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♰ OOC

Player Name: tifa

Are you over 18? yes

Contact: protects

Characters in game: also apping alina starkov



♰ BASICS

Character's name: Mavis

Canon: Original Character

Canon point: after aristaeus betrays her

Age: 26

Background:

cw: slavery, child abuse/neglect, genocide, forced breeding

mavis' world is a post-post-apocalyptic far future version of earth akin to horizon zero dawn, but without the AI machines. in the deserts of the soundless wilds, mavis' parents were members of the itinerant kuruko clan who were made slaves due to their personal debts. to pay off that debt, they went to fight in a conflict with the neighboring efra clan when mavis was very young and were killed, which paid off their debts and spared mavis the pain of inheriting it.

though she was still a toddler, mavis was made to scrape by on her own because the clans of the soundless wilds value strength. her survival was viewed as a test put to her by the gods. no one stepped in to raise her or help her, and she was left to raise herself as a penniless orphan.

at age 10, she witnessed a vision of her clan being slaughtered by kossian soldiers. terrified by what she had seen, she tried to warn her clan's leader, the jarl. the jarl called a clan meeting, and mavis discovered that her own people feared her power more than kossos because her power — a psychic energy known as furor — was strongly associated with the empire's power, as it fuels the hivemind that unites every kossian. taking her for an ill omen and a curse, the clan exiled her.

she made a life for herself alone in the desert of the soundless wilds, an itinerant outcast who — despite her exile — could never bring herself to stray too far from where the kuruko settled, always testing the edge of their territory as a part of herself hoped to reunite with them one day, or at the very least keep them safe. it was a solitary existence. she taught herself all the necessary skills for survival: she salvaged scrap metal and parts from ancient machine artifacts, hunted and gathered.

and when she stumbled into the territory of other clans, or when their warriors or scouts stumbled upon her, mavis fought for her life. these conflicts further manifested her furor in the form of uncontrolled telekinetic energy. mavis killed for the first time at 16, when an efra warrior tried to drag her back to their clan as an indenture like her parents had been.

over time, she began to wonder if her vision had ever been real, but eventually, the vision came true. when she was 25, kossian soldiers invaded and massacred her people. seeing the fire of their camp on the horizon, she disregarded her exile and entered the camp to find her people decimated, every last one of them killed.

in the aftermath, a kossian soldier named aristaeus found her in the camp and began pursuing her. she learned that he was a venator, part of a 3-man unit of hunters sent to find people with strong affinity for furor and 'invite them' to join the kossian hivemind. mavis rejected him and fled.

though he continued his pursuit, her knowledge of the soundless wilds helped her evade capture while the kossian military spread into the soundless wilds to begin mining the sacred mountain for its prissite. while on the run, she meets darcy, a fellow 'untethered' (what kossians call those with an affinity to furor who aren't part of the hive) who cannot touch other people without killing them. the two bond, and mavis resolves to protect darcy.

when aristaeus' unit closes in on them, mavis loses control of her power and kills the youngest venator, ione. mavis gets a narrow chance to escape with her life, but darcy opts to stay behind and return to kossos with them. afraid of their own power, they seek a way to train it. mavis blames aristaeus and kossos for taking away her only friend, resolute in her belief that going to kossos would mean losing her sense of self and identity.

once separated, mavis discovers that in the fight to escape with her life, she accidentally telepathically linked herself to aristaeus — a link he can't undo because his own furor specializes more in telekinesis than telepathy. because mavis accuses aristaeus of creating it, and because of darcy's recent recruitment, aristaeus adjusts his approach the next time they cross paths over an ancient mine: he promise her training in controlling and understanding her power in kossos. despite this, she rejects him again. when aristaeus' partner then tries to capture her, a dust storm ushers them into the mine, which then collapses as a result of their fighting. aristaeus' only remaining partner, leto, dies in the collapse, leaving mavis and aristaeus to rely on one another to survive. it seems as if they might have found a common ground, but connecting with mavis has only mad aristaeus more unwilling to let her go. he betrays mavis, knocking her out to bring her back to kossos for forcible integration into the hive. (this is mavis' canon point.)

the reality in kossos proves very different than the picture aristaeus painted. unwilling converts cannot be integrated into the hive due to the risk they'll destabilize it. instead, kossian scientists suppress mavis' powers with technology and lock her in a forced breeding center so they can introduce her strong furor into their gene pool. aristaeus finds her there and, shocked and disgusted by the reality of what happens to those he brings back to the hive, frees her. the two escape the capital together and return to the wilds.

