Post by deadlock on Jan 3, 2011 5:12:53 GMT -5
Cbox Name:Enkashi
Nicknames:Nemo, Kashi, Veia
Main Account: the Broodmother (username Echidna)
Who else do you play?: the Broodmother, Deadlock
Category: Original Character
Name: Rachael (or Ray)
Alias: Unihar (Ghost Child, the name the spirits have for her), First Snow (the name that humans she has had to deal with have given her)
Age: 24
Ranking: Vigilante (human or wolf), Neutral (hybrid)
Physical Appearance:
As a human, Rachael's body is exceptionally lean and solid with precious little body fat remaining, giving her a hardened, though slinky sort of thinness that speaks of a wolf, even if her fur is gone and face is significantly shallower. She is fit to a fault - with so little body fat, she looks unhealthy.
Fit or not, Rachael is a tiny thing, and with almost no body fat to keep her warm, she shivers almost constantly, forced to wear layers of clothing almost everywhere, only truly comfortable in the summer. Ordinarily, she has fur... but a winter coat will do the trick. In the cold, she just can't sit still - fidgets constantly, walks around, bounces and bobs energetially. Only a small patch remains of her coat, in the shape of a crescent moon across the bottom of her back, cradling her kidneys.
Her face is tired as a human, with shadows under her eyes that don't go away no matter how much rest she gets and graceful, almost elfin features, her ears lilting to slight points. Her knee-length hair is brown in the front, braided extensively with little trinkets and beads, bound away from her face by a bandanna made from... whatever she happened to make it from earlier. The back of her hair suddenly loses all color as it passes her ears, gone without a trace to a snowy white color, the most braids gracing these white locks with the most beads and trinkets of all.
Ray is a nervous, distant creature, her emerald green eyes often big, tracking something that isn't visible or shut tight half of the time, like she is trying to fight the urge to sleep, or fighting to be certain what she is seeing is real. Slender, shaking hands touch and feel things delicately, like she half expects them to burn her, and bring objects to her face to sniff, inspect more closely.
In wolf form, she is like a completely different being - rather than the shivering, nervous wreck she is as a human, Ray makes a beautiful, confident wolf, with a coat that might have been brown, were it not for the trauma-shocked white that dominates a majority of it, starting from the back of her head, running down and across her whole back, and overtaking her hindquarters entirely. Her face and belly remains brown, cutting abruptly to that white-silver halfway up her ribcage approaching her spine. Her forelegs are brown, with the paws jet black on the very underside.
It is hard for a human eye to understand, but her coat shimmers like water, light waivering just slightly as it bounces off her back. The shadows present under her eyes in human form remain somehow, even in wolf form, and to a person gifted with the 'gift of The Sight', spectral smoke rises from her jaws, her eyes glinting with inner flame, both of which intensify under certain circumstances.
The unhealthy leanness of her human shape translates into a lithe, graceful, but strong looking shewolf, each motion she makes betraying the strength she posesses in this shape. She is slightly bigger than a normal wolf, slightly more femenine, a nod to the fact that she is not, in fact, a normal wolf, the talismans and trinkets braided into her human hair visible in the same braids that dangle down on her back and flanks.
In hybrid form, the shape of last resort, she retains the traits and colorations of her wolf form, but similarities end about there. Where human and wolven form is lean and slender, the Hybrid form she assumes is massive, the faintly burning flames in her eyes and spectral smoke becoming raging infernos and billows of black smoke rising from slavering fangs. For man, beast, and spirit, this shape is something that walked right out of a nightmare, and with her control like it is, it is no wonder the spirits try so hard to find her another werewolf who can help her to learn the ways of her own kind.
Motivated by rage, but primarily pain, she constantly whines and moans hellishly, avoiding any contact if she can. Tall, sharp ears flick and swivel, drool drips thickly form her open jaws, revealing... quite a lot of inch-long, razor sharp fangs, her shimmering coat steaming, even at an otherwise comfortable room temperature, her body temperature hot as such. Often, blood dribbles from her ears, her nose, and her eyes at a slow trickle, especially when the change is fresh.
Personality:
Despite it all, with all her problems and the nature of her dangerous powers, she manages, somehow, to be happy. Is it really possible for someone in her position to be happy? I don't know, it is religion - she bears the burden of her sight with a smile. With the spirits to help her bear this gift, at least as a wolf it is bearable - all the love she had for wolves before the change aside, she enjoys being a dog a lot more than being a human.
She's not exactly the most obviously cheer-filled person out there, at least if you don't know her. Verbal jokes are offensive to spirits - words are meant for few things in the eyes of beings that communicate largely without them altogether - since she hears so few, she's slow to catch them and fawn-ishly awkward in telling them
This of course makes her a clever, subtle prankster! To a spirit, mirth is enough as a thing they (And she) can see as plainly as daylight- words are a dressing often considered rude and unnecessary, so a prank means a lot more to them than the misuse of words to tell a funny story. She can play a friendly joke on someone without breaking a pokerface.
Restraint and composure is the name of the game around inhuman spirits - like I said, they are petty beings, and the slightest slip in diplomacy can make a hostile spirit turn violent at the drop of a hat, or hurt the feelings of a friendly one. But, they have personalities and things called 'Bans' - immutable things about them that govern how they operate in a binding, alien sort of fashion.
Getting to the point, she has a tendency, thus, to take things slow and do her homework on people - it can come off as a little invasive. She can seem quiet and sullen - she's learned to not translate what she feels into words (expressing in other ways), not speak when actions will say what she thinks needs to be said (since actions speak louder anyhow). Because spirits are so petty, as a survival trait she learned to be stony and maintain poker face as much as is possible, even when she feels very strongly (which can come off as totally dispassionate and cold). These traits are not normal behaviors, and people do not generally understand at first.
With these things considered, she can seem explosive when her pokerface breaks up. One moment, she's cool as a cucumber. The next, she's flying into a rage and tearing out somebody's throat, seething with fury even her eyes did not betray. Spirits see through this ruse, to witness the aura she can't hide, but the restraint is incredibly appealing in a diplomat nonetheless. Not all spirits, especially human ones, appreciate the gesture as much as others do... Those ones can see what she really is and through the lie she brings before them. Control. As if.
Her wolf is unruly. Werewolves see the signs - she's spitting distance from madness. If it weren't for the spirits, her faith, the only barrier to falling to the beast inside her and becoming a murderous... thing, she'd be unsavable - a monster only fit for death. As a wolf, she's merely masking the losing battle underneath. When she's human, its much more apparent. Her lycanthropy-boosted powers, the lycanthropy aside entirely, would be a hell of a struggle. Combine it with a very strong wolf born of the fangs and torment of a corrupted werewolf? One begins to see the problem.
Transformed into a hybrid, the problem is something anyone can plainly see and fear as the spirits do. Ray is plagued by pain and fury she must fight tooth and nail every second to even approach a ghost of control over, and that amounts to avoiding people and spirits (as if they need much help in the not-being-near-her department) only. She can be set off into a rage at the tiniest provocation in this form - her control is like a cage of pewter containing a starving, very angry lion. Little else can be said for this shape - she isn't rational, only marginally sentient - a being comprised entirely of pain and fury.
She only retains recognition when she isn't enraged, but this balance of relative calm is tenuously delicate - Sudden movements, unusual behaviors, even being stared at or a close proximity is enough to set her off.
Powers/Abilities:
Lycanthropy: She is a werewolf, a secondborn, transformed by a born werewolf into one of his kind by the fang. Whether she had a choice or not, she became a monster.
