#intelligence.

RED WARBLER. CYRUS HAN   —   28,  M.

Fear Paralysis: (+) you can inflict the feeling of fear into your target (+) no matter if the person’s fear is great or small, it will consume their thoughts (+) your opponent is trapped in place while the power is in use (-) the user must know the person’s fear (-) eye contact must be maintained (-) only works on one user at a time and can only be used on that individual once in their lifetime (-) the power is noticeable to individuals in a close radius (-) influence begins to start fading after 3 minutes (-) the more the user activates their power, the more they begin to hallucinate their own fears

HISTORY

YOU STARED INTO THE FACE OF THE BEAST AND SEE NOTHING BUT YOUR OWN SHATTERED REFLECTION STARING BACK AT YOU. You were a boy born from the hands of hubris and shaped into a pillar of envy. The shadows have always been your birthright, the whispered echoes of their caress comforting you like a mother comforting an aching child. You broken, feral thing, saw the darkness as your salvation, but you didn’t realize that salvation and destruction walked a fine line. You sat by as your desires were met one by one, watched as shadows disappeared under the earth until you were the only one left, yet the feeling left behind wasn’t one of fulfillment— it was emptiness, like a black hole consuming all in its path. But what does one do when there’s nothing left to consume? Simple: you turn around and destroy yourself instead.

CONNECTIONS

ROBIN﹒

You look at ROBIN and see your mirrored image. You were twin flames, beings meant to wander the same path set forth by the beast, and the two of you embraced that role wholeheartedly. There’s a certain allure to chaos, and when the two of you are around each other, danger seems to dance at your fingertips. You feed each other’s toxicity, but perhaps that was your relationship’s true destiny— to rot the earth and turn it to dust.

FALCONET﹒

You pride yourself on knowing what makes people tick— what they love, what they fear— but FALCONET has always been that code you could never quite crack. You’d hover around him in college, trail after him like one’s shadow, yet he only revealed himself to you in rare glimpses. A part of you finds him frustrating, but another part of you finds him exciting— for who doesn’t love a challenge?

BLACK HERON﹒

You made your desire known to the beast, listened as news of your siblings’ deaths arrived one after the other, yet there was a nagging feeling that there was a ghost who still wandered the earth. You hired the shadow to track down this soul, but when they arrived empty-handed, declaring your siblings dead, you turned your back on your end of the bargain. Why should you pay when they gave you nothing of substance? If anything, they should pay you for wasting your time.

QUEEN OF PLAGUE

GUNNER. W. ( 30-34 ) Jasmine Daniels.

HISTORY

YOUR RUINATION BEGINS THE DAY YOU ARE BORN. The history of your family begins with the patriarchal legacy of madmen. Your father was no different with his relentless pursuits for strength and subjugation. In those stark, cold eyes, you with your delicate bones and quiet disposition could never compete with the legends of your forebears. Your father convinced himself of your incompetence when in truth, he desired a male progeny. There was no violence in his disregard but you never dared to meet his gaze; that was his cruelty - for a daughter, you must know your place. Was it mercy or was it malice that you were cast from paradise from your very first breath? 

You realize your place could only be made by your hand, that your life was yours to live. You buried yourself in a makeshift grave the day you chose to die. It was the last act of grace for your self-preservation. The silks that adorned you, the flowers that decorated your tresses remained in memory of the beautiful girl who sacrificed herself for fruitless piety. Girlhood is like godhood is what you learn. It awakens your potential. You are reborn anew in a baptismal of blood, finding new meaning in tearing things apart. Carnage calls to you as your new Goddess and you swathe yourself in your newfound worship of me, myself and I. You will anoint yourself into the palace of Saints where myth remembers you as the one who died for your place among Gods. Father, aren't you proud? Look at what I have become. 

CONNECTIONS

KING OF DROUGHT ⌱ THE WORLD WAS CREATED BY A GODDESS AND DESTROYED BY MAN

The throne was almost yours to claim. A future Queen that would rule nations, you never dreamt of becoming a damsel in distress. You were a reflection of your father’s ruthless nature, his stubborn ambition and his talent for conquest. But due to centuries of tradition and your brother, it was you that was thrown away like a disposable pawn. You loved your brother at first but this love festered into twisted hatred. He who was kind, sweet and gentle in disposition was given all that you had ever wanted. You saw the privileges that came as heir as you were forced to stand aside with your head bowed. You seethed and plotted for a place of your own. There shall be a day where all others regret that you weren’t the one to lead. You left on your own accord and when you see him again, you see a newfound torment that replaced the child prince. You can’t help but grin, so this is the weapon your father has made him. Your hostility remains and his face reminds you of a world that should have been yours. You bide your time to see what he’s worth, you won’t hesitate to show him how it feels to bleed. The world is a cruel place brother so I must teach you how it works. 

