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Basic Info

Name

Worthy to Be Beloved

Concept

Soul in search of its other half.

Player

Arynne

Contact Info

AIM

Aridawnia

E-Mail

Aridawnia@aol.com

Motivation

Find fulfillment through true love.

Exalt Type

Lunar

Caste

Changing Moon

Age

21

Anima

Flying silver swan with a golden chain around its neck.

History

Jessamine’s life was drab and cold.

While the rest of her people were slim, free-moving, firm and brown, she was pale and dull. She was dreadfully clumsy -- by Haltan standards, at least -- and though she dutifully learned the basic woodcraft required to pass her survival test, she showed no enthusiasm for any of it. Other children teased her at school, and she responded by retreating into a literary dreamland. Fact was too dreary, so fiction was the natural escape. She soon developed a taste for fantasy, particularly romantic fantasy. Even if she didn’t have any real-life proof that love existed, she had faith.

She tried getting into acting, but stage fright crippled her. So she spent a lot of time watching plays and trying her hand at writing scripts. She had an excellent vocabulary and a good sense of style…but the inspiration just wasn’t there.

She was always alone. She didn’t feel comfortable in social settings, and nobody invites a recluse into an interesting clique anyway. Every so often, she would fixate on somebody she thought might be The One and try pleasing them as much as she could; when it became obvious that they were not The One, she would gently cut the ties and move on.

One moonlit night, though, everything changed. She had been hovering on the edges of things, as usual, wistfully watching a silver-haired youth she thought might be The One. When he slipped away from the festival, she followed him. Losing track of him for a few minutes, she was horrified to see him down on the ground...and the twisted shapes of hobgoblins emerging from the shadows between the trees. Heedless of her own safety, she scrambled down the ladder -- falling the last few feet -- and raced towards him, despairingly conscious of the chuckling raksha closing in. Her own death meant little to her compared to the destruction of the beauty she had watched longingly from far-off.

When he turned, smiling, to face her, she had just enough time to see he now sported heavy breasts and a pregnant belly, and glowed with silver light, before the Exaltation came upon her.

In one brief moment, Jessamine dreamed a thousand dreams of glory. She remembered soaring across the sky on wings that outpaced the falcon’s, and running through the forest faster than the swiftest deer. She saw herself clad in silver armor and slaying monsters, or leading thousands in worship as clouds of sweet blue smoke rose to Heaven. And always, always, she sensed another at her side -- sometimes a man, sometimes a woman -- blazing with cold white fire and surmounted by the image of a golden bird.

She woke up still on the forest floor, but amazingly enough, there were no Fair Folk in sight. She could see alarmed faces peering down at her from above. She was shivering and sick to her stomach...but in her mind she was still soaring through the air, jubilant at her own beauty and strength, and when someone started lowering a basket down to her, she laughed.

The Lunar pack who came to retrieve her looked askance at the pale, pudgy girl, and wondered openly whether she’d survive the initial tattooing, let alone the trials. She surprised them.

Deposited in the Far Eastern rainforest between two tribes of feuding barbarians, Jessamine quickly discovered that the nearby raksha freehold was planning to attack and wipe out both. She also surmised that the Fair Folk were manipulating the second tribe, sending them visions and voices that purported to come from the gods.

Befriending the young chief of one tribe (and learning of his secret love for the sister of the other tribe’s leader) she finally succeeded in persuading them of the raksha threat. Meanwhile, she used her anima banner, illusionary powers and shapechanging gifts (drinking her first Heart’s Blood in the process) to convince the other tribe that she was a goddess…and to coax them at midnight, heavily armed, to the clearing outside the first tribe’s stockade, where the tribesmen were already assembled, likewise armed to the teeth.

Before either side could cry foul, the Fair Folk swarmed into the clearing…to be met with armed warriors where they had expected sleeping prey. Both tribes took heavy casualties, but the raksha were utterly annihilated.

In the aftermath , Jessamine persuaded the two decimated tribes decided to combine into one, ending a hundred-year war. After the ceremony -- which included the marriage of the young leader to the girl he loved -- she returned to the retrieval pack, who declared her a Changing Moon, completed her tattoos, and sent her to Sky-Eyes the Destroyer of Nations for fostering.

