Jodariel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greaterbanishment) wrote2021-11-24 08:27 pm
greaterbanishment) wrote2021-11-24 08:27 pm
RYSLIG; application
OOC INFORMATION
Name: Ashley
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
kabunevermind
Age: 18+
Other Characters: Riley Williams
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Jodariel
Age: Early 40s
Canon: Pyre
Canon Point: 16th Exile Anniversary
Character Information: Wiki page.
Some general world backstory:
Pyre is a world wherein there exists two main sections, the Commonwealth and the Downside. The Commonwealth is a largely classist society where the upper class use their power to control the populace. A long ago imposed literacy ban has kept the masses ignorant. Anything the Commonwealth deems a threat or immoral can be punished with exile to the Downside, a harsh environment akin to purgatory. The crimes can range from desertion to vagrancy to public urination. The exiles are assigned motivations, unable to argue their cases, and cast out into the Downside via a river that spills into the strange land. If they survive the fall, they are sentenced to live there eternally.
...Unless they can prevail in the Rites of Flame, because Pyre is a sports game. The Rites were set up to rehabilitate actual criminals, giving them a sense of community with their team and urging them to become better people worthy of living in society. They’ve since become twisted, what with the ruling class of the Commonwealth casting every person down they find distasteful.
The Nightwings, Jodariel’s triumvirate, set out to Liberate the entirety of their group and strike up a peaceful revolution in the Commonwealth, to restore the principles the Eight Scribes who founded the land built it on.
Since Pyre is a malleable game, I will state I’m taking her from a game wherein the Nightwings lose their first Liberation Rite to the Tempers. Up until that point, they have won every game.
Personality: At first glance, Jodariel is an intimidating, no-nonsense woman who can and will break you in half if you cross her. She’s lived in the Downside for a long time and has no time for false sentiment or minced words. Already hardened before her exile by her time at the Bloodborder, watching comrades die and rising in the ranks to Captain, it may seem that she’s uncaring. When first meeting the Reader, freshly cast into the Downside and in bad shape, she offers to put them out of their misery, and this is the first impression of her: The ruthless horned woman who says she will kill you.
All of that, however, hides a much softer truth. See, Jodariel has lived through much suffering and hardship, so she knows how it can affect others. She offers to kill the Reader out of mercy, as if they are going to die anyway, leaving them clinging to life would be cruel. She gripes about the more loose and free Rukey Greentail, but as it turns out she saved him from a pack of howlers, fast predators that almost killed him when he arrived in the Downside. She is above all else a protector, serving as the chief of security for the Nightwings and acting as the intimidating muscle behind Hedwyn’s idealistic leadership.
This is not to say that Jodariel is soft. No, she’s rather cynical and skeptical when the group learns they could have their freedom. She only follows Hedwyn, placing faith in him and his goals, not truly believing the Rites could return and be a viable way to leave the Downside until they enter the match itself. When it looks for a moment like they have traveled for nothing, she expresses resignation, because she had refused to get her hopes up. She holds her emotions inside rather than outwardly express them, her most outward concession being her rage at the exiled Highwing Remnants, Harps who she fought during her time in the Commonwealth. It’s said in narration the Reader can count the number of times they’ve seen Jodariel smile on one hand.
One of the biggest aspects of Jodariel as a person is her as a mother. When her fellow soldiers fell, she took in their children, raising many orphans, including Hedwyn, one of the other exiles who finds the Reader at the River Sclorian. Despite him being fully grown, she still calls him boy, still treats him as a child, still expresses intense worry when he gets seasick. Even though by the time she met up with Hedwyn again he was most likely an adult, even though it had been ten years since she’d seen him, she considers him her son, and she is very adamant about how he should be sent back to the Commonwealth as soon as possible, as he has a soft heart—and likely to prevent his own transformation into a Demon, something that happens to humans who stay in the Downside for approximately ten years or more.