Abilities:

mavis has an affinity to a natural force (think gravity or the Force) that kossians dubbed 'furor.' it's sort of like a sixth sense that begets hyperawareness of the world. to think of furor affinity in terms of power level, mavis is especially powerful but absolutely untrained, so she has very little control over these things, and they usually manifest as bursts of unprocessed emotion or in instinctual defense of her life. she's an unstable atom bomb. this is part of why after aristaeus finds her, kossos commits resources to pursuing her — both to control her, and to get that power for their society.

the practical applications involve:

• precognitive visions/dreams — this is limited and influenced by location and connection, so mavis isn't going to have precognitive dreams about people on the other side of the country or on another planet who she's never met, but psychometry can trigger something, or the feeling of a space, or if something significant might happen to someone she's emotionally connected with, she might foresee it. these visions are not always literal because they're processed by the brain's subconscious, so often they're not recognizable as premonitions or they're not actionable. in-game, these would obviously be restricted to cr plotted things (not plot-related, unless the mods want to use it for something) and only with an opt-in from the players involved.


• telepathy - for mavis, because she's unable to control her power, this mostly looks like incredible migraines because she can't turn off 'receiving' and hears the surface-level thoughts of everyone around her all the time. it's often loud/crowded enough that individual thoughts are indistinguishable because she hasn't learned how to focus it. however, with training, deliberately reading thoughts and digging into memories and hidden intentions would be possible, as well as dreamwalking and hanging out in another character's mind palace. again, this would be opt-in only! and i would ask other players to include in their brackets the thoughts that mavis might pick up.


• telekinesis - when her life is threatened, mavis is liable to create a telekinetic explosion, a 'slice' of air/energy that could sever someone, or to merely shove them back with incredible force. in theory, she could learn how to train this power to lift and move objects without touch deliberately, to lift herself into the air for hovering/basic flight. kossians with a strong enough affinity, for example, use technology to amplify their sensitivity and can use telekinesis to alter her own internal body chemistry because they also study human biology. however, mavis can't personally, at this time, apply her telekinesis in these ways.


• tether - mavis accidentally created a psychic tether between herself and aristaeus as a result of her uncontrolled telepathic power. this connection allows them to constantly feel one another's emotions and surface thoughts, even across great distances.

additionally, mavis comes from a warrior clan that hunts and gathers in the desert. she has basic wilderness survival skills and is a skilled fighter (both hand-to-hand and with knives).

♰ SUITABILITY

Strengths:

RESILIENT - growing up first as an orphan in a culture where strength was proven through violence and survival, then as an exile forced to survive the harsh desert alone, made mavis into a very self-sufficient person. she weathers hardship without flagging, pushes through her own physical and emotional pain, and she knows how to teach herself the practical skills to navigate her environment. her style of resilience is very practical and results-oriented; there's nothing productive or helpful about a breakdown. if she were the type to break, she'd be dead, and she instills a lot of pride in the fact that she has survived the hardships of her life so she doesn't consider failure an option. instead, when met with failure or defeat, she will persist and re-attempt until she succeeds.

IDEALIST - despite all this, mavis is an idealist. because she views her parents' deaths in combat as a selfless act that freed her from inheriting their burdens, she believes deep down that people are doing their best in a violent world. the way she managed to survive all these years of misery was by holding onto the hope that things could get better — that her clan might take her back, one day. that she might be able to save them. that she wouldn't always have to be afraid of herself.

COMPASSIONATE - though mavis struggled to connect to people socially, she demonstrates particular empathy to those who have suffered loss and feel isolated (i.e., who share her traumatic experiences). she generally demonstrates this by positioning herself as their protector. when she comes across darcy in the wilds, afraid of their own furor, mavis sets aside her own psychological hang-ups to help them deal with theirs. when her own life is in danger, mavis may prioritize escape/survival, but if someone she relates to is in danger, she will always choose fight. this is part of the reason that she ultimately connects with aristaeus in the mine and later when they flee kossos: she comes to understand him as someone who has also been victimized.

