Aly / The Flame (
wolfishflame) wrote2016-05-18 01:00 pm
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Entry tags:
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tushanshu | help me
Player Information:
Name: Alex
Age: 26
Contact:
Chatvert
Other Characters Played: Gene Khan, Jackie Ma, Peridot, Alex Conklin, Miles Upshur (PLEASE HELP ME)
Most Recent AC Link: glaow.
This will be a swap-out app for Peridot.
Character Information:
Name: Aliya Marie Haskell (Aly Haskell for community tags) / “ember” (the wolf’s nickname for her) / the Flame (her Otherside title)
Canon: Original Character
Canon Point: After Imbolc of her Junior Year From Hell™; February 2017
Age: 17
Reference: Aly grew up normal. Well. Sort of. She’d been stalked by wolves all her life, metaphorically - wolf-related things had always been around her more than the average (calendars and the like), and she’d been crazy about wolves from a young age. When she was in her early teens, she started having the occasional dream about a white wolf with ram’s horns, and she was always deeply sad when it broke; eventually the dreams faded from her mind.
She began to have other dreams - dreams of a chase through a forest of birches, of running from something unknown, and eventually of jumping over a river...but before she could clear the river, the same wolf knocked her out of the air into the water and told her that it wasn’t yet time.
Though the time came soon; when Aly started at her new school, she ended up stumbling into another foreign exchange student and the pair of them ended up jointly stumbling into the local magic users. The three other magic users helped them come into their own power and introduced them to the Otherside…
...and life for Aly hasn’t been the same since. But she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Setting Concepts:
Hello from the Otherside
The Otherside is a plane that exists concurrently with the Waking - what we would refer to as the “real world”. It is a realm composed of belief and willpower, where all myths are true, and where spirits and gods roam. Time runs strangely there versus the Waking; either too slow or too fast. Cause and effect don’t necessarily occur in that order, because lol your quaint mortal concepts of time. The two realms are separated by the Veil, which thins cyclically at the midpoints between the solstices and equinoxes, known as the cross-quarter days. Souls travel to and from the Otherside, leaving their physical bodies behind in a state like sleep. Physical travel to and from the Otherside outside of the cross-quarter days is unheard of unless the Veil tears, which is only caused by a deliberate act by some unsavory party looking to cross the boundary. The easiest point at which the Veil can tear is Samhain/Halloween, when the Veil is at its thinnest.
Some people are born with “split souls” - that is, walking concurrently in the Waking and the Otherside, and able to, with practice, easily focus on both worlds at the same time, essentially giving a new meaning to “leading a double life”. Aly is not one of these people. Anyone can walk in both worlds at the same time, but it's not as easy as it is for someone with a split soul; it's very draining and takes a lot of effort, and will make the Waking body very visibly sick if it goes on for too long.
Wolf-sensei
Aly has an Otherside sensei. This sensei is a bigass white wolf with ram horns because that’s totally normal shut up. He is maybe not an especially good sensei because he thinks she knows things she honestly has no way of knowing and this constantly gets her ass in trouble. But he is kind to her, even though he puts up a gruff facade. He consents to being ridden like a horsey, sometimes. Sometimes he can join her in the Waking world, when the Veil is thin. Obviously he will not be doing that here. Except during Fourth Wall events maybe because hoooo boy how ‘bout that thin veil eh.
The Name Game
On the Otherside, even mundane names can be used to control people, so titles and by-names and kennings are used instead. If someone is unlucky enough to discover their true name - since only the bearer of one’s own true name can discover it - it can be used both to grant them great power and to control them utterly. Think of it as the master copy of a person that can be rewritten at will. One’s true name can also be used to Unname them - that is, wipe all or part of them from reality altogether.
“The Flame” is Aly’s official title. Since Aly will believe she’s still Otherside for a time, she will not immediately reveal her name to anyone, only providing aliases and trying to run mind games around everyone. Wolf-sensei taught her well.
She’ll also give people nicknames if she likes them, because hey why not? It’s a mark of respect from her - that she won’t risk using someone’s real name, even if it isn’t their true name.
Wild Flame
Aly has always been the Flame (because cause?? effect???? what), but she had not awakened to her title until she, er, died. Her Otherside death and resurrection unlocked the part of her soul that was the Flame, because even a tiny spark can rekindle a bonfire, and fire and resurrection/purification are closely linked due to all the myths and beliefs floating around. (All myths are true.) This accounts for some of her deep and furious anger and her eventual pyrokinesis. Not to mention the fact that she can get berserk in battle - hence the alternate title, “Wild Flame”.
Here’s the kicker - Aly hates battle. Absolutely hates it. In the thick of it she enjoys it to a terrifying degree, laughing like a maniac, but when it’s over she’s disgusted with herself. Her Waking self is full of self-hatred because of it; she feels like a bad person because of all the killing and maiming she’s done, even if it’s on the Otherside and it’s been in self-defense and she’s been harmed in the process. Waking Aly is a pacifist. Otherside Aly can be a bloodthirsty maniac.
Every time she asks someone “why me,” because she’s scared of fire, they just give her a tautological answer. Because everyone on the Otherside is a jerk.
[Mr. Crocker voice] FAERIES!
Jerks.
No but really. Jerks.
Also they taste gross. Don’t bite them. Ick.
