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Character of the Season
Frail in body but dangerously quick of mind, Nikandr is the sort of character who proves that curiosity can be just as perilous as any weapon. A necromancer, inventor, and problem-solver with more ambition than self-preservation, Niki approaches the world like a puzzle box begging to be opened, even when what’s inside has teeth. Blunt, dry-witted, fiercely independent, and carrying a history best left partially buried, he has a knack for making even failure feel fascinating. Whether he’s raising the dead, moving across Caido to King's End, or experiencing a hangover for the first time, Nikandr brings a wonderfully strange spark to Caido, and we can’t wait to see what trouble his brilliant mind wanders into next.
Congratulations, Niki!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
The Citadels' shrine was beautifully ornate, crafted in honor of the gods to be a place of prayer and devotion. Rhiannon had always enjoyed visiting, even if her prayers had never been directly answered before. To be fair, she'd never had particularly specific requests, so why should the gods have deigned to respond? Now, though, she had finally worked up the nerve to ask for something - and was willing to pay the price, whatever it might be.
Rhiannon had spent a fair amount of time in the market that morning, carefully selecting the perfect offering to appeal to Safrin. She'd perused for hours before settling on a simple crystalline orb set upon a carved wooden base. Within the crystal, multicolored swirls and stars gleamed; when the light hit it just so, the world around the orb became an illuminated galaxy. When Rhi set the orb upon the shrine, she was careful to position it just so, ensuring that the light hit it properly in honor of the goddess.
Once she was satisfied, she backed away a step and bowed her head. "Safrin, I appeal to you. If it please you, I'd like to be Attuned. Please make me a hybrid."
And then she waited.
---
Using my hybrid pass! Rhi would like to become an Abandoned/Attuned hybrid, with her first shift being an ursur.
"How do they know what my galaxies look like, I wonder?" Safrin's voice is thoughtful if not a touch cold. Appearing in a warm rush of starlight that has the various candles flickering and sputtering, thus ruining the illusion cast by Rhiannon's orb, the goddess's presence causes star-bright light to radiate throughout the shrine. "There are so few who I have shown them to." She muses, glancing a touch dismissively at the soldier as she runs a finger over the glass.
"I cannot make you an attuned any more than I can grant you magic." The goddess says, turning her galactic gaze toward the abandoned. "Your soul will always be tainted with the magic you carry, but...there are options, of course." Being a hybrid chief among them.
"But why have you called to me? What you ask is no small thing, and yours is not a face I have ever seen before, much less taken favour in.."
As the goddess appeared before her in a warm rush of starlight, ruining the beauty of the orb, Rhiannon wondered if perhaps she hadn't fucked up rather badly. Safrin's demeanor was cold and dismissive - but Rhi had expected that, as an Abandoned. Her kind weren't exactly favored by the gods. She'd hoped to woo the goddess with her offering, but if her star-crystal hadn't been right... well, she could only pray that Safrin wasn't there to smite her further.
"I know, and I'm sorry to bother you," Rhi said respectfully, offering the goddess a bow. "And I'm happy to offer whatever you'd like in return. But I think I could better protect our home if I had more tools at my disposal. As for why you... I admire Deimos greatly, and I know he thinks highly of you. I've heard more about you than about any other gods, so I thought..." She trailed off, not wanting to ramble. "Please, give me a chance to prove myself to you."
Rhiannon's reasons for seeking out Safrin as opposed to one of the other gods, were thin at best. Though mention of Deimos was obviously well received, that the soldier's other reasons seemed only to be that she'd heard more about Safrin through mere happenstance than because of any actual effort or intentionality on her part was...interesting.
"And if in return I asked you to pledge yourself to me for life, as Deimos has?" Safrin raised a brow, her arms folding elegantly and comfortably across her chest as she turned, forcing Rhiannon to bear the full weight of her stare.
The soldier shifted under the weight of Safrin's stare, hoping that she wouldn't say something that would cause the goddess to smite her. It would be easy for her - a blink from Safrin could end Rhiannon easily. And she had no intentions of dying today.
So she thought carefully about her next words. If the price of her hybridization was pledging her life, it seemed like a fair price to pay. After all, as the goddess had said, what she had requested was no small thing, and she supposed it probably was a lot to ask when she'd never had so much as a conversation with any of the gods before. And of all the gods, Safrin was, perhaps, who Rhi admired the most. The stories she'd heard of the goddess had called to her in a way that the others had not, but she wasn't sure how to put that into words.
So she forced herself to meet Safrin's gaze as she tried. "I would do so gladly. I've heard stories about all of the heralds and always felt most drawn to you. I understand that pledging myself to you wouldn't be something to do lightly, but... I would do it gladly.”
Luckily for the soldier, Safrin rarely required words in order to understand the intentions or admiration of those who came before her. They helped, if only because she adored hearing her praises sung, but it wasn't strictly necessary, not when her powers let her slip into the minds of all those who stood before her. To swim through their memories and rifle through their subconsciouses. While she found Rhi's notions to perhaps be a bit naive and lacking in knowledge and experience where the gods were concerned, nevertheless her intentions seemed genuine enough. It wasn't Safrin's fault that the soldier had no idea the sort of deal she was entering into.
Smiling, her lips twisting into a catlike curl, Safrin lifted her chin ever so slightly. "Then say that you are mine, for now until your heart ceases to beat." So saying, the goddess extends a hand for the soldier to take. As soon as the words leave Rhi's lips, the girl will feel a wild uncoupling within herself as starlight ripples out from Safrin's touch, smoothing away the etchings of abandoned magic already clinging to her soul in order to make a surface capable of holding the attuned bond.
Rhiannon has used her hybrid pass and has been made into a hybrid!
If she thought about it too hard, she might lose her nerve. She'd meant what she said to Safrin, of course - she would gladly pledge herself to the herald and would have no regrets in doing so - but there was still something profound about it. Once it was done, she couldn't take it back. Perhaps a wiser soul would have wondered what Safrin got out of the bargain, but Rhi couldn't bring herself to care. She was getting what she wanted, and for that gift alone, Safrin had earned her eternal loyalty.
"I am yours," she said, almost demure as she bowed her head respectfully. "Until my heart ceases to beat." And so it was that starlight rippled from Safrin's hands, covering Rhi's very soul with something wild and untameable that somehow soothed the rough edges of her magic, creating a surface upon which a new Attuned bond could cling.
She was a hybrid. Now and forever bound to the goddess before her.
"Thank you," Rhiannon said. "I will serve you well. I swear it."
As the words leave the soldier's lips, something untamed and wild will begin to stir inside of her. Something with claws and teeth so sharp that she'll be able to slice through leather armour with ease. "It will take some getting used to. Perhaps warn those around you that you might be a bit more...tempermental, at first." Safrin advises, though how Rhiannon ultimately decided to proceed now that she was more than what she was before, was entirely up to her.
"Now that you are one of my stars, don't be a stranger, mmm?" With a wolfish smile, the goddess winks at her newest follower, before vanishing in a plume of decadent lilac smoke.
