Shantak/PelepsSaria

Peleps Saria

Name: Peleps Saria
Aspect: Air
Nature: Follower
House: Peleps
Age: 14

Description: Saria does not believe she is beautiful, even though she knows that "being pretty" is her only value. She has always been something of a beauty, resembling her elder sister in coloring and grace, though of course not approaching her radiant beauty, and never having hope that she would someday surpass her. But Saria has recently blossomed and become, more beautiful then even her near-perfect siblings: petite and delicate, with long, silver hair, which she wears loose, and large, childlike green eyes. Her pale ethereal features are perfect, flawless, transcending mere beauty, almost appearing as a dream, too beautiful to ever, ever be real. She carries herself with fragile, floating grace, a nervous, vulnerable grace.

ATTRIBUTES
Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2
Charisma 1, Manipulation 1, Appearance 5
Perception 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 3

VIRTUES
Compassion 4
Conviction 2
Temperance 4
Valor 2

ABILITIES
Aspect Abilities
Occult 4 (+1 Sorcery)
Linguistics 2 (Native: High Realm, Old Realm, Riverspeak)
Lore 4
Thrown 2
Stealth 3

Favored Abilities
Performance 4 (+1 Singing)
Dodge 3
Awareness 3

Other Abilities
Martial Arts 1
Melee 1
Presence 2
Socialize 2
Ride 1
Archery 1
Craft 3

BACKGROUNDS
Backing (House Peleps) 3
Breeding: 3
Familiar: 3

CHARMS
Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
Elemental Concentration Trance
Flickering Candle Meditation

SPELLS
Emerald Countermagic
Demon of the First Circle
Emerald Circle Banishment
Virtous Guardian of Flame
Death of Obsidian Butterflies
Stormwind Rider

Willpower: 8
Essence: 3
Personal Essence: Peripheral Essence:

COMBAT SUMMARY
Base Initiative: 6
Attack:
Punch (Speed 6, Accuracy 4, Damage 2B, Defense 4)

Dodge Pool: 6 Soak: 1L/2B
Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-4/Incapacitated

EXPERIENCE (since OOC post 2928)
General: 7
Specific: 2 (combat)

Backstory:
Perfection. That was what her parents demanded of their children, all their children, whether Exalted or mortal. To be perfect, to be flawless. To be more then everyone around them, they set impossibly high standards and expected their children to meet those standards, and pushed them, relentlessly, and cruelly, to be perfect. Because perfection was strength, and failure was weakness. And, as impossible as that seemed, most of their children met those standards (admittedly, at the cost of their mental health and free will, but they hid it well enough). Most of them. Except for Saria, who, unlike her siblings, did not blossom under pressure: instead, she broke.

She always had to be perfect. It was a high standard to live up to, but her parents-who themselves were cold and harsh and unapproachable as the northern sea, impeccably, perfectly bred and themselves overly high-achieving and proud, proud and stubborn and unyielding-insisted on nothing less from their offspring. They did not coddle, did not keep their children in spun-glass webs: instead, it was always the push to be better, to be stronger, to be proud and beautiful and live up to their heritage as Princes of the Earth, to be flawless, as the Dragon-Blooded should be. As her siblings, as her parents were.

Saria was never perfect. She tried, and she tried, but she was flawed. Flawed when she should not have been, when such brilliant and noble and proud blood and the touch of the Dragons flowed in her veins...why she had received such a gift, when there were so many others more worthy who did not Exalt, was puzzling.

Peleps Saria: the insignificant, easily forgotten, youngest daughter. The girl who could not, would not, do anything of importance, who was flawed, pitiable, inexplicably damaged, a failure, weak. She was not perfect, not like her older siblings, not like her younger siblings: she was not and never would be, never would live up to her parents' expectations, their desires. No matter how much she tried-and she tried, she tried, with all the fiber of her being, though it seemed for all the results she gained, that she wasn't trying at all-it would never, ever be enough. The quiet, useless, pathetic, clumsy youngest sister who was always overshadowed by her siblings (especially Elthea, who was everything she should have been).

She was not strong and brave (angry, controlling) like her eldest brother, Veritas: she was not perfect, golden (secretly unhappy) Elthea: nor bold and charming (cruel and conniving) like her brother Isarien, or even like her mortal siblings. She was only Saria, flawed and broken and weak and damaged, the "perfect disgrace", the failure in a group of successes, the daisy in a garden of roses, that all she had was pretty, and nothing else. And she was made aware of that, every day of her life, whether through letter or reprimand, until that truth became the core of how she defined herself.

The only thing she did right, in her parents' eyes, was Exalt: but even that was flawed. At the age of eleven, when she was in primary school, she was reading yet one of her parents' letters, yet more harsh criticism, and she snapped, breaking at last under the strain of trying to live up to the perfection that her family demanded, and she Exalted in the midst of a nervous breakdown, in a violent storm of wind and tears. She was pulled home, in disgrace, to be tutored privately for the remainder of her primary school career.

Saria was a disappointment, there, to. Oh, she learned well enough, when prodded to (it didn't matter that she knew the answers, knew them perfectly, it mattered that she always choked up when it came time for her to recite her lessons, that she couldn't speak, that was what mattered, a Prince of the Earth did not choke up when it was necessary to speak), but she still broke down all too easily into a storm of tears, she could not do something as simple as control her anima, she struggled to learn the most simple of Charms. She was a failure. The perfect disgrace.

Finally, it was decided to try her on one more option: as she was unsuitable for anywhere else, they would send her to the Heptagram, desperately pulling in favors and bribing people and jumping through hoops to get her in. And there were a lot of hoops to jump through. A considerable amount of them. And her parents made it clear to her that this was her last chance, that if she failed...it was over for her.

It was clear they were expecting her to fail, before she even began: after all, she had failed miserably at everything else, why not this, too?

Saria kept her secret to herself...that she had found, in the most hidden recesses of the library, two books. That she had smuggled them to her rooms, and in secret, had studied the secrets to be found within them. That, somehow, she had unlocked the way to Terrestial Circle sorcery, by herself, had learned spells on her own, with no tutor, with an ease and grace that transcended anything she had ever done before.

Saria is uncomfortable with that. She is uncomfortable with the idea that she can, at all, do anything well, and is secretly afraid she will wake up and find it all to be a dream.