She likewise takes a shine to the Stowaway (known in this app as Mae, as because the girl only remembers her name rhymes with gray the player has some input in that), who is largely an outcast because of her eccentric behavior. Mae confides in Jodariel that she was exiled because of her fascination with the Scribes and deep devotion. No one would take her in because they found her strange, and she was deemed unable to function in society. Jodariel expresses anger and frustration at this, but while talking with Mae she is soft spoken and gentle. From the first moment she lays eyes on her, she wants to take her in, simply telling Hedwyn to say the word and she’ll offer her a place in their Triumvirate. The girl is nineteen, but should she be sent back to the Commonwealth, in contrast with Hedwyn, Jodariel expresses worry because of how she was treated in the past. She explicitly says Mae should have been kept where they could take care of her. Where she could take care of her. It’s because Mae reminds her most of the orphans she cared for, and she concedes that she knows the girl will survive—that she is stronger and wiser than her years suggest.
Jodariel’s kindness does not just extend to those she deems her children. What got her exiled in the first place was refusing to execute Harp fledglings captured under her watch. They were already being taught to hate and attack the Commonwealth, already taught violence, but they hadn’t yet had the proper mental conditioning soldiers of the Highwing Remnants do. They were, to her, innocent. They were children, and she would not have them tortured and killed under her watch. For this, she was branded a traitor and conspirator, and she was cast down. She admits on the sixteenth anniversary of her exile she doesn’t know if she would make the same decision, with the knowledge she has now. She’s bitter and angry at the Commonwealth, but also at her past idealism. At times she expresses frustration at all the lives that have been lost while she’s been exiled, at how she could have protected the young soldiers in her command who have since perished if she hadn’t.
On that note, she’s spent a lot of time being uncertain of her place in the world—but specifically her place in the world she came from. After spending sixteen years in the Downside, ten of those relatively on her own, Jodariel has had little to do but think and reflect, and boy does she not know where that leaves her. When first the Nightwings reach the site of the Liberation Rite and are asked to declare themselves, both name and what they seek, Jodariel responds simply:
“I am Captain Jodariel. I do not truly know as yet what I am seeking, here.”
This tells us two things—that she still sees herself as the Captain from sixteen years ago, when she was in her prime, still can’t separate herself from that, and that despite having this sense of self, she can’t fit herself back into life in the Commonwealth. Jodariel knows life has gone on without her. Only once does she mention old friends or family, outside of her fostered orphans, and even then it is a passing mention. She never talks about what she will do back in the Commonwealth, should she be liberated, never talks about what to get back to. Even when anointed for liberation, she can barely believe it could happen. Should she be liberated, she admits she never thought the day would come. It’s only then that, after saying she doesn’t know what her return will look like, that she shall strive to improve the Commonwealth, if it’s anything like the one she remembers. Only once an actual future is before her can she put into words what she wants.
That isn’t to say that she has no principles. No, she accepts the Plan that their benefactor, Volfred Sandalwood, puts forth to carry out a peaceful revolution in the Commonwealth, but she tells the Reader what she is loyal to is them, and even if and when Hedwyn is liberated, she will still follow them. Jodariel was alone for so long in such harsh conditions that she doesn’t often express hope for large changes. It’s her loyalty to the Nightwings that keeps her committed. In the end, whether liberated or not, she works to make either the Commonwealth or the most hospitable area of the Downside a better, more liveable place.
She views the world cynically but pragmatically using her longtime knowledge of the Downside to forage rare plants or rocks for money (Sol). After living there so long, she knows how to survive, after all. Even in places she hasn’t been yet, she can figure out how to live off the land. She taught herself to weave clothes and rugs, some out of howler hide as to intimidate them. Despite holding a grudge against Pamitha, the Harp who joins the Nightwings, she hears her out after the two realize their refusal to conduct Rites together could harm the rest of the team. They never become friends, but they stop sniping at one another. Or at least, they have the potential to, if they interact enough.
In focusing on survival, sometimes she can come across as rather stern. She doesn’t often joke around with the others, finding the spirited Sir Gilman tiring with his chivalrous knight persona and Pamitha frustrating with her coy and playful patterns of speech. Sometimes, when they’re in more dangerous parts of the Downside, she expresses dissatisfaction with others’ foraging, particularly Rukey’s, as it all relies on shady connections and tips from his informants. When the Minstrel who travels with the Nightwings jokes about Hedwyn’s seasickness, making her believe he is worse off than he is, she threatens to wring his neck. Quite simply, Jodariel has little sense of humor, particularly outside of those she’s known longest. She’s serious and dour, and it can cause those of lighter disposition to dislike her. She only seems to have patience for her children, such as Mae.
