Character Info
Feb. 7th, 2022 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
topothefoodchainThis is Ahri specifically from the Ruined King RPG. I draw a little from her LoL lore for her early history but characterization is based entirely on Ruined King.
Background: The short version is that she's a psychic vampire and as far as she knows the last of her species, who travels the world seeking clues to the history and fate of her kin, and generally avoids humans for fear of accidentally eating them. In Ruined King she joins forces with a bunch of Bilgewater ne'er-do-wells (and Braum, who's more of an always-do-well) to stop the eponymous vengeful ghost from destroying Bilgewater, and possibly the world. Having to travel alongside the party teaches her to trust herself a little more and, following the general theme of all the character arcs, to put her future ahead of her past.
Her people are the Vesani, fox-themed demispirits known for their magical prowess and ability to manipulate or feed off of the minds of others. Despite the sinister-seeming nature of their powers, the Vesani were a largely peaceful group who sought ways to use their unique abilities to better the world; in The Ruined King they researched methods to magically store knowledge in the form of recorded memories, and transfer the skills of the living to magical golem-like constructs.
Ahri has lived for 'many lifetimes' but she admits that she hasn't gained that much from her ample experience, having lived almost her entire life in Ionia, avoided forming any strong relationships, and seen little success in her quest for knowledge of her ancestors. This stasis is rooted in her experience with her first and only lover, a human who she killed with her powers in a moment of lost control. In the hundred years since she has lived a life held in abeyance, waiting for the day when some ancient lore might teach her perfect control and allow her to become part of human society.
In Ruined King she hires Yasuo, an itinerant disgraced swordsman in the classic form, as a bodyguard as she journeys outside Ionia for the first time to the mostly-lawless port of Bilgewater, following rumors of a trade in Vesani artifacts. Her mind control abilities allow her to quickly pick up the trail of the artifacts, purchased by the deposed pirate king Gangplank as part of his nefarious plot to use the fell spirits of the Shadow Isles to retake his throne. Having vaulted herself about five steps ahead of the rest of the protagonists she immediately runs off to said evil islands on her own, leaving a clueless Yasuo with no idea where or why she went until their party catches up with her halfway through the game.
In the interim she meets an ancient tree spirit who has watched over the islands, Maokai. Though the once gregarious spirit has been driven half-mad by the corruption of the isles, Maokai still trusts Ahri enough to ally with her due to her demispirit nature. Ahri plays the crucial role of intervening to stop the potentially disastrous battle that erupts between Maokai and the other heroes of the story when they make their way to his grove on the island, and mediating between them. Ahri, still hoping to find the relics of her ancestors but primarily motivated by the desire to help Maokai and put right the corrupted islands, finally joins the protagonist party.
Ruined King leans heavily towards being a plot rather than character-driven game and Ahri's personal stakes are more peripheral to the plot than those of Illaoi or Sarah, so there's not a huge amount to relate. Ahri helps the party jump through various dungeon-shaped hoops to restore Maokai, open the way to the inner islands, defeat the masterminds behind the plot to use the Ruined King, and at last the Ruined King himself. Due to one of those forced 'you may only download one file before thecomputer magic explodes' situations she's forced to choose between saving what remains of the work the Vesani did on the isles and keeping the quest to save Bilgewater on the rails, but it really isn't built up much and she makes the non-evil choice without any fuss. Ahri's ability to manipulate memory is crucial in the final battle with the Ruined King, as she's able to force the delusional ghost to remember his history as a crazed tyrant and abusive spouse from the point of view of his victims, creating a sort of psychic weak point.
Personality: Ahri is pretty easily understood in terms of typical reluctant vampire tropes. She is, as she says, the top of the food chain (~journal name drop~), a predator who finds violence and manipulation as natural as breathing - and thanks to her powers, about as difficult, too. When she was young and completely unacquainted with human civilization she was intoxicated by her first tastes of human memories and emotions and fed on them freely, killing many. Having been raised by feral spirits and with no notion of her own community and origins, she came to desire to join human society, but her accidental killing of her lover convinced her that she was unready for this, and she prefers to isolate herself rather than risk reliving that trauma, searching for some solution in the teachings of her vanished people instead.
