Orphea

Orphea

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• Orphea, aka Echo of Immortal Love
• Caste: No Moon
• Totem: Barn owl
• Orphea is a beautiful woman with a heart-shaped face who appears to be physically in her late twenties or early thirties. Pale and slender from her years in the lands of the dead, she has warm hazel eyes with long, dark eyelashes, though when her anima flares her eyes go black from corner to corner and take on a slant reminiscent of her totem. Her hair is a ghostly, dead white, often worn long (but this varies), and her fingernails are likewise long and delicately enameled. Orphea favors dark clothing, usually black or purple, of an archaic fashion popular in Stygia, and usually goes barefoot to show off her slender ankles. Her jewelry consists of finely-worked silver kept tarnished black, except for a golden wedding ring on her left hand.
  

Motivation

• Strangle the Neverborn until they give up my daughter

Intimacies

Natural

Negative

The Neverborn (Morbid fascination)
Rising Smoke (Guilt at abandoning)

Positive

Flower (Maternal fondness)
Family ties (They're important)

Supernatural

Positive

Cymbeline (Love: reinforced with Righteous Lion)

Anima

A ghostly silver owl flies above her, its wings spreading an almost tangible darkness over everything below.

Attributes

Physical

• Strength 3
• Dexterity 4
• Stamina 4

Social

• Charisma 4
• Manipulation 4
• Appearance 4

Mental

• Perception 4 (+1 Secrets)
• Intelligence 5 (+1 Neverborn)
• Wits 4

Abilities

Caste

Survival 2 (+1 The Labyrinth)

Favored

Occult 5 (+3 The Underworld)

Unfavored

Athletics 1
Awareness 2
Bureaucracy 2
Dodge 1
Integrity 4
Investigation 4
Linguistics 2 (Native: Riverspeak. Others: Old Realm, Airtongue)
Lore 4 (+1 Ancient history)
Martial Arts 4
Performance 2 (+2 Prayer)
Presence 4 (+1 Seduction)
Resistance 1
Socialize 2
Stealth 1

Charms

Dexterity

1st DEX Excellency
Instinctive DEX Unity

Stamina

1st STAM Excellency
Bruise Relief Method
Halting the Scarlet Flow
Moonsilver Stomach Conversion
Steadfast Yeddim Meditation
Ox-Body Technique x4

Charisma

1st CHA Excellency
Outworld-Forsaking Stance
Feral Smile Tactic

Manipulation

1st MAN Excellency
Instinctive MAN Unity
Mask of White Jade

Appearance

1st APP Excellency
Hide of the Cunning Hunter
Glance-Oration Technique

Perception

1st PER Excellency
Flawless Perception Focus
Wyld-Sensing Instincts
Outland-Navigating Guile
Eye and Fingertip Wisdom
Holistic Knowledge Transmission
Eye of the Cat
Instinctive Essence Prediction

Intelligence

1st INT Excellency
Flawless INT Focus
Righteous Lion Defense
Counting the Elephant's Wrinkles
Lessons in the Blood
Predator's Insight
Flesh-Sculpting Art
Shadowlands-Circle Necromancy

Wits

2nd WITS Excellency
Lodestone Reckoning Manner

Knacks

Humble Mouse Shape
Emerald Grasshopper Form
Towering Beast Form
Prey's Skin Disguise
Hearth and Flame Shell
Ash and Tears Banquet
Intimate Training Recollection
Flickering Star Infusion
Subtle Silver Declaration
Hybrid Body Rearrangement
Changing Plumage Mastery
Internal Form Mastery
Compassionate Mirror Nature
Courtesan's Possession
Deadly Beastman Transformation

Spells

Iron Circle Necromancy

Blood Mirror Speech
Door of the Dead
Five Gifts
Gathering a Ghost's Strings
Without Pity, Without Scorn

Essence

• Essence: 5
• Personal: 25/25
• Peripheral: 60/60
• Committed to Charms: 0
• Committed to artifacts: 10m
• Willpower: 10/10
• Anima status: Quiescent

Virtues

• Compassion: 3
• Conviction: 5
• Temperance: 4
• Valor: 3

Limit Break

Curse of the Mother Hen
Current Limit: 0

Conflict

Physical

• Join Battle: 6
• Dodge DV: 5
• Parry DV: 6
• Soak: 4B/2L/0A

Movement

• Move:
• Dash:

Social

• Join Debate:
• Dodge MDV:
• Parry MDV:

Health Levels

-0
-1, -1
-2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2
-2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2
-2, -2, -2, -2, -2, -2
-4
Incapacitated
Dying (x12)

Personality

A very social woman, Orphea is often found watching the everyday lives of the Creation-born with a small smile on her lips. On a personal level, she is quite kind and always has time to listen to others, dispensing wise advice when she thinks it would be well-received. When speaking about her ultimate goal, however, her smile fades and a glint of madness enters her eyes. Though she clearly deeply cares about many things, one gets the distinct impression that, on some days, Orphea would sacrifice anything to get her daughter back.

