Virara Wakuwa
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Virara Wakuwa
✿ Scattering Apricot Blossoms ✿
Contents
|
✿ RACE Plainsfolk Lalafell ✿ GENDER Female ✿ NATIONALITY None (Doma in Exile) ✿ AGE & NAMEDAY 18-19, Unknown ✿ ORIENTATION Indeterminate ✿ MARITAL STATUS Single |
✿ CURRENT RESIDENCE Neverfar's Tavern, Mist ✿ HEIGHT & WEIGHT 3 fulm, 7 ilm, 52 ponze ✿ BUILD Toned, slim (For a Lala) ✿ Guardian Llymlaen ✿ ALIGNMENT Chaotic Neutral ✿ TRUE NAME Unknown |
[edit]
BACKGROUND MATERIAL
RP LIMITS
A P P E A R A N C E
At a glance, one would typically first notice her height. Still growing and scarcely more than a few inches away from 4', Virara marks among the tallest and leanest of her species. While easily lost in a crowd of mixed Spoken, she carries a statuesque impression among other Lalafell. Raven hair, dyed haphazardly to resemble Doman black, done up in pigtails frames a round, immaculate face disinclined to expression. Her skin carries the healthy flush of frequent exertion, and her body bears many faded scars, mostly upon the arms and trunk, forgotten marks left by an endless cycle of training and hardship. Compared to other Lalafell, Virara's ears are rather smallish and soft to the touch. Her enigmatic looks lend her a unapproachable air that diverges sharply from the gregarious and welcoming nature of her kin. Her stride is long (relatively speaking) and stable, her posture firm, as befitting a seasoned martial artist. Not a single breath is out of place, no unnecessary movements are made. When idle she becomes so still as to be easily mistaken for a doll, her breathing and blinking the only trace of life. Virara has a demeanor of severity so intense that despite her size, the sheer 'wrongness' inherent in her presence can be oppressive enough to elicit fear.
Her eyes are an asymmetrical red, similar in shade to ruby. Virara's left eye appears slightly brighter than the right; this is due to partial paralysis of the iris, which is permanently dilated due to an old injury. The eye is frozen permanently in a withering, bestial glare, but few, if any, ever observe this characteristic, for the girl refuses to be seen by anyone without her characteristic eye patch. Virara's visible eye is rarely much more inviting. Sharp and glistening with unspoken intent, Virara's transfixing eye struggles to contain an undercurrent of invisible energy. At times it is dull and muted like brackish water. At times it is hungry like the eye of a jackal. Set in a flat affect that seldom changes, that eye is the only point of escape for what fugitive traces of emotion lie prisoner within Virara's eternal stoicism.
Virara's voice rarely raises above a murmur or whisper, displaying a breathy, soft tone that is easy on the ears and even more easily overlooked. However that same voice is capable of monstrous force when yelling, far out of proportion to her size.
|
|
|
|
|
|
P E R S O N A L I T Y
A girl apart from any culture, whether it is the Doman Far Eastern one she was raised in, that of Eorzea, Hyur or her own kin, Virara is a perpetual foreigner. At times the sharp hunger within her endless glaring is more Beastkin than Spoken, and her wired, tense posture always seems one step away from pouncing. Even at her most placid moments, Virara is fervently alive, a dynamic energy circulating beneath her tranquil surface.
Virara's first language was force. Having communicated through her fists since she was old enough to walk, a lifetime of hardship has left Vira a profoundly stunted, socially incomplete being. Unable to read the mood, explosively brusque, and prone to indiscreet staring, Virara blunders her way through conversation with the grace of an Aurochs. Outwardly at least, this doesn't weigh heavily upon the girl. Others are not necessary. Her Master is the only human connection she's truly been able to enjoy for any length of time, and between them lies a nebulous morass of blind worship and murderous animosity. Perhaps because of this chaotic river of sentiments, Virara seeks to distill all emotions into an indistinct, uniform fuel. Growing up, feelings were merely a burnable resource, consumed to lend strength to her blows. Precisely what she felt was never a question to her, but rather how hard she felt it.