Spirit Sight: Before the change, she could see ghosts. After the change, the entire spirit world, not just the human portion of it, tore into her life. In all forms, she sees the spirit world paralell to this one with great clarity, such that she can have difficulty distinguishing (at least in human form) if what she is seeing is physical or ephermal.
Wolf Form: Her form of choice. She can assume and hold the shape of a wolf almost indefinitely. Her powers make the most sense to her perceptions
Human form: A distant second shape, she of course retained a capability to have a human form if she so desires.
Hybrid form: She avoids this shape at all costs - with control as flimsy as hers is, her hybrid form is a mortal danger to all living things, flesh or spirit. Animals won't enter where she is willingly, even predators, and spirits will, if they have any love for humanity or their Unihar, do their best to encourage even well-meaning humans away, even attack them to prevent them from disturbing her. To disturb her is almost certain death.
Witchcraft: The art of invoking positive energies that stem from her willpower, augmented by visualization, the spirits, and of course, the divine power of reality itself - known to her craft as the God and the Goddess. While the White art is focused entirely on the positive aspects of nature, the god and the goddess are not exclusively good - there are dark, terrible things mankind was not meant to reach out for - to do so with the Craft is an affront to the natural order... and not without serious consequences.
The God is the masculine aspect, represented by the sun, and the elemental forces of Fire and Wind. He is found in many places under the sun - the hunting predator, the raging flames, in male passion, and many other things. He is also attributed to might and protection.
His counterpart, the Goddess, is found in the light of the moon and the elemental forces of earth and water. She is fertility, she is maternal love, present in a tame creature and the raging sea both. She is attributed to wisdom, and courage as well.
The craft is NOT A TOOL. Like a Rite, the physical analogues of a ritual or spell mean nothing by themselves - she must truly put herself behind them, visualize, and pour her energies into the action of the ritual itself, or it simply fails to work. The energies she must command with this are visual to herself and to spirits, but to a normal person, they are invisible and without weight to the senses... though their effects remain real nonetheless.
Protection: To help protect herself and people near her from evil spirits and Others, but also to help protect her in a conventional fight, protective rituals often imbue an object, place, or person with her will, energies, and those of Diety and the spirits. This offering of energy is finite, but with true belief and strength behind them, they can be just as real as steel.
Anointing: Vesting another person or spirit with her energies to protect them. An evil person won't benefit. Though the benefits are temporary... they are, by design, there when they are needed the most, unused until that most-critical moment.
God: A God-oriented anointment lends strength to the recipient, of body and of spirit, and the fortitude to back it up. The Anointed will stand tall where before they would have fallen. Female characters receive the benefit of a god-anointment more strongly. When active, the anointment floods the anointed with the feelings of vitality, a rush of adrenaline, a burst of energy they didn't know they had.
Goddess: Given by the mother of everything, this blessing gives the anointed that extra little push of inspiration, that just-brighter flame of courage, that much-needed boost of morale when it truly counts. When active, this blessing floods the heart and mind of the anointed, giving them, flooding them with new insight or the feeling they aren't alone.
Spirits: An anointment from the spirits varies in its effects - but she grants the anointed the use of one of her gifts, temporarily - which one... isn't clear, and she requires the blessing of the spirits to even do something like this... but as always, just when things are at their worst, the given gift can be called upon intuitively, used just when it matters the most.
Sanctification: Invests an area of definite size with divine power, rendering it holy - Good spirits are stronger within this area, and Evil ones are repelled by it, weakened within. The most common sanctification is the ritual circle, but she can sanctify a home or some other place. The effects upon the spirit world are VERY obvious, but to the average living human, the effects are subtle - this kind of place gives a 'good vibe'. A sanctification can become stronger from the presence of positive energies within its boundaries. A home where the residents are happy, where good memories are had will have an inherently stronger sanctification. The opposite is true, also - and a sanctification can be shattered completely by a truly heinous act.
Healing: A staple of the White Craft, Healing magics operate on bringing out the natural properties of the body, a tendency of nature to wish to heal, and the essential properties of crystal, herbs, and her own willpower. There is no living wound that cannot be healed by such means and time - but the means and the time are also its limitation - she must feel, not just push her energies around, to heal someone. She must care. And the time aspect is another issue - it can take hours for the spells to come to fruition. While any wound could be healed, these factors limit her sorely.
Purification: Remove taint from an object, being, or place, purging the dark energies present. This can take time... and it can be dangerous - dark spirits are WELL AWARE when she uses this - it is painful to them, offensive in every regard, and they will attempt to kill her. She almost 100% requires the support of others while doing a purification - she will need to be almost completely still in intense concentration.
Healing: The namesake of the whole school of thought, Healing is gradual, it is personal, and it is time devouring - but its effects are marked and unearthly in nature. The healing potential of this kind of magic is unlimited within the realm of life - the only out-of-bounds of physical, mental, or spiritual healing, given the time and feeling necessary is the return of life itself - she cannot bring back the dead, no matter how strong the feeling.
Divination: Use of her energies, the energies of the spirits, and the divine god and goddess to gain purchase into the past, present, or future, in direct or abstract.
Bones: Gain a portent wrapped in symbolism, about the future - not the result, but the path itself.
Trial of Dice: a human form divination - She casts a dice, invoking a spirit to answer a simple two-way question through the result. Even a hostile spirit will humor her.
Scry: Using a pool of water or crystal, even a pane of glass (as a last resort), a spirit can show her images. Friendly spirits will likely help her see things she asks for. Not-so-friendly ones usually show her whatever they damn well please...
Rites and Gifts: A rite is a ritual taught to her by the spirits, a sacred thing that operates along the lines of old pacts made in bygone eras - like her craft, they require her to pour herself into them: They aren't tools, and the physical parts of the Rites, while not at all unneccesary, are not the extent. They ask something of the spirits, and of course aren't guaranteed to work as she planned them to. Unlike her craft, Rites aren't wired the same way, or come from the same sources of power.
Gifts are just that - gifts given to her by the very spirits she has helped in the past as love and assistasnce to their friend and ally in times to come. These are not ritualized, nor are they 'magical' per se, at least not in the same way a ritual or rite is magical - merely things a spirit has seen her fit to be able to do. Just the same, like most spirit magic, the effects aren't quite as cut and dry as might be convenient. Unlike her magic, she CAN cause another to come to harm with these gifts. However, there are ways she is SUPPOSED to use them, and other uses are considered an affront, offensive to the spirits she gained them from.
Gifts change her - these abilities alter the way her body works and appears, and when she uses these abilities, these changes are more visible.
Call Water (gift): Ray can call a portion of water from her environment, even in a territory hostile to her. Provided the area she is calling it from isn't wounded, she will recieve drinkable water. If the place is tainted... she'll get murk and diseased filth, pus, curdled blood, or something else nightmarish perhaps.
Ordinarily she can only call small ammounts of water, but in a place where she is on good terms with local spirits, or with the help of a poltergeist, she can burst pipes, cause faucets to turn on, make toilets flood, or make a fire hydrant suddenly vent pressure.
This gift gave her fur, but also her hair, no matter if she dyes it or not an aqueous reflection effect when light hits it, rendering it absolutely distinct. When she is raging as 'the monster', pipes will burst, fire hydrants will explode, toilets will flood, and any source of running water will go haywire as she suffers psychic flux.
Command Fire (gift): Fire is a simple form of life - this gift recognizes that. Cowing fire into obedience isn't that difficult once you can speak the language. With a tongue of smoke and embers, and eyes that the fire can look into and fear, getting flames to obey isn't difficult.