In all seriousness: Faeries on the Otherside, at least the ones Aly’s interacted with, are far more inclined to the idea of the Unseelie court rather than the Seelie court. That is to say: They are cruel jerky jerks. They are inhuman and do not abide by logic as we know it, working only for their own benefit and ruthlessly manipulating anyone who stands in their way. The Faerie Queen is the most ruthless of them all, with an inhuman radiance and a desire to claim as much territory as she can, including the Waking world. That is behind her drive to tear the Veil between the Waking and the Otherside - to have her people pour out into the world, terrorize humanity until their fear powers the faeries beyond stopping, and to rule both the Waking and the Otherside.
Spirits
ALSO JERKS.
No for serious. Spirits can take any form they choose, talk circles around you, and use mortals (and other spirits!) in something even more mind-breaking than Star Trek’s Tri-Dimensional Chess. Spirits and gods have no compunction to be honest and no qualms about manipulating others for their own ends. Seriously. No qualms. No qualms at all. They will twist your perception up and around five ways from Sunday. A good rule of thumb is “spirits lie”. Thanking a spirit or a god is inadvisable, because the less scrupulous will use being thanked as an admission that they are owed a debt, and they will collect on that debt in a way you may not like.
Lines
Aly can see lines - important connections between people and places (e.g. she’d see a line between Anton and the Midnight Hotel, and probably between most people within a cast if they’re close or their destinies are intertwined.) This is not an ability that’s always on; she has to focus to do it, usually by unfocusing her eyes and concentrating. They show up as golden threads, though there are rare silver-and-gold threads that indicate a deep soul connection. Since she has a great deal of lines, anyone who would be able to see such things (auras etc.) would see them spreading out from her back, between her shoulder blades, and fading out into the distance. Since they’re intangible except by actively using magic on them, they won’t affect anyone else; this is just for her benefit. (I will have a permissions post asking about lines.)
Please do not use magic or whatever else to twang on her lines if you can see them. She will get annoyed and make this face: >:| And then yell at you because that’s really rude what the hell. (No but seriously do it, it’ll be funny.)
Land Ties
Land ties are incredibly rare. They come about with sacrifices made to land spirits - and most of those land spirits are sleeping, and will not awaken unless the sacrifice is from someone they deem worthy or are curious about. Usually they’re made by spilling blood onto the land, intentionally or not. If the spirit accepts your sacrifice, then you have a home on the Otherside and the spirit has someone to protect their lands from interlopers. The relationship is symbiotic; the spirit gives a little of itself to you, and you give a little of yourself to the spirit, and you live in each other. Aly’s wolf-sensei has a land tie to his forest, and so does she. A land tie comes with other neat perks - if someone dead is returned to the land to which they’re tied, the spirit will resurrect them. It’s not always a pretty process, and it doesn’t always work if the corpse is in really rough shape. Other neat perk: the tie can function like an Escape Rope and bring the tied individual back to the land. The way Aly could use it is if she holds her hand out and twists her wrist, like she’s grabbing on a rope, and pulling. Obviously that won’t work here. (But it might take her to a Dreaming version…? Note to self: consider that for a heartbreaking thread.)
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
The Otherside is not all candy and unicorns. In fact, it is like 90% murder. And with murder comes a lot of phantom pain. Due to her land tie to the wolf’s forest, as long as Aly’s body is returned there, she can revive, or if she’s seen to by a healer in time, but some wounds don’t fully heal, and many leave scars, due to the nature of the weapon or the trauma inflicted. Aly’s first experience with this was being beheaded from behind, so that was fun. As a result, she now has a thin, permanent scar encircling her neck like a choker - appropriate, because sometimes it makes her feel like she’s choking. She’s also beenARROWED! shot, stabbed, sliced, and bitten by something unpleasant, so there are lots of scars and lots of occasional phantom pains from them. Murder, mayhem, gore and death...what’s not to love?
wepon.
Anyone on the Otherside can customize their appearance, to a point. Since willpower has such a strong influence on the reality of the Otherside, people can use their will to shapeshift or conjure weapons or outfit themselves in armor. Hence Aly’s mace and armor and spiffy little cloak. People can also trick the world into behaving the way they want if they focus and believe hard enough - like flying with faith, trust, and pixie dust. Aly’s not so good at that. She falls on her face when she tries to fly. She’s gotten okay at parkour and the occasional wuxia-style wire leap, though, but that’s through practice and eating a lot of ground.
Personality: Aly has a sort of dual personality. In the Waking world, she’s a bright and happy high school student who’s always willing to help out her friends. She has a bit of a temper, but it rarely comes out. She’s always curious and willing to learn, and drowns herself in books. She can be stubborn when in pursuit of a goal, and throws herself wholeheartedly into whatever she tries to do. She’s always been incredibly safety-conscious and tries to think of multiple contingency plans, both for Waking and Otherside events. She’s cautious, almost to the point of distraction, and tries to mediate as much as she can, even when she’s angry. Mostly she’s able to bite her tongue when she’s upset. This Aly is very fearful of drowning and even more fearful of fire, and hates that she can access her pyrokinesis in the Waking when the Veil is thin.
