Asya Khometi

Character Sheet

Basics

Name: Asya Khometi

Player: Jax

Caste: No Moon

Concept: Former battle-sorceress in the Brides of Ahlat, now raging against corrupt gods and looking for a place

Anima: A Boar-Tusked Crocodile looking around hungrily

Tell: Clawed Reptilian Hands (Claws 4)

Willpower 5 Essence 1

XP: 0 Lunar XP: 0

Attributes

• Strength 2 Dexterity 3 Stamina 5
• Charisma 2 Manipulation 3 Appearance 5
• Perception 3 Intelligence 5 Wits 5

Bold = Caste/Favored, Italics = Qualified for Excellency

Abilities

• Atheltics 1
• Awareness 1
• Brawl 3
• Integrity 2
• Larceny 1
• Linguistics 1
• Lore 3
• Medicine 1
• Melee 1
• Occult 5
• Performance 1
• Presence 3
• Resistance 1
• Socialize 3
• Stealth 1
• Survival 1
• War 1

Specialties: Socialize (Hiding Identity), Lore (Archaeology), Brawl (Claws)

Lore Domains: Archaeology, Spirits, Southern Geopolitics, Southern Trade, Southern Cultures, Animal Husbandry

Merits

• Heart's Blood 1: southern domestic shorthair cat, catfish, white ibis, 3 other minor forms, claw strider, bear, venomous snake
• Stolen Faces 1: would-be Scavenger Lord Livia Casbah
• Artifact 4: Quincunx (AoC 103)
• Artifact 4: Intimate Rain
• Languages 2: Old Realm, Riverspeak
• Thaumaturgist (free from Sorcery)
• Claws 4 (Tell)

Charms

Sorcery

• Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
  • Scarred by Nightmares (From the Black Boar that Twists the Skies)
  • Control: Stormwind Rider
  • Shaping Ritual: Nightmares
  • Special control ability: increase Stormwind Rider's carrying capacity by 3x when out of combat
• Death of Obsidian Butterflies
• Impervious sphere of Water
• Demon of the First Circle

Dexterity

• Agile Beast Defense
• Bending Before the Storm

Stamina

• Steel Paw Style
• Bear Sleep Technique

Appearance

• Subtle Silver Declaration
• Glance-Oration Technique
• Argument-Eclipsing Shadow

Perception

• Perceiving the Hidden World
• Spirit-Rending Fury

Intelligence

• Penumbra Witch Mastery

Wits

• Grudge-Nursing Resentment

Social

Limit Trigger: Someone Asya wishes would pay attention to her rejects, humiliates, or deliberately ignores her.

Resolve 4 Guile 3(4*)

• When using Guile to withstand scrutiny of her identity

Languages: Flametongue (N), Old Realm, Riverspeak

Intimacies

• Defining Negative Principle: Blind devotion to gods is folly.
• Defining Negative Tie - Ahlat: I gave up so much of my life for him and he threw me away.
• Major Principle: Knowledge is power, but only when used.
• Major Principle: I must gain power to be secure.
• Major Tie - Luna: She helped me throw off the chains I'd wrapped myself up in.
• Major Tie - Safiya: I feel like she completes me. Which actually worries me a little.
• Major Negative Tie - Raksi: I will not crawl back to her for anything.
• Minor Negative Tie - The Brides of Ahlat: We were all bound by chains of social expectation or a false sense of purpose, but my scars are now filled in with silver.
• Minor Tie - Human Flesh: It's surprisingly savory.
• Minor Negative Tie - My own taste for human flesh: It's disquieting.
• Minor Principle: I should free people bound in unrewarding servitude to the gods.
• Minor Principle: Helping the weak isn't my job, but it feels good.
• Minor Principle: It's better to have allies than be alone.
• Minor Principle: Fear is more honest than love.
• Minor Negative Principle: Close-knit groups always have someone to dump on.
• Minor Negative Principle: Maybe most of the gods don't deserve what they control.
• Minor Tie - Livia Casbah: She was arrogant and annoying and had no clue who she was dealing with at the end, but she was brave.
• Minor Tie - Khotekh: I feel sympathy for the displaced god who shares my form.
• Minor Tie - Demons: They know what it's like to be led around by uncaring masters.
• Minor Tie - The other PCs: TBD various ties, based on personality meshes or conflicts

