[Silver Surfers] Dorissa Blackfish

[Arynne]

Motivation: Discover the meaning of freedom and teach it to others.


Notable Intimacies: Her family (Bittersweet Regret), Fletcher (Affectionate Respect), the ocean (Love), Luna (Gratitude), killer whales (Comradeship), those who remain in slavery (Hope).


Caste: No Moon


Spirit Shape: Orca


Anima: A dorsal fin jigs slowly across deep blue water


Tell: Shadows around her eyes

Spoiler

As in the dark of winter night


Our eyes seek dawn,


As in the bonds of bitter cold


The heart craves sun,


So blinded and so bound, the soul


Cries out to thee:


Be our light, our fire, our life,


Liberty!


In the Northern satrapy of Dehenna, only a few thousand inhabitants are free. Within their number, a few dozen free and exceptionally wealthy citizens own the rest of the population. Slaves work the fields and toil in the mines. More than that, though, all the scribes and clerks, merchants, artisans and managers are slaves too. They receive other rewards and privileges. They can own other slaves and property. They can earn money. They can even become wealthy. Yet, they are not in any way free.


When the skeletal ship came out of the fog, most of the people on the waterfront fled screaming or stood staring blankly at the corpse-pale pirates who came rushing to cut them down with axes stained by frozen blood. Dorissa, the plump, seemingly placid daughter of a clerk in the service of House Ledaal, did not. Instead, she lured two of the pirates away from her sister and brother, giving her younger siblings time to escape. When the pirates realized they had been tricked, they tried to drown “the fat cow”. They were surprised, to put it mildly, when she suddenly glowed with dark blue light and transformed into a killer whale. It was the last thing they were ever surprised by.


In the aftermath, the whale surfaced once, gazing sadly at her stunned friends and family, who had gathered at the dock. But as the hissing whispers of “Anathema!” began, she turned and swam away in the direction of the Western Ocean, vanishing quickly from sight.


So she hunted and explored from the frozen seas of the North to the warm lagoons of the South, swimming as much as three hundred miles in a day and a night. She met with more adventures than can be told, and narrowly escaped being caught by the Thousand Hungry Wings, and the Singers of the Deep, and the Children of Siakal, and she met all the untrustworthy ruffians that loaf up and down the seas, and the heavy polite fish, and the scarlet spotted scallops that are moored in one place for hundreds of years, and grow very proud of it.


Her mentor, Fletcher, taught her to follow the salmon and the herring along the under-sea banks; how to skirt the wrecks lying a hundred fathoms below water and dart like an arrow in at one hole and out at another as the fishes ran; how to dance on the top of the waves when the lightning was racing all over the sky, and wave her flukes politely to the stumpy-tailed Albatross and the Man-of-War Hawk as they went down the wind; how to jump five or six feet clear of the water, flukes close to the side and tail curved; to leave the flying fish alone because they are all bony; and how to take the shoulder-piece out of a shark at full speed ten fathoms deep. At the end of a year what Dorissa did not know about deep-sea fishing was not worth the knowing. And all that time she never set foot on dry ground.


She has lived among pods of whales and dolphins, and rookeries of seals, and the great seabird colonies that turn the cliffs white, among Realm serfs and Wyld barbarians, and she seeks always the thing her heart most desires -- a people who have discovered how to create a perfectly free, perfectly just society.


Yet she has not uncovered the secret…






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


Spirit Shape Attributes: Strength 12, Dexterity 4, Stamina 8


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


Virtue Flaw: Curse of the Humble Sloth


Abilities: Athletics 2 (Swimming +2), Awareness 2, Bureaucracy 1, Dodge 2, Integrity 2, Investigation 1, Linguistics (Native: Skytongue; Others: High Realm, Seatongue, Old Realm) 3, Lore 3, Martial Arts 2 (Orca Form +2), Occult 3, Resistance 3, Sail 2, Stealth 1, Survival 3


Backgrounds: Allies 2, Backing (Crossroads Society) 1, Contacts 2, Heart’s Blood 3, Mentor 2


Knacks --


Form Acquisition (Animal) : Towering Beast Shape


Shapeshifting Refinement: Hybrid Body Rearrangement, Internal Form Mastery


Charms --


Excellencies: Dexterity (2nd), Charisma (1st), Intelligence (1st), Perception (2nd), Stamina (2nd)