On the Otherside, her temper is far more pronounced and her tongue is sharper, partially due to her status as the Flame, and partially due to the fact that she has less of a brain-to-mouth filter. It’s almost like there’s a constant hot coal of rage in her chest, even before she was killed (the first time) and her title was unlocked with her Flame abilities. Her mouth has gotten her into trouble before, and is far more of a liability than an asset. She rushes headlong into situations without thinking when she’s angry, and has to be talked into reason by people who are more logical than she is. (And occasionally sat on.) She is somehow even more stubborn and willful than her Waking self. This Aly is fearful of drowning, because hey, fire, water, not fun. This is especially annoying because the best way to get anywhere from the wolf’s forest is by jumping into a deep natural pool. Both versions of Aly are prone to making stupid jokes and puns, and their deepest fear is that something awful will happen to their friends, either on the Waking or the Otherside, and she's petrified that if it does, it'll be her fault.
The version of Aly in Tu Shanshu will be a melding of both personalities, but skew towards her Otherside self. She’s stubborn, angry, unwilling to listen to reason unless someone basically sits on her and makes her, distrustful, makes awful puns, constantly puts her foot in her mouth, yells a lot about dumb stuff, will not hesitate to telekinetically set someone on fire a little for annoying her, maybe is sometimes a little good at making plans, can be kindhearted, but mostly is a suspicious jerk. Since she has more aspects of her Otherside self than her Waking self, she’s not afraid of fire but is incredibly terrified of drowning. (Someone push her off of Tu Vishan. It’ll be funny.)
Initially, she'll be incredibly suspicious and paranoid that Keeliai is a faerie trap, and while she'll talk to people to get the skinny, she won't eat or drink because ~faerie food~ and she doesn't want to get bound here for a zillion years. (Bad news, Aly...) She will take the giant turtle city news in stride. The only thing that will trip her up is Life-Death-Dreaming because THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS, THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. Once she realizes it is in fact the truth, there will be much grumbling and eventual acceptance. And she'll integrate into the city, but she will also want to fight everyone at the drop of a hat. What a loser.
Appearance: Aly’s PB is Naomi Scott, particularly her appearance in Terra Nova.
Abilities:
Inventory:
x1 set of clothing - shirt, pants, jacket, cloak
x1 set of boiled leather armor over the clothing (except the cloak, that would be silly)
x1 belt pouch
x1 journal and ballpoint pen
x1 one-handed flanged mace - copper with iron core (faeries watch out!)
x1 labradorite pendant which can serve as a short-charge magic battery to get one or two last shots off in the rare event that she's completely used up her energy, and, more generally, allows her to briefly see other magic (for 30 seconds to a minute at a time) around her when she’s touching it. When it’s depleted, it has to recharge for an hour or two with her own energy by being on her.
x1 small bottle containing earth and one leaf from the wolf’s forest, and a tuft of his fur. There is a tag attached in Aly’s handwriting that reads “In case of emergency, break glass”, because she just can’t help herself.
Soul Gem: A labradorite ring.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person (Prose): March TDM.
Network: [A very annoyed-looking young woman is staring balefully at the camera.]
Are you serious.
Are you serious.
Because people keep explaining this Life-Death-Dreaming thing to me and it sounds like bullshit. There are two planes I can be on and I’m apparently not on either of them and that is so much bullshit I have apparently been dropped into the former pasture of a hekatomb of oxen because what the hell.
Look. Look at this. [She holds up her journal with a helpful diagram of a stick figure, a vertical line, and another stick figure, and a double-sided arrow.] My soul can be Waking, or it can be Otherside, or it can occasionally be both at the same time because my life is a dumpster fire. Not this, okay? [She puts the journal down, raises her hand, and taps the labradorite ring she’s wearing.] My soul is not in a rock. Even if it’s a really pretty rock, and I know from pretty rocks.
[Frustratedly:] Like, oh my gods. Every single god I have ever met. All of them. Up to and including Inari-Ōkami. For the love of baby Jesus in his mangery crib. Put me back. I want to speak to the manager. Yeah. The spell manager.
Fix this, Obama.
Special Notes: Since Aly comes from a world much like our own, she may recognize a lot of people. I will have a fourth-walling permissions post up, and if she's not allowed to recognize someone, it's the Dreaming's fault. :V
REVISIONS
Reference: Aly's Otherside travel buddies are as follows:
Until a fox appeared.
The white fox resolved into a brilliant humanoid shape, stating that the Queen had no claim to Soren; she laughed and relented, saying that she didn't want him anyway. Faerie food is sweet, but they're good at sour grapes. The being led them out of the court to safety, and Soren mistook them for the Archangel Gabriel before vanishing awake. The being panicked for a moment before revealing themselves as the Pale Princeps, before everyone else woke up.
Aly decided to go find the Princeps and express appreciation, and went with the wolf to offer them a sword. They accepted the sword with the promise of future aid, should it be needed. And it was soon needed - while Aly and her friends were in school, they were drawn out of their bodies to the Otherside, because the Queen had sent faerie assassins after them. This was the source of Aly's recurring dream of running through birches. They found a clearing, stood and fought, and they thought they'd defeated all of the assassins.
That is, until one they thought they'd drowned went behind Aly and sliced her head clean off.
In the Waking, Aly had a fit and passed out in the middle of her trig test; she needed to be helped to the nurse's office and sent home early. When she next fell asleep properly, she found herself back on the Otherside, propped up against a tree, with the wolf and the Princeps leaning over her. This was when people first started calling her Flame, and when she first started acting more like a wildfire - angrier, more destructive, readier to fight. The wolf said that the Queen would send no more assassins - her failure had caused her to lose enough face, and since she'd killed one of he land spirit's own, the forest itself would destroy any faeries that tried to invade.
