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[forgottenmercy]

Player name: Mischa
Player age: Over 18
Method of contact: laskaris#2672 on discord, heavensblessing @ plurk

Character name: the Betrayed Bride Veiled in Forgotten Mercy | Kaede
Character canon: fandom OC (Exalted tabletop OC)

Note: I tried to be as clear as possible in explaining Exalted-specific terms and metaphysics without going into too much detail, but the 3e corebook is 600 pages. If anything is unclear, since I probably tried to stick as close to word limit as possible, let me know and I’ll explain it further.

Character summary: the Abyssal Exalted currently known as Bride was born under the name Kaede, youngest child of a minor noble family, in a village in the midst of the “Hundred Kingdoms”, a fragmented bunch of constantly-fighting small kingdoms. The lack of political cohesion or the constant conflict wasn’t exactly a concern for him at first, busy with his studies and his duty dancing and singing for the gods: at a young age, he proved to be adept at performing the rites that would please the local gods and spirits and became the village shrine maiden, intermediary between the villagers and the divine.

Unfortunately, politics would become a concern for him, as the taxes became ruinous in order to pay for the excesses of the nobles and their interminable, internecine warfare: it didn’t matter, then, how much he danced, how much he sang, it didn’t matter even if he married one or all of the regional gods and forever won all the divine favor that they could possibly give, it would never, ever be enough. He could die dancing, die doing the rites, and nothing would change.

So, reluctantly, Kaede stepped down after training his successor, and tried to find another way: first, he agreed to become the concubine of Hiroto, the retainer of the local lord, who had longed for Kaede since he’d first laid eyes on him, and tried to use his position to get him to intercede with his lord to change her taxation policy - or, if that didn’t work, try to sway Hiroto into making allowances for the village.

Hiroto, unfortunately, proved to be stubborn, and Kaede became first involved with a nascent rebellion movement - and then ended up its leader, and tried to balance his marriage with the fact that he was plotting against his lover’s lord. Even more unfortunately, someone betrayed them, went right to the lord with what was happening - and she sent her army to wipe out any trace of rebellion, and with it the entire village (along with a large chunk of her domain’s initial population).

One thing Kaede never quite realized was that Hiroto did, in fact, love him - but obsessively and possessively. Rather than let Kaede face a public execution, Hiroto strangled him to death, and Kaede died knowing that he had failed - except that it wasn’t quite the end. All along, he’d had the gifts and the potential to Exalt as a Solar, be Chosen as one of the sun’s divine champions - which would have surely happened if he’d been able to plead his case at a public execution, swaying the hearts and minds of all who were witness. Instead, he died without fulfilling that potential, and the dead but-never-dying Neverborn offered him the Black Exaltation: either become one of their champions, chosen by death and the void, one of the Abyssal Exalted, or die for real.

Kaede got back up, afterward, alone: Hiroto had laid him out in his burial kimono, the most rites any of the villagers had gotten before they would be consigned to a mass funeral pyre. He cast off his name, gave it to the void, and became Bride, wandering around without much of an overarching goal except the desire to someday take the world in his hands and show it mercy - he’d wanted to save everyone he loved, once, and he’s still interested in mercy. Just the mercy that comes with the peace of death.

Character personality: On first - and second, and third, and even fourth - glance, Bride is soft-spoken, graceful, and demure: exquisitely polite, pleasing, and gentle, but with a will like steel. He was, in fact, actually all of those things once upon a time, before betrayal and death, an exquisite flower of a boy devoted utterly to his duty and to the people he loved. However, betrayal and death turned his sweetness bitter, made him sharp, lily like a blade, rose with thorns, tempered his gentleness and kindness with vindictive viciousness.

When Hiroto killed him, his trust died: when his community died, he broke, because despite everything, despite all the sacrifices he’d made, despite everything he’d done, he couldn’t save anyone, a sense only sharpened when he Exalted as an Abyssal and was made into one of the champions of the dead. There seemed to be no point, nothing that could have been done to save them, and the only peace the people he’d loved had found had been in death. Had that been their only option, all along? It’s a truth he struggles with, cannot bear, and yet cannot also entirely deny, and he’s too depressed to see any alternatives (and lacks a support network to help him otherwise).

