TALIA BARNES, born August 25th 1989, NOLI aligned SINNER.
WORKING: VP of PR @ DayStar Casino. LIVING: 6B @ Sunset Tower.
Once upon a time, you were a unicornâor part of you was. Merged with ancient magics to prolong your life and ensure your existence, you reincarnate throughout the ages, one of the Noli; short for noli me tangere, or the promise Lucifer has made and always kept: if anyone tried to hurt you, heâd rend the world with his bare hands. Free in ways that most canât dream of, you travel doing generous work, only to choose over and again to return to his side.
2005 was the year everything changed for you. Before that, you were the daughter of a single mother, who was an immigrant from the southwestern coast of Karnataka, India, where Portuguese influence still had a hold on your religion and your name. She had been a widow when she gave birth to you, but no one believed she was still in mourning when she became pregnant. Looking for community, she uprooted her life to where the cypress trees took hold and where the sun dripped with tupelo honey: Louisiana. When you were born, there was a star-shaped birthmark on the nape of your neck, and she thought that made you special. Neither of you had any idea just how special until that fateful summer when Hurricane Katrina moved through. Before then, you were just a child playing at growing jasmine and marigold, ever with a green thumb, assimilating the best you knew how: there were no Catholic churches for miles, so you and your mother made do with what was left to you, some new fangled thing called Church of Saints, but it felt enough like home for you both. Something in a sermon had always stuck with you: âEvery manâs conscience is vile and depraved; you cannot depend on it to be your guide when itâs you who must keep it satisfied.â It seemed like sage advice and has never once steered you from the right path, for yourself or when advising others.
When the hurricane came through, it shook clean everything that had ever mattered to you. Water like fangs and wind like claws, it was the closest youâd been to a war zone. Your city was drowning and you couldnât do any miracle big enough to breathe it back to life. There came into town a man in a black coat who poured money in, helped evacuate, helped rebuild, and you caught his eye as an afterthoughtâbut once you did, he couldnât shake the look of being haunted. He managed to get you, amid all the horror and chaos, to give him a single dance, a small bright spot of joy. His name was Lucifer and he told you who you were, too: the tahashâthe unicornâsaid to have been hidden away, or ceased to exist. The truth is both. The first God, Baal, had made you for himselfâor he made the first version of youâbut Lucifer knew your gifts and your threats, knew your value, and so had hidden you away in mortal form so the world would never lose you. It was one of his first feats as the Devil: preserving something so good, even if it preserved his only vulnerability in the process. You, in all your forms, the first and every reincarnation after, have always been his weakness. He gave you all of your old journals so you could know your lives through your own words, gave you every freedom, and you loved him for it. Lucifer gave your mother and yourself a home in Las Vegas with no strings attached and you all continued to help aid Louisianaâs aftermath.
Being soulmates with the Devil has taught you the power of choice, leaving the Saints for the Sinners of your own volition. You know the beauty in the darkness and choose it every time, in every life, yours a love affair that spans the ages. Some of your freedom is not by Luciferâs hand, though, but your own nature: you are a walking poppet, anyone inflicting damage on you having it turned on themselves instead, making you untouchable. That can make life all the more difficult: the only way to hurt you is to hurt those you love best and miraculous healing is not among your skills. You often wish it was: if you could lay hands and heal, perhaps you could do more than fix broken bones. Perhaps you could make Heath less bitter, less sad and distant. Perhaps you could have saved the lives of those you lost in the hurricane. But instead, your protection is only for yourself. You find distraction in your gardening and morality in your philanthropy, as if to offset. If there is a part for you to play in this coming of the end of days, you hope itâs that, for once, you can save more lives than you harm. Whether the blood on your hands is your own doing or othersâ inflictions, either way the damage is done.Â
Talia is portrayed by Deepika Padukone. Changing the faceclaim is ALLOWED; alternates include Shraddha Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra. Talia is currently OPEN and available for application.