The crew prepared for Samhain, when the Veil was going to thin enough for the faeries to invade. They trained both on the Otherside and in the Waking, and Aly was the only one who couldn't reliably use her fire. It turned out that she could only summon it in the Waking when she was angry, which worked just fine, because nothing would make her angrier than a faerie invasion.
Come Samhain, Soren was their faerie radar, trying to find the site of the breach, and the wolf crossed the Veil to join them, feeling guilty for his failure to protect Aly during the first and second encounters with the faeries. The faeries could only cross the veil during the period between nautical twilight and full night, one hour. The gang tried to stall out the faeries, but they were soon surrounded by archers. All seemed lost...until the wolf tackled the Queen, pinning her to the ground beneath her war stag and saying he'd rip out her throat if they fired. If she wanted to return with a scrap of honor, she'd leave. She thought he was bluffing until he clamped his jaws around her throat.
The faeries vanquished with a severe loss of face, the Queen returned through the portal with a warning - they hadn't seen the last of her.
That was enough for everyone for a few months. The Princeps came to visit for winter break because their father lived in the area, so they got to meet anyone face-to-face. They all hit it off instantly, and while they were reluctant to talk shop, as it were, it gave Aly a chance to pick their brain about certain things. The Princeps - Florence - was a split soul, wandering both worlds since birth, so they were an expert on all things Otherside. The wolf had been pretty coy about true names, so Aly wanted to follow up on that. She wanted to make the Queen pay. And maybe that was the Flame in her, but nobody was going to threaten her friends again.
Nobody.
Personality: Aly knows she's stubborn, but she prefers to think of it as being firm rather than a character flaw. She's always been that way. As a kid, her favorite word was "no!". She's a little ashamed in the Waking of her rash Flame behavior, but it seems perfectly reasonable at the time. As the Flame, she follows the gospel of "talk shit, get hit". She's trying to balance these two parts of her personality, and not doing especially well. The more time she spends on the Otherside, the more Flamey she gets in the Waking; snappish, hot-tempered, even a little bloody-minded. This scares her, because she doesn't really like that person, and much prefers who she thinks she really is in the Waking - quiet, bookish, low-key. But the wolf had said something about true selves becoming more and more apparent when the Veil is thin, and he'd looked directly at her when he'd said it. There's always been that anger deep inside her, that rage at things she wants to fix but can't, but it had been inchoate, and thus covered up by her new, nice, cheerful personality, because that was an easier person to be. She stopped getting in fights in middle school when she moved again (expat life), because it was too tiring to be that way all the time, and she just wanted to be someone quiet and nice, and she genuinely believes that she is.
That's why she hates fighting. She doesn't want to be that person again, and she certainly doesn't want to be that person to that degree. Black eyes, fine. Bludgeoning people with maces, oh God why. The Flame is fine if they deserve it. Waking Aly loses sleep over it, but there's that little part in her - that flaming part - that's totally fine with it.
She wants to believe that there's good in people, and that the world - both of them - is not a terrible place. But what she's experienced so far is testing that, even despite the wonders she's experienced on the Otherside. Regardless, she tries not to give in to cynicism, even when things are dire. She just watches the world with a weather eye. No matter how beautiful things seem, they can always be a trap - and that's true for both the Waking and the Otherside.
She tries to ignore the pyrokinesis, but when the wolf finds out she's ignoring it, he gives her all kinds of hell. So she trains, grudgingly, on her back patio, so she has no danger of setting fire to anything. She's scared of fire because she is fire, and now that she knows that she's desperately trying to deny it and ignore it. But it's her soul. She can't ignore what she fundamentally is. That's why she's always been scared of deep water, because it could snuff her out; that's why she's always been scared of fire, because she doesn't want to acknowledge what she is.
Everyone's title is what they are in some way; Annie is almost a trickster god in human form, Kath is a quintessential wanderer and explorer, Rebecca has been doing weapons training her whole life (with the SCA), Soren can See things other people can't...and Aly is Fire. Warm and light and dangerous and destructive and cleansing and purifying. She will destroy to create anew.
Name: Alex
Age: 26
Contact:
Other Characters Played: Gene Khan, Jackie Ma, Peridot, Alex Conklin, Miles Upshur (PLEASE HELP ME)
Most Recent AC Link: glaow.
This will be a swap-out app for Peridot.
Character Information:
Name: Aliya Marie Haskell (Aly Haskell for community tags) / “ember” (the wolf’s nickname for her) / the Flame (her Otherside title)
Canon: Original Character
Canon Point: After Imbolc of her Junior Year From Hell™; February 2017
Age: 17
Reference: Aly grew up normal. Well. Sort of. She’d been stalked by wolves all her life, metaphorically - wolf-related things had always been around her more than the average (calendars and the like), and she’d been crazy about wolves from a young age. When she was in her early teens, she started having the occasional dream about a white wolf with ram’s horns, and she was always deeply sad when it broke; eventually the dreams faded from her mind.
She began to have other dreams - dreams of a chase through a forest of birches, of running from something unknown, and eventually of jumping over a river...but before she could clear the river, the same wolf knocked her out of the air into the water and told her that it wasn’t yet time.