Currently, Bride has no overarching goal, as with the loss of his community, the overriding goal that ruled his life is gone: he has all the power of an Abyssal Exalt and grows stronger, but doesn’t know what, if anything, he wants to do with that power. The Neverborn, his only masters, want him (much like their other Abyssal servants) to kill the world, but he doesn’t especially want to do that, at least not yet: the salvation and mercy of death might be the only true option to save people, to protect people, (and he himself isn’t entirely sure on that), but he’s still holding back on actually committing to “murder everyone” as his course of action, even if “murder’ is a tool in his toolbox that he resorts to fairly often.

Bride shuns authority and dislikes hierarchy: he neither wishes to serve a lord ever again nor be in a position of power, and he utterly distrusts nobility and rulers in general, having seen firsthand the abuses of power by the powerful. He has occasionally been courted by other deathknights, who were loyalist agents of the Deathlords - powerful, ancient ghosts who command great power, and many (though not all) of the Abyssal Exalted choose to have one of them as their patron - to become one of their master’s servants, offers he has all declined, not interested in anything that they have to offer. He does sometimes accept at least a night or two’s dalliance with an appropriately handsome male fellow deathknight who was also trying to court him for more pleasant things and broken several hearts in his wake. (Not so oops. He does this deliberately.)

In lieu of service to a lord or actually attempting to fulfill the goal laid out by his masters, Bride wanders the Eastern threshold, performing small-scale acts of mercy and compassion - even if twisted, as Abyssal acts of compassion tend to be by their relationship with death, the grave, and the Void. He is especially gentle to children as well as young, vulnerable people trapped in abusive relationships (whether as spouse, lover, consort, or courtesan)- and in the process, has acquired ghostly followers. While he was unable to protect these innocents in life, ..and frequently actually kills them to free them from their awful situations, before murdering their abusers out of vengeance, he protects them in death, setting up a home in the Underworld for them where he will dote on them as best as he can, as best as he remembers how. And will absolutely fucking murder anyone - or try to, as best as within his power - who fucks with his ghostly adoptive family.

However, Bride is not at all merciful to men that remind him of his former lover, Hiroto, namely “possessive, brutal assholes in positions of power and authority”: he is, in fact, murderous and a serial killer, and takes special pleasure in murdering those men over a period of several months. His modus operandi is to pretend to be a demure, gentle innocent, playing the fragile, helpless beauty that he seems to be, and once in a relationship with one of those men, will gradually do things carefully calculated (aided, of course, by magic) to inflame their jealousy and possessiveness until they inevitably turn on him - before he’ll show his true colors and murder them with their own weapon, sigh sadly because this didn’t have to happen if they wouldn’t take the bait, and move on. Rinse, lather, repeat, as he reenacts what happened to him with a “better” conclusion: if he kills them first, he reasons, then they won’t get the chance to hurt another Kaede, another person like the boy he’d been.

However, even these murders, as briefly satisfying as they are, pale next to his real obsession: Bride would very much like to murder Hiroto, who is still alive, if disgraced, but hasn’t succeeded, despite his best efforts. Unfortunately, his ex-lover also Exalted- as one of the Solar Exalted, the bright mirrors to the Abyssals - putting him on an equal playing field power-wise and his martial skill far outstrips Bride’s, even with all Bride’s cunning. What encounters they’ve had since Kaede’s death usually boil down to “trying to murder each other, then really amazing hatesex, then trying to murder each other”, and while Bride has to reluctantly continue to admit that the sex is really good (especially because he is, to put it bluntly, a hedonistic tart), he won’t be satisfied or even able to start moving on until Hiroto is dead.

Playing sweet, fragile bait, something delicate and underestimated even as he manipulates the strong and powerful to their likely demise, whether it was trying to get information out of Hiroto while still putting on the appearance of being naive and not having an ulterior motive for having married him, getting close to the men he ruins and the murders, or even just trying to lure out bandits, slavers, and assorted other highwaymen who prey on the weak while traveling in order to kill them as one of his small-scale acts of compassion. Their (apparent) prey turning the tables on would-be abusers and viciously murdering them is something that Bride takes quiet, vicious pleasure in: the way of the world is so often the opposite, after all. Ironically, he sometimes comes into conflict with his fellow deathknights - even some of his occasional allies- for his attempts at do-gooding: vicious, obsessed, and violent he might be, he’s still trying to make Creation a better place, which not all his fellow Abyssals appreciate (or think that he’s not killing enough people!).