BELLS OF HELL & SUNKEN WITCH ⌱ WE DREAM, WE DEVOUR, WE BECOME MURDERESSES

You became the woman you are now with the help of a captain who found you and taught you how to sail the seas and become something beautiful and something equally terrible. You weren’t the only one who she saved and your days were spent with BELLS OF HELL and SUNKEN WITCH who were as carefully selected as you were. You never truly liked BELLS OF HELL, with her crude personality and her starvation for attention. Where you utilized all you had been taught to shift the turning tides of a country, she abandoned herself completely and became akin to scum. Her strength was in the brutality of her tongue and the piercing nature of her voice; both which never ceased to grate upon your nerves. SUNKEN WITCH, who had nothing to her name or history, became enthralled with riches and all things beautiful. At one point, even you were infatuated with her loveliness but you refused to trust a woman whose only interest was in making profit. Beyond a lingering kiss, you desired nothing more. The bond that connected the three of you was fragile and it instantly vanished the moment you were left to fend for yourselves.

CURSED SOLDIER ⌱ SOMEDAY YOUR SWORD WILL MELT AND YOUR LIFE WILL BE CUT

A heartless soldier who only cared about his own desires, he refused every proposition you offered. You remember the day he detained you with his cold, apathetic nature. You attempted to bribe him with the thought of a coup and when that didn’t unravel in your favor, you chose more violent means. Yet despite your attempt on his life, he carried out his duties with little care. His arrogance and strategy was something you considered promising once upon a time but his refusal to bow to your status and power was a big enough bruise to your hubris that it marked him an enemy. You’ll never forgive him for what he has done. You lived your life so gloriously free from the place you were discarded that to be dragged back into the hell of your royal cage only stirred carnage in your heart. Your several attempts to run resulted in severe consequences that will forever be imprinted upon your memory. One day, he will taste the very same suffering he has caused you and you will relish it when you are the one seated on the throne. 

MOON BLADE ⌱ A PRETTY TRINKET MADE DISPOSABLE

Her devotion to you was blindly granted and if there was anything more satisfying than submission, it was narcissistic devotion. At first you saw little use for her beyond the pleasures of shared companionship between the sheets. But slowly, you began to fan the flames of her twinkling greed. You could see how badly she desired to be more than what she was born into, and you dangled it all before her. She was a prized tool that would be an extension of your own political agenda. Despite your fondness for her, your own ambitions and dreams stood above every living being. When a pawn was no longer useful to you, you made no hesitation to toss them aside and she was no different. Your last act of grace was permitting her to live, a favor for old time’s sake.

The flag of true intelligence.

BELLS OF HELL

MUSICIAN. W. ( 29-32 ) Yada Villaret.

HISTORY

THE WEED WHICH THRIVES IN ADVERSITY WILL ONE DAY BECOME SOMETHING POISONOUS, SOMETHING ANNIHILATING. You remember what it was like to never exist - a voiceless child that could not be heard or seen. Even in silence, you were only permitted to grovel and make worship to a mother you did not call your own. Your father only ever appeared in name, between pages scrawled messily in fine print. This shell of a body was not yours to do with as you pleased. You were simply never enough - not for your family, not for society, and perhaps the nothingness of your bygone days wasn’t even enough for yourself. Under the moonlight, your reflection mirrors a stranger. The revered legacy of your name and everything that you were born into is met with spit and a scowl. 

With decadence and luxury dictated by the regimental traditions of nobility and an undesired bloodline, you grew a temper that threatened to crack from your sharpened fingernails. You concluded that there had to be another way of life: one where you would awake from your quiet slumber, where your colorless days would end. You knew you never wanted this, not this suffering for the price of everything you could be. In the moments between aimless wandering and unbearable loneliness, you simply screamed. You had forgotten after so many years that you too had teeth, and that you too, could eat. There was nothing beautiful about the sound that parted from your snarled lips. A pause. Then came relief. Finally, they’d hear the ugliness of everything. 

