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michiexileA companion character to Daina.
Leander Achim auf der Weide, born 1985, grew up to Austrian parents in the southern reaches of the area surrounding Wien. Bright kid, liked sports, liked computers, grew up passionate in a loving home with activist parents who still remembered the 1968 revolts.
As above: grew active in hard core pacifist movements, took part in many demonstration and even a few sabotage actions before he decided that the sabotage, in itself, placed too large culpability on himself, whereupon he simply stopped.
For his 18th birthday, in 2003, combined with an exam gift, he got a trip to Goa from his parents. He went with friends, got involved in a particularly western-tourist-trappy Guru-centered cult in Goa, and stayed on for longer than was planned.
Stolen while out in the forests outside Goa high as houses on shrooms and going through an initiation rite step for his host cult.
Set to show fight by Their Keeper. Wouldn't. Went through deconstruction, debugging and reconstruction as above. This was all followed by a long sequence of tweaks and supposed improvements through the time he was gone.
Once they managed to escape, Leander has been broken into what can most easily be described as smush, mentally. Physically, he is gnarly, every single cube inch of his body having been rebuilt more times than he could remember. Arms reach long - so that he gets a better reach for sword fights. Legs are comically short - to keep him from running circles around opponents instead of fighting them. His face was never a high priority during the reconstructions, and is looked in a toothy grimace, with ridges and welts covering everything.
Very high physical. Okay mental, low social. Mental concentrated away from Intelligence.
Bitter, vitriolic, deformed antisocial asshole. He'll have a strong affinity for the violent far left: punkers, AntiFA et.c. for their positions combining the World Peace embracing ideals with an Action Now and Damn The Consequences attitude mirroring his own highly conflicted internal remains. He remains a flock animal, looking to his peers primarily for instructions and directions.
1. How was your family life before your abduction? Were your parents kind or cruel? Were you spoiled or impoverished?
Family life before the abduction were good. Leander grew up with loving, politically active and harmonious parents, a sister 2 years younger, and all his life ahead of him.
2. Where did you live? Did you live in Vienna, or did you live elsewhere?
The Achim auf der Weide family lived in the small village of Mauerbach, to the west of Wien, on the border of the Eichenhahn national park and the Baumgartner forest. Close enough to Wien for his parents to be able to commute to work in Wien proper, but still far away enough that they had a basically rural, idyllicized childhood.
3. How were you viewed amongst your peers, both in school(if you went) and in your social life. Were you cited as a bully or ruffian, were you kind and charitable?
Leander was popular in school: throughout one of the pretty boys, sporty enough to be in the high school in groups, good looking enough that he would always have a cluster of girls pining for him. At that, he had a tendency to be somewhat insufferable in his own awareness of his good standing in the school culture; but was kind and generous to most.
4. What was your occupation prior to your abduction? How did this play a role in your personality (if it did)?
Leander had just finished Gymnasium and was about to start university studies as he got abducted.
1. How did your former master claim you? What methods did he establish to get you into the Hedge?
The master appeared in front of him in the shape of the God Ganesha during his initiation rites in Goa, while he was high on shrooms. Ganesha then told him that the next step he needed to take was to follow Ganesha to be guided through the upcoming tribulations. Believing this apparent God, Leander simply followed along.
2. How did your Master treat you during this time? Was he forceful? Or was he friendly?
During this time, the Master was friendly, occasionally insistent, but essentially friendly.
3. Give us a small description of how your character felt upon entering the Hedge, and when he officially captured you?
Religious ecstasy at first. Once they arrived at their destination, and Leander was thrown into the Gladiator Holding Cells, and his trip wore down, the extent to which everything had gone wrong started sinking in, and Leander fell into a deepening feeling of despair.
1. What tasks did your Master use you for? (This is an important note for Seeming as well as Kith selection)
Gladiator battles. He would be sent out, regularly, to fight in a classical arena to the amusement of various spectators, against opponents of many shapes and sorts, and also many varying degrees of balanced or imbalanced armament.
2. Were other stolen people working with you? How did you view them?
All the Gladiators, and many other functions in the world around the arena were fulfilled by stolen people. A wary camaraderie developed among the Gladiators - where the awareness was absolute that anyone would be forced to kill anyone else at any point in the future.
3. What urged you to escape?
Escapes were planned basically from the point Leander arrived. However, the retooling his Master subjected him to severely impaired his capability for planning, and so it was the meeting with Daina that set things in motion.
4. How do you view your Master now?
Leander nurtures a hope that one day he will be able to confront his Master, in battle, and defeat him, ridding the world of that horror. He doesn't really know how this is supposed to happen, but he keeps half an eye out for any opportunity leading towards such a resolution.
1. How much time has passed since your abduction and return from the Hedge?
Thoughts on this?