Appearance: Hide of the Cunning Hunter


Charisma: Dog-Tongue Method


Intelligence: Terrestrial Circle Sorcery


Perception: Eye of the Cat, Sense-Borrowing Method


Stamina: Hide-Toughening Essence


Spells --


Emerald Circle: Command the Beasts


Join Battle: 6


Attacks (Human) --


Punch: Speed 5, Accuracy 6, Damage 3B, Defense 7, Rate 3


Kick: Speed 5, Accuracy 5, Damage 6B, Defense 3, Rate 2


Clinch: Speed 6, Accuracy 5, Damage 3B, Defense - , Rate 1


Attacks (Orca) --


Ram: Speed 5, Accuracy 8, Damage 12B, Defense 9, Rate 3


Tail Smack: Speed 5, Accuracy 7, Damage 15B, Defense 5, Rate 2


Bite: Speed 6, Accuracy 7, Damage 12L, Defense - , Rate 1


Soak: 4B/2L


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


Dodge DV: 4/5 (Human/Orca)


Willpower: 6


Essence: 3


BPs: Essence 3 (10), Willpower 6 (1), Compassion 3 (1), Linguistics 3 (2), Lore 3 (2), Backing 1 (1), Heart’s Blood 3 (2)

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

Your character sheet lists 31 Ability points, but only 30 are accounted with BP and the base 25...


Who is your Mentor? who are the contacts? Who are your Allies/Ally?

 

[Arynne]

The 31 dots must have a mistake, I'll fix it.

Spoiler

Fletcher is a No Moon who treats flying as a sort of mystic endeavor, and has developed custom Charms and spells to improve the experience. He was once a youth from a tribe of fisher-folk, who was despised for his dreamy, impractical nature, till Luna called him, and the Silver Pact found him. He still is fascinated by dreams and riddles, and his intuitive powers are unerring when applied to them, but it is hard for more pragmatic individuals to follow his...circumventive logic.


He bonds with Dorissa chiefly over their shared joy in flight (he jokes with her about how she flies in the water while he swims in the sky). For those who don’t share his obsession, patience is crucial; one must nod and feign interest while he comments about cloud patterns and the landscape when seen from above. Eventually, though, he gets to the heart of the question.


Of course, Fletcher is somewhat elderly now (Dorissa isn’t sure how old he is and isn’t brave or rude enough to ask outright) and this contributes to his eccentricity of appearance and manner. In human form he resembles a stereotypical wizard: an old gray-bearded man with an elaborately carved staff -- but lacking a broad-brimmed pointy hat, his face is reddened and weathered by sun and wind. Fletcher is usually smiling and whistling to himself; there is often a feel of the comically absurd about his appearance. He can emerge from either serene contemplation or bloody battle chuckling contentedly.


Fletcher’s wisdom and accomplishments are respected within the Silver Pact, but many Lunars find him frustrating: his statements often seem to contradict themselves and his cackling laughter can be irritating as hell. His totem animal is, of course, a seagull.

​

Dorissa's Allies and Contacts largely come from her long sojourns among different cultures to learn their ways:






Silent and deadly hunters of the Northern seas, orcas range from 35-40 feet long and are air breathers, although they can submerge for long periods of time while pursuing prey. They seldom attack humans unless they are starving -- or their ire has been provoked.


Clever and sociable, orca pods band together against the natural and supernatural threats of the West, just as humans do. The pods are further organized by “matrilines” -- family groups, led by the eldest female, who is mother and grandmother and great-grandmother to all the rest. These matriarchs are larger and more intelligent than the average orca, and can potentially be reasoned with -- if one can communicate with them.


In her whale form, Dorissa is a loosely associated member of the -- well, their name doesn’t really translate well into any human language, but it could be roughly rendered as “the Children of the Open Sea”. Their numbers vary between 20 and 75, for unlike other orca tribes, who prize blood ties above all, the open sea orcas welcome new blood. And rightly so, for those who brave the far western waters must contend with pelagic dragons, siaka and the Wyld, and there is strength in numbers. Many solitary whales rest here from their travels, savoring the company, the safety and the easy availability of food before heading out on their journeys again.


Sometimes the orcas congregate in the hundreds, but those are temporary gatherings in order to mark some momentous event, or to do battle. The Children function as a collective Ally.






Whalemen and dolphinmen are common in the Far West, where they wage a vicious war for survival against the sharkmen. Although whalemen are more intelligent and capable of civilized behavior, these creatures cannot breed as rapidly as sharkmen and lack their bloodthirsty ferocity. To survive the ravages of their enemies, the whalemen follow a strict code of honor, truth and mutual aid. They avoid most humans, whom they regard as cowardly and deceitful.