It is never certain whether Virara is truly capable of, or merely imitating, sentiments like compassion or love. Such feelings were in low demand for most of her years, and they perplex and irritate her in their complexity. When she finds herself thinking to an unnecessary degree, Virara always seeks to simplify the process to stimulus and reaction, the fabled paradise of the "no-mind" state of mushin sought by many martial artists in its myriad forms and names. However, this intense focus can lead to inflexibility and obstinence. Combined with her general social ignorance and almost child-like curiosity, Virara can give the impression of being quite dull.
Though she is trained to exercise an exacting, machine-like level of self control, one look at the black thirst radiating from her visage in combat speaks more than she has in her entire sentient life. To pursue the path of the fist is to exist, to think, to breathe; all else is vanity, an illusion meant to lead the student astray. The Master's teachings are absolute. Yet even after being 'civilized,' a feral undercurrent courses deep within her, whether calm or galvanized. She hungers both literally and figuratively, seeking new stimuli to reject again and again as "vulgar," her term for knowledge not passed down from the immaculate being and absolute foe that is her Master. Despite the negative appellation, she seems to appreciate utility in all its forms; it's simply a denotation of the difference between infallible truth and fallible principle, to Virara.
Virara is courageous to such an extreme that one could be forgiven for thinking she has forgotten her own mortality, but she is shrewd rather than brash, and often is merely redirecting fear into action. Still, she loses her nerve when it comes to supernatural things (Because she is too much of a materialist and fears ghosts which she cannot punch.) and typhoon/hurricane weather. (A faint memory from before her childhood on the Necklace.) Her overly literal and realist way of thinking also makes her more or less a complete dunce when it comes to the magic arts.C O M B A T
Virara's first language was the fist. Trained by both the predators of the wild and a "monster" whose path is littered with over a thousand corpses, to judge her by her size is to court instant death.
|
|
|
S K I L L S
Her monomaniacal focus on training has allowed what few peaceful skills Virara possesses to atrophy, but she's diligent if little else. If only she could stop breaking things...
|
|
|
I N T E R A C T I O N S
These rumors do not necessarily need to be accurate, or even true. They are rumors, after all~! Use with care. ◢ Common Rumors - Easily overheard.
◢ Uncommon Rumors - A little more difficult to hear.
◢ Rare Rumors - Very rarely overheard.
◢ Player Character Rumors - Feel free to add rumors of your own!
|
|
H I S T O R Y
Childhood
- Orphaned at sea by a typhoon, a tiny Lalafell child was cast away in a worm-eaten barrel to the shores of a coral atoll halfway between Othard and Eorzea. Murky colors and sounds, viewed through an opaque haze in her deepest memories, were all that remained of her past. Hunger agonized her and thirst drove her half mad. She forgot her name, her family's faces, even her old language. Now nearly feral, the tiny girl fought fiercely to survive at no older than six. Only through an uncanny strength and copious luck did the castaway live for more than a year. Tiny and alone, everything and later, everyone, was a potential threat.
- At the same time the insignificant speck found another insignificant speck to eke out an existence upon, Garlemald solidified its powerful claim on its holdings in Othard. What once was a proud nation controlled by a warrior nobility now genuflected before a new master, and rebellion already was already seething beneath placating faces and bowed heads. Many refugees fleeing oppression retreated from their continent, particularly from Doma. What started as an unremarkable atoll visited only by the occasional smuggler gradually grew into a shanty town full of the runoff from Garlemald, and from there expanded into a series of small fishing, trade and supply communities tailored to the cultural needs primarily of those from Othard and Doma. Cities were sometimes more water than earth and stone canals rose up seemingly out of nowhere. Incredible masses of Doman refugees poured in; their numbers would nearly double years later as the rebellion began and ended almost as abruptly, and the former Garlean territory was consumed in a worldly hell.
- The young Lalafell had become a stranger to civilization. Tentatively entering the territory of the intruders, she secreted herself into the remote alleys and canal ways of the settlement, soon to become a tiny, unremarkable dot named Llymlaen's Necklace on Eorzean maps. The girl stole and mugged her way into a higher calorie diet, and grew stronger. Soon she could easily beat and rob any refugee children and relieve them of what little food kept them from starvation. She had no conscience any more than a wild animal, and lacked the ability to recognize the harm she did to others, and as a result grew stronger and bolder, eventually even attacking weakened adults. Her body was laced with a wiry strength that seemed out of proportion with her tiny figure. Sometimes she beat refugees, if they resisted fiercely, until they stopped moving. On her small island, she became hated and was driven out of town whenever they caught sight of her. But neither could they capture the girl.