2. Are you just stepping out of the Hedge into Vienna, or coming from elsewhere?
It seems as if just stepping out into Wien is at least mildly discouraged. We should probably try and get clarification on how well-established new characters already are...
3. If you are in a Court, how did you get brought in?
I'm thinking:
Int 1 (used to be 3 or even 4, but then he got rebuilt...)
Virtue: Charity
Vice: Wrath (instilled)
Court: Spring or Summer, probably Spring.
Generic feeling: frustrated, seething, boiling unwelcome wrath. He needs someone else - preferably Daina - to tell him what to do. If nobody does, he grows frustrated and confused. Alas, he also has a temper worth fleeing from. And when his Wrath kicks in, so does his penchant for violence.
His frustrations do certainly not grow any less urgent by his fleeting memories of a time when he was not ... so clumsy. So .. BIG. So .. stupid. He can still remember what it felt like to be young, high, happy, intelligent, but he cannot reach any of these feelings. It's as if it all was caged in, put in a glass box and locked away for ever.
Leander Achim auf der Weide, born 1985, grew up to Austrian parents in the southern reaches of the area surrounding Wien. Bright kid, liked sports, liked computers, grew up passionate in a loving home with activist parents who still remembered the 1968 revolts.
As above: grew active in hard core pacifist movements, took part in many demonstration and even a few sabotage actions before he decided that the sabotage, in itself, placed too large culpability on himself, whereupon he simply stopped.
For his 18th birthday, in 2003, combined with an exam gift, he got a trip to Goa from his parents. He went with friends, got involved in a particularly western-tourist-trappy Guru-centered cult in Goa, and stayed on for longer than was planned.
Stolen while out in the forests outside Goa high as houses on shrooms and going through an initiation rite step for his host cult.
Set to show fight by Their Keeper. Wouldn't. Went through deconstruction, debugging and reconstruction as above. This was all followed by a long sequence of tweaks and supposed improvements through the time he was gone.
Once they managed to escape, Leander has been broken into what can most easily be described as smush, mentally. Physically, he is gnarly, every single cube inch of his body having been rebuilt more times than he could remember. Arms reach long - so that he gets a better reach for sword fights. Legs are comically short - to keep him from running circles around opponents instead of fighting them. His face was never a high priority during the reconstructions, and is looked in a toothy grimace, with ridges and welts covering everything.
Very high physical. Okay mental, low social. Mental concentrated away from Intelligence.
Bitter, vitriolic, deformed antisocial asshole. He'll have a strong affinity for the violent far left: punkers, AntiFA et.c. for their positions combining the World Peace embracing ideals with an Action Now and Damn The Consequences attitude mirroring his own highly conflicted internal remains. He remains a flock animal, looking to his peers primarily for instructions and directions.
1. How was your family life before your abduction? Were your parents kind or cruel? Were you spoiled or impoverished?
Family life before the abduction were good. Leander grew up with loving, politically active and harmonious parents, a sister 2 years younger, and all his life ahead of him.
2. Where did you live? Did you live in Vienna, or did you live elsewhere?
The Achim auf der Weide family lived in the small village of Mauerbach, to the west of Wien, on the border of the Eichenhahn national park and the Baumgartner forest. Close enough to Wien for his parents to be able to commute to work in Wien proper, but still far away enough that they had a basically rural, idyllicized childhood.
3. How were you viewed amongst your peers, both in school(if you went) and in your social life. Were you cited as a bully or ruffian, were you kind and charitable?
Leander was popular in school: throughout one of the pretty boys, sporty enough to be in the high school in groups, good looking enough that he would always have a cluster of girls pining for him. At that, he had a tendency to be somewhat insufferable in his own awareness of his good standing in the school culture; but was kind and generous to most.
4. What was your occupation prior to your abduction? How did this play a role in your personality (if it did)?
Leander had just finished Gymnasium and was about to start university studies as he got abducted.
1. How did your former master claim you? What methods did he establish to get you into the Hedge?
The master appeared in front of him in the shape of the God Ganesha during his initiation rites in Goa, while he was high on shrooms. Ganesha then told him that the next step he needed to take was to follow Ganesha to be guided through the upcoming tribulations. Believing this apparent God, Leander simply followed along.
2. How did your Master treat you during this time? Was he forceful? Or was he friendly?
During this time, the Master was friendly, occasionally insistent, but essentially friendly.
3. Give us a small description of how your character felt upon entering the Hedge, and when he officially captured you?
Religious ecstasy at first. Once they arrived at their destination, and Leander was thrown into the Gladiator Holding Cells, and his trip wore down, the extent to which everything had gone wrong started sinking in, and Leander fell into a deepening feeling of despair.
1. What tasks did your Master use you for? (This is an important note for Seeming as well as Kith selection)
Gladiator battles. He would be sent out, regularly, to fight in a classical arena to the amusement of various spectators, against opponents of many shapes and sorts, and also many varying degrees of balanced or imbalanced armament.