The Brightwater Pod lives on the isolated island of Balatran in a large tainted area 500 miles West of the Neck. Because these orcamen breathe air and must spend time on land to give birth and craft tools and weapons, the Brightwaters are highly territorial and guard the location of Balatran with their lives. They normally treat any trespass into their territories as an attack, but show deference to aquatic Lunars, as they are the descendants of an ancient orca-totem Lunar who still communicates with his scattered offspring.


Once a year all the region’s pods meet, each year on a different pod’s island. Many songs are sung, telling how the Great Whale God sired them during the forgotten years, and of the deeds of heroes against the Wyld and the sharkmen. Only at the Whalemoot does mating takes place, and only with members of other pods, for the orcamen are rigidly exogamous. Children belong to their mother’s lineage; the orcamen’s dialect of Seatongue contains no word for “marriage”.


Leadership of a pod generally goes either to the eldest female or to the senior female of the eldest family line. The current matriarch of the Brightwater Pod is K!eeei, a woman of 60. She rules the pod firmly and justly, arbitrating disputes with an even hand and leading the defense during the three times they have come under attack from sharkmen. While she spares the lives of strangers who do not threaten or assault them, she makes sure the intruders are stripped of any items useful to the pod, and often has them beaten soundly to discourage return visits. She welcomes Dorissa’s help in defending the birthing beaches from sharks and siaka, however. K!eeei is calm in manner and stoic in bearing, but she still shows disfiguring scars from a siaka attack in her youth.






The people of the sea were created to have the best of both worlds, land and water. They could endure the great depths and never need to surface, or they could live on land without a moment’s difficulty. They spread across the waters of Creation in territories that nobody else could inhabit and fought back the tides of the Western Wyld with heroic determination. Like water, they are persistent, adaptable and enduring. Even now, with their greatest cities fallen, their people scattered and Creation viewing them as no better than Wyld mutants, they persevere.


The city of Oceanmouth lies in the deep waters where the White Sea meets the Great Western Ocean. It is a constant victim of great storm tides and nearby tribes of brutish pelagothropes. One small city cannot bar the pelagothropes from the White Sea or hope to hold them off for long, but they’re trying.


The city’s leader, Zannin Sea-Furrower, is young for his place, having been elected after he devised a stratagem to trap and kill a raiding party without a single seafolk casualty. He worries that his people expect him to repeat this miracle every time; he understands just how much luck was responsible for his victory.


His chief advisor is a thaumaturge, a master of most of the arts of Summoning and Warding, known as Jezath the Seeker for his willingness to acquire knowledge from any source, even land-dwellers. While this makes him more comfortable in the company of un-augmented humans and Exalted, it also leads to a certain…moral flexibility, especially with his people in such dire straits. Knowing that Zannin is growing desperate enough to accept help from any source, he is considering summoning and bargaining with a Second Circle demon. However, there are no Master-level texts in demon summoning anywhere in Oceanmouth; he needs to look further abroad. Jezath is planning a trip to the other surviving seafolk cities, ostensibly to find allies, in reality to visit some of the West’s sorcerous libraries.






The Old Man of the Sea dwells upon a coral atoll in the far Western Ocean, in a manse shaped like a giant barnacle. Those judged worthy to enter his home find it filled with the written history and lore of the West, from grimoires penned by famous magicians to passionate letters exchanged between lovers long dead. The Old Man guards his collection obsessively (despite having no use for most of it), but he has a soft spot for clever young women. He also fancies himself a rake. Those willing to play along with the old rascal can gain priceless bits of knowledge…if they can tolerate his heavy-handed flirtations. His naughty behavior conceals a good heart, however, and Dorissa has found him a trustworthy source of information.


In his true form, the Old Man of the Sea is a gigantic crab with two massive claws, a pair of smaller claws beneath, and many waving eyestalks that peer in all directions (including up skirts). He can also appear as a tanned and salty old fisherman; an elderly but still debonair man-about-town; or a swaggering, heavily-armed warrior. Also called the Lord of the Surf, the Old Man is a high advisor in the Ocean Father’s court, a fact that surprises those who have only seen his Falstaffian persona. He maintains his own retinue of small gods and elementals, mostly sly nymphs, gruff lobster- and crab-spirits, and a few minor deities of education and learning who serve him in return for access to his library.


In a few old religious texts surviving from the First Age, the Old Man is respectfully referred to as Bashixun, the Wise Crab.

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

As noted in other thread you guys had a base of 28 Ability dots... go use the BP however you want...

 

[Arynne]

*facepalms*

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

Backing (Silver Pact) or Backing (Crossroads Society) could be good. Or give her Intelligence 5, if you want. or Increase her Occult. There's plenty of options... up to you