- After a few close calls, she became semi-civilized, learning their language through observing from the shadows. She knew she needed some basic ability to communicate as the intruders became more numerous and their towns grew larger. She smuggled herself from island to island by offering food she stole, never staying in one place more than a night. Eventually, the locals grew wary of her once more at somewhere around ten or twelve years old; she'd lost count long ago. By that point in time, Virara had become a savagely clever child, as well as possessing abnormal size even compared to fully grown Lalafell, with strength and agility beyond that which her tiny frame would suggest. She was a threat even to hale adults on a good day, and was only growing stronger, and hungrier.
Captivity
- One day, the pickings had been slim. The children hid from her bullying, and unable to mug or steal anything from the Domans' store rooms and fish pots, she became acutely aware of her hunger and desperation set in. She set eyes on a tanned, grim woman missing an eye, sitting in a rude street front tea shop. Her build was strong, her posture confident, and she stunk of blood. The way she carried herself, and the grisly tattoos on her arm would have normally been warning enough to tell her to keep a wide berth from the stranger, but she was too famished to notice. She gambled. With an eye missing, she was doubtlessly blind on that side and pickpocketing should have been easy.
- After slipping her hand into the woman's robe around her waist, where all the Domans kept their coin purses, the urchin abruptly found herself on the ground, beaten raw, her arm numb and unmoving. The woman bore down upon her. "Steal from me, would you? I've never met a child so eager to die. I shan't oblige you." Carried off to no objections by the locals, the girl found herself bound and collared in a drafty house redolent of sandalwood and incense on the biggest island in the Necklace.
- The woman who held her prisoner her stated simply that since the girl conducted herself like an animal she would be treated like one, and thus was given the epithet "Wakuwa," which in the stranger's peculiar dialect from an island near Doma, meant simply "pig," in reference to her build and size.
- In the hellish half-year she spent in captivity, she initially took every attempt possible to escape, but in all cases found herself thwarted and beaten horribly. Eventually her rage over boiled. She had thrashed a few refugees hard in her years, sometimes until they stopped moving, but it was the first time she wanted to do so purely out of malice. The woman seemed aware of this, and one night opened the store room door to the small, stuffy chamber "pig" was tied up in.
- "You hate me, don't you?"
- Though she was smaller than her, the girl's violent nature, contrasting with her inhumanly focused glare, provoked a flinch in the older woman. With every reckless blow the captive girl threw, futile as it was, her eyes took on a quality the Doman lady had seen before in shark infested waters off the coast of the Necklace. The essence of void, entered before the fatal bite, was the state of innocent brutality known only to a beast. When Virara's eyes grew wide with rage, their dark pupils seemed to eclipse everything sentient inside her. Perhaps it was this inner nature that the coldly smiling woman resonated with.
- "Enough to kill me, huh?"
- A few wild, reckless swings and desperate clawing at the room's dirty floor were answer enough.
- The woman hunkered down, nursing a long, smoking pipe, as she was wont to do.
- "You're not the first. Many men and women came before you, and all have failed. I was stronger, better than them. And you, a bloody pig, have the gall to think you've got what it takes to retire me?"
- Clearly interested, the woman undid her collar... and immediately pinned the flailing child to the floor, foreseeing her obvious assault before it came.
- "Only a Spoken can kill me. Spoken have names. A pig has no use for one. I'll grant you a name fit for a Lalafell."