The upshot of this is that she can, with a stern look, a growl, a flex of effort, snuff a flame up to the size of a campfire instantly, make fire burst and consume its fuel in a flash of heat and light, sip slowly upon its food, lessening its intensity but lengthening its burn time, or simply encourage it to burn in another direction. The biggest singular fire she's ever commanded was a housefire - and all she could do was make it burn slower and away from teh garage.
Large fires resent this kind of domination, and are able and willing to attack her to prevent her from using this gift on them, or breaking them up into many smaller, managable fires. She earned this gift, strangely enough, from a forest spirit so she could battle a fire that threatened it and all the other spirits under it.
The obvious sign of this power is the tongue of smoke and eyes of embers - Normally, to a human not able to see past the veil, the smoke billowing from her jaws and fire blazing in her eyes isn't visible unless she uses the Gift. In hybrid form, however, the effect is always visible, and flames will snuff out or avoid her.
Wolfblood Lure (gift): A most basic gift, this allows her to weave among beasts while making herself seem as nothing but a simple beast, herself. This puts other wolves much more at ease, and other animals don't fear her presence... quite as much - though a wolf is still a predator. She can, alternatively, use this gift to appear, to a human, as a normal dog.
Wolves taught her this one - and it is a dirty, simple trick, a ruse she can keep up indefinately. Of course... an animal or person that isn't aware of what she really is will treat her like she is nothing but normal, and act accordingly. In exchange for this ability, her body retains a small patch of fur on her lower back even in human form, just above her rear where her tail would be ordinarily.
Deer's Fleet (gift): Given by a forest spirit in thanks for helping it heal an old wound, this gift lets her put on brief bursts of great speed, but the gift is limited by her endurance - while the speed becomes possible, and her body can withstand it, she exhausts much quicker when using this gift as if she had exerted herself accordingly. When she uses this ability, her shadow becomes that of a bounding deer. She can do this as a hybrid. And will.
Scent of Malice (Gift): Malice has its own scent With this gift. When someone in her immediate area (about a city block) wishes her harm, she. and anyone near enough to her, will catch a strong, intense whiff of a bloody, coppery scent. In exchange for this, when she wishes another harm, they gain the same benefit, but the power is limited in the exact same manner.
This gift is also intended as a kind of "Bell around the monster's neck", so a creature that has earned her ire when she is transformed into the Hybrid will know that this is so. In a common warning spirits give those who will listen, "Courage is not a service to you. Go past here, but be warned - if you smell blood... leave immediately or death is certain."
Scent of Taint (gift): Experience with the spirit world taught her this. When a person is tainted, when a place has suffered a great wound that has begun to fester... she, and anyone near her, can pick up on this gangrenous smell, even in strong winds. While the Scent of malice is nonspecific... the Scent of taint is not - any who smell it know EXACTLY what it is they are smelling. The price is, if ever she becomes corrupt herself, there can be nothing she can ever do that will remove the scent of a corpse from her flesh.
Know Name (Gift~): The first step in understanding is to know something's name. This simple trick has a lot of potential uses. With a glance, she can learn a person or spirit's name. A name means a lot and imprints upon you. This gift is as simple as reading the writing on the wall. Just the same... she might only learn a nickname they prefer, or if the person is actively trying to hide it, nothing at all or perhaps even a false name. She can learn the names of things around her, too - a street's name without a signpost, a town's name simply by looking around, the make and model of a car at a glance, all governed by the same rules. The trade? Silly rabbit. No trade for this one - She didn't barter for it.
Traveler's Blessing (Gift!): Stranger though she may be, she need never be an ignorant one. Just as she can read the writing on the wall to know a name, she can also read a little more to learn the bare essentials of a culture - perhaps an accent, a couple words of a foreign language, where to find food and water, if a pack of wolves or werewolves claims an area, or perhaps an understanding of the city's layout and a sense of direction. On the other side of the card, she might get information from the past or a subculture's notion of the city instead of what she really wants, and not know any better... after all, the writing on the wall is often graffiti. This and her ability to know names makes her eyes focus... differently when she uses them. The cost? Headaches when she uses it.
Mask of Rage (Gift?): Knowing how to avoid making man and spirit fear you involves learning what makes them fear you in the first place. A simple tweak on this underlying current to bring it to the fore makes face a so-called mask of rage. Humans, animals, and spirits alike see her eyes blaze, her face become harsh, light flee from her features, and feel a supernatural terror wash over them. Werewolves themselves and the strong of spirit can't be cowed by this... and boy the spirits hate it when she does this!
Actually, a ghost she helped to pass on taught her this trick. From doing this often enough where she can manage it quickly when she must, her eyes have shadows under them even when she isn't using the ability. This gift, before it was something she could control, was/is a part of the reason her Hybrid form appears as frightening as it does - supernaturally so, especially when she has been triggered. So it is - whenever she is... really, really, angry, this comes out.
The fear created by this gift is primal, coming from the deepest recesses of the mind. Anything with even a semblance of life is affected - how that affects them is up to the player, but nothing is truly immune, even (or perhaps especially) the undead.
Echo Dream (Rite): Holding an object, touching the side of an old building, standing barefoot on the road, if she uses this rite, she can see echos of the past through the clouded lens that is the spirit world. This murky lens is not ideal- if she tries to look back through the ether around spirits she does not know, the images... probably won't make much sense. They may even cause her bodily harm! With the spirits that saw these things present to narrate and willing to do so... its not so bad. This gift is best used when the spirits' attention have been called.
Rite of Healing (Rite): Using the flame in her own body, the lycanthropic healing burning in her breast, she can share this flame to help another's heat and light grow back to its true glow. Metaphor aside, this intense ritual can be used to heal man, beast, or spirit with lycanthropic regeneration as she ritually tends to and cleans their wounds. This rite is completely different from her Craft healing - it is not unlimited - there are limits to the wounds this spell can remedy - psychological ones are completely out of bounds, as are ones the body simply cannot heal (in most cases, this includes regrowing limbs, though she can re-attach a limb by holding the stump against the sever, given time). It also takes less time - its still a matter of hours, but better one or two than... four to eight in some cases, and since it operates on a person's personal energies as well as her own, without the spirits' assistance or divine influence, she can heal damn near anyone or anything alive with it - spirit, human, no matter how she feels about them.
Story of Bones (Rite): This rite lets her interrogate the remains of the dead for details on how they died. Please note, she isn't contacting the ghost, if any, of the creature whom these bones belong to: Merely asking the bones themselves, for they know the story, for it is their own. This divination takes a couple hours to perform, and the bones don't need to respond to her call and obediently do as she says if their ghost wills it... but if they speak, they are unable to lie. To perform the rite, she must have a significant bone - one that played an essential role in the creature's life. A finger bone, part of an arm, tail bones, they are not suitable, but a ribcage, a hipbone, or best of all, a skull, these things are usable for the purpose of a ritual, and as long as they are not ground away to dust, she can use them.
Equipment:
Talismans: She has trinkets from spirits woven into her fur and hair, gifts that mark her as a friend to certain kinds of spirits. She bears a forest spirit talisman, given for her services to the woodlands in her travels, and a road talisman that helps her a bit with civilization so many spirits who honor the great road spirits will see her... at least more favorably than is the default (open hostility becomes disdain or neutrality). Forest spirits, animal spirits, and others will respond more favorably - she is their ally, and this is known. These talismans function as protective items in this regard, and besides that, they have great personal worth to her, even if by themselves they are worth nothing in material value.
Psychological Flaws:
-Unwanted Need: She needs people, even her own kind. A person needs to be around people or it just isn't right, and they suffer for it. She's spent the last eight years of her life for the most part away from sentient mortal contact of any kind, and she misses this aspect of her humanity the most. This has affected her - she is quirky, at best. To a random person on the street, seeing her mumble, seemingly to herself or talk to a lamp post leaves a lot to be desired, socially speaking.
