We Are Our Avatars XI (Open)

[Vakra jal]

"Maybe" Dalahar answered the diminutive creature "I'd be inclined to believe that if I hadn't been fighting that war for 200 years. I've seen strange xenos unique to one planet, xenos cultures like the Eldar or orks. The idea was to forge an unassailable empire, mankind United against the xenos. Of course it would be the case that it was inner strife that tore the imperium apart."

"Exacrtly" he said to Anik "at the time of the rebellion the only xenos who could stand against the Legiones were in retreat. We had won"

 

[Slenn]

Shana shook her head periodically during the conversation with Anik and Candace. She felt like she should speak up, but she couldn't. Not because she was nervous, but because she couldn't find the right words. Finally she said something.

"While I do not deny that humans can destroy, I do not agree that they are completely one sided. Humans and humanoids like myself have been and will be making brilliant ideas and stupid mistakes for a long time. But I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of. If we never had the ability of choosing our path, we would probably have destroyed ourselves long ago. But why? Because there was another choice. The choice to heal, to forgive, to understand, and to collaborate."

"Anik, I have been on the front lines of facing the worst and the best of humanity. I fight for my civil rights every day. I can tell you for a fact that I've been spat in the face by people who would rather see me dead. But on the other hand, there are plenty of sympathizers who understand this folly and know that humans and fenrir are very much alike. They are the ones who give me hope for the future, telling me somehow everything will work out. Even if it's a small light. It is unfortunate that all you got to see was the worst side of humanity. But perhaps you'll need more exposure."

 

[Chungus]

"It doesn't need to be the immediate victims. If you start exterminating neighbours, the rest--"

, Kuki commented to Anik, but cut themselves off, remembering something.

"Well, you get the idea."

Looking to Dalahar, Kuki didn't continue their original point of argument, instead answering with,

"Talk about overreaching. ... Either way, I'd much rather think about learning and improving, rather than destroying. I'm done with this subject."

Hearing Dalahar say he was at least 200 years old didn't get any reaction out of Kuki.

 

[Vakra jal]

"As am I, it's simply unfortunate is all. Lorgar was an amazing public speaker with a vision of what he wanted to make. His vision just didn't extend to xenos." he said "maybe things would have been different"

He was curious of Shana mentioning front lines and fighting. "You seen combat? I admit I've never fought for myself or those like me."

 

[Slenn]

"I don't really mean that I'm a soldier. But it doesn't mean that I've been exempt from viewing violent behavior. Even on both sides, humans and fenrir. When I attend rallies and go into town for supporting a new bill, I've seen... harassment... bullying... and the occasional altercation. I suppose in some sense, you could call that 'combat'. I do not regret seeing this. I know the magnitude of their hatred. And I know there are fenrir that wish the destruction of humans. There's video footage of their rampages. They are evidence that humans and fenrir are no different mentally."

 

[Vakra jal]

Dalahar had thought he'd found some common ground. Alas political activism was not something he wqs familiar with. Not really front lines or fighting, not like he's seen. "We all fight the battles we can" he said "I suppose there is merit to your cause, it's just hard for me to appreciate. The differenc of scale is jarring"

 

[Silence]

"I hope you are right, Shana." Anik stated after listening for a while. "But from what I experienced, from what I could ... feel, and from what I've done ... I can't get a negative view of humans out of my head.
Now, you are not completely human, and maybe this does make you different. I hope you can be better.

But it takes only one good speaker, and you know, what Dalahar tells is true."


OoC:

Spoiler: Aniks character sheet

Name: Anik
Species: Human ?
Sex: Female
Age: 22
Eye colour: n/a
Hair colour: Red-brown
Height: 1,66 m
Weight: 60 kg
Titles: The Soul Searcher, The Blind Huntress
Morality: Would do everything for her friends, but is cold towards unknown people. Dislikes most technology, aside from the things that help her directly.