- Combining some haphazard syllables in a manner roughly resembling her race's typical rhyming name scheme, Virara was born anew as a person. The name was meaningless and odd to the ears of her kind, but her keeper didn't care. The woman, who demanded Virara merely refer to her as Sensei, underwent a dramatic metamorphosis in how she regarded the girl. What once was arbitrary, vicious behavior for no other purpose other than reprisal or amusement, focused itself into an intense reformation of her character. She took on the Doman language and lifestyle, as taught to her by Sensei in between puffs on her long pipe. Virara was no more than a servant, but she ate better than she had in years, often times several magnitudes more than Sensei herself. Though Sensei knew she was hated by literally everyone in every settlement in the Necklace, she sent her out regardless on errands, and Virara often had to find and pay merchants and traders for foodstuffs and goods as secretly as possible.
- With time Virara grew hale and strong, and when obedient, Sensei didn't harm her, though she was casually dismissive and rarely spoke to her conversationally. While Spoken now, Sensei still did not regard Virara as anything approaching an equal. She demanded more from Virara, and Virara obliged, giving up her life of theft and violence for one of constant study and dutiful toil. Her personality radically changed, molded as if she were an infant again in the hands of her watchful master. There were times when Virara forgot that she had meant to kill this woman altogether, and her seething hatred slowly evaporated into a mist of forgotten grievances.
The Labyrinth Fist
- Virara began to exhibit an unnatural constitution. She was constantly hungry and required more food than Sensei initially intended to give her, eventually forcing the woman to train Virara to fish for herself. Vira helped Sensei plant a small orchard in the uncleared land behind her home, and they dried apricots to save them for the spring.
- In addition to this strange metabolism, Virara seemed to have no real grasp of her own strength, which was already disproportionate to her size. When chopping wood, Vira would often hew the logs straight through, and leave deep rend marks in the stone beneath. Her arms would be red and sore afterward, and sometimes even needed medical attention. Sensei believed that something in Vira's mind was shattered from since she was castaway, transcending exhaustion and pain, but her servant didn't fully understand anyway.
- Vira's unnatural constitution piqued Sensei's interest once again. "You've become Spoken now, Virara. Far from the pig you once were. An animal does not kill out of hatred, nor for some flimsy concoction of 'reasoning.' You recognize a distinction between right and wrong, a quality most Spoken either possess or claim to. Which applies to you, I don't have a care for. A thinking being has the ability to weigh the life of another in her hands. Do you wish to become fully Spoken, with all that truly entails?"
- From that day forward, something in the woman's eyes changed. Virara could tell, merely by looking at her, that Sensei had recognized her. No longer a servant or an animal, she was a true student.
- "Watch yourself, brat," Master warned her, "For the very instant I deem you a failure is the instant I stop your heart."
- Sensei was the inheritor of a style of combat from Doma, compiled from many nations' martial arts long before their nation was formed, long before Garlemald and the occupation. This style was Shichisei Meikyuuken, or the Seven Star Maze Fist. She had left for reasons she wouldn't divulge during the early years of the Rebellion. In her own words, it was a method of fighting, unarmed or armed, that would render its masters either a god or demon. This sounded like an excellent tool to kill her master with, so she agreed outright. Such was the reasoning she provided herself consciously, but Virara felt an unfamiliar, rising sensation in her chest when her Sensei gazed at her more softly than before. Her face often began making a faint expression alien to her, the corners of her lips curving upward. The feeling was good, though she scarcely understood what it meant.
- The training was harsh, almost as much so as the mistreatment she endured during her early stay with Sensei. Five years were spent in enhanced study; both her civilizing and fighting training became feverishly intense. Master's method of instruction was merciless to the point of insanity, and countless times her new student courted instant death simply by sparring with her. Virara learnt of foreign languages other than Doman and how to cook for herself at the same time she was shattering iron spheres with her palms and cutting down orchard trees with her forearms. Eventually Virara was honed into a fist fighter of prodigious skill. A natural, her abnormal muscle power and hyperactive metabolism meshed keenly with the explosive, lethal blows of the style. Meikyuuken was a direct style, in comparison to its convoluted name, but perhaps its simplicity belied a more subtle insidiousness. Even the most innocent of testing blows could easily transition to a fatal hit. Its guards were deflections and strikes at the same time. A seemingly linear step in fact involved countless subtle curving movements and changes in speed. Economy of movement, a strong defense, and mythril-like core body conditioning were its areas of focus, on top of penetrating defenses and ending the fight in a single blow. With time, Virara could slay next week's dinner (The rare, expensive aldgoat not common on the Necklace) with a single blow to the forehead, the thickest part of its skull. Prodigy was a term oft used and rarely deserved, but in some sense it did apply to her.