2. Were other stolen people working with you? How did you view them?
All the Gladiators, and many other functions in the world around the arena were fulfilled by stolen people. A wary camaraderie developed among the Gladiators - where the awareness was absolute that anyone would be forced to kill anyone else at any point in the future.
3. What urged you to escape?
Escapes were planned basically from the point Leander arrived. However, the retooling his Master subjected him to severely impaired his capability for planning, and so it was the meeting with Daina that set things in motion.
4. How do you view your Master now?
Leander nurtures a hope that one day he will be able to confront his Master, in battle, and defeat him, ridding the world of that horror. He doesn't really know how this is supposed to happen, but he keeps half an eye out for any opportunity leading towards such a resolution.
1. How much time has passed since your abduction and return from the Hedge?
Thoughts on this?
2. Are you just stepping out of the Hedge into Vienna, or coming from elsewhere?
It seems as if just stepping out into Wien is at least mildly discouraged. We should probably try and get clarification on how well-established new characters already are...
3. If you are in a Court, how did you get brought in?
I'm thinking:
Int 1 (used to be 3 or even 4, but then he got rebuilt...)
Virtue: Charity
Vice: Wrath (instilled)
Court: Spring or Summer, probably Spring.
Generic feeling: frustrated, seething, boiling unwelcome wrath. He needs someone else - preferably Daina - to tell him what to do. If nobody does, he grows frustrated and confused. Alas, he also has a temper worth fleeing from. And when his Wrath kicks in, so does his penchant for violence.
His frustrations do certainly not grow any less urgent by his fleeting memories of a time when he was not ... so clumsy. So .. BIG. So .. stupid. He can still remember what it felt like to be young, high, happy, intelligent, but he cannot reach any of these feelings. It's as if it all was caged in, put in a glass box and locked away for ever.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 02:07 pm (UTC)Lea as High Wyrd Low Clarity High Winter Mantle Gristlegrind Ogre
Changelings, like the True Fae that so fascinate and terrify them, are shaped primarily by story, even if a particular Changeling doesn't know the story that shaped her. Lea Long-Arm may never have heard of Black Annis or Pemphredo, but there are stories of such monstrous women everywhere. Now one of them herself, she is tall and bent and gray-green-skinned, her arms dangling past her knees, her yellow teeth and yellow nails long and jagged, her nose long and pointed, her eye sockets black and empty and lightless. A tangle of matted hair falls to the ground, not hiding her crone's body, her slack belly, the flat withered dugs that flutter over her shoulder when she runs hooting after her prey. She is dressed only in blood. Much of it is still fresh.
Where she steps frost crazes the ground killing anything that might grow there. The air around her is palpably uncomfortably cold and smells of metal.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 03:13 pm (UTC)I still like his "Werdegang", as it were, and want to preserve that - but I'm not growing convinced that the Ogres constitute the best match.
Hence, I also started reading through the Soldier aspect of Wizened. And an indian-inspired version of a blade wielding goblin is starting to seem like a possible template to work with too.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 08:17 pm (UTC)Leander Achim auf der Weide, born 1985, grew up to Austrian parents in the southern reaches of the area surrounding Wien. Bright kid, liked sports, liked computers, grew up passionate in a loving home with activist parents who still remembered the 1968 revolts.
As above: grew active in hard core pacifist movements, took part in many demonstration and even a few sabotage actions before he decided that the sabotage, in itself, placed too large culpability on himself, whereupon he simply stopped.
For his 18th birthday, in 2003, combined with an exam gift, he got a trip to Goa from his parents. He went with friends, got involved in a particularly western-tourist-trappy Guru-centered cult in Goa, and stayed on for longer than was planned.
Stolen while out in the forests outside Goa high as houses on shrooms and going through an initiation rite step for his host cult.
Set to show fight by Their Keeper. Wouldn't. Went through deconstruction, debugging and reconstruction as above. This was all followed by a long sequence of tweaks and supposed improvements through the time he was gone.
Once they managed to escape, Leander has been broken into what can most easily be described as smush, mentally. Physically, he is gnarly, every single cube inch of his body having been rebuilt more times than he could remember. Arms reach long - so that he gets a better reach for sword fights. Legs are comically short - to keep him from running circles around opponents instead of fighting them. His face was never a high priority during the reconstructions, and is looked in a toothy grimace, with ridges and welts covering everything.
Very high physical. Okay mental, low social. Mental concentrated away from Intelligence.
