Bridging the Divide:Flower Knight

Hwarang

Oathbound hunk devoted to knighthood, service, and the equalizing power of rules and restriction. Former captive of a Fallen Fae, now drawn to faerie things due to shared experience. Sworn champion of a fictional past and a bright, strange future.

Stats

Path: Acanthus

Order: Adamantine Arrow

Virtue: Protective

Vice: Vain

Nimbus: Blooming possibility, regal roses and finely-honed thorns.

Nimbus Tilt: -1 and lose 10-again on Weaponry.

Arcane Experience: 0/0

Experience Points: 0/4

Aspirations and Obsessions

Long-Term: Fight in the name of my oaths.

Short-Term: Teach a self-defense class.

Short Term: Go on a date.

Obsession: The Rose Whip, an Artifact currently held by unfriendly magicians.

Conditions

None

Status

Health: [][][][][][][]

Willpower: 6/6

Gnosis: 2

Mana: 11/11 (2/turn)

Wisdom: 7

Size: 5

Defense: 6

Speed: 11

Initiative Modifier: +6

Attributes

Intelligence 2

Wits 2

Resolve 3

Strength 3

Dexterity 3

Stamina 2

Presence 2

Manipulation 2

Composure 3

Skills

Academics

Computer

Crafts

Investigation

Medicine 1 (rote)

Occult 2 (Faerie)

Politics 2 (Obligation)

Science

Athletics 4 (rote)

Brawl 4 (Restrain)

Drive

Firearms

Larceny

Stealth

Survival 2

Weaponry 2

Animal Ken 1

Empathy

Expression 2

Intimidation 4 (rote)

Persuasion

Socialize

Streetwise

Subterfuge

Merits

Adamant Hand (Brawl) 2

Court Goodwill (West) 1 [Allies 1. Mentor 1: Occult, Survival, Weaponry.]

High Speech 1

Infamous Mentor (Dark Lady) 2 [Consilium and Assembly Status 3. Allies (Thistles of Iris) 3, Fame 1.]

Mentor (Dark Lady) 3 [Investigation, Socialize, Streetwise. Gnosis 4, Mind 4, Space 3, Fate 3.]

Order Status (Adamantine Arrow) 1

Arcana

Fate 3

Life 1

Time 2

Praxes

Heightened Senses (Life 1)

(formerly Oaths Fulfilled; traded for attainment)

Rotes

Sworn Oaths (Intimidation) (Fate 3)

Fools Rush In (Athletics) (Fate 2)

Exceptional Luck (Intimidation) (Fate 2)

Equipment

Dedicated Magical Tool: Long silk scarf that doubles as a blindfold, embroidered with magically significant patterns.

Legacy

The House of Renunciation, ecstatics who pursue magical truth through willing obedience to (and control of) one another and seek to remake the future and past in their utopian vision. A thoroughly modern Legacy that blends the magical theory of the Whipping Boys with avant-garde art and a deadly serious devotion to oaths. They are bedeviled by Time-displaced doppelgangers that claim to be visitors from a dark vision of their utopian future/past and seek to draw this world towards its lower rather than higher nature.

Parentage: Acanthus, Adamantine Arrow or Free Council

Prerequisites: Fate 2, Politics or Athletics or Expression 2

Ruling Arcanum: Fate

Yantras:

Oblations:

Attainments

First: (purchased with attainment)

Prerequisites: Initiation

The Renunciant spends a scene interacting with her subject in a way that keeps his attention on her. This could be one-on-one conversation, or an enthralling performance directed at the subject in an intimate audience. At the end, the Renunciant gives her subject an instruction. She knows whether the subject obeys or disobeys, as Oaths Fulfilled with Reach spent on Advanced Duration.

Optional: Time 1

After spending a scene being restrained and deprived of sensation in some way, bound and blindfolded at the very least, the Renunciant enters an oracular trance as she contacts the future timeline. This recreates Divination with Reach spent on complex answers, with the caveat that she can only provide answers to questions she is asked by someone else- or perhaps by her own recorded voice, with sufficient prep to make the restraint meaningful.

Second: (purchased with XP)

Prerequisites: Fate 2, Initiation Skill 3

The House believes that a skilled dominant can draw her submissive into transcending his limits. With this Attainment, she gives her subject a simple instruction and pushes him out into the world. While following the instruction, this recreates Fools Rush In with Reach spent on instant use and a dice bonus to mundane rolls. This Attainment must be used on someone else, not the Renunciant herself.

Optional: Time 2

Freed from responsibility, the Renunciant becomes a vessel for incredible possibility. After spending a scene meditating while restrained, she can adorn the future timeline with her own magical workings. This recreates Hung Spell with Reach spent on Advanced Duration. If the Renunciant follows someone else's instructions, she may use the Conditional Duration Attainment.

Third: (not unlocked)

Prerequisites: Fate 3, one of the following Merits: Sympathetic 2, Small Unit Tactics 2

Oaths are the root of all magic, as proven by the pact between the newly Awakened and their Watchtowers. The House of Renunciation mirrors this principle, overseeing oaths that push parties beyond mundane limitations- and make them feel the pain of disobedience. After spending a scene on a suitable ceremony that exalts her subjects and shows the gravity of their words, the Renunciant may sanctify a verbal oath as if casting Sworn Oaths with Advanced Duration.