- In time Sensei also conversed more with her student. She told of Doma's history and its culture, the war with Garlemald. She mentioned in passing that she once had a family, and that she was the only student of the style left. Sensei expressed a disgruntled hatred of both Garlemald *and* Doma, and stated in vague terms that her nation "betrayed" her, but in what way she never said, and she only spoke of the matter when thoroughly drunk. Sometimes Virara could her her master praying alone outside in the grove at night. The list of names she prayed for was long. It soon became her lullaby.
- The Calamity came and went for Virara. Unlike most, it was not a happening of significance in her life. As with everything, the inhabitants of the Necklace merely adapted. Their remote location helped protect them, slightly, from the wrath of the cataclysm. Though some died in the horrible storms and massive waves, both Virara and her master escaped unscathed, though they lost their home and had to live amongst the locals in their new floating raft and boat community. Much of the landmass was submerged, but the Necklace was part of the sea and its inhabitants were hardy people. Virara became accustomed to the steady rock of ships and boats beneath her feet, soon beginning to find dry land unnatural.
- The two increased in strength together as summers and winters passed like migratory birds. Eventually, Sensei's past in Doma caught up to her. Often she would leave to walk along the piers and canal ways late at night to deal with 'urgent business.' On rare occasions she would leave the islands entirely for days on end. She often came back disheveled and scratched up. Sensei's excuse was that she fell down, drunk, which Virara typically believed because she was very much addicted to rice wine, but eventually the excuses stopped flowing and the injuries became more severe. It appeared not all of the past she'd left behind in occupied Doma wanted to be forgotten.
- One night, a man dressed in black and wearing curious weapons greeted Virara as she rose groggily from her sleep to relieve herself. A desperate struggle ensued, in which Virara's life nearly ended, if not for Sensei's intervention. The killer was obscenely skilled, and quickly had even her Master on the defensive, but he hadn't counted on Virara breaking his knee in twain from behind. When the assassin reeled in pain, Virara simply did as she'd done with the aldgoats before. It ended quickly. A muddy, dark film seemed to cross the iris of her eyes as she locked gazes with her Sensei. Something lay there in her Master's single eye, something nostalgic and painful, a sense of agonizing recognition. That brought Vira back to reality, but before the significance of what she'd done set in:
- "Virara, your training, as it has been until now, is over. You're not ready to face me and kill me yet, not until you've inherited the art from me fully."
- Days later, Sensei prepared a satchel full of supplies, some rugged traveling clothes, and a pair of bone hora, meant solely to protect Vira from her own freakish strength, and told her to go to Eorzea, as a test of worthiness to begin learning the succession techniques of Shichisei Meikyuuken. Told to seek out a man that Sensei supposedly crossed paths with in an arena years ago, Virara set out on a trade vessel bound for Ul'Dah's bay of Dha'Yuz, hunting for the man known as "Holyfist" to challenge him. But Virara did not leave without a final, taxing "gift" from her exacting Sensei...
The Power to Slay
- Arriving in Eorzea, Virara was immediately beset by a suffusion of sounds and sights utterly alien to her. Ul'dah was dry and teeming with people, the marketplaces overflowing with goods Virara could scarcely imagine in her time on the Necklace. Immediately she began setting out to find the Holyfist and crush him, in accordance to her Master's wishes, but her lack of physical strength after the woman's crippling acupressure technique left Virara feeling a sense of vulnerability and frailty hitherto unknown to her. Hamon did not take the Lalafell girl seriously and instead set her about the Pugilist's Guild attending to menial tasks and doing strength training. Virara assumed that Hamon was pitying her, or felt she was unworthy of a match, humiliating the girl. Hamon for his part may have felt she was pushing herself too hard, or just wanted free labor.
- In any case, Virara would eventually get her wish to face Hamon in a match, but as a method of rehabilitating the aged warrior after events Virara was not privy to reignited his fighting spirit. This fulfilled Virara's obligation to her master. In her short time as a member, Virara spoke little with other pugilists and absorbed tremendous knowledge of the typical Ul'dahn hand to hand combat styles with typical ease, but the culture of the locals remained bewildering to her.