-You can't see that? Really?: She's been around the second world that offers so much more vibrance for so long... she has almost forgotten that most people don't see the world the way she does.
-Gooooood puppy...: She is used to being a wolf most of the time - Behaving like a human is almost like speaking a second language to her now. She displays avatism, demonstrating lupine behaviors that are more habitual than anything else. She eat raw meat without a second thought, growl when she is angry, whine when she is upset, pant... you get the picture, I think. That said, she does have some remnants of human decencies - hygeine, for example.
Physical Flaws:
Werewolf: Some things just don't need much explanation. As a werewolf, some things are bad for her. Silver is something she is harmed when she touches, and has difficulty bringing herself to do so. Wolfsbane is poisonous to her. Mistletoe and Rye are absolutely vile and offensive to her senses, and she will avoid such things like a plague.
Other Flaws:
-False: As a human, Rachael has to continually convince herself that things are real, that she is where she aught to be. She touches the textures of things around her, holds things to her nose to take them in, and will hold still for long pauses, eyes wide as she stares at something nobody else sees. Human form isn't just unpleasant, it is downright crippling. She has had precious little chance to control her powers in this shape, so they are wild, insane, and to a human's eyes, ears, and nose, make almost no sense, and they are as real to her senses as the physical world.
-She is a young werewolf with no guidance from her own kind. The spirits helped her, of course, but they are not themselves werewolves, and no gift is a substitute for that kind of teaching. As good-natured as she is, she is a monster, a wholly inhuman creature whose control isn't nearly what it should be. The scent of blood and meat, the thrill of the hunt, the way rage is enhanced (and quite dangerous) in her, these things are only barely controlled. She has strong will... but its just not enough by itself at her age.
-Walking Breach: She is a walking weakpoint in the dimensional barrier between the world of the living and the world she sees. Things in that plane have a much easier time becoming partially real in her presence, whatever that happens to mean with the present spirits. Ghosts feed off of this, and a poltergeist's abilities intensify many times over since they have to use so much less effort to affect the real world. A spirit, beneficent or baneful, need give a fraction of the effort they normally would need to exert when in her presence.
-Not so nice...: It is not my intention to make you think that the spirit world is a particularly nice place. It is not. In the shadow, thoughts and emotions have as much, if not more, meaning than physical form. Spirits exist there that are so wholly alien, so totally insane and vile that reality recoils from their presence. These... others, they can take advantage of the walking weakpoint Rachael represents... just as any other spirit can. While those are rare, other dangerous spirits exist that would like nothing more than to attack people or just... make their presence known and felt in a world that has so far ignored them.
-LEAVE: Just because she is there to help, that doesn't mean spirits want it. Sometimes, a powerful spirit wants absolutely nothing to do with her, or many small ones want to chase her out of the forest for the threat she represents, reasonable or not. Unless she's making an effort to be concealed, spirits know her. And they aren't always happy to see her. They can harm her and others near her, and will do so if they feel a need to.
Brief History:
At sixteen, Rachael was changed from a human into something else entirely by a man who sought a mate. She doesn't talk about it, but the lycan who wanted her didn't give her any say in the matter, didn't teach her to control her powers or how the wolf in her liked to be stroked - even if he was fully able to.
She was told her visions were in her head, that they weren't real, that the only hope for her was him, and it was a lie. Ray tried to run - no matter where she went, the wolf chased, raped, and scoured her, killing any who dared to help her... including her elder brother, who had up until then helped her. This was the first three months.
Ray fought back, wounded the wolf that hurt her and killed her family. The spirits started whispering to her then... bid her take his tongue - for since he had her blood, he could track her, follow her every move unless she did.
Running into the forest, she has only bumped into humanity since then. Over the eight years since she has been changed, she's learned to survive with her new friends and mentors, but survival is not enough. She's looking for a werewolf who will teach her - someone who can show her how her wolf works, to reveal the secrets of her own soul so she can continue to live and become whole.
Reason for being on AM: Drawn to the world of men by the apocalypse, the spirits guided her to where they felt she could make a difference, where there were werewolves she might be able to tolerate long enough to learn some control.
Sample RP:
Ray was alone... but the pain had faded and the forest was silent. It was in these rare moments of utter peace that she really had a chance to think. Resisting the agony of her flesh, she forced herself to stand, naked in the summer morning, cool dew balming her burning flesh, steaming into the dim light.
She didn't have to ask if she'd killed last night - hunger spoke volumes. She felt sick with it, and sought to relieve it... as soon as possible, please. She had an arrangement, of course - she did have friends, of a sort, but it meant giving up the chance to think. She fought the urge to eat, considering that. She knew she should. Thinking. That was what was important. Thought.
Ray usually tried to think about the night before - her mind recoiled, but she forced her way into what she could get. Pain, rage, horror, fear (And most of it actually her own), but nothing to swipe at, nothing came to mind. She was still hungry, so her hunt must have been fruitless. She sighed, planting her bare bottom into the cool grass, relief washing over her.
This was a reward for her mind, not her wolf - Her wolf was pissed. Wolf was hungry, wolf was angry, wolf desired to chew on a tree if it would help at all. It wouldn't - she'd tried that. Twice, once past the first time just to be certain.
"Alright..." she said, and the world vibrated a little, familiar scent waivering just at the edge of her perceptions. "I'm ready." she said softly. Her world swam, shadow flooded in, assaulting her human senses. Just to prove her point, she reached within herself, grabbing at the way her flesh preffered to be, the shape her wolf wore. Her body temperature skyrocketed, her flesh creaked, her bones crackled like glass undertoe, and pain seared in her senses, but the rage was distant, a low-humming red rush ingrained into her flesh, worn out from the night of highest moon, when magic was strongest in the air.
Luna was waning - she had a half-month of decreasing instinct, declining rage to look forward to - she found that the comedown was the best part as she felt her flesh twist, trying to keep the words "Tearing", "Flesh", "Breaking" or "Bones" out of her head, kicking it all into a corner as fur exploded on her form.
It took about ten minuites - it always did - for her body to stop screaming in protest, panting in the dew, and fall under her control again. The world stopped shaking and swimming, and she could clearly see the form of a female before her, her face a perfect human analogue - too perfect - carved of stone, her body sprouting at random behind it, proportions alien and off by a longshot, at least by human standard, head and face supported on a long neck draped in vines.
The forest spirit smiled - she wasn't good at smiling yet, but she tried, just for her Unihar, reaching a familiar branch-rasped hand to caress her furred side, brushing her claws through her pleasing fur. She was used to this arrangement. Forest came with an offering, and gave it readily to her Unihar, stroking all the while.
Greatful, Ray feasted upon the offering, rumbling with pleasure at the touch of the brave forest spirit. It'd taken her years to get used to how spirits looked, and it still threw her... especially the spirits of locations - at least animal spirits were sane-looking, and emotion spirits were human... ish. Locations were always so alien. Just... one of those things, she supposed. At least everything had a gender.
Meal completed and satisfaction in her flesh, Ray turned her bright yellow eyes upward into the face of her benefactor. Such things never came free, even, or perhaps especially, between friends in her world. She rose, and the spirit led. Where... it didn't matter. Never did. She'd know when she got there - that was their arrangement. It was always the arrangement - both of them knew the terms, both of them signed the bond.
