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[thevineintervention]

OOC:

Name: Lady

Personal LJ or DW: Laserdragon
Email: true.wutai.style@gmail.com

Other Contact: IRC most likely under “Lady”

Characters You Play/Have Played in Thusia: None!

Will You Need a DW Code?: No thank you



IC:

Character Name: Aerta Ferham

Canon: Sabra La Tau

AU/OC/Previous Game: OC

Age: 24

Appearance: Height 5’3”, somewhat thin build though not impressively so. Looks pretty much human. She has medium skin tone, dark auburn hair and light green eyes. Her hair tends to be rather bushy and does, in fact, contain living vines, which most of the year bloom in a number of white flowers. When her hair is up this can look like the flowers are decorative, but if she is wearing it down, it’s clear enough that they are a part of her body.



As is traditional of her people, she has a good number of tattoos, which are monochromatic in an ink slightly darker than her own skin. This is a partial list: Both forearms have an intricate grid pattern- each a complicated weave made of one looping thread. Across her back is a large tree- somewhat reminiscent of a dogwood. Her upper left leg has a beautiful and lovingly detailed scene depicting an extremely filthy sex act.


She will wearing green woven robes, with a traveling cape on top of it and several pouches on her belt.


Cause of Death: Heard the call of her insane undying zombie planet, wandered away from safety and was swallowed up by stone.



Impact of Death: Death itself will not be of much concern as she was becoming very unpleasantly aware of just how fucked up everything was getting for her world and the increasingly terrible cost of her race and species’ continued survival. She will be much more concerned and upset about her world’s fate than her own. Also, the fact that she is taken away from her world and can never return will be much more upsetting than just dying. She loves and is deeply connected to her world, having it removed will be painful.

At first she will be very, very upset, but she's the sort who would rather adapt and be happy than be miserable forever; she will do her best to adjust.



References Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d3mePfiQ1jMB8Aq-0BBZfagOVcB7E-LFAFdd_kNmlUw/edit

This is the original planning document for the event these characters were made for (learning the truth of the world the Sabra-game characters were trapped in) The “Aeris Feramis” on that page is the version of this character that was experiences in-game. It can be considered what was left of Aerta Ferham’s memories, with Aeris’s own experiences projected on them to fill in gaps. This application is for the “real” girl, free of Aeris’s skewed perception. 
Generally all relationship, world and culture info in that doc will be basically accurate, but there are some changes to personality and back story to make Aerta a more completely separate character from Aeris and to make a little more sense in the context of her world.

Character Info:



WORLD INFO: Sabra La Tau is a distant planet with a whole lot of fantasy shit going on. The main continent has well over a dozen very distinct nations and cultures. For the sake of brevity we will simply focus on Aerta’s nation of Lacerta. 



The Lacertans are a deeply spiritual but astoundingly disorganized people. They live at peace with nature but do poorly with any formalized structure. The have little formalized leadership, religion or laws. Their “government” such as it is, is a highly informal and barely regarded set of quasi-fiefdoms. Lifestyle can be agrarian, though rarely aggressively so. Family structures too tend to be highly disorganized, due in no small part for their culture’s complete lack of interest in or competence at monogamy. It’s not uncommon or looked down upon to be uncertain of one’s parentage. Local customs and beliefs can vary wildly from area to area. Generally it emphasizes humanity’s part in the grater order of nature, and a reverence for the world around them. Also an acknowledgment of higher gods, but a much greater familiarity and reliance on minor local gods.



The line between humanity, divinity and nature is blurred not just in their beliefs but also in their very nature and DNA. Somehow, the people have interbred with magical aspects of the land. It’s normal for a Lacertan to have one or more inhuman aspects to them, either in appearance or ability. They are generally known as being hedonists as well. Recreational drug use is common, as is casual sex, though often a Lacerta will consider this an aspect of their spirituality.

To some outsides, Lacerta can appear an almost idealistic paradise full of deeply spiritual people. To others it appears to be an incomprehensible No Man's Land of touchy-feely drug-addled sluts and lunatics. It’s sort of a matter of perspective.

BACKSTORY: Aerta and her brother Aeron were raised in a small village in the shadow of mountains. She never knew her own biological father, which did not particularly bother her. Her brother's father was a knight- one of the very few formal duties that could be found in Lacerta. She got along with him well, but as a result of his station, he had to leave their family indefinitely around the time of the birth of his son. They were poor, but doin' OK. Having a couple kids who show early skills with healing and medicine does tend to make you popular in a small village.

Then their mom contracted a rather terrible disease. Despite the siblings' early-blooming skills, everywhere they turned from medicine to faith told them that there was not the power in their land to save her: the people did not have the medical knowledge and the gods did not have the magic. So even though this was something Lacertans Did Not Do, the siblings interceded to the higher gods. Aerta prayed to Kolotha the Weaver for stronger healing magic, and Aeron prayed to Corpus the Surgeon for a greater understanding of medicine. This was a Bad Plan. The twins Kolotha and Corpus functioned by very strict laws and concepts of balance. While they gave the siblings what they asked for, each of them also exacted a curse in payment, and their mother was unable to be saved anyway.

