TheHoverpope/HeavenVoicedAlesa

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Heaven-Voiced Alesa

In the northeastern forest, there is a place that is alone and is quiet; a small glade in the middle of trees stretching as high as the sky, pressed tight as a palisade. None still living, even the god who watches that place, know how it came to be; it is simply a completely separate, completely isolated bubble of plains, perhaps a kilometer across, among trees far taller. There are people there, a few hundred, no more, no less, who silently watch the turning of the years, sing to each other songs of peace, and know no war or conflict. They feed on the mushrooms that grow on the sides of the trees, they eat the ferns that grow about their home, and they are calm. It is dark in their home except in those brief minutes every day when the sun is directly overhead; and it is dark at night, just a spot far above like a coin held overhead, that is filled with stars rather than endless tesselating leaves. The moon suffuses the sky at night, the leaves overhead glowing a cold silver, and the dew that falls from them the villagers call Tomorrow's Kiss. It is said that those drops, if you capture them and drink a drought of them down, will cure any disease; and it seems to be true, for the villagers know no illness. They live uniformly long lives, and they spend most of them devising song and harvesting.

Alesa was one of them, and she was reputed to have one of the finer voices in the village, a songstress without compare as well as clever. One of those lucky few universally beloved, even her rivals held no ill will towards her, and she was foreign to the concept of ill will in her first charmed life. These things must come to an end, though, for some if not for all. The forest spirit who oversaw the glade, periodically appearing to request a song of the villagers, manifested himself in the center of the plains. "My children," he spoke, and his voice was no greater than that of a man's, "you know many things of this dale, and many things of the waters that flow through the soil, and many things of the plants and the roots and the stars overhead. But there are many things that you do not know, many things about the greater world outside your borders." The spirit paused for dramatic effect, but the people there had no sense of drama and so were only puzzled at his manner. "What you must know now is that there are many spirits of the forest, of whom I am the mightiest and the king. I am unquestioned in my dominion over the woods. However, there is another god, a god of the earth, who I seek to make a gift to. I will return in one week, and the finest woman of the village will come with me to be in a better place. That is all. Keep praying to me, children, and I will protect you."

The villagers were naive, but they were not fools. They had their own literature, and they had their own metaphysics, and they had their own understandings, which the spirit who relied on them was too full of drink and fool of mind to learn. He did not know that there was much theorizing among the thinking peoples of the town, which posited that given that the sky was light for many hours, and the sun was in their sky for but a small portion of that time, the world must be a larger place than they had thought. And they had thought that if their spirit could come and go, then surely there must be a larger place to go to. And surely, if the spirit only took and did not give - for the villagers apprehended the meaning of prayer - then he was not to be trusted. What worse could he do to the place than try to take Alesa from them? And so she took her bare hands, and she walked to the boundaries of their land, and she tried to burrow, to cut her way through the soil, under the wall of trees, to reach a freer place. But the roots of those trees were thick as limbs, barbed and brambled, and she could go no further. So she climbed, and she climbed for hours and hours, trying to reach the place that they could see, the sky. And she climbed for days, and rested precariously on the branches, and learned to make a rope of the vines and how to tie a knot so she would not fall as she slept. And she learned that there was nothing to fear in height, although much to fear in the strix and the skyhopper, which she learned to fight off and kill. And after four days of climbing, drinking from bromeliads caught in the branches, feeding on the grubs that walked the tree sides and the first meat she had seen, the flesh of a strix she downed in its sleep, she reached the canopy and surmounted it. When she reached the very top of that tree and looked out over the endless forests of the east, she saw that she was not alone, and behind her stood a woman. That woman was graceful and naked, and the moon seemed to be silhouetted by her presence, rather than the opposite, as if she were its source and its being. And she taught Alesa what she had become, and led Alesa to the world, and Alesa took her place among the children of the moon.

Motivation: Restore Heaven

Physical: 1/5/4
Social: 5/1/5
Mental: 4/4/2

Abilities:
Athletics 1, Awareness 2, Archery 1, Dodge 3, integrity 3, Lore 2, Martial Arts 3, Occult 2, Performance 3, Presence 1, resistance 1, Survival 2, Socialize 1

Backgrounds:
Solar Bond: 2 (Apostle)
Manse: 1 (Stone of the Hunt)
Tattoo Artifact: 2 (Hearthstone bracers)
Artifact: 2 (Moonsilver buff jacket; modelled to look like Martha Jones's leather get-up)
Heart's Blood: 3

Virtues:
Compassion 3
Conviction 2
Temperance 4 (6 bonus)
Valor 2

Willpower: 7

Essence: 4
Pools: 18 / 42

Knacks:
Life of the Hummingbird
Prey's Skin Disguise
Subtle Silver Declaration
Deadly Beastman Transformation

Charms:
First Dexterity Excellency
Third Appearance Excellency
First Perception Excellency
Scorpion and Toad Absolution

Merits and Flaws:
Greater Curse: -3
Pacifist: -3

Mutations:
Gazelle's Pace (2)
Heart's Blood Addiction (-2)

Bonus points:
Temperance: 6
Dexterity: 12
Martial arts 4+5: 2

Experience: 151
essence 3 (18)
essence 4 (27)
performance 4 (6)
strength 2 (4)
Terrifying Beastman Alteration (10)
Outworld Forsaking Stance (10)
Foe-Turning Rebuke (10)
Second Charisma Excellency (10)
Perfect Symmetry (10)
Irresistable Silver Spirit (10)
Combo: Word of the World's Protection (Outworld Forsaking Stance, Foe-Turning Rebuke, Second Charisma Excellency, First Dexterity Excellency) (8)
Attribute specialties: (5 experience each, FrivYeti house rule)
Charisma: +3 (in Beastman form) (15)
Appearance: +2 (Beastman form) (10)
Heart's blood 3 (3)

Deadly Beastman Form

(Some mutations at TheHoverpope/RandomMutations 12 mutation points
Wood adaptation (1 point)
Enhanced Sense: Hearing (1 point)
Impossible joints (2 points)
Monkey Tail (2 points)
Songbird's Voice (4 points)
Compact (2 points)