Though she wishes for the perfect control necessary to live a life of her choosing, Ahri's desire to constrain her nature does not result in a total rejection of it. In Ruined King, a combat-heavy RPG, Ahri's willingness to embrace her bloodthirsty instincts is on full display: forced by circumstances to fight her way through hordes of angry spirits and the occasional pirate gang, Ahri not only revels in the opportunity to unleash her powers against her foes, she engages in solo night hunts where she gorges herself on any foe she can find so as to minimize any uncomfortable feelings of hunger towards her allies.
WIP
Abilities: Ahri is a world-class sorceress with myriad magical abilities, however these are still the less 'special' of her powers and tend to only be explored via game mechanics. Even so, there are some notable themes - many of her spells are exceptionally quick to cast, and some continue functioning autonomously, giving her excellent multi-tasking ability. She's adept at defending herself from hostile magic, and conversely in stripping magical protections from foes. While her abilities are weighted towards the offense, especially use of fire and subversive debilitating magic, she has decent access to support and healing spells as well.
Ahri's signature ability, the mark of her Vesani heritage, is to manipulate the mind and life-essence of others. In battle she can tear these away with her spells, where they become a source of power for Ahri, allowing her to invigorate her body and magic alike. What is truly fearsome about these abilities is the ease with which Ahri can use them; in the A Fair Trade short story a completely paralyzed Ahri is able to hypnotize her captor, Hirin, with nothing but eye contact, and steal her life from her breath. The dialogue in Ruined King also plays up the idea that Ahri is uniquely lethal among the heroes; her solo night hunts, where she unleashes the powers she doesn't trust herself to use alongside her allies, are said to make a humbling sight even to her companions when they make the mistake of following her to see what she's getting up to.
Ahri is not without her physical advantages, too. When she was young she was able to run down and kill deer bare-handed, and even when she lacked any understanding of her powers she was able to enhance her reflexes to a small degree to give herself an edge in these hunts. As a vastaya she is technically a shapeshifter and can change her appearance, though it is a process starkly limited by self-image - as one who desires to be loved by humans and was raised by foxes she probably can't get too far outside her 'pretty kitsune' wheelhouse even if she wanted to.
Background: The short version is that she's a psychic vampire and as far as she knows the last of her species, who travels the world seeking clues to the history and fate of her kin, and generally avoids humans for fear of accidentally eating them. In Ruined King she joins forces with a bunch of Bilgewater ne'er-do-wells (and Braum, who's more of an always-do-well) to stop the eponymous vengeful ghost from destroying Bilgewater, and possibly the world. Having to travel alongside the party teaches her to trust herself a little more and, following the general theme of all the character arcs, to put her future ahead of her past.
Her people are the Vesani, fox-themed demispirits known for their magical prowess and ability to manipulate or feed off of the minds of others. Despite the sinister-seeming nature of their powers, the Vesani were a largely peaceful group who sought ways to use their unique abilities to better the world; in The Ruined King they researched methods to magically store knowledge in the form of recorded memories, and transfer the skills of the living to magical golem-like constructs.
Ahri has lived for 'many lifetimes' but she admits that she hasn't gained that much from her ample experience, having lived almost her entire life in Ionia, avoided forming any strong relationships, and seen little success in her quest for knowledge of her ancestors. This stasis is rooted in her experience with her first and only lover, a human who she killed with her powers in a moment of lost control. In the hundred years since she has lived a life held in abeyance, waiting for the day when some ancient lore might teach her perfect control and allow her to become part of human society.
In Ruined King she hires Yasuo, an itinerant disgraced swordsman in the classic form, as a bodyguard as she journeys outside Ionia for the first time to the mostly-lawless port of Bilgewater, following rumors of a trade in Vesani artifacts. Her mind control abilities allow her to quickly pick up the trail of the artifacts, purchased by the deposed pirate king Gangplank as part of his nefarious plot to use the fell spirits of the Shadow Isles to retake his throne. Having vaulted herself about five steps ahead of the rest of the protagonists she immediately runs off to said evil islands on her own, leaving a clueless Yasuo with no idea where or why she went until their party catches up with her halfway through the game.
