SOTDL: Devi Vanathys
Devi Vanathys :: Thorny Rose of Bar Kesh[edit]
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Character Quotes[edit]
- Ugh, you're barely worth my fee. At least the audience will get a show.
- A shame we don't have an audience, monster. I'll just have to entertain myself...
Attributes 
[edit]
|| Power 
|| Endurance 
|| Charm ||
|| Finesse 
|| Reason || Will ||
Trained Skills [edit]
Fight 
- Duels
Focus
Influence
Move
- Traversal
Notice
Perform
- Attention-Seeking
Shoot/Throw
Trick
Untrained Skills 
[edit]
| Everything Else 
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Distinctions/SFX 
[edit]
Checked SFX are active.
Thorny Rose of Bar Kesh
Hinder: Sometimes your distinction works against you. Gain 1 plot point when you roll a 
instead of a 
- SFX: "Oh. It's you." Devi's gotten around, and always leaves an impression. Spend 1 PP to create a Asset declaring she has a history (for good or ill) with a NPC. If she uses this asset in a roll and fails, that person either turns against her or remembers how to trip her up instead. Turn the Asset into a Complication and gain 1 PP.
Freeblade - Freeblades are independent swords for hire - mercenaries, gladiators. guards, even royal envoys or court assassins. Unlike soldiers, trained to work in groups, cooperate with, defend, and rely on their fellows and to follow orders, Freeblades are independent fighters used to functioning alone and with complete discretion over what jobs they take and how they fulfil those jobs. What they lack in military training and discipline they more than make up for in flair and innovation.
- Hinder: Sometimes your distinction works against you. Gain 1 plot point when you roll a instead of a
Role Ability: Once per scene you may spend a PP to automatically succeed on a Perform action to feint for the purpose of unexpectedly disarming and/or otherwise forcing your opponent to yield without actually wounding them. If an Effect die is needed, the action counts as a
Harbinger - If the Bonewight is the Speaker for the Dead, the Harbinger is the Bringer of Death, a spiritual executioner able to summon and subsequently wield unseen weapons.
- Hinder: Sometimes your distinction works against you. Gain 1 plot point when you roll a instead of a
- SFX: Red Rain Her deathly weapons gather the blood of foes greedily, but let it loose just as readily. If she successfully injures an opponent - to however minor an extent - then she can allow her weapon to become visible with a shimmering coating of their fresh blood. The next time within the same scene that she uses Influence or Perform to intimidate people, she may step up or double the skill as she flings the blood of her foes around for emphasis.
Signature Assets [edit]
Strategic Costuming She sets up her outfit to be billowing or tight in all the right places to obscure her fighting movements while showing herself off. Of course, she can't really make use of it without drawing attention. but that's the way she likes it.
Background/Bio[edit]
Devi is Corsair'na (with significant Druidain ancestry) born the only child of a merchant family with the patronage of House d'Amasku in Bar Kesh. She grew up dreaming of being a star of the stage, and was given some of the best tutelage money could buy in pursuit of dancing success in the high theatre.*
The dancing scene in Bar Kesh is known to be particularly cutthroat, but Devi hadn't expected one of her rivals to goad a hot-blooded noble patron into literally cutting her throat a few days after she got her first big part. She clawed her way back from death, dancing a crimson streak through the Dry Lands, and spent several days at home to recover and figure things out. By the time she returned to the theater she'd been replaced by her understudy of course. Perla fainted straight away on seeing Devi alive, confirming her suspicion as to who had sought her death, but she took her final stipend and left rather than beg for her old position back.
Devi used most of her savings to hire one of Bar Kesh's foremost dueling instructors to seek her revenge. Kal Peris had expected to be giving a tiresome self defense course to yet another rich girl, or even worse being asked to teach stage fighting, but they were both surprised by the level of skill she'd picked up fighting her way back from death (not that she actually told him why). She still had much to learn, especially in how to learn an enemy's style and respond appropriately, but learn she did.
Once confident of her fighting skill - overconfident by any sane assessment, but sane assessments were out the window after she didn't even die properly - she sought out her would-be murderer, Cisco d'Jaala, and publicly challenged him to a duel to the death. Most formal duels in Corsair lands are not to the death, nor do they actually need to be fought by the aggrieved parties, which is why mercenary proxy duelists are a thing. But with such a serious and public challenge, insinuation that she'd already gotten Perla to confess, and the expectation that he was fighting an easy target led Cisco to accept her deadly challenge. She ran her blade through his heart the next morning.
The blood of a d'Jaala on her hands, no matter how justified the duel, made her toxically unemployable in theatrical circles (they command theaters through a quirk of history, as the modern venues originally evolved from side stages in taverns), but that was fine. She had a new job to be passionate about. And it got her skills nice and sharp for when she realized she was called to face the Wraith...
- Prestige dance style in Corsair culture is focused less on things like ballet's light-body, linear style and more like flamenco's mix of tapdancing, whirling, and tightly controlled chaos.
