Character:Veil-Winged Shrike

[[1]]

• Veil-Winged Shrike
• Caste: Eclipse
• Concept: Kung-fu Dancing Diplomat
• Veil-Winged Shrike is one of the premier beauties of the Scavenger Lands, appearing to be a young woman in her early 20s, although she is by now almost 30. Her beauty is as brilliant and harsh as sunlight reflecting off the edge of a drawn blade. Her build is actually substantially more trim and athletic than her usually-languorous demeanor might suggest: slim-hipped, long-legged. She moves with an inhuman grace, the slightest movement suggestive of a sublime dance. She usually dresses to make the most of her beauty, clad in the barest minimum necessary to preserve her modesty, accentuated by the addition of dozens of fluttering veils that shift with the breeze and her own movements. Her long, red-highlighted golden hair, in contrast with her bronzed skin, is usually left in a series of long, thin braids, each one tied with a ribbon and a tiny bell; Shrike jingles softly as she walks, the music of her hair answered by the matching bells on her bangles and anklets.

Motivation

• Liberate Thorns

Intimacies

Natural

Negative

• destroying the Deathlords and Abyssal Exalted (fierce hatred)
• being the best dancer (vanity)

Positive

• Mari
• The liberation of Thorns
• reluctance to be straightforward (coy)

Supernatural

Positive

• resisting mental influence (love of own autonomy) Elusive Dream Defence

Anima

As a Quicksilver Falcon, Shrike's anima power enables her to make oaths binding. For the cost of 10m 1wp, she may sanctify an oath she is witness or party to by touching the hands of those involved. Anyone who breaks the oath (including Shrike herself) will suffer 4 botches at critical actions. Heaven itself will act to ruin those who are forsworn. Shrike is also protected by ancient pacts, granting her and her companions diplomatic immunity when treating with the spirit world, demons, and the Fair Folk. Finally, Shrike may learn non-Solar Charms for twice their experience cost and +2m to their activation cost.

Attributes

Physical

• Strength 5
• Dexterity 8
• Stamina 5

Social

• Charisma 1
• Manipulation 5
• Appearance 5

Mental

• Perception 2
• Intelligence 2
• Wits 3

Abilities

Caste

Bureaucracy 2 Linguistics 4 Ride 2 Sail Socialise 3

Favored

Martial Arts 5 (+3 unarmoured) Presence 5 Performance 5 (dance +1) Larceny 3 Integrity 4 Investigation 2 Occult 3

Unfavored

Lore 1 Resistance 5

Backgrounds

Each Background

Resources 5 (vast estates wrung from the grasp of various blackmailed merchant princes) Manse 3 (the Freedom Stone) Manse 3 (Stone of Compassion) Manse 5 (Gem of Perfected Mobility) Artifact 5 (the Crown of Thunders) Artifact 2 (skin-mount amulet)

Merits

Each Merit

Describe the Merit and it's cost

Flaws

Each Flaw

• Describe the Flaw and it's cost

Charms

Martial Arts

Crane Style

• Fluttering Cry of Warning
• Empowering Justice Redirection
• Crane Form
• Crossed Wings Denial
• Beak Spears Frog
• Humble Enlightenment Commentary

Presence

• Majestic Radiant Presence
• Terrifying Apparition of Glory
• Injunction of the Lawgiver

Performance

• Heart-Compelling Method
• Husband-Seducing Demon-Dance

Integrity

• Integrity-Protecting Prana
• Temptation-Resisting Stance
• Elusive Dream Defence
• Epic Zeal of Compassion

Investigation

• Judge's Ear Technique

Occult

• Spirit-Detecting Glance
• Terrestrial Circle Sorcery

Spells

• Emerald Countermagic
• Demon of the First Circle

Resistance

• Ox-Body Technique x5

Spirit

• Principle of Motion

Essence

• Essence: 4
• Personal: 17/22
• Peripheral: 42/59
• Committed to Charms: 7 (Principle of Motion)
• Committed to artifacts: 10 (Crown of Thunders)
• Willpower: 10/10
• Anima status: Quiescent

