Brightfires/Kareyeru
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Tepet Kareyeru
Game: A Child Shall Lead Them, GMed by Shantak
Aspect: Air
Anima: Skyward gusts of swirling wind, prone to a peculiar low keening
Nature: Judge (Often played as Caregiver)
Concept: Spiritmaster with a Strange Destiny
Picture: http:/KareyeruWeb.jpg
STR 3
DEX 4
STM 3
CHR 3
MAN 2
APP 3
PER 3
INT 3
WIT 3
Linguistics 1 (Native: High Realm, Old Realm)
Lore 4 (+2 Spirits, +1 First Age)
Occult 4 (+2 Spirits)
Stealth 2
Thrown 1
Martial Arts 4 (+1 Acrobatics)
Performance 4 (+2 Flute, +1 Voice)
Melee 3 (+2 Spear)
Endurance 1
Awareness 2
Archery 1
Ride 1
Athletics 2
Dodge 2
Presence 3
Socialize 2
Craft (Jadework) 2
Backgrounds:
Backing 3 (House Tepet)
Breeding 5
Artifact 3 (Flute)
Contacts 2 (Spirits on the Isle of Voices)
Merits and Flaws:
Lucky 1
Destiny 3
Small
Willpower 6
Essence 3 (Personal +5, Peripheral +9)
Personal Essence 14
Peripheral Essence 33
Compassion 4
Conviction 2
Temperance 2
Valor 2
Charms:
Spirit-Detecting Mirror Technique
Spirit Sight
Spirit-Walking
Ox-Body Technique
Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
Spells:
Emerald Circle Countermagic
Emerald Banishment
Flight of Separation
Summon Demon of the First Circle
Marutetsu's Perfect Ritual of the Pattern Made Whole
Her Artifacts:
Voice of Autumn- A pale jade transverse flute.When she plays it and spends 2 motes to activate it, it forces all dematerialized spirits in 3x her essence in yards to materialize (and expend their essence to do so)
Hound to the Hunter- An antique silver huntsman's whistle decorated with hounds, horsemen, and game animals. Attunement: 1 mote. Use: 5 motes. The whistle contains a hunting dog with tracking abilities similar to the hound created by the spell 'Hound of the Four Winds'. (It's an elemental automaton. It has physical stats equal to a standard war dog, and looks a bit like a large beagle.) The dog remains in Creation until the next sunrise or sunset, or until dismissed by its owner, and must "rest" in the whistle for one hour for every hour it remained active in Creation. Kareyeru calls the hound Hon Mun... "door watcher".
Her means of combat:
Fist or other general unarmed attack - Speed 6 Accuracy 7 Damage 2B Defense 7 (if Martial Arts: Acrobatics applies, Accuracy or Defense can be 8)
Qiang, a spear - Speed 9 Accuracy 9 Damage 5L Defense 8
Dodge Pool: 5 Soak 1L/3B
Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-2/-4/Incapacitated
EXPERIENCE (since OOC post 2928)
General: -1
Specific: -
Remaining from Year One: 4 specific (Willpower, Valor, Performance, Martial Arts)
SPENT XP
First Year XP use
2+1 (Occult: Spirits +1), 5+4 (Compassion 4), 7+1 (Stamina 3), 3 (Martial Arts 3), 2 (Presence 2), 4+1 (Martial Arts 4), 2+1 (Athletics 1), 2+1 (Endurance 1), 3 (MA: Acrobatic forms +1), 10 (Marutetsu's Perfect Ritual of the Pattern Made Whole), 7 + 5 (Dexterity 4)
= 47 + 14
Second Year XP use
8 (Str 3), 3 (Craft 1), 3 [combat] (Thrown 1), 1 [hunting] (Stealth 2), 1+1 [athletics] (Athletics 2), 2+2 [social] (Presence 3), 2 (Craft 2), 9 (Contacts 2)
Her Background:
Kareyeru ("winter orchid") is the youngest child of Tepet Minoko and Cathak Kosu, and (as a particularly unkind uncle put it-) she's always been "the runt of the litter".
Her breeding is exceptional, though, and she was born under an auspicious sign. A great deal has always been expected of her, runt or not... Unfortunately, she's never quite been able to live up to those high expectations.
She's neither as strong nor as clever as her brothers, nor is she as beautiful or as gracious as her sisters... Her mother says that she's just too plain and too quiet to be a social success. Her father is convinced that she's too soft, too much of a dreamer, to lead an army. (... Or do anything else useful in a Leigon position...) Her ambitious aunts and uncles barely know she exists, and to her more illustrious siblings... she's better off forgotten. The reduced circumstances of the House have even made marrying her off a difficult proposition, despite her flawless pedigree. They'd thought to have some luck with the V'neef, but even that's looking doubtful these days...
Her one and only saving grace is an affinity for music... Kareyeru is an accomplished flutist, which has given the family exactly one virtue to mention when she comes up in conversation.... Which fortunately isn't often. No one wants to dwell on the least accomplished child of the line, but when it becomes unavoidable at least she had the good sense to be relatively good at *something*...