Though the time came soon; when Aly started at her new school, she ended up stumbling into another foreign exchange student and the pair of them ended up jointly stumbling into the local magic users. The three other magic users helped them come into their own power and introduced them to the Otherside…
...and life for Aly hasn’t been the same since. But she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Setting Concepts:
The Otherside is a plane that exists concurrently with the Waking - what we would refer to as the “real world”. It is a realm composed of belief and willpower, where all myths are true, and where spirits and gods roam. Time runs strangely there versus the Waking; either too slow or too fast. Cause and effect don’t necessarily occur in that order, because lol your quaint mortal concepts of time. The two realms are separated by the Veil, which thins cyclically at the midpoints between the solstices and equinoxes, known as the cross-quarter days. Souls travel to and from the Otherside, leaving their physical bodies behind in a state like sleep. Physical travel to and from the Otherside outside of the cross-quarter days is unheard of unless the Veil tears, which is only caused by a deliberate act by some unsavory party looking to cross the boundary. The easiest point at which the Veil can tear is Samhain/Halloween, when the Veil is at its thinnest.
Some people are born with “split souls” - that is, walking concurrently in the Waking and the Otherside, and able to, with practice, easily focus on both worlds at the same time, essentially giving a new meaning to “leading a double life”. Aly is not one of these people. Anyone can walk in both worlds at the same time, but it's not as easy as it is for someone with a split soul; it's very draining and takes a lot of effort, and will make the Waking body very visibly sick if it goes on for too long.
Wolf-sensei
Aly has an Otherside sensei. This sensei is a bigass white wolf with ram horns because that’s totally normal shut up. He is maybe not an especially good sensei because he thinks she knows things she honestly has no way of knowing and this constantly gets her ass in trouble. But he is kind to her, even though he puts up a gruff facade. He consents to being ridden like a horsey, sometimes. Sometimes he can join her in the Waking world, when the Veil is thin. Obviously he will not be doing that here. Except during Fourth Wall events maybe because hoooo boy how ‘bout that thin veil eh.
The Name Game
On the Otherside, even mundane names can be used to control people, so titles and by-names and kennings are used instead. If someone is unlucky enough to discover their true name - since only the bearer of one’s own true name can discover it - it can be used both to grant them great power and to control them utterly. Think of it as the master copy of a person that can be rewritten at will. One’s true name can also be used to Unname them - that is, wipe all or part of them from reality altogether.
“The Flame” is Aly’s official title. Since Aly will believe she’s still Otherside for a time, she will not immediately reveal her name to anyone, only providing aliases and trying to run mind games around everyone. Wolf-sensei taught her well.
She’ll also give people nicknames if she likes them, because hey why not? It’s a mark of respect from her - that she won’t risk using someone’s real name, even if it isn’t their true name.
Wild Flame
“Why am I the Flame?”Aka: wow spirits can never give straight answers.
“Because you are the Flame.”
Aly has always been the Flame (because cause?? effect???? what), but she had not awakened to her title until she, er, died. Her Otherside death and resurrection unlocked the part of her soul that was the Flame, because even a tiny spark can rekindle a bonfire, and fire and resurrection/purification are closely linked due to all the myths and beliefs floating around. (All myths are true.) This accounts for some of her deep and furious anger and her eventual pyrokinesis. Not to mention the fact that she can get berserk in battle - hence the alternate title, “Wild Flame”.
Here’s the kicker - Aly hates battle. Absolutely hates it. In the thick of it she enjoys it to a terrifying degree, laughing like a maniac, but when it’s over she’s disgusted with herself. Her Waking self is full of self-hatred because of it; she feels like a bad person because of all the killing and maiming she’s done, even if it’s on the Otherside and it’s been in self-defense and she’s been harmed in the process. Waking Aly is a pacifist. Otherside Aly can be a bloodthirsty maniac.
Every time she asks someone “why me,” because she’s scared of fire, they just give her a tautological answer. Because everyone on the Otherside is a jerk.
[Mr. Crocker voice] FAERIES!
Jerks.
No but really. Jerks.
Also they taste gross. Don’t bite them. Ick.
In all seriousness: Faeries on the Otherside, at least the ones Aly’s interacted with, are far more inclined to the idea of the Unseelie court rather than the Seelie court. That is to say: They are cruel jerky jerks. They are inhuman and do not abide by logic as we know it, working only for their own benefit and ruthlessly manipulating anyone who stands in their way. The Faerie Queen is the most ruthless of them all, with an inhuman radiance and a desire to claim as much territory as she can, including the Waking world. That is behind her drive to tear the Veil between the Waking and the Otherside - to have her people pour out into the world, terrorize humanity until their fear powers the faeries beyond stopping, and to rule both the Waking and the Otherside.
Spirits
ALSO JERKS.
No for serious. Spirits can take any form they choose, talk circles around you, and use mortals (and other spirits!) in something even more mind-breaking than Star Trek’s Tri-Dimensional Chess. Spirits and gods have no compunction to be honest and no qualms about manipulating others for their own ends. Seriously. No qualms. No qualms at all. They will twist your perception up and around five ways from Sunday. A good rule of thumb is “spirits lie”. Thanking a spirit or a god is inadvisable, because the less scrupulous will use being thanked as an admission that they are owed a debt, and they will collect on that debt in a way you may not like.