Theme Songs:
("Unihar")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGIrE190z3I&feature=related
("Lenses of shadow")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-7uFaa8x0E
("First Snow")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGUKy477AHQ&feature=related
("If you smell blood, run.")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqih21z5B4I&feature=related
Nicknames:Nemo, Kashi, Veia
Main Account: the Broodmother (username Echidna)
Who else do you play?: the Broodmother, Deadlock
Category: Original Character
Name: Rachael (or Ray)
Alias: Unihar (Ghost Child, the name the spirits have for her), First Snow (the name that humans she has had to deal with have given her)
Age: 24
Ranking: Vigilante (human or wolf), Neutral (hybrid)
Physical Appearance:
As a human, Rachael's body is exceptionally lean and solid with precious little body fat remaining, giving her a hardened, though slinky sort of thinness that speaks of a wolf, even if her fur is gone and face is significantly shallower. She is fit to a fault - with so little body fat, she looks unhealthy.
Fit or not, Rachael is a tiny thing, and with almost no body fat to keep her warm, she shivers almost constantly, forced to wear layers of clothing almost everywhere, only truly comfortable in the summer. Ordinarily, she has fur... but a winter coat will do the trick. In the cold, she just can't sit still - fidgets constantly, walks around, bounces and bobs energetially. Only a small patch remains of her coat, in the shape of a crescent moon across the bottom of her back, cradling her kidneys.
Her face is tired as a human, with shadows under her eyes that don't go away no matter how much rest she gets and graceful, almost elfin features, her ears lilting to slight points. Her knee-length hair is brown in the front, braided extensively with little trinkets and beads, bound away from her face by a bandanna made from... whatever she happened to make it from earlier. The back of her hair suddenly loses all color as it passes her ears, gone without a trace to a snowy white color, the most braids gracing these white locks with the most beads and trinkets of all.
Ray is a nervous, distant creature, her emerald green eyes often big, tracking something that isn't visible or shut tight half of the time, like she is trying to fight the urge to sleep, or fighting to be certain what she is seeing is real. Slender, shaking hands touch and feel things delicately, like she half expects them to burn her, and bring objects to her face to sniff, inspect more closely.
In wolf form, she is like a completely different being - rather than the shivering, nervous wreck she is as a human, Ray makes a beautiful, confident wolf, with a coat that might have been brown, were it not for the trauma-shocked white that dominates a majority of it, starting from the back of her head, running down and across her whole back, and overtaking her hindquarters entirely. Her face and belly remains brown, cutting abruptly to that white-silver halfway up her ribcage approaching her spine. Her forelegs are brown, with the paws jet black on the very underside.
It is hard for a human eye to understand, but her coat shimmers like water, light waivering just slightly as it bounces off her back. The shadows present under her eyes in human form remain somehow, even in wolf form, and to a person gifted with the 'gift of The Sight', spectral smoke rises from her jaws, her eyes glinting with inner flame, both of which intensify under certain circumstances.
The unhealthy leanness of her human shape translates into a lithe, graceful, but strong looking shewolf, each motion she makes betraying the strength she posesses in this shape. She is slightly bigger than a normal wolf, slightly more femenine, a nod to the fact that she is not, in fact, a normal wolf, the talismans and trinkets braided into her human hair visible in the same braids that dangle down on her back and flanks.
In hybrid form, the shape of last resort, she retains the traits and colorations of her wolf form, but similarities end about there. Where human and wolven form is lean and slender, the Hybrid form she assumes is massive, the faintly burning flames in her eyes and spectral smoke becoming raging infernos and billows of black smoke rising from slavering fangs. For man, beast, and spirit, this shape is something that walked right out of a nightmare, and with her control like it is, it is no wonder the spirits try so hard to find her another werewolf who can help her to learn the ways of her own kind.
Motivated by rage, but primarily pain, she constantly whines and moans hellishly, avoiding any contact if she can. Tall, sharp ears flick and swivel, drool drips thickly form her open jaws, revealing... quite a lot of inch-long, razor sharp fangs, her shimmering coat steaming, even at an otherwise comfortable room temperature, her body temperature hot as such. Often, blood dribbles from her ears, her nose, and her eyes at a slow trickle, especially when the change is fresh.
Personality:
Despite it all, with all her problems and the nature of her dangerous powers, she manages, somehow, to be happy. Is it really possible for someone in her position to be happy? I don't know, it is religion - she bears the burden of her sight with a smile. With the spirits to help her bear this gift, at least as a wolf it is bearable - all the love she had for wolves before the change aside, she enjoys being a dog a lot more than being a human.
She's not exactly the most obviously cheer-filled person out there, at least if you don't know her. Verbal jokes are offensive to spirits - words are meant for few things in the eyes of beings that communicate largely without them altogether - since she hears so few, she's slow to catch them and fawn-ishly awkward in telling them
This of course makes her a clever, subtle prankster! To a spirit, mirth is enough as a thing they (And she) can see as plainly as daylight- words are a dressing often considered rude and unnecessary, so a prank means a lot more to them than the misuse of words to tell a funny story. She can play a friendly joke on someone without breaking a pokerface.
Restraint and composure is the name of the game around inhuman spirits - like I said, they are petty beings, and the slightest slip in diplomacy can make a hostile spirit turn violent at the drop of a hat, or hurt the feelings of a friendly one. But, they have personalities and things called 'Bans' - immutable things about them that govern how they operate in a binding, alien sort of fashion.
Getting to the point, she has a tendency, thus, to take things slow and do her homework on people - it can come off as a little invasive. She can seem quiet and sullen - she's learned to not translate what she feels into words (expressing in other ways), not speak when actions will say what she thinks needs to be said (since actions speak louder anyhow). Because spirits are so petty, as a survival trait she learned to be stony and maintain poker face as much as is possible, even when she feels very strongly (which can come off as totally dispassionate and cold). These traits are not normal behaviors, and people do not generally understand at first.
With these things considered, she can seem explosive when her pokerface breaks up. One moment, she's cool as a cucumber. The next, she's flying into a rage and tearing out somebody's throat, seething with fury even her eyes did not betray. Spirits see through this ruse, to witness the aura she can't hide, but the restraint is incredibly appealing in a diplomat nonetheless. Not all spirits, especially human ones, appreciate the gesture as much as others do... Those ones can see what she really is and through the lie she brings before them. Control. As if.
Her wolf is unruly. Werewolves see the signs - she's spitting distance from madness. If it weren't for the spirits, her faith, the only barrier to falling to the beast inside her and becoming a murderous... thing, she'd be unsavable - a monster only fit for death. As a wolf, she's merely masking the losing battle underneath. When she's human, its much more apparent. Her lycanthropy-boosted powers, the lycanthropy aside entirely, would be a hell of a struggle. Combine it with a very strong wolf born of the fangs and torment of a corrupted werewolf? One begins to see the problem.
Transformed into a hybrid, the problem is something anyone can plainly see and fear as the spirits do. Ray is plagued by pain and fury she must fight tooth and nail every second to even approach a ghost of control over, and that amounts to avoiding people and spirits (as if they need much help in the not-being-near-her department) only. She can be set off into a rage at the tiniest provocation in this form - her control is like a cage of pewter containing a starving, very angry lion. Little else can be said for this shape - she isn't rational, only marginally sentient - a being comprised entirely of pain and fury.
She only retains recognition when she isn't enraged, but this balance of relative calm is tenuously delicate - Sudden movements, unusual behaviors, even being stared at or a close proximity is enough to set her off.
Powers/Abilities:
Lycanthropy: She is a werewolf, a secondborn, transformed by a born werewolf into one of his kind by the fang. Whether she had a choice or not, she became a monster.
Spirit Sight: Before the change, she could see ghosts. After the change, the entire spirit world, not just the human portion of it, tore into her life. In all forms, she sees the spirit world paralell to this one with great clarity, such that she can have difficulty distinguishing (at least in human form) if what she is seeing is physical or ephermal.