Spoiler: Clothing

Due to living in the amazonian jungle, Anik only wears hotpants, a colourful blindfold, several necklaces and bracelets.
For visiting cities, she also possesses a crop top, black shades and high wedge sandals.
She got civilian winter clothing as one of the first things when she arrived in Montreal, which includes boots, a coat, gloves, and underwear.

Spoiler: Appearance

Anik is quite a beautiful young woman, with a snub nose and little mouth. Her blindness can distract from her face, as she wears either a blindfold or dark shades most of the time. If not, her eyes are permanently closed. She is short with a thin waist, though a little bit stacked. Her arms and legs are quite muscular. She has long, wavy, red-brown hair, which reaches to her thighs. Due to two years living in the Brazilian sun, her skin is fairly tanned. Several bright red scars are visible on her body, a few on her upper left arm, depicting parallel wavy lines, another one on her sternum, depicting an infinite knot design. Around the joint of her right arm, she has a big bite mark.

Spoiler: Personality

Anik still tries to rationalize things, but she gets overwhelmed by her own emotions more often than not. She has a black and white view of people, She thinks that dragons and several other people she met are good, most other people are evil. (???) She looks down on other people, but still searches for a longer lasting relationship with an equal. She can be very stubborn when talked to, though she can also act quite impulsively. Has a guilty conscience about her past as an assassin and refuses most things she feels would push her back towards a similar path. Only kills out of necessity, when hunting, or after several warnings, if she defends herself.

Spoiler: Strengths

Due to her blindness, Anik naturally has better hearing and sense of touch than most people. (???) She also has a superior sense of smell. Talented and trained in acrobatics, Anik's agility is exceptional. She can jump higher and farther than an average human and she has a very good sense of balance, being able to walk on a rope. Her strength and endurance are enhanced by a god (due to her scars), (???) and trained as well, therefore she is able to lift over 120 kg worth of mass (???) and run for two hours without slowing down. She has a high magic affinity for water and is able to learn magic of this kind. (???)

Most of the time Anik uses a cane to find her way, but she is able to go without, as she has the ability to echolocate through clicking with her tongue, therefore 'seeing' obstacles in close proximity above knee level. (???)

Spoiler: Powers

Reading Hearts:
Through the enhancement in magic abilities, Anik got control about her magic sense to peer into people's hearts. As it tires her a lot to keep active, she prefers to only use it in a very small scale, mostly when talking to one person. Inactive, she still feels the emotions of people around her, without a clear way to locate them, which can tire her fast if in a big crowd, or city.
If active, she can sense location, age and type of a living heart, as well as their virtues and vice. As she feels all hearts around her, this drains her of energy very quickly. It is limited by her inability to sense undead and dead, as well as machine hearts.

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Fire Rune:
Anik can draw a magic rune into soft material or on a paper, which functions as a campfire. Can be done pretty much endlessly.

Sense Bloodstream:
Anik can sense the bloodstream of a person if concentrating on it, which leads to better awareness, for example in combat.

Spoiler: Resistances

Pain Resistance:
Anik can deal with pain for a longer time than an average human, especially when on adrenaline. This does not protect from damage, however.

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Spoiler: Weaknesses

Blind:
Being blind since birth due to cataracts, and having her eyes removed at the age of five, Anik is not able to process any kind of visual information, not even differentiating between bright and dark. She needs to rely on her other senses instead. Being blind this long also led her visual cortex to take over other functions, like her echolocation, so Anik is not able to get sight in any way. If looked at closely, her eyelids look flat, and her tears do not consist of water, but blood. Both of these reasons lead to her wearing dark shades, a blindfold or at least bandages over her eyes, most of the time.

Personality Disorder:
Due to childhood and later trauma, Anik can be quite irritable. She feels her emotions much stronger than other people, and can not control them much, leading to a lot of impulsive decisions. She feels betrayed much more easily than other people. She tends to compare people to the greatest being she ever met, in her mind, Timea, and can be quite disappointed if they don't fit the requirements. She can tend to self-harm and addictive behaviour if feeling down, this including drugs, alcohol and making love. She hates herself at times, longing for people to disagree. She fears abandonment, but her interpersonal relationships tend to be very unstable. She also feels angry most of the time.