Lines
Aly can see lines - important connections between people and places (e.g. she’d see a line between Anton and the Midnight Hotel, and probably between most people within a cast if they’re close or their destinies are intertwined.) This is not an ability that’s always on; she has to focus to do it, usually by unfocusing her eyes and concentrating. They show up as golden threads, though there are rare silver-and-gold threads that indicate a deep soul connection. Since she has a great deal of lines, anyone who would be able to see such things (auras etc.) would see them spreading out from her back, between her shoulder blades, and fading out into the distance. Since they’re intangible except by actively using magic on them, they won’t affect anyone else; this is just for her benefit. (I will have a permissions post asking about lines.)
Please do not use magic or whatever else to twang on her lines if you can see them. She will get annoyed and make this face: >:| And then yell at you because that’s really rude what the hell. (No but seriously do it, it’ll be funny.)
Land Ties
Land ties are incredibly rare. They come about with sacrifices made to land spirits - and most of those land spirits are sleeping, and will not awaken unless the sacrifice is from someone they deem worthy or are curious about. Usually they’re made by spilling blood onto the land, intentionally or not. If the spirit accepts your sacrifice, then you have a home on the Otherside and the spirit has someone to protect their lands from interlopers. The relationship is symbiotic; the spirit gives a little of itself to you, and you give a little of yourself to the spirit, and you live in each other. Aly’s wolf-sensei has a land tie to his forest, and so does she. A land tie comes with other neat perks - if someone dead is returned to the land to which they’re tied, the spirit will resurrect them. It’s not always a pretty process, and it doesn’t always work if the corpse is in really rough shape. Other neat perk: the tie can function like an Escape Rope and bring the tied individual back to the land. The way Aly could use it is if she holds her hand out and twists her wrist, like she’s grabbing on a rope, and pulling. Obviously that won’t work here. (But it might take her to a Dreaming version…? Note to self: consider that for a heartbreaking thread.)
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
The Otherside is not all candy and unicorns. In fact, it is like 90% murder. And with murder comes a lot of phantom pain. Due to her land tie to the wolf’s forest, as long as Aly’s body is returned there, she can revive, or if she’s seen to by a healer in time, but some wounds don’t fully heal, and many leave scars, due to the nature of the weapon or the trauma inflicted. Aly’s first experience with this was being beheaded from behind, so that was fun. As a result, she now has a thin, permanent scar encircling her neck like a choker - appropriate, because sometimes it makes her feel like she’s choking. She’s also been
wepon.
Anyone on the Otherside can customize their appearance, to a point. Since willpower has such a strong influence on the reality of the Otherside, people can use their will to shapeshift or conjure weapons or outfit themselves in armor. Hence Aly’s mace and armor and spiffy little cloak. People can also trick the world into behaving the way they want if they focus and believe hard enough - like flying with faith, trust, and pixie dust. Aly’s not so good at that. She falls on her face when she tries to fly. She’s gotten okay at parkour and the occasional wuxia-style wire leap, though, but that’s through practice and eating a lot of ground.
Personality: Aly has a sort of dual personality. In the Waking world, she’s a bright and happy high school student who’s always willing to help out her friends. She has a bit of a temper, but it rarely comes out. She’s always curious and willing to learn, and drowns herself in books. She can be stubborn when in pursuit of a goal, and throws herself wholeheartedly into whatever she tries to do. She’s always been incredibly safety-conscious and tries to think of multiple contingency plans, both for Waking and Otherside events. She’s cautious, almost to the point of distraction, and tries to mediate as much as she can, even when she’s angry. Mostly she’s able to bite her tongue when she’s upset. This Aly is very fearful of drowning and even more fearful of fire, and hates that she can access her pyrokinesis in the Waking when the Veil is thin.
On the Otherside, her temper is far more pronounced and her tongue is sharper, partially due to her status as the Flame, and partially due to the fact that she has less of a brain-to-mouth filter. It’s almost like there’s a constant hot coal of rage in her chest, even before she was killed (the first time) and her title was unlocked with her Flame abilities. Her mouth has gotten her into trouble before, and is far more of a liability than an asset. She rushes headlong into situations without thinking when she’s angry, and has to be talked into reason by people who are more logical than she is. (And occasionally sat on.) She is somehow even more stubborn and willful than her Waking self. This Aly is fearful of drowning, because hey, fire, water, not fun. This is especially annoying because the best way to get anywhere from the wolf’s forest is by jumping into a deep natural pool. Both versions of Aly are prone to making stupid jokes and puns, and their deepest fear is that something awful will happen to their friends, either on the Waking or the Otherside, and she's petrified that if it does, it'll be her fault.
The version of Aly in Tu Shanshu will be a melding of both personalities, but skew towards her Otherside self. She’s stubborn, angry, unwilling to listen to reason unless someone basically sits on her and makes her, distrustful, makes awful puns, constantly puts her foot in her mouth, yells a lot about dumb stuff, will not hesitate to telekinetically set someone on fire a little for annoying her, maybe is sometimes a little good at making plans, can be kindhearted, but mostly is a suspicious jerk. Since she has more aspects of her Otherside self than her Waking self, she’s not afraid of fire but is incredibly terrified of drowning. (Someone push her off of Tu Vishan. It’ll be funny.)