Virtues

• Compassion: 5
• Conviction: 4
• Temperance: 1
• Valor: 2
• (Virtue channels used: Compassion 1)

Limit Break

Virtue Flaw: Deliberate Cruelty: resorts to terror and cruelty with no regard for humanity or morality. -2 to Social interactions not involving intimidation. Partial Control: Can use indifference instead of cruelty. -1 to Social interactions not involving fear or intimidation. Condition: Severe stress or being backed against the wall. Duration: 1 full day

Conflict

Physical

• Join Battle: 3
• Dodge DV: 6
• Parry DV: 11
• Soak (L/B/A): 15/21/12

Movement

• Move: 8
• Dash: 14

Social

• Join Debate: 3
• Dodge MDV: 10
• Parry MDV: 5

Health Levels

• -0, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -4, Incapacitated
• (wounds are designated as bashing, lethal or aggravated)

Equipment

She wears the Crown of Thunders (with an inset Stone of Compassion, +6m/h, +3 Compassion dice and Freedom Stone, +6m/h, immunity from physical restraint), which increases all her physical attributes by 3 at the cost of 10 motes of attunement. For another 10 motes, she adds 5 dice to all social actions. For yet another 10 dice, all mortals become incapable of attacking her and are compelled to follow her commands. This effect extends to Essence wielders if their MDV is less than her social roll against them, to which she gains 3 automatic successes. If they fail to defend against this unnatural mental influence, they can spend 2 Willpower to become immune for a month and a day. She usually wields a pair of exceptional war fans (the Wings of the Courting Crane, Spd 5 Acc +2 Damage +1L Defence +5 Rate 3). She also wears a Gem of Perfect Mobility (10m/h, halves Speed of all actions, can move twice as fast) in a skin-mount amulet concealed as a navel-piercing. When not performing, she tends to wear a perfect breastplate (+6L/+4B)

Shrike also keeps a number of demonic retainers in her retinue for special occasions. She has an agata for transport, a peronelle (+6L/+12B) which she only dons when she knows a confrontation is unavoidable or at least likely, and a sesselja is in permanent residence in her bowels.

Wings of the Courting Crane (perfect war fans) Right Spd 5 Accuracy 21 Damage 6L Defence 2 Rate 3 Parry DV 9 (+1 w/ Crane Form) Left Spd 5 Accuracy 18 Damage 6L Defence 5 Rate 3 Parry DV 11 (+1 if wearing long sleeves w/ Crane Form)

History

Veil-Winged Shrike was originally born Golden Swallow. Of Southern stock, she grew up in the Scavenger Lands, just one of many children of exotic backgrounds enjoying an otherwise uneventful childhood in the peaceful city of Thorns. Her mother, who when her husband was away would sigh and mutter to herself that she should have never left the desert, taught her the dances of her tribe, which Golden Swallow, named for the brilliant hair she inherited from her father, learned easily. As she grew up, she became renowned for her dancing, and was soon helping her mother earn money during the days of her father's frequent absences by dancing in the marketplace or in taverns. As both her talent and her beauty grew, she became highly sought-after as a person escort, and although her mother disapproved, Swallow would sometimes slip away on assignations. Despite the hurt that brought tears to both their eyes, her mother never asked where the occasional financial windfalls came from.

At one point she caught the eye of a recently-promoted lieutenant in the city's militia, for whose sake she foreswore her occupation. Her mother too was delighted to know that her daughter would have the chance to lead an honest life. Swallow's fiancé doted on her, and Swallow was infatuated with her gallant, loving soldier.

Then the Mask of Winters came, and everything changed. 

During the fighting, her fiancé abandoned her post and sought her out, finding her cowering with her mother while screaming civilians ran through the rubble-filled streets. He smuggled the two of them out of the city. He had time to lift a hand in farewell before a passing war ghost casually vivisected him. Swallow's mother had to drag the girl sobbing and cursing away from the doomed city.