When not actually busy doing something, Bride has very quiet hobbies: if at home, he dotes on his ghostly followers, brings them back little offerings from the living world and properly venerates them, doing the rites for both them (as if he was their descendant) and the people he knew and loved in life, rites he also does while traveling, observing faithfully. He reads and studies, he practices singing and dancing, has a taste for pretty clothes (and is honestly kind of vain, though he keeps his vanity to himself and is subtle about it), and will often seek out one-night stands: he isn’t looking for another committed lover, being about as interested in that as the sun is in moving backwards in the sky, but as mentioned before, he’s a hedonistic tart - and has the freedom to indulge his appetites, as in life he was either not acknowledging his sexuality and remaining totally and ritually pure, following the obligations of his office, or he was required to be faithful to Hiroto and his desires, instead of satisfying his own. Death gave him the freedom to at least do what he wanted, instead of being bound by the weight of obligation, custom, and tradition - but Bride would never have considered it worth the prices he’s paid for it.

Character in Imeeji: So, in his default state as an amnesiac, Bride would be far closer to how he was as Kaede, at least to start: genuinely sweet, graceful, and demure, though with a clear difference being that he wouldn’t be as bound by tradition, duty, and expectation : he obviously has a role to play, but not one that so tightly restricts him from exploring his own desires, unlike his social roles as Kaede. In addition, he would have, at least initially, very little of the vindictive viciousness,though those tendencies would likely at least start returning as he regains memories, if not to the same extent as his trauma would be dulled due to detachment caused by amnesia + regain - a filter, so to speak, over the raw edges. Still sad, still depressed, but with enough distance that he could actually start moving forward, much less obsessed with the defining tragedy that he completely shaped the broken arc of his second life around: amnesiac Bride can actually let it go, while normal Bride cannot.. He would also be more trusting, as he doesn’t remember his former lover’s betrayal, and willing to actually connect with people instead of holding them at a wary arm’s length at best.

The other main difference, besides being far less obsessed with the chain of betrayal and failures that led to the deaths of his entire village, is his level of violence: normally, Bride’s way of solving problems, regardless of the problem at hand, generally always ended with “and then murder”. In Imeeji, while he would be comfortable with committing violence as a way of solving problems, especially after he got memories back, he would 1) have other tools by which to solve problems, and 2) more importantly wouldn’t use lethal force as his only go-to method.

Related to both his diminished violent tendencies and his ability to actually move forward, he wouldn’t ever be a serial killer: 1) no one would actually fit his target profile (no one being in a position of authority and all), 2) his lessening of lethal violence as his means for dealing with problems, and 3) the detachment from his trauma would also mean his compulsion to reenact what happened to him with a better conclusion and save the possibility of his own tragedy from happening to anyone else through parallel murder is gone.

In addition, much of the reason he broke so hard in the first place was his absolute lack of support in the face of all that trauma, the utter hopelessness that came with being so very, very alone. He had no one left: everyone died (except Hiroto, who killed him), and he had to face the sheer magnitude of his losses alone, had to come to terms (or rather, not come to terms) with what happened alone, with a bunch of dead-but-never-dying gods in his head basically going “HEY! LISTEN! HEY! LISTEN! KILL THE GODDAMN WORLD”, only less annoyingly loud and more constant creepy chorus that also gives horrible yet useful insights.

So, in Imeeji, as part of a unit, he would theoretically have a support network and not be entirely alone, so be at least less likely to completely fly off the handle even once he has those memories back. Theoretically, anyway. In addition, as he is no longer in Creation, his connection to the Neverborn would (hopefully!) be cut off for good, or at least for as long as he remains in Imeeji, so that would also help: no dead gods attempting to push him to do their will, no constant creepy chorus in the back of his head. He wouldn’t ever really be okay, especially after he remembers the key memories, but he’d be more healthy and less obsessive, which is an improvement.

Being on a unit would also force him to learn how to interact with people on an equal level and actually have friends for once in his life: as Kaede, he was always apart, somehow, beginning with being the youngest child with a significant age gap between himself and his older sisters, who were a decade older than he was: they dressed him up and played with him as a small child, before he became a shrine maiden, but that wasn’t the same as having friends his own age.