Initially, she'll be incredibly suspicious and paranoid that Keeliai is a faerie trap, and while she'll talk to people to get the skinny, she won't eat or drink because ~faerie food~ and she doesn't want to get bound here for a zillion years. (Bad news, Aly...) She will take the giant turtle city news in stride. The only thing that will trip her up is Life-Death-Dreaming because THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS, THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. Once she realizes it is in fact the truth, there will be much grumbling and eventual acceptance. And she'll integrate into the city, but she will also want to fight everyone at the drop of a hat. What a loser.
Appearance: Aly’s PB is Naomi Scott, particularly her appearance in Terra Nova.
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Abilities:
- Pew Pew Pew!: As would be expected from someone titled Flame, Aly sets things on fire, and she sure does do it well. She conjures it into her hands, and it’s not the normal appearance of fire, but is deep crimson throughout, and burns whatever it’s set upon to her mental specifications - e.g. it could only burn someone’s pants briefly to startle them (because she is a bit vindictive), or it could burn them until nothing but ashes remain. So...don’t piss her off? :V Another thing she can do is fire up the head of her mace for a super-flame-whack whammy attack.
She can also wreath herself in the same crimson flames, but not for too long. It's not as effortless as doing the Super Mario Fireballs. ...honestly, it's more for dramatic effect than anything. Or making anyone who's grabbed hold of her let go. - Hit ‘em with my hittin’ stick: Aly conjured up her mace from the Otherside, but you can’t conjure up skill. She’s been training with it for seven months real-time, which is considerably longer on the Otherside, so she has the equivalent of a couple years’ worth of weapons training under her belt. Or hanging on it, as it were. (Her mace's name is Dr. Bonkers. It'll cure what ails ya. Because being alive is a long-term status condition, so it can take care of that for you AND simultaneously cauterize the wound.)
She’s also learning how to use a bow, but her aim with it is still less than impressive. She does tend to miss consistently, though. - Woof: Aly can, for brief periods (up to two hours on a good day), transform into a very red maned wolf with the horns of a goitered gazelle. This does not happen often, because it takes a lot of energy and it's a very new ability, but she's trying to be a good apprentice to her wolf-sensei. Maned wolves are tall, but in this form, she is a complete fragile speedster. She avoids fighting like this because she prefers power over speed, but sometimes you gotta make a quick getaway.
The transformation ain't pretty, either.
Inventory:
x1 set of clothing - shirt, pants, jacket, cloak
x1 set of boiled leather armor over the clothing (except the cloak, that would be silly)
x1 belt pouch
x1 journal and ballpoint pen
x1 one-handed flanged mace - copper with iron core (faeries watch out!)
x1 labradorite pendant which can serve as a short-charge magic battery to get one or two last shots off in the rare event that she's completely used up her energy, and, more generally, allows her to briefly see other magic (for 30 seconds to a minute at a time) around her when she’s touching it. When it’s depleted, it has to recharge for an hour or two with her own energy by being on her.
x1 small bottle containing earth and one leaf from the wolf’s forest, and a tuft of his fur. There is a tag attached in Aly’s handwriting that reads “In case of emergency, break glass”, because she just can’t help herself.
Soul Gem: A labradorite ring.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person (Prose): March TDM.
Network: [A very annoyed-looking young woman is staring balefully at the camera.]
Are you serious.
Are you serious.
Because people keep explaining this Life-Death-Dreaming thing to me and it sounds like bullshit. There are two planes I can be on and I’m apparently not on either of them and that is so much bullshit I have apparently been dropped into the former pasture of a hekatomb of oxen because what the hell.
Look. Look at this. [She holds up her journal with a helpful diagram of a stick figure, a vertical line, and another stick figure, and a double-sided arrow.] My soul can be Waking, or it can be Otherside, or it can occasionally be both at the same time because my life is a dumpster fire. Not this, okay? [She puts the journal down, raises her hand, and taps the labradorite ring she’s wearing.] My soul is not in a rock. Even if it’s a really pretty rock, and I know from pretty rocks.
[Frustratedly:] Like, oh my gods. Every single god I have ever met. All of them. Up to and including Inari-Ōkami. For the love of baby Jesus in his mangery crib. Put me back. I want to speak to the manager. Yeah. The spell manager.
Fix this, Obama.
Special Notes: Since Aly comes from a world much like our own, she may recognize a lot of people. I will have a fourth-walling permissions post up, and if she's not allowed to recognize someone, it's the Dreaming's fault. :V
REVISIONS
Reference: Aly's Otherside travel buddies are as follows:
- Kath: Self-appointed leader of their little group. Known as "Walker".
- Annie: Kath's best friend. Total nerd. Otherside outfit is like a Final Fantasy character. Known as "the Mischief".
- Rebecca: A slightly later addition to the group, but one of the original members with Kath and Annie. Fences in the Waking, which is how she's so good with a sword. Known as "the Warrior".
- Soren: French exchange student and Aly's expats-gotta-stick-together buddy. Timid, because he's been able to see disturbances in the Veil his entire life and not known what they were. Occasionally makes creepy prophecies. Known as "the Seer".
- Florence: American living in Japan - about the same age as Aly's group. Had been of assistance on the Otherside but not met in person until winter break 2016. Soren's some-kind-of-romantic-nonbinary-friend...? Connected to Soren by the silver-and-gold line. Known as "the Princeps".
Until a fox appeared.
