Tabby
Derpsichord
Name: Selene Aurion
Aliases: That crazy fucking bitch, that fucking crazy bitch who stole my shit, what the fuck is that shiGET OVER HERE!
Concept: Amoral but generally friendly drifter. Also a fucking walking tank and crazy bitch.
Caste: Full Moon
True Form: White wolf. Selene only indulges herself in this form occasionally, and generally only for long-distance traveling. While what remains of her right arm is grown out enough to act as a leg, it is paw- and claw-less and unbalances her slightly, not to mention noticeable enough to raise some questions as to what exactly happened to her real arm.
Quote: "It's inevitable, that a monster like I should be inexorably drawn back to the fields of blood, brought back to kill and kill and kill some more in pursuit of some impossible goal. But in the meantime, I can stop and smell the flowers, make up for a bit of the life I left behind. Can't I? Is the crime of my existence so great that I can't try to give back something to the world after all I've taken from it before I leave it for the last time?"
Motivation: Carve a world where she and Leaeus can be together again.
Intimacies:
+Leaeus
PERSONALITY
Selene is friendly and extroverted; while she tends to be quiet most of the time, she is always observing the world around her and ready to jump into the excitement of the moment. Fittingly, she has a penchant for overdramatizing things and a bit of interest in gossip, though more for the information-sharing aspect than anything else. However, she is flat-out atrocious at small talk and relies on a sense of humor and sheer force of personality to get her through most encounters more than an ability to relate to and empathize with others, something she does have a certain degree of difficulty with due to her past. Selene is extremely - unnervingly, almost - perceptive most of the time and quite quick-witted, but fairly poorly educated and not much of a tactician; a decade of relying on Leaeus for tactics and strategy and trusting him to deploy her whenever she would be most useful has left her more than a little lost while on her own.
As a result, what little morals she ever possessed wilted away quite quickly, leading her to turn to a life of petty crime, as much a work of quick words convincing an innkeeper to let her stay the night as actual larceny. While she is a poor thief, her track record is sterling, an interesting combination of god-tier bullshit and the occasional threat, though she shies violently away from violent crime and makes a point of stopping it should she run into it - an unfavorable reaction to her past actions and a pitiful attempt to atone in some small degree for all she has done.
While fighting, however, Selene sees no issue with drawing on her prodigious experience and what has been flatteringly described as "toughness bordering on that of a fucking tank," though it is as much due to the Moonsilver armor embedded in her skin as her own undeniable innate endurance. While she shies away from the unnecessary brutality that embodied the Butcher and never starts a fight, her fighting style is quick and efficient, cutting down anyone in her way and occasionally branching into a touch of savagery when she loses control; her self-control is far from perfect, and she enjoys combat more than she's willing to admit without being drunk off her ass. Selene doesn't drink, of course, but she does smoke - just about anything she can get her hands on, whether legally or illegally, fairly or by larceny.
While Selene isn't proud of her more sadistic and brutal tendencies, neither is she ashamed of them; they are as much a part of her as her occasionally melodramatic personality, and she makes no apologies for them. She never brings it up unless pressed, however; she believes in not bringing up the past, especially her own. In general, she does her best to hide that she was ever the Butcher of Chiaroscuro, and tends to fight in a dramatic but not especially brutal fashion. She rarely uses the chain-claw, useful as it may be, as it is entirely too memorable to be forgotten by bystanders.
On the other hand, when the situation gets bad enough that she can't get past it in any other way, Selene can and does turn to her skills and mindset from her years in the Black Hand; her normal personality evaporates, leaving behind little more than the Butcher of Chiarascuro until all is said and done and she need rely on it no longer. She does do her best to avoid this, however, and find any number of ways to win or escape regardless.
Her Exaltation is the subject of a lot of mixed feelings to her, and she's far from working them all out. She spent nearly a decade after exaltation trying to hide it and convince herself that it was just being a bit stronger and tougher, and it hasn't really been all that long since then; the year and a half she spent with the Silver Pact have done much to shake her life-long hatred of Anathema and help her consider using the more animalistic of her new abilities, but quite frankly, they still seem somewhat unnatural to her, and she generally prefers to avoid using them more than necessary - she's already spent enough time being a monster, and doesn't want to trade one kind of inhumanity in for another.
Finally, while Selene is even more reluctant to talk about it than her military service, she did have a vague plan of, when she retired from the military, becoming a mother. While that is now physically impossible, she never forgot the idea and still mulls over it occasionally. One side effect is that she has a fondness for children, generally preferring to avoid scarring or scaring them, and tends to be a touch jealous of families that actually worked out. Selene isn't so immature or unrealistic as to think that her half-boiled idea to join the military in her late teens was anyone's fault but her own, but very little logic can stand in the face of emotion.