Optional: Time 3

By artfully meddling with Temporal Sympathy, the House of Renunciation loosens the iron chains of the past on the present and replaces them with lovely silk. The Renunciant may obscure and reimagine the future and past of a subject, whether it be a person, a place, or the mage herself. This emulates Shield of Chronos with Reach spent on Advanced Duration and designing new events. As an additional effect, this weakens the subject's Temporal Sympathy to itself for the duration, severing past trauma and opening up new possibilities.

Questions

- Character portrait, either an actual picture and short description, or a detailed description

Hwarang looks like this: [1]

Blasian, nonbinary, buff, pink hair, face pockmarked by acne scars. They have a very distinctive voice.

- Description of your Awakening, and how you perceive your Watchtower/Realm/Path

Before the Awakening, the future Hwarang was isolated, desperate, and drowning in debt after career failure and a messy divorce. Their Fate was sealed: trapped, no escape, no future. They would walk along the train tracks, hopelessly fantasizing about hopping a train and going Somewhere Else, but imprisoned by the linear tracks. They dreamed of cats with two tails, dozens of them, multiplying every night and consuming whatever narrative they dreamed up. Their little studio apartment grew choked with thorns.

One day, they saw a two-tailed cat when they were awake, and instead of going to their job, they decided to follow it to the train tracks. The other cats were waiting inside an open boxcar. There seemed to be a tall hedge on the far side of the tracks, with a silvery radio tower in the brambles beyond. They decided to hop in the boxcar instead, since they had dreamed of it so often, and see where it took them.

They had tumbled outside of Time and Fate to the castle-under-the-hill of the Fair Folk, where an overgrown cat lord called the Nekomata wished to wed her (they were known as her in that time and place) in a strange retelling of the Bluebeard fairy tale. Something about this did not feel right, but the Bride found that she couldn't say exactly why, and besides, she was very desperate for money and purpose and did not wish to insult her host's misguided hospitality. The cat yowled and purred and pleaded at the wedding altar in front of all his servants, "just say yes," but things proceeded without a word being said.

Time passed differently in the castle, less like linear days and more like reading the same storybook over and over with a few changes in every telling. The formula was that the incomplete Bride carried a secret heirloom jewel (her nascent Awakening), and the Nekomata coaxed and pleaded and threatened her to give it up, but could not take it by force. Servants were dispatched, potions were forced, rooms were explored, endless lies were told and boundaries violated and promises broken, and in every story she would finally approach the forbidden door and be executed, waking up in the morning the moment the bloody blade touched her neck.

Finally, a slave rebellion broke the rules of the story. The Bride fled through the forbidden door, climbing higher and higher up a spiral staircase with the jewel lighting the path through the Abyss beyond, until all the masks and costumes fell away and the new Witch emerged into the moonsilver light of Arcadia.

Hwarang perceives Arcadia much like the Peach Blossom Spring of Chinese folklore: a hidden place of natural beauty beyond a river of petals, whose immortal residents have escaped the tragedy of Time and Fate to live forever in joyful play. Arcadia represents the promise that Time blossoms in myriad directions and Fate can be tamed into submission by wise courtesans and noble knights. Hwarang swore an eternal oath beneath a thorny peach tree under silvery moonlight to undo the Lie of history and bring the Fallen World into alignment with the transcendent rules of Arcadia.

They left the Supernal Arcadia by way of a harrowing journey through the Hedge that ended in San Francisco, and soon found asylum with the local Freehold. Their debt, their divorce, their lease agreement: it just didn't matter anymore. Fallen laws were undone. That's magic for you.

- Brief description of how each of your Arcana fits into your magical worldview. How do you sense it, what metaphorical role does it hold

- Description of an NPC connected to your character. A major back story figure, a rival, a friend. Someone I can incorporate

Hwarang's Mentor goes by the Shadow Name of Dietrich, after the iconic Marlene Dietrich, but Hwarang knows her as Dark Lady. She looks like this: [2]

Hwarang met her when the San Francisco Freehold put them in contact with the Thistles of Iris, a cabal known to certain bold and outgoing changelings. The two hit it off almost immediately, and she took responsibility for their introduction into Awakened society. Hwarang and their Lady have a deep mutual trust that evades traditional relationship labels, although she is stringent about countering their codependency and not being the only important person or partner in their life.

In another life, she was a low-Wisdom villain who treated others as puppets. After being Renounced, she radically changed her values and joined the House of Renunciation herself. She is an administrator at Stanford in her Sleeper identity, but finds most of her fulfillment in her magical life.

- Free spin. Description of another NPC, an important Artifact or location, a short vignette that says something about your character

Hwarang's contact in the Western Court of the San Francisco Freehold is Louis, a merman or selkie or possibly some kind of naiad. Native, chubby, round glasses, long braided hair.

Louis joined the martial Western Court more because of its association with Hope, the Future, and Waves than any warlike nature, although he's a big nerd about dueling and does have some potent contracts with storms and the ocean. He's clearly chosen to put a painful past behind him, but he's really pretty friendly and seems happiest when he's talking about aquariums and proper fish care. Sometimes he gets in dark moods and stares at the ocean, and some mysterious pledge compels him to go under the waves for a few days.

Hwarang met Louis before they were introduced to Awakened society, and has a huge crush on him.

=Back=