TheHoverpope/Capybar
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Capybar, who Dissents, Protective Soul of the Hunted Meaning
Once, Lost Tayala began to spread her secrets through the world. She knew that the tighter a secret is kept, the more it slips through your fingers, that the best way to keep a secret is to let it free. Capybar was born when a portion of her mind disagreed, when she second-guessed and thought that maybe secrets should remain that way.
Capybar knows that Lost Tayala has been leaving her scent where she sees fit - on infants, on objects, on concepts and on hopes. Capybar has been following her through the world when she gets a chance, and erasing those traces systematically. Of course, Capybar is not often free in the world, and so when she is released, she tracks that scent as a child to its mother's voice. And when she finds that scent, she destroys it, crushes into the dust, makes it vanish. Lost Tayala bears her no malice, for she knows that such disagreements are bound to happen, and that any being - and especially a third circle soul - in perfect agreement with itself would surely be mad.
Capybar appears as a woman with hair that flows in stylised green waves like an ocean of malachite, eyes like cloudy spheres traced solely by their outlines. She looks like a woodcut that has slipped off a page into a third dimension, broad strokes and flat planes of colour. Her blade is a single verdant green brushstroke, and when it slices across the flesh of one who bears Lost Tayala's scent, it spreads great streaks of red paint that hang in the air dramatically. When she finds a target, she says simply "Some secrets should remain secrets" and attacks, her attacks nearly unstoppable.
Rough stats
Attributes: 6/4/5, 3/5/7, 8/4/5
Abilities: investigation 7 (tracking +3), survival 7 (tracking +3), occult 6, melee 6 (Sorrowful World +3), presence 4 (Bluntness +3), resistance 4, war 3, occult 5, lore 5, ride 4,
Special powers:
Interrogation by Haste: 6m Capybar may ask a question of 7 words or less, and her target must respond with an answer they believe to be true in seven words or less. This is a unnatural mental influence that costs 1 willpower to resist, however, the target must succeed at a wits roll to be permitted spend the willpower. Perfect social defenses may counter this even if the wits roll fails.
Hunting the Scent: Capybar can tell when the scent of Lost Tayala - that is, something with the flawTheHoverpope/TayalasScent - is within ten miles. However, she does not know where it is. This is a permanent charm effect that automatically triggers whenever such a thing passes into that radius, with a cost of one mote.
Secrets Remain Secrets - Capybar may, for 5 motes, make a single attack against a target who has the Tayala's Scent flaw perfect.
A Secret Spread - Capybar desires, sometimes, to affect those who do not bear her targeted scent. She may spend six motes and a willpower to create a dose of a magical toxin, either automatically envenoming her weapon or in the form of a flavorless, odorless mote. If she manages to feed it to a target, or her weapon pierces the skin of a target after it is envenomed, that target suffers from Tayala's Scent for three days. At a cost of an extra two willpower, she may make the toxin ethereal and conceptual; she may then apply it to hopes, dreams, fears or concepts. This toxin does no damage and has no penalty, and takes a difficulty 6 stamina+resistance roll to resist. Poison-preventing charms work fine.
A Secret Found - Tayala has been known to apply her scent to things such as hopes and fears that are not tangible. If Capybar has spent at least three days among a social group of magnitude no larger than her essence that believes in that particular hope or fear, she may spend six motes to embody that scent in the social group's leader for one day. Killing the group's leader will efface the scent of Tayala. That intangible thing will live on, but lessened.
Example: A small town near the borders of the Wyld pray for a savior to protect them. Lost Tayala, passing by, declared that that hope would bear a piece of her essence. Capybar spends three days in the town and then materializes and strikes down the mayor in a swirl of essence; from then on, the townsfolk hope resignedly for the Fair Folk to just leave them alone.
Riding the Hidden - Capybar spends ten motes and a willpower as a simple action and closes her senses, and she may float through the world as if a dream of the wind. If she has a destination in mind in whatever world she started in, she arrives at dawn of the third day after she has begun her journey. If she does not, she arrives when it is necessary for her to, somewhere that it is necessary for her to be in the same world - usually because the scent of Tayala is there, but sometimes for reasons that she finds utterly inscrutable. She suspects that she may be riding the hidden, forgotten dreams of Zuratha etched into the world, but understands that this is mere speculation. When the charm is activated, she vanishes; when it culminates, she reappears. None have been able to follow her on this journey, and she can bring none along. She doesn't know how she is travelling, as if she ever attempts to perceive the world around her while travelling, she is immediately returned to whatever most imprisons her at the time - a sorceror with his bindings, the endless stretches of Cecelyne, a Solar clinching her face off. This charm may only be activated when she is material.