This only became worse once he became the shrine maiden, set apart and revered but never someone to be friends with, and then Hiroto’s concubine (because Hiroto was a jealous man and didn’t let him socialize too much ), and then he became Bride, who has even more problems getting along with people on a friendly, interpersonal level due to his ideological conflicts. Bride can manipulate people (and always could, even as Kaede), he can pretend to be sweet and cute, but actually making friends? Being friendly? He’s never had the chance to learn how.

Both units that I would be interested in playing him on sort of play to the worst aspects of his personality. Bride as he was before amnesia fits almost every point required of sensitIV except “dreamy and tender” (mostly because he’s too violent to be tender, unless you’re one of his ghosts), and the juxtaposition of him being a better, healthier person as an amnesiac idol but having to put on the persona of his old self from the memories he regains for the cameras is an interesting proposition, especially if/when the act starts bleeding over, confusion about where the line is, between “role” and “memories”, and whoever he is now.

AlcheME!, on the other hand, would put a lot of emphasis on the “gently smiling, manipulative as hell” aspect of his personality,which he’s always had, whether as Kaede or as Bride, though he’s not exactly good at mood lightening: presenting himself as being completely unthreatening and harmless, absolutely, but mood lightening? Not so much. (which means he has to fake it until he can make it). Also him having to be the troll-y mood lightener would be absolutely hilarious to me given that Abyssals tend to be extremely gothy Gloom and Doom (even down to their titles, which are generally the most overwrought gothy bullshit that a player can think up).



SURVEY: (pre-amnesia)
Evaluate yourself honestly: what do you think your soul is worth?
Mm, truly? I suppose “a second life” because I already paid that price, but is a soul worth less or more if already sold? More valuable to some, as it belongs to another, and less to others, stained and damaged. I don’t think much of those who hold with the second: ah, for the sake of your future, I pray that you think the same way.
Is there anything you would do anything to achieve?
...must I? It won’t be a very pretty answer, I’m afraid. Or very interesting.

...you should have asked me this question last year. My family, everyone who I ever loved...I wanted them to be safe. I wanted them to live. I paid everything I had, but I didn’t pay enough. Now? I don’t know. I don’t think there is anything that I would do anything for to achieve.
What does hell mean to you?
Please, may we skip this question? Ah, no, truly, no? You must ask? [sigh] Very well, if you absolutely insist. Have you seen the afterlife? Yes? No? Ghosts clinging to memory, to existence. That is not hell, but peace.

Hell, to me, is my husband’s hands around my throat, because his idea of mercy was to kill me himself rather than turn me over to someone else to be executed. Hell is waking up dressed for my funeral, alone, among the bodies of my kin and my community.

Hell is spending my entire life sacrificing, and everything coming to nothing in the end.
Which of these nine words is the most meaningful to you, and why? Idolatry, lies, transgressions, vengeance, sorcery, plague, devastation, inquisition, or temptation?
Lies. Everything else you named, save sorcery, is limited, and vengeance is empty. But lies can encompass all the destruction the others bring, and more. Lies can be sweet, or bitter: a lie can break a heart, or destroy a country, or change the course of history. A few well-chosen words and a smile can destroy the great, bring low the mighty, and bring a boy from his grave, bitter and empty.

I know the power in a lie: do you?
Do you want a puppy?
Do you mean a living puppy or a ghost puppy? A man I know has such a cute ghost puppy and he lets me play with it when I go see him for information, but living dogs won’t come near me anymore. If you mean a ghost puppy...mm, they’re cute, but it would chase my bird, so unfortunately no.
Have you previously owned a puppy?
No: I didn’t have any pets, growing up, but my oldest sister gave me a kitten as a...wedding? gift, because she had no idea what to give me besides books and clothes. He didn’t like cats very much, but liked how I smiled and laughed while playing with my cat, thought me even more pretty and cute, so put up with her. I wish I knew what happened to her, even if she wouldn’t like me now: I hope she is safe and well. And not with him.
Are you worried we've been recording this conversation?
Ah, why would I be worried? I expected that you were, from the beginning.
Do you have any last words for us?
Come here, and please let me tell you a secret. I promise it won’t hurt. Much.