Shadow Lynne/HiddenCrystal

NOTES: Yes, I quoted song lyrics here. (October Project's "Bury My Lovely".) Shoot me later...I tend to pick songs that suit my characters.

For JustAddWater.
Status: Active

Name: Hidden Crystal
Concept: butterfly caught in the chrysalis
Caste: Endings
Faction: Gold
Anima banner: corona of violet

Cover the mirror
Hide in your dreams
Forget what they told you
Forget what it means
A picture worth a thousand lies
The mem'ry and the mirror
Nothing but what came before
Nothing but a closing door

A picture worth a thousand lies
A thousand words
A thousand eyes

Bury my lovely
Hide in your room
Bury my lovely
Forget me soon
Forget me
Forget me now
Forget me not

Combat:
Base Initiative: 8
Soak: 3B/1 L/0A (unarmored)
Attacks:
Starmetal Daiklave (Whisper of Stars): Speed 15 Accuracy 13 (MA), 12 (Melee) Damage 10L Defense 12 (MA)/11 (Melee)
Punch: Speed 8 Accuracy 9 Damage 2B Defense 8
Kick: Speed 5 Accuracy 8 Damage 4B Defense 7
Knife: Speed 11 Accuracy 8 Damage 3L Defense 6

Paradox:

Expanded Backgrounds

Artifact **-Whisper of Stars. Starmetal daiklave. Nothing really special about it other then the fact it's a starmetal daiklave: no other bonuses then the Magical Material bonus.

Celestial Manse *-To come, as I still need to think of it.

Salary **-paid in the bottom of his grade, as he is a Sidereal of the Gold Faction.

Sifu ***- Quicksilver Starfall, Unaligned Chosen of Endings. Quicksilver Starfall is a rather...interestingShadow_Lynne/HiddenCrystal/I> individual, a very independent man: doesn't really hold with either faction, thinking them too extreme, though he leans slightly more towards Gold then towards the Bronze. He doesn't really do much politicking, considering it really a waste of time, time spent doing better things: like, you know, his jobShadow_Lynne/HiddenCrystal/I>. Fairly cheerful and quick-tempered, though not really what you call perky, and with a definite case of 'Foot in Mouth' Syndrome, his moods tend to change like quicksilver: at one moment laughing, the next moment serious when the situation calls for it. A caregiver by nature, he does not like to see things suffer, and prefers to end suffering quickly. Definitely a contrast to the perpetually serious, silent Crystal: while the young Sidereal has not confided very many personal things to his teacher, how much doesShadow_Lynne/HiddenCrystal/I> Starfall reallyShadow_Lynne/HiddenCrystal/I> know about his student? Teaches Violet Bier of Sorrows style, Ebon Shadow Style, Terrestial Circle Sorcery, Prismatic Arrangement of Creation style, and Celestial Circle Sorcery.
Note: QS's original name has been changed. Because of me realizing his name was too similar to a party member's.

Expanded Flaws

Nightmares-His childhood and early teenage years as a catamite to a nobleman of House Cynis have left their mark. Not only is Crystal painfully shy, over-silent, and fairly submissive (though he hasShadow_Lynne/HiddenCrystal/I> gotten better since his Exaltation and training), he has recurring nightmares of that period in his life. He cannot stand to be touched for some time after he wakes up from one.
Unbidden Oracle-Crystal is silent, almost seeming to have an aversion to speech at times. However, he occasionally breaks his silence, dark warnings on his tongue that he cannot help but speak.
Secrets- Crystal never really speaks about personal things. His life pre-Exaltation is definitely on that list: he cannot help but be untrustful, and he would just rather his past remain buried hidden and buried.

Experience Management

Current Unspent XP: 7
Current Spent XP: 88
Total XP: 95
Purchased:
Joy In Adversity Stance
Martial Arts 4
MA specialty: Multiple Attacks
Forgotten Earth (Athletics)
Dodge: 4
Awareness: 3
Athletics 4
Temperance 3
Performance specialty: Dance
Emerald Banishment
Essence 4
Martial Arts 5

Resplendent Destinies

Crystal's most used RD is that of Grey Heron, a young woman from Coral, from a family who was very poor and down-on-their-luck. Once she dreamed, and her dreams were bright: but no matter how much she tried, how much she struggled, things never got any better for her. The one time she had a chance to make her way up in the world, a marriage with the son of more prosperous neighbors, it ended like everything else did: he died of an untimely illness, and that dream evaporated. Now, she is simply resigned to the fact that her life will go on the way it always has, and will end the same way, and she has stopped hoping and dreaming for anything better. (A RD of the Sword, duration of a century and 5Shadow_Lynne/HiddenCrystal/I> effect points remaining. Used the resignation and failure correlations.)

