ghosts, okay? It’s just that I don’t like anything that instakills me because I’m not looking in the right direction. In a darkened room where your headlamp doesn’t work.

We still died a couple of times anyway. That last stage is a bit of a bitch because there’s at least two of them and if someone hasn’t “don’t blink”ed the fucking things ... *poof* dead.

Next up ... oh gods, next up is the FNF. ICly. Eeeeeeeeeeheeheeheeheehee.

[thessalian]

♝ - Mychae, ♔ - Addie, ♙ - Lira

♝- crisis / war / battle armor - for Mychae? Well, she is a ‘blessed of Gaia’, so basically crisis / battle armour is whatever she happens to be wearing plus a full complement of talismans. If she has time to prepare, though? Either the kitbashed steampunky Third Age / ‘shit she scavenged from not-too-Filthy-Orochi’ battle gear or full-on Iron Man power armour. Mychae’s heavy on the occultech side.

♔ -  pajamas / bedtime outfit - for Addie, it’s generally an oversized Firefly T-shirt, boxer shorts and a pair of fuzzy bumblebee slippers the Templar Archive jawas gave her.

♙ - date night - Jallira (Lira for short) doesn’t date. She’s a 16-year-old prodigy with a screamingly overprotective father and a terminal case of the shys; she wouldn’t even know where to start. So instead I’m going to go for the other pawn:

♟- winter outfit - Lira actually in-game has one of these: fur-lined wool boots, pale grey pants, white puffy jacket, turtleneck sweater underneath, blue mittens, blue knit scarf and pale grey pom-pom hat with ear flaps. It’s a little bit too cute to be permitted, and far too cute to have killed Mara in, but she did it anyway.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Being a Brick

My teenage Texan Templar tank, Addie, has reached Tokyo. Somehow, despite not even being kitted out in all purples, she is surviving pretty well. Then again, I set her up for damage!tank. I also made a few tweaks to the build which I’m actually pretty proud of. So behold - hammer / shotgun build, based VERY loosely off the Templar Puritan deck.

Actives:

Striker - a single target shotgun strike. Moderate damage, builds a resource for each weapon.

Sure Shot - single target shotgun attack. Heavy damage. Exploits hindered state. Consumes all shotgun resources.

Bone Breaker - single target hammer attack. Heavy damage. Exploits weakened state. Consumes all hammer resources.

Takedown - single target shotgun attack. Heavy damage, slows target. Sets hindered state.

Touchdown! - leap to target, deal moderate damage to nearby targets on landing.

Beatdown - single target hammer attack. Light damage, knockdown. Sets impaired state.

Bombardment - sets a turret down, dealing heavy damage to various targets within the area. AoE.

Passives:

Strike Force - increases penetration rating of all strike abilities.

Improved Strikes - increases damage of all strike abilities.

Punisher - all strike abilities reduce target’s damage output for a short time. Sets weakened state.

Pinned Down - any hit that penetrates slows the target. Sets hindered state.

Brick Wall - when you block an attack, enemy knockdown. Sets impaired state.

Impact Striker - increases damage done by Striker to hindered targets.

Forged in Fire - large heal over time effect triggered when your health drops below 50%.

I think you maybe see where I’m going with this. Now, I really need to build up my Pen rating for this to be effective, but Brick Wall gets triggered more often than not. This entire build has been centred around doing as much damage with as little effort as possible while debuffing the fuck out of everything I hit. Now, I’ll have to tweak it again when I hit dungeons - add a taunt, that kind of thing - but for a solo-run damage!tank build ... she’s a fucking brick. She can survive mobs in Kaidan. She got one of the big evolved Filth critters and three Filthed rakshasa at once. She took down an infected colossus. I have tactics and it is good.

So ... yeah. If you want a build that’s a little more hands-on and you don’t ever want to die? Try this one.