Wolf Form: Her form of choice. She can assume and hold the shape of a wolf almost indefinitely. Her powers make the most sense to her perceptions
Human form: A distant second shape, she of course retained a capability to have a human form if she so desires.
Hybrid form: She avoids this shape at all costs - with control as flimsy as hers is, her hybrid form is a mortal danger to all living things, flesh or spirit. Animals won't enter where she is willingly, even predators, and spirits will, if they have any love for humanity or their Unihar, do their best to encourage even well-meaning humans away, even attack them to prevent them from disturbing her. To disturb her is almost certain death.
Witchcraft: The art of invoking positive energies that stem from her willpower, augmented by visualization, the spirits, and of course, the divine power of reality itself - known to her craft as the God and the Goddess. While the White art is focused entirely on the positive aspects of nature, the god and the goddess are not exclusively good - there are dark, terrible things mankind was not meant to reach out for - to do so with the Craft is an affront to the natural order... and not without serious consequences.
The God is the masculine aspect, represented by the sun, and the elemental forces of Fire and Wind. He is found in many places under the sun - the hunting predator, the raging flames, in male passion, and many other things. He is also attributed to might and protection.
His counterpart, the Goddess, is found in the light of the moon and the elemental forces of earth and water. She is fertility, she is maternal love, present in a tame creature and the raging sea both. She is attributed to wisdom, and courage as well.
The craft is NOT A TOOL. Like a Rite, the physical analogues of a ritual or spell mean nothing by themselves - she must truly put herself behind them, visualize, and pour her energies into the action of the ritual itself, or it simply fails to work. The energies she must command with this are visual to herself and to spirits, but to a normal person, they are invisible and without weight to the senses... though their effects remain real nonetheless.
Protection: To help protect herself and people near her from evil spirits and Others, but also to help protect her in a conventional fight, protective rituals often imbue an object, place, or person with her will, energies, and those of Diety and the spirits. This offering of energy is finite, but with true belief and strength behind them, they can be just as real as steel.
Anointing: Vesting another person or spirit with her energies to protect them. An evil person won't benefit. Though the benefits are temporary... they are, by design, there when they are needed the most, unused until that most-critical moment.
God: A God-oriented anointment lends strength to the recipient, of body and of spirit, and the fortitude to back it up. The Anointed will stand tall where before they would have fallen. Female characters receive the benefit of a god-anointment more strongly. When active, the anointment floods the anointed with the feelings of vitality, a rush of adrenaline, a burst of energy they didn't know they had.
Goddess: Given by the mother of everything, this blessing gives the anointed that extra little push of inspiration, that just-brighter flame of courage, that much-needed boost of morale when it truly counts. When active, this blessing floods the heart and mind of the anointed, giving them, flooding them with new insight or the feeling they aren't alone.
Spirits: An anointment from the spirits varies in its effects - but she grants the anointed the use of one of her gifts, temporarily - which one... isn't clear, and she requires the blessing of the spirits to even do something like this... but as always, just when things are at their worst, the given gift can be called upon intuitively, used just when it matters the most.
Sanctification: Invests an area of definite size with divine power, rendering it holy - Good spirits are stronger within this area, and Evil ones are repelled by it, weakened within. The most common sanctification is the ritual circle, but she can sanctify a home or some other place. The effects upon the spirit world are VERY obvious, but to the average living human, the effects are subtle - this kind of place gives a 'good vibe'. A sanctification can become stronger from the presence of positive energies within its boundaries. A home where the residents are happy, where good memories are had will have an inherently stronger sanctification. The opposite is true, also - and a sanctification can be shattered completely by a truly heinous act.
Healing: A staple of the White Craft, Healing magics operate on bringing out the natural properties of the body, a tendency of nature to wish to heal, and the essential properties of crystal, herbs, and her own willpower. There is no living wound that cannot be healed by such means and time - but the means and the time are also its limitation - she must feel, not just push her energies around, to heal someone. She must care. And the time aspect is another issue - it can take hours for the spells to come to fruition. While any wound could be healed, these factors limit her sorely.
Purification: Remove taint from an object, being, or place, purging the dark energies present. This can take time... and it can be dangerous - dark spirits are WELL AWARE when she uses this - it is painful to them, offensive in every regard, and they will attempt to kill her. She almost 100% requires the support of others while doing a purification - she will need to be almost completely still in intense concentration.
Healing: The namesake of the whole school of thought, Healing is gradual, it is personal, and it is time devouring - but its effects are marked and unearthly in nature. The healing potential of this kind of magic is unlimited within the realm of life - the only out-of-bounds of physical, mental, or spiritual healing, given the time and feeling necessary is the return of life itself - she cannot bring back the dead, no matter how strong the feeling.
Divination: Use of her energies, the energies of the spirits, and the divine god and goddess to gain purchase into the past, present, or future, in direct or abstract.
Bones: Gain a portent wrapped in symbolism, about the future - not the result, but the path itself.
Trial of Dice: a human form divination - She casts a dice, invoking a spirit to answer a simple two-way question through the result. Even a hostile spirit will humor her.
Scry: Using a pool of water or crystal, even a pane of glass (as a last resort), a spirit can show her images. Friendly spirits will likely help her see things she asks for. Not-so-friendly ones usually show her whatever they damn well please...
Rites and Gifts: A rite is a ritual taught to her by the spirits, a sacred thing that operates along the lines of old pacts made in bygone eras - like her craft, they require her to pour herself into them: They aren't tools, and the physical parts of the Rites, while not at all unneccesary, are not the extent. They ask something of the spirits, and of course aren't guaranteed to work as she planned them to. Unlike her craft, Rites aren't wired the same way, or come from the same sources of power.
Gifts are just that - gifts given to her by the very spirits she has helped in the past as love and assistasnce to their friend and ally in times to come. These are not ritualized, nor are they 'magical' per se, at least not in the same way a ritual or rite is magical - merely things a spirit has seen her fit to be able to do. Just the same, like most spirit magic, the effects aren't quite as cut and dry as might be convenient. Unlike her magic, she CAN cause another to come to harm with these gifts. However, there are ways she is SUPPOSED to use them, and other uses are considered an affront, offensive to the spirits she gained them from.
Gifts change her - these abilities alter the way her body works and appears, and when she uses these abilities, these changes are more visible.
Call Water (gift): Ray can call a portion of water from her environment, even in a territory hostile to her. Provided the area she is calling it from isn't wounded, she will recieve drinkable water. If the place is tainted... she'll get murk and diseased filth, pus, curdled blood, or something else nightmarish perhaps.
Ordinarily she can only call small ammounts of water, but in a place where she is on good terms with local spirits, or with the help of a poltergeist, she can burst pipes, cause faucets to turn on, make toilets flood, or make a fire hydrant suddenly vent pressure.
This gift gave her fur, but also her hair, no matter if she dyes it or not an aqueous reflection effect when light hits it, rendering it absolutely distinct. When she is raging as 'the monster', pipes will burst, fire hydrants will explode, toilets will flood, and any source of running water will go haywire as she suffers psychic flux.
Command Fire (gift): Fire is a simple form of life - this gift recognizes that. Cowing fire into obedience isn't that difficult once you can speak the language. With a tongue of smoke and embers, and eyes that the fire can look into and fear, getting flames to obey isn't difficult.
The upshot of this is that she can, with a stern look, a growl, a flex of effort, snuff a flame up to the size of a campfire instantly, make fire burst and consume its fuel in a flash of heat and light, sip slowly upon its food, lessening its intensity but lengthening its burn time, or simply encourage it to burn in another direction. The biggest singular fire she's ever commanded was a housefire - and all she could do was make it burn slower and away from teh garage.
