[Lunar Fury] Worthy to Be Beloved

[Arynne]

Spoiler

The Bad Beginning


Jessamine’s life was drab and cold.


While the rest of her people were slim, free-moving, firm and brown, she was pale and dull. She was dreadfully clumsy -- by Haltan standards, at least -- and though she dutifully learned the basic woodcraft required to pass her survival test, she showed no enthusiasm for any of it. Other children teased her at school, and she responded by retreating into a dreamland. Fact was too dreary, so fantasy was the natural escape. Even if she didn’t have any real-life proof that love existed, she had faith.


She tried getting into acting, but stage fright crippled her. She tried her hand at writing music and poetry...but the inspiration just wasn’t there.


She was always alone. She didn’t feel comfortable in social settings, and nobody invites a sullen recluse into an interesting clique anyway. Every so often, she would fixate on somebody she thought might be The One and try pleasing them as much as she could; when it became obvious that they were not The One, she would quietly sever the ties and move on.


One moonlit night, though, everything changed.


The Second Breath


She had been hovering on the edges of things, as usual, wistfully watching a silver-haired youth she thought might be The One. When he slipped away from the festival, she followed him. Losing track of him for a few minutes, she was horrified to see him down on the ground...and the twisted shapes of hobgoblins emerging from the shadows between the trees. Heedless of her own safety, she scrambled down the ladder -- falling the last few feet -- and raced towards him, despairingly conscious of the chuckling raksha closing in. When he turned, smiling, to face her, she had just enough time to see he now sported heavy breasts and a pregnant belly, and glowed with silver light, before the Exaltation came upon her.


In one brief moment, Jessamine dreamed a thousand dreams of glory. She remembered soaring across the sky on wings that outpaced the falcon’s, and running through the forest faster than the swiftest deer. She saw herself clad in silver armor and slaying monsters, or leading thousands in worship as clouds of sweet blue smoke rose to Heaven. And always, always, she sensed another at her side -- sometimes a man, sometimes a woman -- blazing with cold white fire and surmounted by the image of a golden bird. She woke up still on the forest floor, but amazingly enough, there were no Fair Folk in sight. She could see alarmed faces peering down at her from above. She was shivering and sick to her stomach...but in her mind she was still soaring through the air, jubilant at her own beauty and strength, and when someone started lowering a basket down to her, she laughed.


Three nights after Jessamine’s Exaltation, a huge white falcon appeared in the sky over her hometown. When it glowed with silver light and took the form of a tall woman, the people knew why she was here. They had been expecting her.


To the Haltans, the Lunar Exalted are awesome but reclusive beings. Every so often the Changing Lady chooses someone to become one of her mighty servants, and that person departs into the wilderness, seldom to return. When they do, they are viewed with the same mixture of veneration and fear that beastmen, the Wyld-touched and gods receive. In Halta, those who are at once human, animal and beastman are honored, but it is an accepted fact that they no longer belong to the human world.


For Jessamine, her fear and sorrow at leaving the life she knew behind were small things compared to her joy at doing just that.


Jessamine -- now calling herself Worthy to Be Beloved -- has long since left behind her paleness and her plumpness, thanks to what the young Lunar wryly refers to as “the training from Hell”; though she has yet to approach her teachers’ power, she is a far cry from the listless wallflower she once was. Her voice has texture and power now, and the haunting tones of her flute bring tears to the eyes of hardened warriors.


As a mortal, Worthy had never found the true and nourishing love she longed for, but as a Lunar, it is her birthright. She eagerly listens for stories and rumors of the returning Solars as she awaits the arrival of the one the gods have ordained as her soul mate. Of course, she doesn’t know what gender her Solar mate is now, but what did that matter? If there is one thing that Worthy has always believed, it is that love has everything to do with the spirit and not with the body. And with her Changing powers, she can be anything her lover wants or needs. Anything...






Name: Worthy to Be Beloved


Caste: Changing Moon


Spirit Shape: Swan


Tell: Swansdown


Anima: A white swan on a blue lake, with a silver chain around its neck


Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 4, Stamina 3; Charisma 4, Manipulation 3, Appearance 4; Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3


Virtues: Compassion 3, Conviction 2, Temperance 2, Valor 2


Abilities: Athletics 2 (Flight +1), Awareness 2, Dodge 2, Integrity 2, Investigation 1, Linguistics 2 (Native: Forest-tongue; Others: Flametongue, Old Realm), Lore 2, Martial Arts 3 (Unarmed +2), Occult 1, Performance 3 (Flute +1), Presence 3, Resistance 2, Socialize 3, Stealth 1, Survival 3


Backgrounds: Artifact 1 (Breastplate), Artifact 2 (Hautbois), Heart’s Blood 2 (Wolf, falcon, fox, antelope, great horned owl, side-blotched lizard, deermouse, flicker, redback salamander), Mentor 3, Reputation 1, Solar Bond 3


Knacks --


Form Acquisition (Animal) : Humble Mouse Shape


Shapeshifting Refinement : Hybrid Body Rearrangement


War Form : Deadly Beastman Transformation (Feathers, Wings)


Charms --


Excellencies: Appearance (3rd), Dexterity (2nd), Charisma (1st)


Appearance: Perfect Symmetry


Charisma: Outworld-Forsaking Stance


Dexterity: Golden Tiger Stance


Stamina: Ox-Body Technique x3


Supernatural Martial Arts --


Dagger Wind Style:






Cost: 3m; Mins: Martial Arts 2, Essence 2; Type: Reflexive (Step 2)


Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious


Duration: Instant


Prerequisite Charms: None


Those who rely on the wind to carry their attacks to the martial artist find themselves sorely disappointed. A student of Dagger Wind Style first learns to make the air itself her ally. This Charm allows the practitioner to parry ranged attacks with a wing buffet without a stunt. The martial artist raises her Parry DV against such an attack by (Martial Arts/2).