Aerta was cursed by and bound to the will of Kolotha. Kolotha was a goddess of wisdom, fate, and prophecy. For Aerta's vanity in asking that she have the power to alter fate, she was cursed to know with absolute certainty which aspects of destiny were binding. She was given just enough knowledge of Kolotha's will to see when death and misfortune were unavoidable, or necessary for the greater good, but not enough to know the comfort of what better ends might come of unpleasant means. Her powers of healing were increased to miraculous levels, but she was no longer able to use them as she saw fit. Essentially, she became a tool of fate.

Her brother, bearing his own curse, left their home. He needed more knowledge, which he could only find abroad. And though she wanted more than anything to stay by his side, Kolotha's will whispered to her that she had no choice but to stay behind and wait for other to seek her out. As her powers became better known, the sick or injured would make pilgrimages to her begging for intercession. Many of them she would refuse to heal, knowing that their deaths were pre-ordained and necessary. However, even if she refused to heal them, she would turn no one away completely, and her home was often full of the dying.

Still, she did leave home from time to time, or her brother would bring back friends from his travels. A few of the surviving pilgrims or others that had somehow found their way to her house as part of a family that was a little odd even by Lacerta standards. There were some number of adventures and miss-adventures in here before everything went to shit for the entire planet. Which it did, sooner rather than later.

Because then their sun began to die! The gods of their world believed that this condition was temporary, and so devised a plan wherein gods and mortals would life underground until the star’s “wrath” had passed. In fact, the destruction of their world was completely inevitable. As the spirit of the world itself began to die, it called other life back into it. As one so sensitive to both her environment and to fate itself, Aerta was one of the first to hear this call, and was swallowed up by living/dying stone.

PERSONALITY: From a young age she was always a very upbeat sort of girl. She was every bit the Lacertan in easy temperament and spirituality. She had an easy deep sort of understanding “the world around me is alive and it loves me and I love it.” Her personality was always very bright: she was happy and she wanted the people around her to be happy too.

But Kolotha's curse is a heavy thing for a Lacertan to carry. Even if it wasn't the sort of spirituality that a Lacertan is generally attuned to, Aerta has to have deep respect for the will of the Gods. It was never in her to rebel against it directly. It means she spent a lot of time comforting the dying, and even more time than that being cursed for her refusal to help. The heaviness of her life as Kolotha's tool has certainly taken its toll on her bright personality: there is often a bit of melancholy to her.

But! It's really not in her to be the sort that bemoans her fate, or even the unpleasant fate of others. For a girl who took a solid hit to her free will, she's still pretty damn willful, and she doesn't particularly want to be a melancholy person! So in some ways her knowledge of the bitterness of life only serves to galvanize her desire to squeeze every drop of pleasure and happiness out of it possible. Through the years she has built up very strong defenses against the unpleasantness of her position, and she pursues Lacertan hedonism with even greater ferocity than she may have otherwise.

Some may interpret it as insincere, and there may be some small amount of truth to that. Certainly she is rarely quite so happy as she puts on in the good moods. But the other side of that is that she behaves happily for no one benefit but her own. She has no interest in being in constant mourning, no matter how much death she sees, and she will not let anyone tell her how she should behave and deal with the burden of her fate.

If she is in a place where she is not recognized, and in the mood to do so, she can generally pass herself off as a regular Lacerta girl as far as behavior goes. She flirts nigh constantly, and while yes, she does enjoy a lot of sex she is perfectly willing to flirt just for fun. She'll flirt with old men for a wink, she'll flirt with young boys to fluster them, she will flirt with other women for the lulz. She loves girly things like flowers and trinkets. She loves to see fashion from other countries. Even if she can be somewhat somber and heavy at times, deep down she is still that energetic, happy girl, and she fights hard not to lose that.

Like the god she is bound to, she often keeps her own counsel, particularly when it comes to her curse. It's nothing she is ashamed of, or wishes to hide, but it is not a topic she particularly enjoys discussing. When discussing her curse, or death or other heavy topics, she has a strong preference to speak about it in metaphor or symbolic/representative language rather than directly. Some of this is cultural, but much of it is personal preference.

It should be noted that, again like most Lacertans, she enjoys recreational drug use. She has never met a hallucinogenic that she didn't like, and is fond of most things we would consider opiates. She is not a fan of strong stimulants and while she will drink, there are other forms of inebriation she greatly prefers.


Abilities (before Powercap):
1) Innate plant-based powers. These include an instinctual connection with plant life and supernatural understanding of plant needs. It also means that she can gain sustenance from sunlight and hanging out in dirt- this is not as an alternative to eating, but it does just generally make her feel better and can speed up her own recovery if sick or injured.
2) Healing powers! This is both via straight-up holy magical curing and a rather intuitive understanding of plant-based medicine.
3) DESTINYYYY. Her curse via Weaver gave her innate knowledge about how things had to proceed to be going “by plan.”