HISTORY
-Selene served in the The Black Hand, an elite Realm strike force dedicated to eliminating dangerous Anathema and other threats to the Realm, for a good ten years. They are ostensibly a normal force, but they are led by a Sidereal, and nearly everyone in the unit knows it. As such, they comprise an odd combination of Dragonblooded assassins, highly skilled mortal soldiers, and occasionally a Sidereal for particularly dangerous opponents. They don't have a lot of raw firepower, but make up for it with their skill in ambush tactics and artifact weaponry; First Age mines and the like. Casualties are high, but they have built up an impressive head-count of slain Anathema. Generally used as a fast response squad to eliminate mobile anathema and other targets that were difficult to bring the full weight of the Wyld Hunt on
-After an especially bloody mission, she became known as the Butcher of Chiaroscuro, and has a wildly varying reputation in quite a number of places across creation - some positive, some negative. The reputation is attached to the Butcher rather than her, though, as very few ever knew what the Butcher looked like, and even fewer of those are alive today - most of her unit was killed during the Lintha attack mentioned below, and they were the only ones to have any real knowledge of the woman behind the legend.
-Captured and tortured by Lintha during a mission that went horribly awry and ended with the death of nearly everyone in the unit she was part of, she was left sterile, partially broken, and with a burning hatred for them all. It's one of the few things that her generally pleasant masks cracks when confronted with; she is liable to snap at the drop of a pin with Lintha around, and is more than happy to do anything to kill them.
-She was recruited by Leaeus at a relatively young age when they ended up saving her from a bandit attack, and served for three years before exalting. In a stroke of luck, the Sidereal commander was Silver Faction, and consented to let her stay so long as she continued to do her job and didn't expose her exaltation to anyone else in the unit. This worked well enough for another seven years before she was inevitably found out, and rather than risk his own ass for aiding and abetting Anathema, the commander ordered her death. Thanks to a warning from Leaeus, Selene managed to escape, and has been wandering Creation since; she has no coherent purpose left, so she merely focuses on staying alive and avoiding the occasional Wyld Hunt.
So far.
VIRTUES
Compassion: 2
Conviction: 1
Temperance: 3
Valor: 3
Willpower: 6
Essence: 3
Personal Pool: 15
Peripheral Pool: 36
ATTRIBUTES
- Strength 5
- Dexterity 5
- Stamina 4
Charisma 4
Manipulation 1
Appearance 4
- Perception 5
Intelligence 2
Wits 3
ABILITIES
- Melee 5 (Savagery +3)
- Survival 3
Resistance 3
Performance 3
Athletics 3
Awareness 3
Presence 3
Integrity 3
Socialize 2
CHARMS
Second Charmisma Excellency
Second Dexterity Excellency
Second Strength Excellency
Impressions of Strength
Unstoppable Lunar Wound
Graceful Crane Stance (3m perma-comitted)
Ox Body Technique (4x -2 HL)
GET OVER HERE
BACKGROUNDS
- Moonsilver Tattoo Artifact 5 (Plot Armor; 14L/12B, 0 Mobility Penalty, 1 Fatigue)
- Moonsilver Artifact 4 (Savage Rose; Spd 5, Acc +4, Dmg 12L/4, Def +3, Rate 2, Tags: O, P, R. High Ougi: Lifesever. For 1 mote per attack, her sword cuts unpossibly cleanly, even tearing through materials that a sword has no business effortlessly cleaning in two. This ability allows the Savage Rose's wielder to count extra successes on the attack roll twice for the purposes of determining raw damage. {tl;dr it's a ripoff of Hungry Tiger Technique}
- Moonsilver Tattoo Artifact 2 (Hearthstone Bracers; +2L soak, +3DDV)
MERITS & FLAWS
Merits
Signature Style 2pts - Unpossible Brutality (She is known as the Butcher of Chiaroscuro for a reason. This is the cause. Generally speaking, this merit is not in effect - she tends to restrain herself to avoid drawing unwarranted attention. However, she is far from in perfect control of her emotions, and as she gets more and more into battle, or anytime the claw is out and in action, she makes full use of this ability)
Favored Weapon 2pt - Savage Rose (While Selene has had it for only a relatively short time, it is HER weapon, and she is more closely attached to it than nearly any human alive - except the one who gave it to her, of course. Then too, half the reason she is so attached to it is precisely -because- he gave it to her. The other half is that it's great for horribly butchering people.)
Flaws
Debt - 2pts (Selene owes the one who gave her Savage Rose for more than one reason - he's saved her life, inspired her, and of course, given her the Savage Rose)
Amnesia 1pt - (technically it's just a horrible long-term memory, but she likes to claim amnesia)
Unusual Appearance 1pt (weeaboo clothing: check. weeaboo clothing in a non-eastern setting: also check. like three swords all sheathed at her waist: check. fucking claw arm: not usually noticeable, but also check.)
Sterile 3pt (no babies for the crazy cat lady)
Known Anathema 1pt (it's not exactly a secret, since she worked for the Realm for over a decade - and while she generally stays out of trouble by staying on the move and not interfering with Realm business, she's still Anathema; even her old group would kill her if they managed to track her down.)
Intolerance 2pt (Lintha - take a wild guess as to why)
Nightmares 1pt (you'd have bad dreams too if most of your life had been a hurricane of blood and torture. and regardless of what she says or thinks, she's not dealing with it all that well)
STATISTICS
Join Battle: 6
Attack: Acc 20, Dmg 17L/4(P)
Soak: 18L/16B
Parry DV: 8
Dodge DV: 6
Mental PDV: 4
Mental DDV: 6