Sky-Eyes is a Lunar who Exalted during the Fair Folk invasion. In its aftermath she became a charismatic warlord, but an increasingly bloodthirsty one. When she was a young girl, her brother Exalted as a Solar -- one of the few to escape the Jade Prison -- but was promptly killed by the local Dragon-Blooded. With the Fair Folk beaten, Sky-Eyes turned her rage on the survivors of the Shogunate. Terrestrials and mortals who had escaped the Great Contagion and the raksha now fell beneath her sword.

Eventually an encounter with the bearer of her brother’s shard snapped her back to sanity, making her realize she had become what she hated. This man, too, was killed, but instead of sinking back into blood and horror, Sky-Eyes disbanded her barbarian hordes and retreated into seclusion. She is a fervent supporter of the Seneschals of the Sun Kings, for obvious reasons, and she encouraged Jessamine -- now calling herself Worthy to Be Beloved -- in her romantic dreams of her missing Solar mate.

As a mortal, Worthy had never found the true and nourishing love she longed for, but as a Lunar, it was her birthright. She eagerly listened for stories and rumors of the returning Solars as she awaited the arrival of the one the gods had ordained as her soul mate. Of course, she didn’t even know what gender her Solar mate was anymore, but what did that matter? If there’s one thing that Worthy had always believed in, it was that love had everything to do with the spirit and not with the body. And with her Changing powers, she vowed, she would be anything her lover wanted or needed. Anything.

Then the event took place that threw all her happy dreams into disarray. Sky-Eyes had sent her to the Shandir Woods with a message for one of Shandir's handsome, hawk-faced princes. On her way back, she came across a village being ravaged by the walking dead, and rushed to defend the villagers. It was a noble attempt, but there were far too many zombies for one young Lunar, and at the fight’s end she lay bleeding on the ground, watching helplessly as the dead slaughtered the grown men and women and herded the children into cages, waiting for the horde’s leader, a shaven-headed teenager in black armor, to deliver the killing blow.

The blow hung there without falling. The deathknight’s hand shook. In a choked voice, she said, “Lorengel?”

Worthy heard her own voice croak, “Ilse…”

The sword trembled in the air, and then flashed down -- into Worthy’s shoulder, not her heart. Black spots swam in front of her eyes, and when they cleared, she lay alone amidst corpses.

Appearance

In her true human form, Worthy is tall, buxom and still somewhat plump. Her eyes and hair are both the same rich greenish-hazel color, while her amber skin is covered in a short, fine, light-colored down that is almost invisible to the naked eye. She prefers to go barefooted; when necessary she wears light shoes (never boots). Her totemic form is that of a large white swan whose silver tattoos shine like droplets of water in the moonlight.

Attributes

Physical (Tertiary)

Strength 2

Dexterity 3

Stamina 3

Social (Secondary)

Charisma 4

Manipulation 3

Appearance 3

Mental (Primary)

Perception 4

Intelligence 3

Wits 3

Abilities

WAR

Athletics 2 (Moving in Trees +1)

Awareness 2

Dodge 2

Integrity 2

Melee 2

Resistance 2

Thrown 3

LIFE

Linguistics 3

Performance 3

Presence 2 (Persuasion +1)

Stealth 3

Survival 2 (Deep Forest +1)

Languages

(Native) Forest-tongue (Haltan)

Tribal Tongues (various)

Claw-speak

Backgrounds

Level 3 Artifact - Dreams of Fair Warriors (1 dot, 2 BPs)

Level 3 Artifact - Hummingbird's Dart (3 BPs)

Level 1 Backing - Silver Pact (1 dot)

Level 1 Follower - Bennu (1 BP)

Level 3 Heart's Blood - Other Forms (1 dot, 2 BPs)

Level 3 Mentor - Sky-Eyes

Level 1 Reputation (1 BP)

Level 1 Resources (1 dot)

Level 5 Solar Bond - (3 dots, 4 BPs)

Artifacts

Dreams of Fair Warriors (3-dot Artifact)

Soak 8B/6L, Mobility -0, Fatigue -0, Attune 6

This steel suit of lamellar armor contains trace amounts of moonsilver, allowing its user to access some of Luna’s protean qualities. After attuning to the armor, the wearer may spend three motes to alter her appearance to look like any human (or other member of her species) she can imagine. Any attempts to penetrate her disguise add 2 to their difficulty. The only restriction is that the armor is always in evidence -- but she can make it appear to be anything from a buff jacket to superheavy plate. In addition, Dreams of Fair Warriors has no fatigue or mobility penalty.