- One day, in the Quicksand, Virara met a tiny boy. Having never spoken to or known another of her kind before, Virara engaged him as awkwardly as could be conceived. This was Chachanji Gegenji, a swordsman training to become a hero. Idealistic and naive in the extreme, Virara initially found "Chagenji" curious. His name was hard to say, his stature was small despite his fairly athletic frame, and he had the awkward air of a cowardly runt, the kind Virara used to pummel on the islands. But when she looked at his earnest, well-meaning gaze, something hot and fearsome boiled within her. This was a boy who endured hardship that did not even compare to her own; he knew suffering but felt it was something others could be saved from indefinitely. It was unacceptable to Virara that he could maintain such a gilded impression of the world around him, ignorant of her own limited experiences and worldview.
- Though initially appreciative of Chachanji's attempts to befriend her and help her adjust to Eorzean culture, his peaceful attitude and heroic tendencies perplexed the comparatively merciless and hard-hearted Virara. Her relationship with him grew more and more tense, and with time Chachanji's presence in her mind became overwhelming. Every waking thought was of how he vowed never to take a life needlessly, and his boundless confidence in his ability to protect others close to him. Virara only understood the strength necessary to kill.
The Power to Save
- This eventually culminated in a furious duel in Thanalan, in which Virara prematurely exerted her strength, despite still being crippled, against a reluctant but determined Chachanji. Meikyuuken roared loudly that day, with her forms in weakened but prominent use. Such a display could hardly go unnoticed. Though she shattered his armor and nearly killed him outright, Chachanji cemented himself as a true warrior by being the first person to stand up after one of Virara's blows, outside of her own Master. For the first time, Virara understood that the intensity of emotion she felt towards Chachanji was respect, not hate. This was the 'power to protect,' to save others, that Virara had failed to grasp. To prioritize the survival of another being was inconceivable to a girl who struggled to survive from birth. That personality, and that line of thinking, began to quickly enthrall her. A stranger to happiness, Virara felt the odd sensation again, much as she had once her Master allowed her to take up their art.
- Her sense of closeness with Chachanji deepening, she allowed her first friend, and the first boy she'd ever known, to guide her to a more tame state, wherein she did not challenge anyone she found strong enough to be worthwhile to a duel, and could interact with Eorzeans more normally. She met others such as Warren and Sei Castille, who trained Chachanji and thus earned interest from Virara quickly. Ququki Quki, another Lalafell, amazed the ignorant Virara with her knowledge of aether. She met Dren Gonne, another boy with a similar background to her own, and a feral streak she understood all too well. With time, however, it was no longer sufficient for Virara to live out of the Quicksand as a boarder. While she made money from time to time working odd jobs out of the guild, and as an unnervingly destructive extra hand in Momodi's kitchen, Virara wished to see more of Eorzea, and to have a solid base from which to stage those endeavors.
A Place to Rest
- Determined not to become reliant on her new acquaintances, Virara trained herself to the limit, traveling across the land from each great city to fight dangerous fauna, traverse hazardous terrain and bolster her stamina through more frequent cooking. With time her old strength returned, though her ability to perform the techniques of her art still seemed limited. But the lifestyle of drifting from inn to inn, sometimes sleeping in alleys or under the stars as she did before she met Master, was draining, not to mention lonely. It was a fact that Virara herself would never admit, but she felt keenly the distance between Eorzea and the Necklace. Sometimes she would sit for hours, watching the surf lap the shores of La Noscea in utter silence. Other times she would train, perform long and short kata, almost hoping a watchful eye over the horizon would find her, even if her islands were far from that horizon in the other direction.
- On an excursion to train in Mist, Virara came across Memeli Meli and Chachanji, who had recently joined the association "Coral Sea." Over time, Virara's visits to Mist became more frequent, and her friendship with the other two deepened. Memeli in particular was a strange girl, full of good humor and warmth, whose behavior differed greatly from Virara's despite the similarity in their ages, and Virara began to consider for the first time if her own upbringing wasn't abnormal in comparison to her new Eorzean friends. Virara also noticed that the way she tended to focus on an opponent with all-encompassing attention when angry seemed to happen to her around Chachanji often, even when she was calm, but remained ignorant and thought little of the strange feeling.