A large aspect of Jodariel’s character and sense of self is the fact that she’s transformed into a Demon. While it’s a sign of survival, it’s also a reminder of how long she’s been stuck in the Downside. She keeps track of the days on her breastplate, so as to never forget, but she also seems frustrated with how much time has passed and how many people she knows have died in her absence. It fuels her bitterness to the Commonwealth and the Harps, but also to herself. Any expression of attraction to her, she outright dismisses as mockery, and her Demon form is a big reason why. Her horns, her hooves, her lower vocal chords—she finds it a representation of her failures.
Few people survive long enough to become a Demon in the Downside, so when she does meet one, Ignarius, she finds herself acquiescing to his requests, such as removing her mask to speak with him before the Rites. Should the Nightwings defeat his team, the Tempers, she also expresses regret if they face them again, as they’ve already defeated them once and defeating them again would simply set him back on his journey to be liberated. Whenever they meet and Ignarius, in his crude way, expresses friendship or attraction toward her, she shuts him down. He sees a fellow Demon and wants to find comradery, while Jodariel sees a fellow Demon and expresses pity. Both hate themselves, but they interact with their self-loathing in different ways. Jodariel’s is to hold him at arm’s length but empathize with the hardships he’s likely gone through. When she reflects later on his flirtations, she draws a comparison to a relationship she once had in the Commonwealth. It’s clearly the first time she’s thought about this or let herself in a long time. She is Captain Jodariel, after all; the soldier, the security, the survivor. That’s what she’s had to be for so long. That’s what she’s clung to, to keep herself alive. Quite simply, she doesn’t know how not to live in survival mode. She doesn’t know how to be anything but the warrior Captain Jodariel, even after all this time, and that’s what keeps her most guarded from others around her.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Cynical
Guarded
Loyal
Motherly
Pragmatic
Protector
Stern
Self-Loathing
Dubious, as from Dubiety
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? EITHER, please!
Opt-Outs: Arachne, Faerie, Goblin, Pooka, Simulacrum, Slime, Harpy (Riley)
Roleplay Sample: TDM toplevel and threads.
Name: Ashley
Contact:
Age: 18+
Other Characters: Riley Williams
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Jodariel
Age: Early 40s
Canon: Pyre
Canon Point: 16th Exile Anniversary
Character Information: Wiki page.
Some general world backstory:
Pyre is a world wherein there exists two main sections, the Commonwealth and the Downside. The Commonwealth is a largely classist society where the upper class use their power to control the populace. A long ago imposed literacy ban has kept the masses ignorant. Anything the Commonwealth deems a threat or immoral can be punished with exile to the Downside, a harsh environment akin to purgatory. The crimes can range from desertion to vagrancy to public urination. The exiles are assigned motivations, unable to argue their cases, and cast out into the Downside via a river that spills into the strange land. If they survive the fall, they are sentenced to live there eternally.
...Unless they can prevail in the Rites of Flame, because Pyre is a sports game. The Rites were set up to rehabilitate actual criminals, giving them a sense of community with their team and urging them to become better people worthy of living in society. They’ve since become twisted, what with the ruling class of the Commonwealth casting every person down they find distasteful.
The Nightwings, Jodariel’s triumvirate, set out to Liberate the entirety of their group and strike up a peaceful revolution in the Commonwealth, to restore the principles the Eight Scribes who founded the land built it on.
Since Pyre is a malleable game, I will state I’m taking her from a game wherein the Nightwings lose their first Liberation Rite to the Tempers. Up until that point, they have won every game.
Personality: At first glance, Jodariel is an intimidating, no-nonsense woman who can and will break you in half if you cross her. She’s lived in the Downside for a long time and has no time for false sentiment or minced words. Already hardened before her exile by her time at the Bloodborder, watching comrades die and rising in the ranks to Captain, it may seem that she’s uncaring. When first meeting the Reader, freshly cast into the Downside and in bad shape, she offers to put them out of their misery, and this is the first impression of her: The ruthless horned woman who says she will kill you.