Blood Hunt:
For some reason, Anik's heart ability gets stronger, the longer she refrains from killing. Even though she does not like this, she needs to hunt regularily, to keep the sense, and the related social anxieties in check and under control. If she does not do so, human contact can be unbearable for her, leading to headaches and nausea.

Bad Smells:
Due to her superior sense of smell, which she also relies on for orientation, Anik can be greatly weakened, or even disabled, by pungent gross smells like garbage or heavy perfume.

Spoiler: Equipment

She possesses a wooden dagger, infused with a similar rune, which burns constantly when activated. The dagger itself does not get destroyed by this. Made out of godswood, the dagger is and stays sharp.
A sky-metal ring, which allows her to create and manipulate a medium amount of water, counts to her belongings.
She possesses a knife-like tool to carve wood, and a tiny statue of a pinewood tree, both being gifts from Timea, she carries around with her as much as possible.
She also possesses a cane, now modern and foldable.

 

[Slenn]

"That very much is true." She said to Dalahar.

"I can understand your viewpoint. I can tell that even just by looking at you, you're built to tackle the most violent of scenarios. From your tales, it sounds like you've trekked across the cosmos combating against the most ruthless of creatures. This experience must make each world you come across seem so small in comparison to the overall scope of your mission. Meanwhile I'm planet-grounded, confined to one conflict. But to me it's been the latter half of my life.

Maybe some time at this smaller scale, you may be able to see the finer details."

"You mentioned magic earlier, right Anik? When I see the good in humans, and the good in my people, I see we have common ground. Whenever I shake a hand of those that support us, I feel magic... hope. That's the kind of magic I really believe in. And a speaker with a good heart can make all the difference as well. They make the best incantations, the best magic spells of all."

 

[Chungus]

"I don't understand, though, Shana. From what I understand, this conflict you're having, between you and the conventional humans comes from your altered make-up, doesn't it?"

Kuki chimed in, glancing towards Shana.

"So, why don't you just reverse the process to weed it out, then?"

 

[ShindoL Shill]

[color=663399]"I think it would be more accurate to say I can naturally interact with a magic field, without using some external device."[/color] Viyang said to Kuki. [color=663399]"As for an explanation of 'elemental', you would need to ask an Emarian."[/color]

Viyang then silently listened to Anik and Candace talking, rolling her eyes quite a bit at Anik's viewpoint. When Kuki and Shana interjected, Viyang decided to join in. [color=663399]"You're criticising Lady Ayers for her belief that humans are better than animals, but you yourself see other groups as better than humans. Don't you see how hypocritical you're being? And countless things other than humans can destroy nature. Leave a group of plant-eating beasts unrestrained by predators, and they'll eventually eat a forest to nothing. And nature isn't perfect. Some aspects of it need to be destroyed."[/color]

 

[Silence]

"I ... don't know what you mean, Shana, but I can hope I will learn it.
When I shook the hand of someone, all I could do was sense their vice. How bad they were. Some of them had virtues as well, but ... it did never outweigh the bad.

And, Viyang, I am not hypocritical. I know my own species, I know a better species, and for everything else I say I don't know if they are better than humans, or not. And a natural balance exists, but it is threatened by humans, because humans are too smart for nature, but not as smart as to join in in it, to keep the natural balance consciously.
You are not human, though, right? Maybe your species is better, maybe you know how to keep a natural balance. Most humans do not."