Cover the madness
Cover the fear
No one will ever
Know you were here

A figure in the hallway light
Returning like a ghost
Something that was left behind
Something in a child's mind

A picture worth a thousand lies
A thousand words
A thousand eyes

Bury my lovely
Hide in your room
Bury my lovely
Forget me soon
Forget me
Forget me now
Forget me not

Character History

The young Chosen of Endings known now as Hidden Crystal was born to a peasant family on the Blessed Isle, a family with too many children, too many mouths to feed, and not enough to go around. He was the youngest, and unfortunately for him, the prettiest: he was sold at the age of six into slavery, and ended up as a slave of House Cynis, given as a pretty present to a member of that House. For the next ten years, he was the plaything of one Cynis Varen, a middle-aged Wood Aspect, a pretty doll for him to use and abuse and play with as he would: it is still hard, sometimes, even after his training, for Crystal to remember that he's not that ornamental butterfly anymore, that he's not helpless anymore, when he was so very helpless during the formative years of his life.
At the age of sixteen, he Exalted without warning, and in one moment, when the weaves of fate were first his to control, put his old life to an end: he barely managed it, even with the aid of his raw, untrained power, and it was awkward as anything, but he stabbed Varen with the man's own daiklave. Though what he had done would not have been discovered *immediately*-as the murder had happened out of sight, in the Dynast's bedroom-Crystal was fully expecting to die, as he could not escape, as soon as it was discovered what he had done. Instead, he was not expecting the figure that slipped in through the window, a slender woman with a short daiklave that gleamed with the colors of the stars.
She whispered to him of what he was, of his destiny, what he had been born to be, a fate that had only just revealed itself: she looked at him, knowing the truth of the life he had lived, and whispered to him that this life would be different. That he would not have to be a pliable, obedient, little doll anymore: a promise for freedom, and for something more. Crystal was afraid, but he went with her regardless: she made the scene look like suicide, to cover up what he had done.
The Sidereal woman-who was a Chosen of Serenity of the Bronze Faction-turned him over to the Violet Bier of Sorrows once she had brought him back to Yu-Shan, for training, and he was promptly taken as a student by Empty Sapphire, a Bronze Faction Chosen of Endings, who not only taught him the required fundamentals, as well as try to carefully repair the damage that had been done to his mind over the past ten years, but was carefully trying to court him to join the Bronze Faction.
Unfortunately, the odds were heavily stacked from the beginning against Hidden Crystal actually deciding to join the Bronze Faction: the abuse that he had been put through had embittered him towards the Realm, and the Dragon-Blooded, and he held (and still holds) a fierce hatred for House Cynis, as well as a general dislike of most Dragon-Blooded. He could not allow such a society, which perpetuated such abuses, to stand: it had absorbed all the worst excesses of the end of the Old Realm, when in the beginning it had come about to replace the corruption of the Old Realm. It had come full circle, and he fully believed, and still believes, that it was, and is, time for the Realm to end, and time for the sickness to be cut from the heart of the world. It was already a losing battle by the Bronze Faction to claim him: Empty Sapphire's accidental slip-up in letting Crystal find out (accidentally!) that it had been known what he was, who he was, where he was (and what was happening to him could easily be guessed at), and that he had been left there simply because it would be easier to find him when the time came, was the final straw that broke the back of the large dromedary.
Crystal joined the Gold Faction, and to this day, still bears quite a lot of resentment towards the Bronze Faction, even though he is notably quiet about it and doesn't show it, simply quiet and efficient in carrying out his duties.