Orphea is open to working with anyone (or anything), partly because of her quest for knowledge and partly because she simply has a very open mind. She has even worked tangentially with Deathlords in the past: though she disapproves of them on a fundamental level (particularly the Lover, for whom she fosters a burning hate), Orphea realizes that they may be her best source of information in her goal to understand and control the Neverborn. Abyssals who oppose the Deathlords she considers to be very likely allies, regardless of other considerations.

She considers fellow Lunars to be part of her extended family, always welcoming them into her home and feeding them if they are hungry. Solars and Infernals Orphea has less experience with, though she would be interested in learning more about the living titans: there might be some parallels she could use in her research...

History

Life in Sijan is stately, ordered, and graced with the dignity of the dead. Those who live there appreciate the complex web of family and tradition that permeates the lives (or unlives) of all Sijanese.

None understood this better than Orphea, a young scion of an expansive family full of uncles and half-cousins and great-grandparents. She grew to maturity surrounded by the wisdom of her ancestors, learning the frailties and triumphs of the human condition at their knee. When she was older, she put this wisdom into practice and soon became a famous and popular matchmaker for those who didn't want to leave such things to chance. She even found herself a husband, a handsome and talented mortal mortician named Rising Smoke, and after a year of marriage Orphea gave birth to a beautiful baby daughter: Cymbeline.

Years passed for the young family, and though their lives were never perfect, Orphea was happy. Until one day, when Orphea was out buying bread, the now 8-year-old Cymbeline's hand slipped from her grasp. Intent as she was on haggling, Orphea didn't realize her daughter had gone until it was too late. The mischievous young girl, curious and intrigued by the forbidden districts of Sijan's dark underbelly, slipped past the guards on ancient tombs and entered the dark and dangerous mausoleums where even experienced morticians feared to tread.

When Orphea realized her daughter was missing, she instantly felt that something was wrong. Dropping everything she had, Orphea began a frantic search for her child that eventually led her deeper into Sijan than she'd ever gone before. Charming the guards on Sijan's deepest tombs, she followed her daughter further and further down, until she realized with sickening horror that she had entered the Labyrinth itself. It was there she found her daughter, teetering glassy-eyed on the lip of a gaping maw of utter darkness. Before Orphea could grab her, the girl slipped into the Void as her mother cried out in despair. Knowledgeable as she was about the Underworld, Orphea knew exactly what that final darkness was, and knew that she couldn't follow.

That night, under a dark moon, Orphea sobbed and railed against the fate that had taken her daughter, frightening even her grieving husband with the rage of her despair. All night she cried, trying to grasp the finality of what had happened, but unable to accept that she had lost her daughter. Finally, she rose from her knees determined to enter the Void and retrieve her daughter, refusing to acknowledge the impossibility of the task. As she rose, however, she noticed a silver light enveloping her, and power and hope filling her soul. A small voice whispered in her ear, “Perhaps there is another way.”

The very next day, Orphea was retrieved by the Silver Pact, who told her all about her new condition and helped her understand her power. She was quickly caste as a No Moon, but didn't linger long with her fellow Lunars- she had a child to save.

Orphea slipped into the Underworld and made her way to Stygia, where she spent the next several years of her life immersing herself in the ebb and flow of the Underworld. Though she played Stygian politics well, her concern was not the Dual Monarchs, nor the Deathlords: it was the Neverborn themselves, and she studied them and the Void itself in exacting, sanity-shattering detail. Orphea spent long hours in debate with Weeping Raiton Cast Aside, the self-proclaimed avatar of the Neverborn in Stygia, and endured days upon end of combing the libraries of Twinborn's Death for the secrets of the dead titans.

Eventually, Orphea found what she was looking for. It was the smallest of hints, a suggestion at the passion at the hearts of the Neverborn, but it was enough. If the Neverborn were fettered to Creation, then that is what she would become. Once she became the tether that held the dead titans to existence, she would beg, plead, bargain, strangle- she would do anything at all, until they relented and returned Cymbeline to her. After that, her research went smoothly; learning to become the fetter of a ghost was positively trivial in comparison. Orphea expects that applying such techniques to the Neverborn will not be easy, but at least now she knows where to start.

After years of living in the Underworld, counting days by the Calendar of Setesh, Orphea returned to Creation. If she was to become the world, first she must know it. She began to travel, roaming the world, collecting the form of every species she found, and filling herself with the knowledge and essence of Creation. Along the way, she made a few friends...

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