Cost: 4m; Mins: Martial Arts 3, Essence 2; Type: Supplemental


Keywords: Combo-OK, Knockback, Obvious


Duration: Instant


Prerequisite Charms: None


As maneuverability is her greatest companion, the canny student quickly learns to isolate herself from her opponents. This Charm supplements a wing buffet. Should it inflict any damage, the opponent is knocked back (Dexterity + Martial Arts) yards, with effects identical to Heaven Thunder Hammer.


Join Battle: 5


Attacks (Human Form) --


Punch : Speed 5, Accuracy 10, Damage 2B, Defense 11, Rate 3


Kick : Speed 5, Accuracy 9, Damage 5B, Defense 7, Rate 2


Clinch : Speed 6, Accuracy 9, Damage 2B, Defense - , Rate 1


Attacks (War Form) --


Wing Buffet : Speed 5, Accuracy 11, Damage 7B, Defense 10, Rate 1


Kick : Speed 5, Accuracy 10, Damage 6B, Defense 8, Rate 2


Clinch : Speed 6, Accuracy 10, Damage 3B, Defense - , Rate 1


Soak: 7L/7B/6A (Moonsilver breastplate, +6L/4B, Hardness 2L/2B)


Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-1/-1/-1/-1/-2/-2/-2/-2/-2/-2/-4/Incapacitated


Dodge DV: 5


Willpower: 6


Essence: 3


Personal: 10/15


Peripheral: 17/36


Committed: 5


BPs: Stamina 3 (4), Willpower 6 (1), Martial Arts 3 (2), Linguistics 2 (2), Performance 3 (1), Presence 3 (2), Socialize 3 (2), Survival 2 (1), Survival 3 (1), Artifact 2 (2)

 

[Sherwood]

Another awesome character. Always impressive.

 

[Arynne]

Thank you!


MOONSILVER BREASTPLATE


Artifact 1

HAUTBOIS D'AMORE


Artifact 2

WIP -- works like the Unsurpassed Sanxian, perhaps with a specialty in invoking love?

 

[Arynne]

The Trials


Deposited in the Southeastern rainforest between two tribes of feuding barbarians, Jessamine quickly discovered that the nearby raksha freehold was planning to attack and wipe out both. She also surmised that the Fair Folk were manipulating the second tribe, sending them visions and voices that purported to come from the gods. Befriending the young chief of one tribe (and learning of his secret love for the sister of the other tribe’s leader) she finally succeeded in persuading them of the raksha threat. Meanwhile, she used her anima banner and shapechanging gifts (drinking her first Heart’s Blood in the process) to convince the other tribe that she was a goddess…and to coax them at midnight, heavily armed, to the clearing outside the first tribe’s stockade, where the tribesmen were already assembled, likewise armed to the teeth. Before either side could cry foul, the Fair Folk swarmed into the clearing...to be met with armed warriors where they had expected sleeping prey. Both tribes took heavy casualties, but the raksha were utterly annihilated.


In the aftermath Jessamine persuaded the two decimated tribes decided to combine into one, ending a hundred-year war. After the ceremony -- which included the marriage of the young leader to the girl he loved -- she returned to the Silver Pact.

 

[Arynne]

DREAMS OF THE FIRST AGE

“Guenever could not search for the Grail. She could not vanish into the English forest for a year’s adventure with the spear. It was her part to sit at home, though passionate, though real and hungry in her fierce and tender heart…the great hawks, the hounds, heraldry, tournaments -- these were for Lancelot. For her, unless she felt like a little spinning or embroidery, there was no occupation -- except Lancelot. So we must imagine the Queen as a woman who had been robbed of her central attribute. As she grew to her difficult age, she did strange things. She was even to be suspected of poisoning a knight. She even became unpopular. But unpopularity is often a compliment -- and Guenever, though she lived tempestuously and finally died in an unreconciled sort of way -- she was not cut out for religion, as Lancelot was -- was never insignificant. She did what women do, on the whole right royally, and at the moment, in the tub with the lioncels before her, she was busy doing it.”


-- T.H. White, The Once and Future King


Basically, that was Worthy’s predecessor during the Era of Dreams, a Lunar trying to pass the time in a world “largely devoid of an obvious need for their presence.” She was beautiful, sanguine, hot-tempered, demanding, impulsive, acquisitive, charming. Like Guenever, she had a duty-minded, conscientious husband, kind to her always, if a little obsessed with his personal projects, and whom she probably loved more deeply than she consciously realized. Like Guenever, she also had a paramour, a brilliant man grappling with his own internal demons, to bring her the excitement she felt her marriage was lacking in this incarnation, a man she adored passionately but could never have lived with for long. Like Guenever, she was childless, “a shore without a sea,” not by biology, but by her husband’s and her own lack of time. That was what broke her in the bitter end, when she knew their sea was to be left empty for ever.


T.H. White observes that Guenever “lived in warlike times, when the lives of young people were as short as those of airmen in the twentieth century. In such times, the elderly moralists are content to relax their moral laws a little, in return for being defended. The condemned pilots, with their lust for the life and love which is probably to be lost so soon, touch the hearts of young women, or possibly call up an answering bravado. Generosity, courage, honesty, pity, the faculty to look short life in the face -- certainly comradeship and tenderness -- these qualities may explain why Guenever took Lancelot as well as Arthur.”


For that First Age Lunar, I like to think it was courage more than anything else -- the courage to take and give from the heart, while there was time. She had the kind of courage about which great poetry is written. She gathered her rosebuds while she might, but she only gathered two of them, which she kept till the very end, and those two were the best.