Large fires resent this kind of domination, and are able and willing to attack her to prevent her from using this gift on them, or breaking them up into many smaller, managable fires. She earned this gift, strangely enough, from a forest spirit so she could battle a fire that threatened it and all the other spirits under it.
The obvious sign of this power is the tongue of smoke and eyes of embers - Normally, to a human not able to see past the veil, the smoke billowing from her jaws and fire blazing in her eyes isn't visible unless she uses the Gift. In hybrid form, however, the effect is always visible, and flames will snuff out or avoid her.
Wolfblood Lure (gift): A most basic gift, this allows her to weave among beasts while making herself seem as nothing but a simple beast, herself. This puts other wolves much more at ease, and other animals don't fear her presence... quite as much - though a wolf is still a predator. She can, alternatively, use this gift to appear, to a human, as a normal dog.
Wolves taught her this one - and it is a dirty, simple trick, a ruse she can keep up indefinately. Of course... an animal or person that isn't aware of what she really is will treat her like she is nothing but normal, and act accordingly. In exchange for this ability, her body retains a small patch of fur on her lower back even in human form, just above her rear where her tail would be ordinarily.
Deer's Fleet (gift): Given by a forest spirit in thanks for helping it heal an old wound, this gift lets her put on brief bursts of great speed, but the gift is limited by her endurance - while the speed becomes possible, and her body can withstand it, she exhausts much quicker when using this gift as if she had exerted herself accordingly. When she uses this ability, her shadow becomes that of a bounding deer. She can do this as a hybrid. And will.
Scent of Malice (Gift): Malice has its own scent With this gift. When someone in her immediate area (about a city block) wishes her harm, she. and anyone near enough to her, will catch a strong, intense whiff of a bloody, coppery scent. In exchange for this, when she wishes another harm, they gain the same benefit, but the power is limited in the exact same manner.
This gift is also intended as a kind of "Bell around the monster's neck", so a creature that has earned her ire when she is transformed into the Hybrid will know that this is so. In a common warning spirits give those who will listen, "Courage is not a service to you. Go past here, but be warned - if you smell blood... leave immediately or death is certain."
Scent of Taint (gift): Experience with the spirit world taught her this. When a person is tainted, when a place has suffered a great wound that has begun to fester... she, and anyone near her, can pick up on this gangrenous smell, even in strong winds. While the Scent of malice is nonspecific... the Scent of taint is not - any who smell it know EXACTLY what it is they are smelling. The price is, if ever she becomes corrupt herself, there can be nothing she can ever do that will remove the scent of a corpse from her flesh.
Know Name (Gift~): The first step in understanding is to know something's name. This simple trick has a lot of potential uses. With a glance, she can learn a person or spirit's name. A name means a lot and imprints upon you. This gift is as simple as reading the writing on the wall. Just the same... she might only learn a nickname they prefer, or if the person is actively trying to hide it, nothing at all or perhaps even a false name. She can learn the names of things around her, too - a street's name without a signpost, a town's name simply by looking around, the make and model of a car at a glance, all governed by the same rules. The trade? Silly rabbit. No trade for this one - She didn't barter for it.
Traveler's Blessing (Gift!): Stranger though she may be, she need never be an ignorant one. Just as she can read the writing on the wall to know a name, she can also read a little more to learn the bare essentials of a culture - perhaps an accent, a couple words of a foreign language, where to find food and water, if a pack of wolves or werewolves claims an area, or perhaps an understanding of the city's layout and a sense of direction. On the other side of the card, she might get information from the past or a subculture's notion of the city instead of what she really wants, and not know any better... after all, the writing on the wall is often graffiti. This and her ability to know names makes her eyes focus... differently when she uses them. The cost? Headaches when she uses it.
Mask of Rage (Gift?): Knowing how to avoid making man and spirit fear you involves learning what makes them fear you in the first place. A simple tweak on this underlying current to bring it to the fore makes face a so-called mask of rage. Humans, animals, and spirits alike see her eyes blaze, her face become harsh, light flee from her features, and feel a supernatural terror wash over them. Werewolves themselves and the strong of spirit can't be cowed by this... and boy the spirits hate it when she does this!
Actually, a ghost she helped to pass on taught her this trick. From doing this often enough where she can manage it quickly when she must, her eyes have shadows under them even when she isn't using the ability. This gift, before it was something she could control, was/is a part of the reason her Hybrid form appears as frightening as it does - supernaturally so, especially when she has been triggered. So it is - whenever she is... really, really, angry, this comes out.
The fear created by this gift is primal, coming from the deepest recesses of the mind. Anything with even a semblance of life is affected - how that affects them is up to the player, but nothing is truly immune, even (or perhaps especially) the undead.
Echo Dream (Rite): Holding an object, touching the side of an old building, standing barefoot on the road, if she uses this rite, she can see echos of the past through the clouded lens that is the spirit world. This murky lens is not ideal- if she tries to look back through the ether around spirits she does not know, the images... probably won't make much sense. They may even cause her bodily harm! With the spirits that saw these things present to narrate and willing to do so... its not so bad. This gift is best used when the spirits' attention have been called.
Rite of Healing (Rite): Using the flame in her own body, the lycanthropic healing burning in her breast, she can share this flame to help another's heat and light grow back to its true glow. Metaphor aside, this intense ritual can be used to heal man, beast, or spirit with lycanthropic regeneration as she ritually tends to and cleans their wounds. This rite is completely different from her Craft healing - it is not unlimited - there are limits to the wounds this spell can remedy - psychological ones are completely out of bounds, as are ones the body simply cannot heal (in most cases, this includes regrowing limbs, though she can re-attach a limb by holding the stump against the sever, given time). It also takes less time - its still a matter of hours, but better one or two than... four to eight in some cases, and since it operates on a person's personal energies as well as her own, without the spirits' assistance or divine influence, she can heal damn near anyone or anything alive with it - spirit, human, no matter how she feels about them.
Story of Bones (Rite): This rite lets her interrogate the remains of the dead for details on how they died. Please note, she isn't contacting the ghost, if any, of the creature whom these bones belong to: Merely asking the bones themselves, for they know the story, for it is their own. This divination takes a couple hours to perform, and the bones don't need to respond to her call and obediently do as she says if their ghost wills it... but if they speak, they are unable to lie. To perform the rite, she must have a significant bone - one that played an essential role in the creature's life. A finger bone, part of an arm, tail bones, they are not suitable, but a ribcage, a hipbone, or best of all, a skull, these things are usable for the purpose of a ritual, and as long as they are not ground away to dust, she can use them.
Equipment:
Talismans: She has trinkets from spirits woven into her fur and hair, gifts that mark her as a friend to certain kinds of spirits. She bears a forest spirit talisman, given for her services to the woodlands in her travels, and a road talisman that helps her a bit with civilization so many spirits who honor the great road spirits will see her... at least more favorably than is the default (open hostility becomes disdain or neutrality). Forest spirits, animal spirits, and others will respond more favorably - she is their ally, and this is known. These talismans function as protective items in this regard, and besides that, they have great personal worth to her, even if by themselves they are worth nothing in material value.
Weaknesses
Psychological Flaws:
-Unwanted Need: She needs people, even her own kind. A person needs to be around people or it just isn't right, and they suffer for it. She's spent the last eight years of her life for the most part away from sentient mortal contact of any kind, and she misses this aspect of her humanity the most. This has affected her - she is quirky, at best. To a random person on the street, seeing her mumble, seemingly to herself or talk to a lamp post leaves a lot to be desired, socially speaking.