Together, they didn't make it far. Swallow's mother had a weak constitution after living a life of poverty and deprivation, and although Swallow was younger, she remained in a state of comatose grief, refusing to so much as walk under her own power, preferring to stay and share the fate of her beloved. In desperation, her every tortured breath bringing up gobbets of blood as her brief exposure to the rigours of war and to the necrotic Essence of the Mask and his deathknights, her mother did the only thing she could do: she approached a band of slavers who had been scavenging in the wake of the Mask's army, taking refugees as prisoners, and sold her daughter into slavery to keep her alive. She knew that the slavers in question would never risk their lives or their profit by straying too near doomed Thorns, and true enough, after a few more days of savagery, they moved off to Nexus. Swallow's mother watched them leave, their captives crammed together in the back of a wagon. Two nights later, she died of exposure to the elements in a ditch.

The first few days of captivity were hard for Swallow, but relatively bearable. The slavers were too preoccupied with getting clear of the warzone with their hides and slaves intact to do much other than push their beasts of burden onwards. She remained uncommunicative, not speaking to any of the other captives. They started calling her 'Veil', for the fabric she ripped from her dress and wore at all times as a sign of mourning, which she resolutely refused to remove.

She arrived in Nexus with her fellow captives, and with little fanfare she was sold to a rich merchant. She was worked hard but not unkindly, although she never spoke or made a sound unless she was unmercifully beaten for her disobedient reticence, which the merchant's steward took for surly rebelliousness. The trouble only started when, four years after she was bought, the master's son came home from his tour of Creation. Time away from home had made the boy confident, and worldly, and cruel. He surrounded himself with friends of advantage, through whom he hoped to gain advancement, and he showered them with his father's wealth in an attempt to ingratiate himself into the inner circles of the powerful. One day, he met at a salon held by a friend a most rare dignitary: a Terrestrial Exalt, a new arrival to Nexus who seemed poised to be one of society's new sensations. He invited the Dragon-Blood to his abode, where the man was waited on by Veil. Perceptive and with tastes the callow youth could not have understood, the Terrestrial realised that beneath her veil and mask of grime, Veil was beautiful, and proceeded to vent his lust on her. At first, Swallow did not struggle, unresisting as he hiked her dress up around her hips and groped her painfully. It was only when he tried to tear the veil from her head that she resisted, battering him uselessly with her small fists as she wept and wailed. That veil was the sole remaining reminder she had of the happiness that she had been robbed of, and she would not surrender it and the memories it stood for without a fight.

The Terrestrial struck her a resounding blow that robbed her of her strength, and tore the scrap of cloth from her head. As he grunted and strained, something inside her broke, flooding her with celestial radiance and a newfound strength. She turned her head and fixed tear-stained eyes, now clear with purpose, on the spectating youth. She commanded him, and he obeyed, drawing the distracted Dynast's sword from its sheath and striking the Terrestrial down.

After that, Veil vanished. The merchant's house suffered swift reprisal from the Dynast's House, of course, but nobody would miss one escaped slave-girl. And nobody survived the wrath of the Dynasts, and so there was no one to remark on the striking similarity of one vanished slave with the new dancing sensation, who called herself Veil-Winged Shrike, and who moved with a sultry confidence and grace that could derange a saint.

Personality

Shrike is... complicated. While anyone could come to the conclusion that she's a manipulative bitch who sells her body for approval and advancement, very few would realise that the tenderness she exhibits is entirely genuine. At her very heart, Shrike is a softy. She had her childhood and home torn from her, and that provides the only steel she has with which to stiffen her spine in the face of the things she must do in order to enact her vengeance. She is, in some ways, terribly confident - in her beauty, in her skill, in her influence over others. In others, she is terribly insecure. Shrike knows that hers is a glorious and righteous road, even if it leads her by strange ways, but she believes it to be an ultimately solitary one. She knows that one day, when they have had what they needed from her, her allies will leave. Her instruments and minions and servants will leave, bound only by the promise of ambition or profit. She tells herself she is not afraid of the day, that when it comes she would have achieved her purpose and have nothing to regret.

Sometimes she even believes it.

XP

• Earned: #
• Spent: # (make a list of all purchases here)
• Unspent: #