Weaknesses:

ANTISOCIAL - self sufficiency and resilience go hand in hand with a sort of emotional stunting. betrayal and isolation have caused mavis to struggle with trusting or relying on others. she avoids the kind of small talk that bonds people and doesn't know how to connect with anyone because she never had peers or mentors. further, she can't be vulnerable with people not only because she was taught that it was weakness, but also because she can't even get in touch with her own needs and desires.

FERAL - in general, she doesn't observe social rules (because she never really had any) and is what most would consider uncivilized and even hostile. scarcity forced her to avoid processing her emotions, to suppress them to survive. this now often manifests in outbursts of frustration and aggression in situations where she is prompted for connection, where she is faced with an emotion she can't process, during times of general stress, or when she is unable to get alone time. the few times she has interacted with people over the past fifteen years has been to fight for her life against them. in most instances, her first solution to a problem is a physical and/or violent one, and she is constantly negotiating with instincts that tell her other people are threats.

CODEPENDENT - a lifetime of starvation has made mavis desperate for love and connection. while she gets frustrated that she doesn't know how to do it, and she avoids social situations because of the awkward discomfort, she ultimately does want these things, and when she finds them, she tethers herself (in the case of aristaeus, literally through furor) to them and organizes her choices around making a space for them in her life. because she doesn't have a strong sense of self due to her lack of emotional skills, she'll even sacrifice pieces of herself and things that are meaningful to her in order to preserve these connections, whether they're healthy/positive or not.

Fears:

when mavis is afraid, she becomes irritable and hostile. this is a prickly defensive mechanism for emotional fears, but it's one born of translating her fight-or-flight response to physical threats and her culture's practices of violence to non-physically violent situations.

one of those fears is loneliness, which is made harder to avoid by the fact that she's deeply uncomfortable in social situations. so though mavis will often choose to be alone, she'll grow hostile when people call her out on it, and she deeply fears the possibility that she'll continue to be alone forever mostly as a result of her inability to function in a community. some part of her is aware that she's not 'built for' social interaction at this point, and when she feels that crop up, she gets defensive.

a competing fear is large crowds of people, which is a result of the sensory overload associated with being an overstimulated telepath who can't control her power, but also a result of the sub-fear that is inability to control her own powers. she fears that she might hurt someone else, either costing her a relationship she values or just giving people more reason to reject her.

generally she doesn't manage these fears so much as avoid facing them.

Desires: more than anything, mavis wants companionship. she wants to feel like she can be part of a community, she wants to feel love and affection and physical touch and all the things that have been inaccessible to her.

on some level, though, and partly as a vehicle to this, she also wants to be rid of her powers — so that she will no longer be a threat to others either by being a target of the empire or by risking hurting someone due to her own out-of-control temper/powers combo.

Regrets:

mavis believes that her actions led to the genocide of her clan — that because she has this great power that kossos wants, and because she revealed her vision and was exiled, she both brought the kossians there and wasn't able to be there to protect her clan when the time came.

Tethers:

lynx — the kuruko clan domesticated large cats for the purposes of riding in combat. when her people died, one of these cats, thus abandoned, developed a bond with mavis. her telepathy means that she can vaguely communicate with the cat (not by like 'speaking cat' but by simply reading emotions/intentions). the lynx is directly responsible for her survival and initial escape from the venators hunting her, so she sees herself as indebted to the lynx for life.

knife — when members of the kuruko clan come of age, they make their own short knives to keep with them. these are both decorative and functional. they are uniquely designed and inscribed with symbols and figures that represent something about their wielder or that's important to them.

♰ OPT-INS / OPT-OUTS


Harrowings: yes

Curses/Pranks: yes

Imprisonment: yes

Encounters: yes

Loss of control: yes

NOTE: again, JUST IN CASE, noting fetishized genderplay here.



♰ SAMPLES

xim tdm & dennys