Combat Stats

HL: 1x-0,2x-1,2x-2,1x-4

Human Shape

• Claws: 9/7 dice (Damage 11) Brawl, Grappling, Lethal, Natural
• Intimate Rain: 15*/10 dice (Damage 12) Thrown (Medium), Lethal, Mounted (*At Close range; accuracy falloff per normal Thrown weapon)
• Grapple: 7 dice (6 dice to control)
• Combat Movement: 4 dice
• Parry 6 Evasion 3
• Natural Soak 5
• Soak/Hardness 10/4
• Join Battle 6

Boar-Tusked Crocodile

• Bite: 8 dice (Damage 16) Brawl, Lethal, Natural (counts as 2 charm dice)
• Claws: 10/8 dice (Damage 11) Brawl, Grappling, Lethal, Natural
• Slam: 10 dice (Damage 14) Smashing, Brawl, Lethal, Natural (counts as 4 charm dice)
• Grapple: 8 dice (10 dice to control) (counts as 2/5 charm dice)
• Combat Movement: 6 dice
• Parry 6 Evasion 3
• Soak/Hardness: 13/0
• Join Battle 7
• See Ex3 p. 559 for advanced details

Background

Asya comes from an unremarkable family in Kirighast. Her parents were minor functionaries (and of course, combat ready) in the counting-houses at the port, so they were able to afford her a proper education in preparation for moving on into business herself. But mere sums and figures, moving money and goods around, all of that bored her. She would grab at any old-looking scroll at the tutoring-house she could in hopes of finding the ones with strange geometrical puzzles and flowing script.

Eventually, she learned those were written in Old Realm, and were but a sample of the historical, geomantic, and thaumaturgical texts offered in various private towers of learning. But her family could not afford such an expense. What they could afford was to offer her up as a Bride of Ahlat; she was pretty enough, if not the prime athletic specimen they usually took in, but any possible battle-sorcerer to give their forces the edge in war was useful.

In early training, however, she was among the slowest and least capable fighters in her cadre, leading to hazing and outright beatings for slowing them down. She was tough enough to take the scarring (which she shed when drawing her Second Breath), but the abuse still gave her nightmares. Something like salvation came in one of those nightmares. In her dream, she saw a massive mountain, but as she drew close she could see it was a vast creature of hooves and tusks and horns. Hearing the scorn of her fellow trainees behind her, she strained up the beast-mountain's impossible face, using all those vicious, goring handholds, until finally she stood atop, with the wind and the sky itself twisting around her.

She woke up finally understanding the flow of Stormwind Rider, and blew all her barracks-mates out of their bed in triumph before swirling off to report her success. Then she visited the Priests of Ahlat, as the dream itself had begun to trouble her; they interpreted the dream as seeing their god's true form within the limitations of a mortal mind, without the benefit of filtering his divine essence through the limitations of mortal eyes. That never quite sat right with her.

But soon, her life was filled with war, and the occasional advances of her fellow warriors. While she had once fantasized about Ahlat's powerful, beautiful guard, she was beyond disillusioned now and rebuffed most contact. Despite the awesome power of creation she could hold in her hands, her routine became almost rote. Her team would swoop in advance of the main force on her whirlwind, and she would perhaps spray jagged death at the enemy ranks if they dawdled in closing. Then, when the battle drew to a close or the line moved on, the apothecae would drag the wounded near her and she would shield them in a shell of water while they worked. It was... almost depressingly routine, despite the terror and adrenaline.

Then one day, everything went wrong, and she was cut off from most of the detachment she was with, and their prayers to the bull god went unanswered. Asya was exhausted, at the end of her rope due to all the nightmares that had kept her from sleeping soundly as she struggled to fuel her sorceries. She didn't even know which way to go once she finally did summon a whirlwind. But she refused to die for the god that had abandoned them. Picking a direction, she summoned her storm, nearly passing out in the process, and dragged everyone back along the way she guessed; her hunch was right, and soon she saw the dust kicked up from the Brides marching through the desert. From above, she could see well how the battle had formed and turned; her team had clearly been a sacrifice to draw out the enemy.

Asya's faith broke, and with it, very nearly her mind. It was simple to get ahead of the column; only a little less simple to dump her battle-sisters off the whirlwind and keep going, out into the desert, not knowing or caring where. That's when Luna came to her.