Slightly less bumbling big-friendly-giant than the original fragment of a vision. Slightly more bitter, vitriolic, deformed antisocial asshole. He'll have a strong affinity for the violent far left: punkers, AntiFA et.c. for their positions combining the World Peace embracing ideals with an Action Now and Damn The Consequences attitude mirroring his own highly conflicted internal remains. He remains a flock animal, looking to everyone else primarily for instructions and directions.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 02:54 pm (UTC)Alternate concept
Date: 2009-06-16 11:41 am (UTC)As the main alternative to all this, meet Lida, a hummingbird Beastie. Certain parts of her story are widely editable - as always. However, it would seem that Lida would probably have been picked up by Daina after Daina left her castle-in-the-sky, but before she was able to make it particularly far through Arcadia.
Lida, in high wyrd, is plain and simple a hummingbird. Bright blue coloration, green metallic undertones. Small, quick, typical hummingbird.
In low wyrd, she's an amalgamation of the hummingbird and human visages - she wears a beak, has opaque black orbs for eyes, bright blue, slightly feathery hair that lies flat back on her scalp, and rows of feather along her arms.
And in mortal eyes, Lida is a very short, very thin young woman - somewhere between 15 and 30, but not at all clear where exactly - with quite obviously apparent vocalization tics and ADHD. She'll narrate her every step back to herself, in order to remember what it is she's about to do. She'll get distracted very easily by almost everything. She wears her hair unruly, androgynously, and bright blue.
She'll also be a hoarder of rank. This is grounded in her Durance - she was an ornamental hummingbird in an ice garden. In order to make the hummingbirds look probable, the Master would distribute sugar water in the pits of some very few of the ice flowers, forcing the hummingbirds to flit anxiously from flower to flower trying to feed themselves. The whole durance was a time of constant hunger, surprising chills and perils everywhere.
As a result, now that suddenly food is not as scarce in supply, Lida still will not trust neither that she has time for the food in front of her, nor that she will find food later. As a result, she'll pack most of her food away into her overly large and very pocket-filled overcoat, to save for later; and she'll go for seconds very often, always grabbing just a little, and always packing almost everything away for later.
She is bright - and very very fast: Dex and Wits being the main emphasis, but she will not be able to focus very long on any single task without significant steering back towards that particular task.
Now the issues I see at the moment with this character is involvement in the RP at the MU*. Right now, she might be mostly gimmick - a vision, but no staying power. I don't see how she supports herself, other than being a prime candidate for admission to a mental institution. And the homeless mental wreck is not the kind of character I'd want to play right now.
Re: Alternate concept
Date: 2009-06-16 02:52 pm (UTC)This was my thought also, from what I'd heard of her. :)
I wouldn't worry too much about who's tied into what -- I'm still writing the Spring/Mortal Life section for Gita/Daina. But yeah, Lida and Daina would have a very different escape than Leander and Daina would. I'm drifting away from the spending time as a kite thing and moving towards something where she spent decades, maybe? as wind. She could well have been the rime-laden wind that tended the ice flowers, and since they both fly, well... it'd be different. Not that flying through the Thorns would be any easier.
They could be a pretty good team also -- rather than Daina and Leander being a brains/brawn lineup, they're both crafty finesse types with Daina more stable intellectually though given to abstraction and occasional catatonia and Lida better connected to emotion and things concrete while having trouble with abstract thought. Elementals, according to Winter Masques aren't terribly given to living with others, but an air elemental and a bird would likely do just fine.
But again, it's your decision and you'd know much better than I would what would be the most fun for you to play rather than for you to keep in your head. I'm just saying I'm flexible and could work with either concept.
Is Lida's hair dyed blue or is that her 'natural' colour? :)
Re: Alternate concept
Date: 2009-06-16 07:22 pm (UTC)I can see both lineups working, and working well. Which is a significant part of why I'm so divided on this:
Pro Lida:
I have an image of her.
I have some tics and mannerisms.
She's so damn cute!
Con Lida:
I don't have a place for Lida.
I'm not convinced she's more than just the image and the tics.
Her story, right now, feels less solid.
I'm not certain how she plays in a MU* setting.
I don't particularly want to play a homeless freak style of character.
Pro Leander:
I do have a place for Leander.
He is a solid, to some extent, character.
He works in a MU* setting.
I have hookups for him imaginable already.
I have somewhere for him to work, to spend his time, to integrate.
I do so like pining for your characters. ;-)
Con Leander:
I don't have a _feeling_ for Leander. Barely a picture, no tics.
Lida is just so damn cute.
Right now, to some extent, I'd like to play both - which obviously won't work, since they'll end up interacting way too much with each other, and most of my RP would boil down into almost wankery levels of ingrouping....
So, while I know that you won't be able to tell me what I'll enjoy, I still am sorta reaching out to you for tiebreakers. (of course you're entitled to answer that with "make up your own damned mind!"....) I can imagine both of them being a lot of fun to play, and I'm changing my mind on an almost hourly basis which I like the more, and I never do that by much....
Re: Alternate concept
Date: 2009-06-16 07:27 pm (UTC)