All of that, however, hides a much softer truth. See, Jodariel has lived through much suffering and hardship, so she knows how it can affect others. She offers to kill the Reader out of mercy, as if they are going to die anyway, leaving them clinging to life would be cruel. She gripes about the more loose and free Rukey Greentail, but as it turns out she saved him from a pack of howlers, fast predators that almost killed him when he arrived in the Downside. She is above all else a protector, serving as the chief of security for the Nightwings and acting as the intimidating muscle behind Hedwyn’s idealistic leadership.
This is not to say that Jodariel is soft. No, she’s rather cynical and skeptical when the group learns they could have their freedom. She only follows Hedwyn, placing faith in him and his goals, not truly believing the Rites could return and be a viable way to leave the Downside until they enter the match itself. When it looks for a moment like they have traveled for nothing, she expresses resignation, because she had refused to get her hopes up. She holds her emotions inside rather than outwardly express them, her most outward concession being her rage at the exiled Highwing Remnants, Harps who she fought during her time in the Commonwealth. It’s said in narration the Reader can count the number of times they’ve seen Jodariel smile on one hand.
One of the biggest aspects of Jodariel as a person is her as a mother. When her fellow soldiers fell, she took in their children, raising many orphans, including Hedwyn, one of the other exiles who finds the Reader at the River Sclorian. Despite him being fully grown, she still calls him boy, still treats him as a child, still expresses intense worry when he gets seasick. Even though by the time she met up with Hedwyn again he was most likely an adult, even though it had been ten years since she’d seen him, she considers him her son, and she is very adamant about how he should be sent back to the Commonwealth as soon as possible, as he has a soft heart—and likely to prevent his own transformation into a Demon, something that happens to humans who stay in the Downside for approximately ten years or more.
She likewise takes a shine to the Stowaway (known in this app as Mae, as because the girl only remembers her name rhymes with gray the player has some input in that), who is largely an outcast because of her eccentric behavior. Mae confides in Jodariel that she was exiled because of her fascination with the Scribes and deep devotion. No one would take her in because they found her strange, and she was deemed unable to function in society. Jodariel expresses anger and frustration at this, but while talking with Mae she is soft spoken and gentle. From the first moment she lays eyes on her, she wants to take her in, simply telling Hedwyn to say the word and she’ll offer her a place in their Triumvirate. The girl is nineteen, but should she be sent back to the Commonwealth, in contrast with Hedwyn, Jodariel expresses worry because of how she was treated in the past. She explicitly says Mae should have been kept where they could take care of her. Where she could take care of her. It’s because Mae reminds her most of the orphans she cared for, and she concedes that she knows the girl will survive—that she is stronger and wiser than her years suggest.
Jodariel’s kindness does not just extend to those she deems her children. What got her exiled in the first place was refusing to execute Harp fledglings captured under her watch. They were already being taught to hate and attack the Commonwealth, already taught violence, but they hadn’t yet had the proper mental conditioning soldiers of the Highwing Remnants do. They were, to her, innocent. They were children, and she would not have them tortured and killed under her watch. For this, she was branded a traitor and conspirator, and she was cast down. She admits on the sixteenth anniversary of her exile she doesn’t know if she would make the same decision, with the knowledge she has now. She’s bitter and angry at the Commonwealth, but also at her past idealism. At times she expresses frustration at all the lives that have been lost while she’s been exiled, at how she could have protected the young soldiers in her command who have since perished if she hadn’t.
On that note, she’s spent a lot of time being uncertain of her place in the world—but specifically her place in the world she came from. After spending sixteen years in the Downside, ten of those relatively on her own, Jodariel has had little to do but think and reflect, and boy does she not know where that leaves her. When first the Nightwings reach the site of the Liberation Rite and are asked to declare themselves, both name and what they seek, Jodariel responds simply:
“I am Captain Jodariel. I do not truly know as yet what I am seeking, here.”
This tells us two things—that she still sees herself as the Captain from sixteen years ago, when she was in her prime, still can’t separate herself from that, and that despite having this sense of self, she can’t fit herself back into life in the Commonwealth. Jodariel knows life has gone on without her. Only once does she mention old friends or family, outside of her fostered orphans, and even then it is a passing mention. She never talks about what she will do back in the Commonwealth, should she be liberated, never talks about what to get back to. Even when anointed for liberation, she can barely believe it could happen. Should she be liberated, she admits she never thought the day would come. It’s only then that, after saying she doesn’t know what her return will look like, that she shall strive to improve the Commonwealth, if it’s anything like the one she remembers. Only once an actual future is before her can she put into words what she wants.