Despite her parent's dashed expectations, the truth is that Kareyeru is (and always has been-) a reasonably bright, very dutiful, and compassionate girl. She's not half the lost cause they make her out to be... She just wasn't the shining paragon of perfection that her parents expected, and they haven't been able to let go of their preconceptions. Her fascination with Spirits is what led her to Sorcery. That, and the deeply-held but seldom mentioned desire to do *something* that would distinguish her from her siblings. Something useful. Something that would impress her parents...
Her sisters may be as beautiful as the stars, and her brothers (Most of whom were lost with the House's armies-) may have been as clever as kitsune, but none of them went into Sorcery.
Her Exaltation:
Her Exaltation was fairly recent, rather dramatic, and embarrassingly public. It was triggered by the stress of having to play an exceptionally difficult First Age composition (The notorious third passage of ‘White Crane and Dragon’s Daughter’)... flawlessly... with an unfamiliar instrument (The jade flute 'Voice of Autumn'... An artifact passed down from her great-grandfather-), for a sizable group of her mother's frightening friends from the Imperial city. Her newly-emerged anima blew paper lanterns, fans, scarves, hats, and at least one parasol so far into the forest that the servants were still searching for them a week later. The damage done to the courtiers' elaborate hair-dos was incalculable.
While they were certainly relieved that their daughter had finally become one of the Exalted (It happened later for Kareyeru than it had for any of her siblings-), her parents were a little less pleased about her choice of venue...
Her Primary School:
Kareyeru attended the Five-fold Trancendant Arias School (an academy for the musically-inclined) for a year, but was removed by her parents and “home-schooled” for the remainder of her primary career. She departed Arias after an incident involving an aggressive older student and a dormitory hearth spirit she’d befriended… While the older student survived his fiery encounter largely unscathed (Although he did look VERY silly without his eyebrows-), and it was determined that the spirit had acted only to defend the girl, the administration still deemed it best that Kareyeru not return for a second year. She completed her basic education under the instruction of Master Willows. (Song of Viridian Willows… whose details remain undetermined beyond his own spirit affinity, his talent with the long-flute, and an apparent disdain for demons. Current OOC supposition holds that he, like Master Shallows, is a Sidereal... And her destiny being what it is, his affiliation may well be Gold rather than Bronze.)
Family Matters:
Kareyeru is the youngest child of Tepet Berel's first daughter, Minoko, a clever woman known for her business sense, and Cathak Kosu, a veteran Leigon commander. Their dozen-decade old marriage, arranged purely for political reasons, was thought to be doomed to failure by early gossips, given the strength of their personalities and the relationship between their houses. Both would say now that they found balance in opposition. Theirs is not the most peaceful household at times, but the match has endured and produced a large number of off-spring, many of whom have been Chosen by the dragons of Air and Water.
Minoko runs a merchant house out of Lord's Crossing, and had hoped to eventually marry Kareyeru to V'neef's grandson Kelris, who attends the House of Bells, in order to merge some portion of the two families' business interests... But Kareyeru doesn't really like the boy. (He's uninterested in spirits, he's loud, and... worst of all... he's tone-deaf-) The destruction of the Tepet's armies and the over-all decline in the House's fortunes have made his family almost as unenthusiastic about the match as Kareyeru herself, but Minoko has not yet given up hope.
Unfortunately, the fact that the girl has gone into sorcery probably hasn't done much to improve their opinions, either... Even though Kareyeru (and her father-) see sorcery as a powerful advantage in supporting an army. As Yeru recently pointed out to Kel, her repair spell works very well on defensive structures, Flight of Seperation is useful for aerial intelligence gathering, and Spirit of Might can aid defensive construction in places where warstriders are unavailable or can not reach. "Sorcery," she reminded him, "Is more... than Obsidian Butterflies and demon summoning."
Her Description:
Kareyeru is a small, fine-boned girl with very long, very dark hair that has only just begun to turn the signature indigo that all of Minoko and Kosu's children are known for. Her pale skin is tinted faintly blue, and her eyes are the color of the sky in summer. She almost always wears some shade of blue, and favors layered robes, with loose scarves, belts, cloaks, and long sleeves that trail dramatically in the wind. She may not have inherited her sisters' beauty, but she does have an excellent sense of style.
Her Destiny:
Kareyeru has a strong attraction to (and affinity for-) the First Age opera White Crane and Dragon’s Daughter that she can’t quite explain. If asked, the goddess Coils of Silk (Or, probably, Yeru's "undercover" Sidereal sifu, Master Shallows-) could explain it to her… Yeru is the reincarnation of Matsujonoryu, one of the two individuals whose story inspired the writer of that ancient opera. Gracious Ivory Crane, whose write-up is elsewhere on the site, is the modern incarnation of the other half of the pair. While Yeru and Crane have never met, and neither knows about the connection that they have to each other, his status as an Anathema and her affiliation with the Bronze Faction Sidereals who oversee the Heptagram are bound to cause fireworks when they do cross paths.
Her destiny is either to rejoin her Solar partner and aid him in the effort to bring harmony to relations between humanity and the spirit world, or it’s to destroy him utterly… Which fate awaits her (and Crane-) has yet to be determined.