She found herself riding the dregs of her guttering storm in the massive body of a land crocodile, remembering even the encounter with Luna as more of a dream than an experience. She'd encouraged Asya to not merely accept divine rule, told her that such excesses distracted from the work of holding Creation together, and declared that she did not want to see Gaia's ancient labors disrespected and abandoned.

Despite the empowerment and divine pep talk, she had little idea of where to go at first. She decided that her new form was an unconscious tribute to Crocodile-headed Khotek, the now-deposed God of Magic and Wisdom, and decided that she wouldn't give up hunting for more knowledge... which was as good a goal as any for now. Eventually she reached civilization again, after hunting her way through a few new forms in the desert. She was a bit careless at first, having not quite made the Anathema connection until the villagers cowered at her sudden transition from crocodile to claw-handed woman. She fled again, but not ahead of the rumors, this time to the city of Bavara where the desert and jungle meet, where influence from both the Realm and Kirighast is present but weak. And she was surprised to find another like her, waiting.

Tangaxoan brought her back to Raksi, where Asya was in awe of the great libraries. Raksi, on the other hand... her trollish abuses brought to mind all of the hazing she'd already suffered, and she'd more than had enough. She remained just long enough to get her tattoos and copy everything she could find about sites of power in the south, then split.

Asya wandered aimlessly then, still mostly rudderless except for steering clear of corrupt, uncaring gods... and ancient mad Lunars. She knew that she was still weak, relative to this new world of mighty champions she'd found herself in at least, and needed to find an edge. More power, more knowledge. More ability to keep safe and change things. So she started plundering the sites she found in the library.

Most were already scavenged, of course, but some were practically impossible to find among the shifting sands and had been for a very long time, or far away from trade routes. Most still yielded nothing of value, at least to her, though she sold off some of the findings to pay for a bit of luxury. Eventually she was noticed by a 'fellow' would-be Scavenger Lord, Livia Casbah, but their personalities clashed immediately and they ended up in a feud.

That feud came to a head when Livia paid off local guides to delay Asya on her way to a site; inside, Livia had already found an incredible tomb-armory and was preparing to drag off a heavy, silvery breastplate after having failed already to pry the sapphires out of it. Asya couldn't let that state of affairs stand - especially the embarassment of being beaten to the discovery - so, in a moment of rage, she ate her.

Now having recovered the Quincunx, Asya still wanders, looking other Exalts she could hopefully make common cause with, and maybe find direction. She hopes that she does, because her dreams - still frequently of that mountain of dark flesh and ivory that twists the skies - seem to portend a direction, one that she doesn't think she wants to take.

More recently, Asya reconnected with the Silver Pact, drifting through the sphere of influence of Lissa Bone-Gnawer, who whips up packs of dissidents in Realm satrapies along the southeast coast of the Inner Sea, including Harborhead and Varang. Her world got even stranger when she found herself helping a dissident group from Harborhead plumb a desert ruin for supplies and met Safiya Elmahdy... again.

She found herself remembering the encounter they'd had before with surprising clarity, when her unit had been watching over a supply caravan loading up in a bazaar in Kirighast... The purple-haired street thief had been going for the firedust satchels, she had been sure. Probably to feed the flame piece at 'his' hip. They'd been proliferating among the dispossessed, and worse, knowledge of how to actually use them, but firedust itself was still scarce on the street... unless of course you stole it.

Asya knew now, of course, that the firewand proliferation and seeding the criminal underworlds with knowledge of the flame-wielding martial arts had been Lissa's doing. But she hadn't actually expected to run into anyone familiar. Especially since so few of them had actually escaped her battle-sisters once found. ...but this one had. How, she wasn't sure, but her sergeant said that the thief had apparently thrown off 'his' clothes and disappeared during the pursuit.

The delve itself was... typical, mostly, only finding a few scraps of shattered artifacts at best, and sellable but not very useful ancient trinkets. Except at some point, Asya noticed that Safiya had disappeared, so she went looking for her. And when she found her... well, she just found an exotic, angular firewand that glowed with smouldering inner flame, pointed at her. When Safiya finally appeared behind it, she felt a strange new shock of recognition, and they've traveled together since.

BP

Stamina 3-5: -6

Intelligence 5: -3

Occult 4-5: -4

Languages 1-2: -2

Social Bonus BP: 4

Resources 1: -1

Contacts 3: -3

Background bonus BP: 2

NPCs bonus BP: 3

Backing 2 (Silver Pact) -2

Intimate Rain Description: 1

Intimate Rain: -4

Remain: 0