- Virara eventually signed on with Coral, though the loose association and lack of direction in such a free-spirited group confused the girl. She boards with Memeli and Chachanji, as she was already practically a resident before joining due to her homelessness. For the first time, Virara had found a place she could consider home outside of that waterlogged, odorous longhouse in the Necklace. Yet the image of her Master still remained forefront in her mind. Could she maintain the power she owed her benefactor? With the softness of her new lifestyle, could she slay her Master when their fated time of confrontation finally arrived? Virara seemed convinced that would be impossible, especially after a humiliating loss (By her perception) in a friendly duel against Memeli, for which she admonished herself mercilessly inside.
- She resumed her training with an obsessive vigor, incorporating new knowledge of Aether and Eorzean culture into her education. When Virara focused on moving her body and training her physique, she could not think deeply. When she was free of deep, irrelevant thoughts, she didn't need to feel unease. Something about her new friendships, the triumvirate she had formed with her Coral companions, was eating away at her, but with her mind empty as it was, Virara could not perceive it even with the slightest of awareness. She understood she was frustrated with something, but what it was she could not begin to describe. Confronting her feelings, she resolved to allow herself to become closer to her "first boy" and "first girl" friends, but feared the worst; that her presence in their relationship would disrupt the accord they shared.
- She also began to train to cook in a manner befitting sane people, to make herself more useful to her new home and not frighten the others with her martial culinary practices.
Bloody Roots
- After a day at the Grindstone, Virara, Memeli and Chachanji returned home. Virara, more or less a vagrant with no address nor any relations outside of acquaintances and her Master, received a small package in the mail. Upon opening it, the grisly visage of a severed pig's head greeted her, along with a cryptic poem in Doman. Thus did begin a long series of harassments and a difficult investigation to find the sender. At times watching from parts unseen, Virara could feel her stalker draw near, and her highly honed instinct became a double-edged sword sharp enough to cut herself on, straining her relationships at the house and wearing her composure thin. After a traumatizing experience over dinner, where Virara quite unexpectedly found 'the eyes' upon her, she resolved to hunt down the stalker and exact retribution. The knowledge of her childhood name suggested the enemy was someone close to her, or had watched her for years.
- When in groups with the rest of her free company, Virara was safe from the prowling terror, and thus was able to assist Chachanji in taking down his ambitious but highly disturbed older brother. She also assisted Memeli in seizing back her very face from a malevolent spirit, whom Virara never quite forgave even after she indicated a desire for just punishment, and demonstrated Memeli's guilt. Her closeness with Memeli, Chachanji, and others of the company and outside, such as Jancis Milburga and Flickering Ember, grew as well. It became clear that though Virara did not put much stock in what she felt, that did not mean she felt nothing. Gifted with a pair of peach blossom earrings and tortoise shell hora by her first friends, she felt a compulsion to be near them; a desire that they never stray far from her. It was unfamiliar, but pleasant.
- That was why when Virara was taken by surprise, paralyzed with a neurotoxin and maimed by metal wires at the hands of her foe in Summerford at the final leg of their investigation, she came to believe that those same bonds had made her vulnerable and distracted. Faced fully with the extent of her unpreparedness, only the timely intervention of Virara's allies in Coral allowed her to make it out of her foe's clutches. The stalker, who called himself, or herself, Tsuchigumo, demonstrated that it not only had watched Virara, it has spied upon the others for some time, and clearly had some connection to her Master. A combatant of uncanny ability, it put Coral's rescue party to the test, but they ultimately triumphed, taking one of its arms. What sort of hideous truths lay behind the assailant's smiling, cordial Doman mask? Judging from the path of disappeared persons Tsuchigumo seemed to leave in its wake, it could be nothing a sane mind would willingly engage with.
