Editing Exalted: Brave New World/Riyu Astariel (section)

=History=
Riyu Astariel's life, especially her childhood, could make for a pretty good novel, but no one is going to believe to the "based on a true story" part.<br>
Born in Thorns (you can guess this isn't going to end well) in a family of minor nobles. When she was three years old, the caravan transporting her and her uncle back to Thorns from Sijan (where he had to attend a rather important funeral) was attacked by bandits. Uncle was killed, she was kidnapped for ransom.<br>
The messengers the band sent to her family asking for the ransom contacted the wrong household by mistake, who of course didn't guess it was a misunderstanding and instead thought of some sort of scam. And refused to pay.<br>
The bandits however, some of which had a soft spot for kids, decided to raise her themselves instead of killing her or selling her in slavery.<br>
At least, until she was eight years old, when she WAS sold into slavery, together with the rest of the band, after being captured by a Guild caravan that proved a nut too hard to crack for them.
After being bought and sold several times, she ended up, aged ten, in a mercenary company based in Nexus, the Red Bands, as an errand runner and general helping hand.<br>
Said mercenary company was actually a facade to cover a conspiracy against the Realm presence in Thorns.<br>
Said conspiracy was quickly uncovered, and ended in a bloodbath. A few prisoners were shipped to the Southern satrapies as slaves, and Riyu ended up in the mines of Gem...

...starting to notice a pattern? Yeah, it's pretty much all like that.

Let's skip to 10 years later. After a whole life of hopeless fights in name of disparate ideals, slavery (and escaping from it), getting involved in rebellions and revolutions, getting attached to people only to become separated form them (sometimes violently) and getting used to killing and bullying her way through life in horrible ways, something happened.<br>
While she was in a slave camp (for a change), in chains, she saw a guard putting his spear through a slave desperately trying to escape.<br>
It wasn't a new sight, for her. She even did worse herself. Killed for far less, or for nothing at all sometimes, out of spite, bitterness, callousness.

But something snapped, and she just suddenly realized that the world sucked.

And that it needed Big Damn Heroes to put it back on track properly.

In a few minutes, that camp became a pile of smoldering ruins.<br>
A similar fate befell a lot of other places like that.

And the newly-exalted Riyu realized that it wasn't working.

Even as an Exalted, she was just one. Some of the toughest and more motivated ex-slaves followed her, but they kept dying in battle. So, instead, she resolved to fight alone. And accomplished very little. Her actions were unfocused, undisciplined, spur-of-the-moment affairs.

Until she met Falling Petal.

Falling Petal was a former officer of the army of Thorns who survived the war and the Mask's takeover by pure chance.<br>
Now a wandering swordswoman, Falling Petal, to say it bluntly, called Riyu out on her bullshit. That she wasn't helping anyone and just making things worse for anyone. That she didn't have any good idea on how to improve Creation. That she didn't even know what "justice" was.

Which was true. But she still took offense and attacked the mortal swordswoman.

Who managed to wipe the floor with Riyu's ass.

"How did you do that?" asked Riyu, spitting a few teeth.

"Justice gives me strength." was the answer.

The young solar was flabbergasted. Confused and broken, she did the only reasonable thing to do.
She asked Petal to take her as a disciple.

Cue Training Montage from Hell, wrestling with bears, headbutting trees, standing under waterfalls, learning how to read and write in record time, memorizing thousand-pages books on philosophy, tactics, medicine, engineering.

Finally, she was ready to depart. Petal had forged her into a kind-hearted, cultured warrior. Into the hero of justice that Creation needed.

Since then, Riyu has been travelling as a wandering swordswoman, ally of justice, righter of wrongs, seeking to atone both for her past misdeeds and her more recent reckless behaviour.