That isn’t to say that she has no principles. No, she accepts the Plan that their benefactor, Volfred Sandalwood, puts forth to carry out a peaceful revolution in the Commonwealth, but she tells the Reader what she is loyal to is them, and even if and when Hedwyn is liberated, she will still follow them. Jodariel was alone for so long in such harsh conditions that she doesn’t often express hope for large changes. It’s her loyalty to the Nightwings that keeps her committed. In the end, whether liberated or not, she works to make either the Commonwealth or the most hospitable area of the Downside a better, more liveable place.
She views the world cynically but pragmatically using her longtime knowledge of the Downside to forage rare plants or rocks for money (Sol). After living there so long, she knows how to survive, after all. Even in places she hasn’t been yet, she can figure out how to live off the land. She taught herself to weave clothes and rugs, some out of howler hide as to intimidate them. Despite holding a grudge against Pamitha, the Harp who joins the Nightwings, she hears her out after the two realize their refusal to conduct Rites together could harm the rest of the team. They never become friends, but they stop sniping at one another. Or at least, they have the potential to, if they interact enough.
In focusing on survival, sometimes she can come across as rather stern. She doesn’t often joke around with the others, finding the spirited Sir Gilman tiring with his chivalrous knight persona and Pamitha frustrating with her coy and playful patterns of speech. Sometimes, when they’re in more dangerous parts of the Downside, she expresses dissatisfaction with others’ foraging, particularly Rukey’s, as it all relies on shady connections and tips from his informants. When the Minstrel who travels with the Nightwings jokes about Hedwyn’s seasickness, making her believe he is worse off than he is, she threatens to wring his neck. Quite simply, Jodariel has little sense of humor, particularly outside of those she’s known longest. She’s serious and dour, and it can cause those of lighter disposition to dislike her. She only seems to have patience for her children, such as Mae.
A large aspect of Jodariel’s character and sense of self is the fact that she’s transformed into a Demon. While it’s a sign of survival, it’s also a reminder of how long she’s been stuck in the Downside. She keeps track of the days on her breastplate, so as to never forget, but she also seems frustrated with how much time has passed and how many people she knows have died in her absence. It fuels her bitterness to the Commonwealth and the Harps, but also to herself. Any expression of attraction to her, she outright dismisses as mockery, and her Demon form is a big reason why. Her horns, her hooves, her lower vocal chords—she finds it a representation of her failures.
Few people survive long enough to become a Demon in the Downside, so when she does meet one, Ignarius, she finds herself acquiescing to his requests, such as removing her mask to speak with him before the Rites. Should the Nightwings defeat his team, the Tempers, she also expresses regret if they face them again, as they’ve already defeated them once and defeating them again would simply set him back on his journey to be liberated. Whenever they meet and Ignarius, in his crude way, expresses friendship or attraction toward her, she shuts him down. He sees a fellow Demon and wants to find comradery, while Jodariel sees a fellow Demon and expresses pity. Both hate themselves, but they interact with their self-loathing in different ways. Jodariel’s is to hold him at arm’s length but empathize with the hardships he’s likely gone through. When she reflects later on his flirtations, she draws a comparison to a relationship she once had in the Commonwealth. It’s clearly the first time she’s thought about this or let herself in a long time. She is Captain Jodariel, after all; the soldier, the security, the survivor. That’s what she’s had to be for so long. That’s what she’s clung to, to keep herself alive. Quite simply, she doesn’t know how not to live in survival mode. She doesn’t know how to be anything but the warrior Captain Jodariel, even after all this time, and that’s what keeps her most guarded from others around her.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Cynical
Guarded
Loyal
Motherly
Pragmatic
Protector
Stern
Self-Loathing
Dubious, as from Dubiety
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? EITHER, please!
Opt-Outs: Arachne, Faerie, Goblin, Pooka, Simulacrum, Slime, Harpy (Riley)
Roleplay Sample: TDM toplevel and threads.