Physical Description

Hidden Crystal is a slender, even slight, young man who appears about sixteen, with longish, pale blue hair that he wears framing his face (he cut his long hair off soon after his training had begun: it used to be long enough for him to sit on), and delicate, beautiful features, the pale beauty of a fragile, ethereal porcelain doll, about an inch or two below six feet in height. He is undeniably very good-looking, hauntingly beautiful, with quiet, deeply sad star-flecked violet eyes, and moves with liquid, perfect grace. When not donning a resplendent destiny, he usually dresses in plain, dark clothing of the deepest violet, that covers as much skin as can humanely be helped: he has no desire to ever wear revealing clothing again unless it can't be helped, like a resplendent destiny of the Lovers calls for it: he even wears black gloves over his hands (which are slender, delicate, long-fingered artist's hands). Surprisingly, he wears what appears to be a small, beautifully crafted silver butterfly ornament in his hair: what most don't know is that it is actually a stiletto dagger in the shape of a hairpin, a symbol of what he used to be, and a reminder to himself that even butterflies can change. That even butterflies don't have to be helpless forever.

Other Notes

Crystal has never really gotten a straight answer as to whyShadow_Lynne/HiddenCrystal/I> he was left there, nor is likely to ever get a straight answer. As is expected. There are any number of possibilities: an attempt to strengthen him through suffering, especially if his last incarnation was weak of will or something of that nature, using the "steel cannot be tempered without fire" analogy and it royally backfired: instead of tempering into a stronger blade, he is the steel that has the hidden flaw. Or his life was allowed to be so terrible so that when the time came for him to Exalt, he would put an end to it with relief, in order to easily abandon his mortal life and become someone new: if so, he is a butterfly caught in a chrysalis, but what is the span of a few decades, after all? Or...plots, which hopefully he won't find out about. Who knows? Certaintly not him.

Vignettes

These are little ficlets written about him. Because I was bored.
"First and Last"Shadow_Lynne/HiddenCrystal/B>
The first time, he cried. He was six, and so very, very small, tiny hands clutching at the bedclothes beneath him, sobbing into the silk, a sound like broken crystal. He was a tiny thing, in the older, stronger man's hands, easy to move and rearrange, a living doll that bled and cried and hurt but whose pain was nothing because he was nothing, and it went on and on and on and on until darkness took him and he didn't feel anything.
After that, he never cried again, no matter how much it hurt. Because it would always hurt.
"Self-Deceptions"
He saw a different person in the mirror that no one else ever saw. He saw the pretty painted butterfly, the ornamental doll. He saw the fragile hands that had never wielded a sword, that only knew the right way to touch to bring pleasure, the silent lips that parted for whatever was forced on him. When he was not looking in the mirror, when he only relied on the descriptions of himself seen through others' eyes, when he donned a mask and was not himself, when he was with others of the Star-Chosen, he could almost believe that he was someone else, someone worth something.
When he was alone, all those illusions fell away. In the mirror, he saw the truth of what he was, and who he would always be, no matter how hard he tried to change. He saw everything he was and never wanted to be, and he knew the truth for what he was.

Bury my lovely
Bury the lies
Bury me under
A thousand good-byes

A shadow from another time
Is waiting in the night
Something happened long ago
Something that will not let go

Bury my lovely
Hide in your room
Bury my lovely
Forget me soon
Forget me
Forget me now
Forget me not

Comments

Question - if his un-Exalted life were so bad, why wouldn't other Sidereals (who certainly knew who he was, and where he was) have stopped in to help out? I'm not saying this background isn't good by any means - but an explanation of why they ignored his suffering might explain yet further why he hates the Bronze so. -- GreenLantern
What if they wanted him like this? ~WillCoon

Maybe the Gold Faction wanted him like this, and tricked the Bronze into not realizing what horrors he was really going through, so that when the Bronze tried to recruit him, he'd go Gold? Heck, entire storylines could be built on why exactly he didn't get pulled out. - FrivYeti

With the help of the wonderful dakkareth, as well as the rest of you lovely commenters, potential reasons have been come up with. See above. :) - Shadow_Lynne

Shadow Lynne/HiddenCrystal

Contents

Character Sheet

Expanded Backgrounds

Expanded Flaws

Experience Management

Resplendent Destinies

Character History

Physical Description

Other Notes

Vignettes

Comments

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