 

[Vakra jal]

Dalahar nodded, knowing how his life had coloured his perspective. He was unable to see a small picture only a big one. He was part of something big, in the past anyway. Something that didn't care for the lives of astartes line officers. While he himself is physically imposing and large, to himself he felt smaller than ever. To see a space marine legion, deployed en masse, that would probably open people's minds into the scale he was dealing with. He was nodding in agreement with Viyang. "It just depends on where you come from. It's that simple. Right and wrong are secondary concerns to a warrior on the battlefield. You are on one side, across the field are the other side. You kill them before they kill you." He looked at Shana "you are right in regards to some of the things I've seen, abhorrent crestures, natures monsters. I've always found kin-strife harder than those however." He was thinking of all the times he's battled non compliant humans. "The humans I've fought, they were just unlucky. Unlucky to be born into a world seperate from the imperium. For every world that welcomed us with open arms, others fought valiantly for their independence. It's just bad luck they had to fight us"
Thoughts of these times, Kin strife. They were black times. No astartes wanted to fight long lost brothers of humanity. Astartes vs men. Those were dark days, brutal days. They were never ready for the level of war the Legiones astartes fought. It was sad, pathetic even most times.

 

[Slenn]

"We're too integrated into Apollo and we've made our own culture. In addition to this, Apollo has created a traditional method of power production. The fenrir were originally engineered as power sources. Plenty of devices on Apollo still rely on the convenient package of power that we offer. Maybe reversing the process on the original 250 fenrir that helped colonize the planet could be feasible. But during the original controversy that started the whole mess, the fenrir did not want to get involved any more in genetics. That and the reverse of the process takes more time than the gene application. And now the population has exploded to the point where a procedural method would take years to fully 'humanize' all the fenrir. Not saying I'm justifying any of this. This is just how it happened."

 

[Furioso]

Yuri had been silent through the conversation, but it was clear he wasn't to happy about what direction the talking had gone. "...Humans can do some horrible things all right. I once ran into a governor who kept monsters in his basement. Anyone who spoke out against the way he ran things got dumped in there. Hell, even kids got thrown in. Y'know what the best part was? Once we put a stop to it he was able to avoid a conviction! I don't give up on humanity though. What kind of person would I be to do that? Instead, I do what I can to improve the world, for the sake of everyone who still gives a damn. No matter what it takes..."

 

[Slenn]

"Hear hear!" She said, raising her fist in fervor as a response to Yuri's spiel.

"Perhaps there will be a day when their nightmare ends." She said to Dalahar.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

Viyang nodded in agreement with Dalahar, then said, [color=663399]"Exactly. If something stands between you and your survival, you seek to destroy it. Sometimes so you can eat it to prevent starvation, other times to avoid being eaten yourself."[/color]

 

[Kirke]

A few minutes after the group had started walking, Ella returned. (Followed by Demonjazz's character?) She was panting and said; "Alright, I'm back. Did I miss anything?"

 

[Silence]

"Humans destroy nature without needing it, though. That is the difference." Anik chimed in.

"And, Yuri, I hope you are not just following a false belief. Many want to improve the world, but are you sure that your methods do what you want them to achieve?

The one I was following ... he used great speeches and the hatred against nobles to create a revolution. He argued that nobody would go hungry anymore, that all would be better, if he was the leader ... and many followed him.
Only he and I knew that he did not care about all these people. Only I knew that he wanted power above all else. He manipulated a whole nation into following him ... all wanting to improve the world..."

 

[Chungus]

"Oh, I see. Setting aside the technical reasons, if there are later generations, I suppose it would be unethical to ask them to undergo the procedure to go back to a previous state"

, Kuki responded, wondering for a moment what the situation on Shana's home planet was like. They also wondered what Shana meant by the fenrir being meant as power sources, but decided to investigate this, later.

After saying this, Kuki looked up to Anik.

"I don't know much about human society, Anik. Or, well, anything, really. But on my planet, it's a sad truth that no small number of things went extinct as we thrived. But, the good things about smarts, is you can put it to use to fix what you broke!"

 

[Slenn]

"Anik, are you saying, species-wise that you aren't human? Because, really, I don't see your motivations and opinions any different from any kind of human that I've met. This has been on my mind for a while."