- Virara, however, had only one truth to glean from Tsuchigumo; that for all her strength and determination, she was wholly unprepared to face and kill her Master. Unhinged to a certain extent by her experiences in the cave behind Woad Whisper Canyon, Virara began to train like a girl possessed, straining her injured body to its limits, the phantom wires still binding her inside the mind. Only the increased pressure of her allies delivered Virara from irreparable damage, at perhaps the expense of her pride.
- Tsuchigumo was not alone, however. Among Gogonji's Khamja organization, two others who seemed connected to Tsuchigumo had emerged, all wearing the Doman Noh theater masks and bearing unique and deadly skills. These disloyal subordinates seemingly abandoned Gogonji to his fate, their treachery only exceeded by the cryptic nature of their true plan. Were they acting independently? Did they value one another as close allies, or loathed one another as rivals working towards some undefined objective? Very little made sense, and each clue grew more befuddling than the last.
- No sooner than Virara had almost fully recovered from her maiming, she was confronted by yet another threat; an unnatural power flowed through her friend, Memeli, threatening not only her life, but the continent itself through the machinations of a primal-like being. Her own demeanor grew darker and more unstable; a powerful compulsion took root at the back of her head, the emotions behind her friendship driving Virara to unhealthy obsession with dragging her friend back from the brink. Her desire to deliver Memeli from her predicament bordered on madness. Perhaps she had never been fully sane to begin with, given who raised her.
- Though the incident was resolved, Memeli was left catatonic and drained. Virara stayed by her bedside like a loyal servant until exhaustion claimed her against her will, night after night, only stopping to train herself to up to the point of breaking. When she questioned herself, which she was loath to do, Virara had no answers for why someone other than Master mattered so deeply. When the time came for Virara to face the creature's new host, Stefan Delumiere, she held nothing back. The result was a single strike that seemed to rend reason itself asunder for a split second, a sublime art that Virara seemed unaware of even as she released it. This was the crystallization of her undiluted malevolent intent given flesh, a subconsciously concocted ars magna. Whether it was something her Master granted her, or a product of her unhealthy mind, Virara did not know and did not care. She'd "expressed her displeasure" in her original language to the false primal. If Memeli recovered or not would be a matter of time, and fate, but that moment where she struck Stefan down, Virara for the first time understood an emotion within her implicitly; a rage born of concern for a precious person, uncontrolled and dominating in its power. It was unlikely, even as Virara recovered her composure after the battle, that she would ever truly be the same.
- ■ RPG Style Stats: These are just for fun, and give a vague impression of what she is skilled at. [This FATE-14 sheet] is for use with events requiring the roll-based system.
| Attributes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Strength |
|
P.Defense |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dexterity |
|
M.Defense |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Martial Prowess |
|
Intelligence |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Magic Affinity |
|
Luck |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
M I S C E L L A N E O U S
|
Design and Influence Notes
|
- ■ Do: Walk up, tell, pretty much anything! The eyepatch is the symbol of my burning commitment to rp! Or it would be, I'm trying to get better about that... Send me a friend request if you want to play more-I am very busy with two characters and quite a bit of PVE, so forgive me if I cannot RP with you always. I am very busy early in the week, and cannot rp much Sun, Tues, Wed evenings PST, with some floating days for extra raid practice. For combat scenes, I prefer honor system, or for the result to be decided beforehand, but will do /roll, and am thinking of making a Fate-14 sheet.
- ■ Ask: Common sense, but most of this wiki is OOC. I trust most players to be responsible as it's more fun that way; however, if you're ever even slightly unsure you can use information from my wiki in RP, please ask me before doing so. I'm always open to getting involved in new events and plotlines. I'd especially be receptive to having your character involved with Virara's past or that of her enormous NPC supporting cast, if yours is Doman or from Othard. However if I am busy or there is something going on that might interfere, I would like to make sure everything is squared away, so please do ask. Basically just ask if it's something that will occupy Virara significantly for extended periods of time.
- ■ Don't: My only real limit is ERP. I will not do it under any circumstances, sorry.
Deirdre Ta'ea. Bancroft Gairn. Xheja Rajhera. Unnamed Mercenary. Lucaell Tareth'eian. D'lyhhia Lhuil. Edda Eglantine Thank you! I bow to your skills.