Abilities (after Powercap):

1) She will have a much harder time communing with the plants in Thusia, and even if she can convince them not to kill HER she certainly won't be able to charm them into helping someone else. She will also discover that trying to sustain herself on the poisoned soil is a solidly Bad Plan.
2) Any prolonged bouts of healing will tire her out. Cleaning up minor cuts and bruises won’t be so bad- she can probably help our two or three people with these and just get a bit winded. Wounds which would require non-urgent medical treatment will cause serious dizziness, and if they are life-threatening, her powers will exhaust themselves at basic stabilization.
3) Without Weaver here this one will basically be a dud. She may be able to perceive some connection to characters from Sabra who were present during Weaver's event, but not enough to flat-out recognize anyone. Other characters who have big canon ~destiny~ pings she may be able to see something there, but for the most part, she's free of this one.



Items Brought In:
A pouch containing a number of seeds from her home in Lacerta
One of her brother's journals. It is mostly a diary and log of his travels but also has some notes of his learnings.

Samples:


INTEVIEW!

Introduce yourself in a few sentences.


I am Aerta Ferham, of Lacerta. If you’ve come looking for me, I may not be able to give you what you’re seeking. I hope we can still get along well.



Describe yourself physically.


What, can’t you tell? OK, I’ll play. I’d say I’m a pretty girl, even by Lacerta standards. My hair is great- it goes really well with my eyes, don’t you think? My brother and I are part featherwood on our mother’s side, so any parts you see like that, well, don’t worry. That’s how it’s supposed to be.


What was your childhood like?

It was beautiful, and its ending was painful. I also spent a lot of time rolling in mud.


Who is most important to you, and why?


My little brother is my other half. Siblings are usually like that, aren't they? There are secrets you share that you couldn't tell another soul even if you wanted to; they'll never speak quite the right language to understand you like family can. And Lacertans . . . well, family is a little different to us than how many other nations see it, but that doesn't make it any less important you know!

He and I, we have been far apart but we have never . . . I have known many things, but I did not know it was possible to be so far from anyone.
There is little I could offer that I wouldn't give to be near him again.

What's your biggest pet peeve?


Hmm, I'd say . . . I dislike the smell of machine oil. Wash it off before you leave your dirty city if you're going to be around girls!



Do you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist? Why?


What will be will be. There’s no use trying to judge it “good” or “bad.” You’ll just give yourself a headache and you won’t get close to an answer. You should just enjoy your path as much as you can.


Where, or how, did you learn your most important skills?


When we were young, my brother and I did something very foolish. Well, more foolish than the things we do now, at any rate. In hubris we insulted the twins Kolotha and Corpus. We were given what we sought, but not what we wanted. I suppose it’s my instinct to call it a “mistake,” but maybe this, too, is a thread of her weave. She certainly never told me.

Do you think world peace is possible?


My world is at peace now, is it not?



Do you tend to argue with people, or avoid conflict?


If I must argue, I will argue. If it is pointless, I will not. It's definitely a lot more fun to get along though, don't you think?



What turns you on the most?


Sunlight, of course.

Oh, sorry, did you mean sexually? That’s difficult . . . How would I pick only one thing? Maybe “a good body?” Oh but that’s so vague. Broad shoulders are important on a guy, well, unless he looks good without them. And I guess that doesn't really work on a girl. A nice smile is good, but that’s not to discount a good smolder. You know, I saw a boy with an amazing set of antlers once. I knew what I wanted to do with him right away!


 

You know what they say about bucks, after all.

Anything else you'd like to say?


Not that I can think of.

 

MONOLOGUE:

 

Well, have you ever heard of viticulture? It's wine-growing, or at least it's growing the grapes that makes the wine. They do it vineyards, which are almost as pretty as orchards, which are no where near as pretty as a real forest, but they're definitely nice. You didn't see a lot of big farms around Lacerta, but if you went North a bit towards Monoceros country you'd see more and more. They liked to do it on their rolling hills, you know? I guess the grapes liked the view, or the earth, maybe.

 

Anyway, they line the plants up in rows and rows and rows. But vines, they won't grow on their own like a tree would. So they make frames that go in the rows. Trellises, maybe? Hmm, I don't really think that's the word. But anyway. Even with the frames all there and convenient, the vines don't tend to grow in just one direction. It's just not in their nature. So the viticulturist- I'm pretty sure that's what you call him- he has to bind the plants. He ties them to the frames with twine and makes sure they can't grow anywhere else. That way, it makes his job easier later. He can get as many grapes from the plants and can make more wine than if they just grew however they wanted.

 

That's what I mean, you see. If they weren't bound, they would never be so fruitful, and the Monocerans wouldn't be able to enjoy the wine they love so much. And it probably don't hurt all that much, to be bound like that. I think it probably doesn't, anyway. But maybe . . . maybe being fruitful isn't what the vines really want. If it was, they wouldn't have to tie them up to make them do what you want. Don't you think?

 

But then I'd much rather smoke than drink, personally.