Hummingbird’s Dart (3-dot Artifact)

Speed 4/6, Accuracy 10/6, Damage 8L, Rate 1, Range 70/210

Longer and heavier than mundane darts and fletched with dark green feathers, the Hummingbird’s Dart uses the base stats of a vajra, but has Speed 4 and does Piercing damage. Like the vajra, it flies back to its caster after every throw. In addition, the user may spend four motes when making an attack; the Dart hovers in the air for an instant before it zooms toward the target, homing in unerringly on him despite his attempts to get out of the way. Attacks of this sort may not be dodged, although they may be parried. The Hummingbird’s Dart may be thrown by hand or used with an atlatl, which reduces it to Speed 6 but triples its Range. Exalts who can attune to moonsilver may receive the magical materials bonus when using it.

Knacks

• Changing Plumage Mastery / n/a / Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, p. 135

• Deadly Beastman Transformation / 5 motes / Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, p. 136

• Life of the Hummingbird / n/a / Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, p. 134

• Prey's Skin Disguise / n/a / Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, p. 131

Charms

Stamina

• Armor-Forming Technique / 1 mote per 3 soak / Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, p. 160

• Ox-Body Technique / n/a / Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, p. 156

Charisma

• 2nd Charisma Excellency / 2 motes per success /

Manipulation

• Second Manipulation Excellency / 2 motes per success /

• Perfection of the Mockingbird / 4 motes / Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, p. 174

Appearance

• Hide of the Cunning Hunter / 2 motes / Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, p. 176

• Irresitable Silver Spirit / 5 motes, 1 Willpower / Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars, p. 177

Equipment

Mundane

• Atlatl

Speed 6, Accuracy +1, Damage +4L, Rate 1, Range 100, Minimum Strength 2, Cost 1/-, Tags: P

Attack: 3 (Dex) + 3 (Throw) + Accuracy (1) = 7 dice

• Short sword

Speed 5, Accuracy +2, Damage +3L, Defense +1, Rate 2, Minimum Strength 1, Cost 1

Attack: 3 (Dex) + 2 (Melee) + 2 (Accuracy) = 7 dice

Magical

• Dreams of Fair Warriors

Soak 8B/6L, Mobility -0, Fatigue -0, Attune 6

• Hummingbird's Dart

Speed 4/6, Accuracy +4, Damage +6L, Rate 1, Range 70/210, Minimum Strength 2, Attune 5, Tags: P

Vital Information

Virtues

Virtue Flaw

Curse of the Mother Hen

Combat Statistics

Health

-0 [ ]

-1 [ ] [ ]

-2 [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]

-4 [ ] [ ]

Incapacitated [ ]

Dying [ ] [ ] [ ]

Essence 3

Personal: 15/15

Peripheral: 36/25

Committed: 11

Other Information

Intimacies

Her family, Sky Eyes, her circlemates

Experience

0/50

Bonus Point Expenditure

Artifact 3 - 2 points

Artifact 3 - 3 points

Followers 1 - 1 point

Heart's Blood 3 - 2 points

Mentor 3 - 2 points

Reputation 1 - 1 point

Solar Bond 5 - 4 points

Athletics Specialty 1 - 1 point

Experience Point Expenditure

Essence 3 - 18 points

Irresistible Silver Spirit - 10 points

Thrown 3 - 4 points

Stealth 3 - 3 points

Presence Specialty 1 - 3 points

Survival Specialty 1 - 3 points

Athletics 2 - 2 points

Integrity 2 - 2 points

Presence 2 - 2 points

Resistance 2 - 2 points

Survival 2 - 1 point