#askjasenia

Jasenia was in desperate need of an updated design. She's a Barhatian Karenzan, so I mixed the Arabic-inspired Barhatian and the South Asian-inspired Karenzan aesthetics together and I actually really like the result!

She plays a prominent role in the recent story "Damage Control".

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

She's gonna make swiss cheese out of you with those heels and you're gonna LIKE IT

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

They definitely knew, they just didn't care very much. I mean, I'm sure they'd prefer if Jasenia didn't sleep with Skel, but it wasn't causing enough problems for them to intervene. Check out this quote from her father in "Steel Knuckle Squad":

   “…How could I sell him when he brings my daughter such happiness?” the chief said to the king. “I couldn’t possibly! As long as my children are happy, I am happy too. Spoiled rotten, all of them!” He let out a hearty laugh.

Overall he seems like a pretty chill guy who can't be bothered to make drama where there doesn't need to be any.

(But he also didn't want to make drama with a neighboring settlement, hence why he forced Jasenia to marry their prince later on. He didn't do it to spite Skel. Skel and Jasenia's relationship was just collateral damage in an unfortunate situation.)

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Questions/Comments?

Say what you want about her, but Jasenia was a real one. She obviously didn't choose Skel for his looks, his money, or his size--both height and otherwise...She loved Skel for Skel!

Basically they have known eachother all their lives. The Barhatian royal family bought Skel from slavers when he was a baby, as a gift to Jasenia's eldest sister. Baby slaves are a common gift for children in Barha unfortunately...The idea is that it gives girls child-rearing experience, and at the same time, there is no risk if she hurts them because they're "only a slave". A slave's life is worth next to nothing in Barha's jurisdiction. They're treated as disposable objects by royalty because money is clearly not an issue for them.

Jasenia grew up with Skel, he was the first friend she ever made aside from her siblings. She was just a toddler, she had no concept of slavery and didn't realize he was different from her in any way. All she knew was that they were friends and she liked playing with him.

Her sister grew out of playing with baby dolls (and by extension, baby slaves...) so Jasenia "inherited" Skel as a hand-me-down toy. This bought him more time before her parents forced him into actual slave-duty. For the time being, his job was to just play with their daughter and keep her happy.

Skel didn't even realize he was a slave until later in life, he thought he was royalty too! He got to eat at the table with the royal family, play with the princess's toys, wear nice clothes, and never had to work. The other slaves were wearing rags, eating gruel, and sleeping together in cramped bunks in the basement. Sure he was a goblin like them, but how could he believe he was on their level when his life was so different?

When Jasenia reached puberty, her parents tried to make Skel do slave-duty, but she screamed and cried and threw such a fit that they decided to just leave him alone and let him continue being her playmate. Jasenia has never thought of Skel as a slave, he has always been her friend first and foremost, so she never let her parents treat him like anything less than family. She even convinced them to let him learn magic from the palace wizard, which is absolutely unheard of for Barhatian slaves.

By this point, Jasenia and Skel were getting romantically involved with eachother and had already decided they would marry when they were older. (Of course the King and Queen gave them a rude awakening about this later, but...)

As the princess of Barha, Jasenia was quite sheltered and wasn't allowed to hang out in town without an entourage of security personnel. Why bother going out to party if you have to take your babysitters with you? Any friends she made were fake suck-ups who just wanted her money and a piece of her clout.

So naturally, she gravitated closer and closer to Skel over time because he was her only "real" friend.

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Questions/Comments?

Don't worry, it's a really obscure detail! It's never explicitly stated in the series. The only hint you get is Dario mentioning he descends from Barhatian royalty, saying his brother was the king of Barha. Jasenia was Barha's princess many generations later. If you're paying super close attention you can piece these two tidbits together, but it's such a tiny detail it barely matters.

Dario was not a king, presumably because he was not the first-born. He developed a shitty inferiority complex over this and decided to contract vampirism so he could outlive his brother and rule his kingdom for eternity. Unfortunately for him, the plan backfired and his vampirism got him banished from Barha altogether.

Dario never had children as far as we're told, but his brother did. Dario was roughly 700 years old at his time of death, meaning he lived about 3.5 elven lifetimes. During that time, he brother has died of old age but his royal descendants have been continuing the bloodline.

This is just a fancy way of saying: Dario is Jasenia's great, great, great uncle--or something like that. Exactly how many "greats" separate them isn't known, but probably 3 or 4. Though Jasenia is a rather distant relative of his, she's not very distant genetically due to the inbreeding that tends to happen in these noble Morite families...hence why she still looks so much like him, despite how many generations have passed.

So yeah...thanks to Skel, the Freelance Good Guys actually have semi-familial ties to Dario Fucking Dusk. Lucky them.

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Questions/Comments?