The white fox resolved into a brilliant humanoid shape, stating that the Queen had no claim to Soren; she laughed and relented, saying that she didn't want him anyway. Faerie food is sweet, but they're good at sour grapes. The being led them out of the court to safety, and Soren mistook them for the Archangel Gabriel before vanishing awake. The being panicked for a moment before revealing themselves as the Pale Princeps, before everyone else woke up.
Aly decided to go find the Princeps and express appreciation, and went with the wolf to offer them a sword. They accepted the sword with the promise of future aid, should it be needed. And it was soon needed - while Aly and her friends were in school, they were drawn out of their bodies to the Otherside, because the Queen had sent faerie assassins after them. This was the source of Aly's recurring dream of running through birches. They found a clearing, stood and fought, and they thought they'd defeated all of the assassins.
That is, until one they thought they'd drowned went behind Aly and sliced her head clean off.
In the Waking, Aly had a fit and passed out in the middle of her trig test; she needed to be helped to the nurse's office and sent home early. When she next fell asleep properly, she found herself back on the Otherside, propped up against a tree, with the wolf and the Princeps leaning over her. This was when people first started calling her Flame, and when she first started acting more like a wildfire - angrier, more destructive, readier to fight. The wolf said that the Queen would send no more assassins - her failure had caused her to lose enough face, and since she'd killed one of he land spirit's own, the forest itself would destroy any faeries that tried to invade.
The crew prepared for Samhain, when the Veil was going to thin enough for the faeries to invade. They trained both on the Otherside and in the Waking, and Aly was the only one who couldn't reliably use her fire. It turned out that she could only summon it in the Waking when she was angry, which worked just fine, because nothing would make her angrier than a faerie invasion.
Come Samhain, Soren was their faerie radar, trying to find the site of the breach, and the wolf crossed the Veil to join them, feeling guilty for his failure to protect Aly during the first and second encounters with the faeries. The faeries could only cross the veil during the period between nautical twilight and full night, one hour. The gang tried to stall out the faeries, but they were soon surrounded by archers. All seemed lost...until the wolf tackled the Queen, pinning her to the ground beneath her war stag and saying he'd rip out her throat if they fired. If she wanted to return with a scrap of honor, she'd leave. She thought he was bluffing until he clamped his jaws around her throat.
The faeries vanquished with a severe loss of face, the Queen returned through the portal with a warning - they hadn't seen the last of her.
That was enough for everyone for a few months. The Princeps came to visit for winter break because their father lived in the area, so they got to meet anyone face-to-face. They all hit it off instantly, and while they were reluctant to talk shop, as it were, it gave Aly a chance to pick their brain about certain things. The Princeps - Florence - was a split soul, wandering both worlds since birth, so they were an expert on all things Otherside. The wolf had been pretty coy about true names, so Aly wanted to follow up on that. She wanted to make the Queen pay. And maybe that was the Flame in her, but nobody was going to threaten her friends again.
Nobody.
Personality: Aly knows she's stubborn, but she prefers to think of it as being firm rather than a character flaw. She's always been that way. As a kid, her favorite word was "no!". She's a little ashamed in the Waking of her rash Flame behavior, but it seems perfectly reasonable at the time. As the Flame, she follows the gospel of "talk shit, get hit". She's trying to balance these two parts of her personality, and not doing especially well. The more time she spends on the Otherside, the more Flamey she gets in the Waking; snappish, hot-tempered, even a little bloody-minded. This scares her, because she doesn't really like that person, and much prefers who she thinks she really is in the Waking - quiet, bookish, low-key. But the wolf had said something about true selves becoming more and more apparent when the Veil is thin, and he'd looked directly at her when he'd said it. There's always been that anger deep inside her, that rage at things she wants to fix but can't, but it had been inchoate, and thus covered up by her new, nice, cheerful personality, because that was an easier person to be. She stopped getting in fights in middle school when she moved again (expat life), because it was too tiring to be that way all the time, and she just wanted to be someone quiet and nice, and she genuinely believes that she is.
That's why she hates fighting. She doesn't want to be that person again, and she certainly doesn't want to be that person to that degree. Black eyes, fine. Bludgeoning people with maces, oh God why. The Flame is fine if they deserve it. Waking Aly loses sleep over it, but there's that little part in her - that flaming part - that's totally fine with it.
She wants to believe that there's good in people, and that the world - both of them - is not a terrible place. But what she's experienced so far is testing that, even despite the wonders she's experienced on the Otherside. Regardless, she tries not to give in to cynicism, even when things are dire. She just watches the world with a weather eye. No matter how beautiful things seem, they can always be a trap - and that's true for both the Waking and the Otherside.
She tries to ignore the pyrokinesis, but when the wolf finds out she's ignoring it, he gives her all kinds of hell. So she trains, grudgingly, on her back patio, so she has no danger of setting fire to anything. She's scared of fire because she is fire, and now that she knows that she's desperately trying to deny it and ignore it. But it's her soul. She can't ignore what she fundamentally is. That's why she's always been scared of deep water, because it could snuff her out; that's why she's always been scared of fire, because she doesn't want to acknowledge what she is.
Everyone's title is what they are in some way; Annie is almost a trickster god in human form, Kath is a quintessential wanderer and explorer, Rebecca has been doing weapons training her whole life (with the SCA), Soren can See things other people can't...and Aly is Fire. Warm and light and dangerous and destructive and cleansing and purifying. She will destroy to create anew.