-You can't see that? Really?: She's been around the second world that offers so much more vibrance for so long... she has almost forgotten that most people don't see the world the way she does.
-Gooooood puppy...: She is used to being a wolf most of the time - Behaving like a human is almost like speaking a second language to her now. She displays avatism, demonstrating lupine behaviors that are more habitual than anything else. She eat raw meat without a second thought, growl when she is angry, whine when she is upset, pant... you get the picture, I think. That said, she does have some remnants of human decencies - hygeine, for example.
Physical Flaws:
Werewolf: Some things just don't need much explanation. As a werewolf, some things are bad for her. Silver is something she is harmed when she touches, and has difficulty bringing herself to do so. Wolfsbane is poisonous to her. Mistletoe and Rye are absolutely vile and offensive to her senses, and she will avoid such things like a plague.
Other Flaws:
-False: As a human, Rachael has to continually convince herself that things are real, that she is where she aught to be. She touches the textures of things around her, holds things to her nose to take them in, and will hold still for long pauses, eyes wide as she stares at something nobody else sees. Human form isn't just unpleasant, it is downright crippling. She has had precious little chance to control her powers in this shape, so they are wild, insane, and to a human's eyes, ears, and nose, make almost no sense, and they are as real to her senses as the physical world.
-She is a young werewolf with no guidance from her own kind. The spirits helped her, of course, but they are not themselves werewolves, and no gift is a substitute for that kind of teaching. As good-natured as she is, she is a monster, a wholly inhuman creature whose control isn't nearly what it should be. The scent of blood and meat, the thrill of the hunt, the way rage is enhanced (and quite dangerous) in her, these things are only barely controlled. She has strong will... but its just not enough by itself at her age.
-Walking Breach: She is a walking weakpoint in the dimensional barrier between the world of the living and the world she sees. Things in that plane have a much easier time becoming partially real in her presence, whatever that happens to mean with the present spirits. Ghosts feed off of this, and a poltergeist's abilities intensify many times over since they have to use so much less effort to affect the real world. A spirit, beneficent or baneful, need give a fraction of the effort they normally would need to exert when in her presence.
-Not so nice...: It is not my intention to make you think that the spirit world is a particularly nice place. It is not. In the shadow, thoughts and emotions have as much, if not more, meaning than physical form. Spirits exist there that are so wholly alien, so totally insane and vile that reality recoils from their presence. These... others, they can take advantage of the walking weakpoint Rachael represents... just as any other spirit can. While those are rare, other dangerous spirits exist that would like nothing more than to attack people or just... make their presence known and felt in a world that has so far ignored them.
-LEAVE: Just because she is there to help, that doesn't mean spirits want it. Sometimes, a powerful spirit wants absolutely nothing to do with her, or many small ones want to chase her out of the forest for the threat she represents, reasonable or not. Unless she's making an effort to be concealed, spirits know her. And they aren't always happy to see her. They can harm her and others near her, and will do so if they feel a need to.
Brief History:
At sixteen, Rachael was changed from a human into something else entirely by a man who sought a mate. She doesn't talk about it, but the lycan who wanted her didn't give her any say in the matter, didn't teach her to control her powers or how the wolf in her liked to be stroked - even if he was fully able to.
She was told her visions were in her head, that they weren't real, that the only hope for her was him, and it was a lie. Ray tried to run - no matter where she went, the wolf chased, raped, and scoured her, killing any who dared to help her... including her elder brother, who had up until then helped her. This was the first three months.
Ray fought back, wounded the wolf that hurt her and killed her family. The spirits started whispering to her then... bid her take his tongue - for since he had her blood, he could track her, follow her every move unless she did.
Running into the forest, she has only bumped into humanity since then. Over the eight years since she has been changed, she's learned to survive with her new friends and mentors, but survival is not enough. She's looking for a werewolf who will teach her - someone who can show her how her wolf works, to reveal the secrets of her own soul so she can continue to live and become whole.
Reason for being on AM: Drawn to the world of men by the apocalypse, the spirits guided her to where they felt she could make a difference, where there were werewolves she might be able to tolerate long enough to learn some control.
Sample RP:
Ray was alone... but the pain had faded and the forest was silent. It was in these rare moments of utter peace that she really had a chance to think. Resisting the agony of her flesh, she forced herself to stand, naked in the summer morning, cool dew balming her burning flesh, steaming into the dim light.
She didn't have to ask if she'd killed last night - hunger spoke volumes. She felt sick with it, and sought to relieve it... as soon as possible, please. She had an arrangement, of course - she did have friends, of a sort, but it meant giving up the chance to think. She fought the urge to eat, considering that. She knew she should. Thinking. That was what was important. Thought.
Ray usually tried to think about the night before - her mind recoiled, but she forced her way into what she could get. Pain, rage, horror, fear (And most of it actually her own), but nothing to swipe at, nothing came to mind. She was still hungry, so her hunt must have been fruitless. She sighed, planting her bare bottom into the cool grass, relief washing over her.
This was a reward for her mind, not her wolf - Her wolf was pissed. Wolf was hungry, wolf was angry, wolf desired to chew on a tree if it would help at all. It wouldn't - she'd tried that. Twice, once past the first time just to be certain.
"Alright..." she said, and the world vibrated a little, familiar scent waivering just at the edge of her perceptions. "I'm ready." she said softly. Her world swam, shadow flooded in, assaulting her human senses. Just to prove her point, she reached within herself, grabbing at the way her flesh preffered to be, the shape her wolf wore. Her body temperature skyrocketed, her flesh creaked, her bones crackled like glass undertoe, and pain seared in her senses, but the rage was distant, a low-humming red rush ingrained into her flesh, worn out from the night of highest moon, when magic was strongest in the air.
Luna was waning - she had a half-month of decreasing instinct, declining rage to look forward to - she found that the comedown was the best part as she felt her flesh twist, trying to keep the words "Tearing", "Flesh", "Breaking" or "Bones" out of her head, kicking it all into a corner as fur exploded on her form.
It took about ten minuites - it always did - for her body to stop screaming in protest, panting in the dew, and fall under her control again. The world stopped shaking and swimming, and she could clearly see the form of a female before her, her face a perfect human analogue - too perfect - carved of stone, her body sprouting at random behind it, proportions alien and off by a longshot, at least by human standard, head and face supported on a long neck draped in vines.
The forest spirit smiled - she wasn't good at smiling yet, but she tried, just for her Unihar, reaching a familiar branch-rasped hand to caress her furred side, brushing her claws through her pleasing fur. She was used to this arrangement. Forest came with an offering, and gave it readily to her Unihar, stroking all the while.
Greatful, Ray feasted upon the offering, rumbling with pleasure at the touch of the brave forest spirit. It'd taken her years to get used to how spirits looked, and it still threw her... especially the spirits of locations - at least animal spirits were sane-looking, and emotion spirits were human... ish. Locations were always so alien. Just... one of those things, she supposed. At least everything had a gender.
Meal completed and satisfaction in her flesh, Ray turned her bright yellow eyes upward into the face of her benefactor. Such things never came free, even, or perhaps especially, between friends in her world. She rose, and the spirit led. Where... it didn't matter. Never did. She'd know when she got there - that was their arrangement. It was always the arrangement - both of them knew the terms, both of them signed the bond.
Theme Songs:
("Unihar")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGIrE190z3I&feature=related
("Lenses of shadow")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-7uFaa8x0E
("First Snow")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGUKy477AHQ&feature=related
("If you smell blood, run.")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqih21z5B4I&feature=related