In the interim she meets an ancient tree spirit who has watched over the islands, Maokai. Though the once gregarious spirit has been driven half-mad by the corruption of the isles, Maokai still trusts Ahri enough to ally with her due to her demispirit nature. Ahri plays the crucial role of intervening to stop the potentially disastrous battle that erupts between Maokai and the other heroes of the story when they make their way to his grove on the island, and mediating between them. Ahri, still hoping to find the relics of her ancestors but primarily motivated by the desire to help Maokai and put right the corrupted islands, finally joins the protagonist party.
Ruined King leans heavily towards being a plot rather than character-driven game and Ahri's personal stakes are more peripheral to the plot than those of Illaoi or Sarah, so there's not a huge amount to relate. Ahri helps the party jump through various dungeon-shaped hoops to restore Maokai, open the way to the inner islands, defeat the masterminds behind the plot to use the Ruined King, and at last the Ruined King himself. Due to one of those forced 'you may only download one file before the
Personality: Ahri is pretty easily understood in terms of typical reluctant vampire tropes. She is, as she says, the top of the food chain (~journal name drop~), a predator who finds violence and manipulation as natural as breathing - and thanks to her powers, about as difficult, too. When she was young and completely unacquainted with human civilization she was intoxicated by her first tastes of human memories and emotions and fed on them freely, killing many. Having been raised by feral spirits and with no notion of her own community and origins, she came to desire to join human society, but her accidental killing of her lover convinced her that she was unready for this, and she prefers to isolate herself rather than risk reliving that trauma, searching for some solution in the teachings of her vanished people instead.
Though she wishes for the perfect control necessary to live a life of her choosing, Ahri's desire to constrain her nature does not result in a total rejection of it. In Ruined King, a combat-heavy RPG, Ahri's willingness to embrace her bloodthirsty instincts is on full display: forced by circumstances to fight her way through hordes of angry spirits and the occasional pirate gang, Ahri not only revels in the opportunity to unleash her powers against her foes, she engages in solo night hunts where she gorges herself on any foe she can find so as to minimize any uncomfortable feelings of hunger towards her allies.
WIP
Abilities: Ahri is a world-class sorceress with myriad magical abilities, however these are still the less 'special' of her powers and tend to only be explored via game mechanics. Even so, there are some notable themes - many of her spells are exceptionally quick to cast, and some continue functioning autonomously, giving her excellent multi-tasking ability. She's adept at defending herself from hostile magic, and conversely in stripping magical protections from foes. While her abilities are weighted towards the offense, especially use of fire and subversive debilitating magic, she has decent access to support and healing spells as well.
Ahri's signature ability, the mark of her Vesani heritage, is to manipulate the mind and life-essence of others. In battle she can tear these away with her spells, where they become a source of power for Ahri, allowing her to invigorate her body and magic alike. What is truly fearsome about these abilities is the ease with which Ahri can use them; in the A Fair Trade short story a completely paralyzed Ahri is able to hypnotize her captor, Hirin, with nothing but eye contact, and steal her life from her breath. The dialogue in Ruined King also plays up the idea that Ahri is uniquely lethal among the heroes; her solo night hunts, where she unleashes the powers she doesn't trust herself to use alongside her allies, are said to make a humbling sight even to her companions when they make the mistake of following her to see what she's getting up to.
Ahri is not without her physical advantages, too. When she was young she was able to run down and kill deer bare-handed, and even when she lacked any understanding of her powers she was able to enhance her reflexes to a small degree to give herself an edge in these hunts. As a vastaya she is technically a shapeshifter and can change her appearance, though it is a process starkly limited by self-image - as one who desires to be loved by humans and was raised by foxes she probably can't get too far outside her 'pretty kitsune' wheelhouse even if she wanted to.