CONNECTIONS

QUEEN OF PLAGUE & SUNKEN WITCH ⌱  THREE BEAUTIES MADE OUT OF PORCELAIN BONES 

Under the tutelage of a woman pirate, the three of you were picked up as her strays. This bond chains you together in your shared past. QUEEN OF PLAGUE who was born to rule, was a naive little princess and though you shared nobility in your blood, you despised each other. Her arrogance stemmed from her birthright and lineage, believing in her leadership based on her blood. But you had unlearned the pompous ways of your restrictive noble life, repainting and recreating yourself until your past was discarded. You found far more companionship with SUNKEN WITCH and had come to love her. But she grew shallow and vapid in her desires to accumulate wealth. And above all her other crimes, she sold you out. What bonded you was your shared loyalty to the woman who found you and made you a part of her crew. When your captain disappeared, all three of you went your separate ways. 

CROOKED HOUND ⌱ TO BELIEVE YOU AS ANYTHING GREAT IS A STRETCH OF AN IMAGINATION 

It was the status quo of those born and bred into nobility to begin making arrangements for their children to wed. And you were given the unfortunate pleasure of meeting CROOKED HOUND as your betrothed. No amount of intelligence made up for his arrogance. Upon the first discussion and impression, you found him to be an insufferable entitled prince with an ego far beyond anything you could ever tolerate. Being as he was, you could never fathom yourself marrying a husband. Your own mother was proof of the ways in which women were akin to livestock, utilized for breeding and nothing more. Your commonalities were non existence and your infatuations had always been toward your own fairer sex. There was no question when a letter was sent in formal request of the end of your miserable arrangement. You’d choose swifter death than to ever be propositioned again as a possession. 

LITTLE MISS RED ⌱ MAKE WORSHIP THROUGH TEETH, THROUGH BLOOD 

One of the rare faces you had the privilege of seeing through the royal court, you had found her to be immediately breath-taking. The curiosity had bloomed from your throat as a friendship before it grew into secret intimacies exchanged between the night. It was the first time you had ever loved so tenderly - the way she caressed and kissed you in a manner that was of need. You were young and foolish, pretending and believing in a forever as any dedicated lover would do. But the cracks of the mirror began to protrude through the seams of your tangled relationship. Betrayal was rotten; it was a complex web of lies that you had navigated when her family offered you a deal: test her and if she succeeds, she will live and you will die. Your final act to protect her was by disappearing, exchanging memories you once shared leaving only gaps in between. She looks at you with hatred for what she believed to be abandonment, but never truly understood what you had sacrificed for her to be alive. 

BLOOD THIEF ⌱ A BETTER STORY IS SIMPLY ONE LEFT UNWRITTEN   

She had made herself remarkable by the art in which she was capable of crafting. Impressions were everything and you knew from the very beginning that she would be a tool to help you climb into the ranks of recognition. You provided her with everything possible out of your own ambition. You thought little of what and who she was and remained naive to her identity and history, believing yourself to be enough to satiate her wildest dreams. You would’ve remained blissfully unaware until she dressed you in flames on your biggest stage and you nearly faced Death itself. It was then that you awoke from your own selfishness and unraveled the threads of her past. You wanted to thank her for the lesson she had taught you and show her your rise from the ashes. With your lips parted, you bellowed the hymns of her countrymen as you committed murder in melodic fashion. Unbeknownst to her, you had found the few friends she had pledged her loyalty to and killed them during the symphonic harmonies of the night. The death of your spirit would sink beneath her flesh as a reminder of her hopelessness. Your grief and hers, who was wrong and who was destroyed? Devastation settles within you both, neither of you are capable of returning to a time before your desolation.

ROOK. DELILAH KWON   —   28,  W.

Emotional Manipulation: can manipulate the emotions a person is already feeling (+) can determine how strongly they feel the emotion (-) cannot introduce new emotions (-) only works for three minutes at a time

HISTORY

cw: death

THE REALIZATION TAKES YOU BY SURPRISE. HAD IT ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY? Has the sky always tasted of salt: thick and heavy on your tongue? A brooch lays flat on your chest and you’re told it symbolizes the pride of your family’s estate. You allow it to adorn your chest if only for the sake of propriety. A funeral may be on its way but the sad truth is this: your family is dead long before they are buried. It’s a slow decay, and in the years after the truth is revealed you take note of all the ways a person can fabricate a lie. In public, there is nothing remiss about the machinations of your life. You smile delicately as daughters ought to do, and look fondly at the figure who praises your accomplishments as feats of his own. Your mother sits in perfect solitude, and you catalog the peculiar smile she wears that belongs more to a museum than the body she inhabits. The woman is fine in all the ways that matter, and until the day she dies, she remains to be just so. The details of your private life are of no consequence, so when your estranged uncle takes your hand in his, introduces you to a new family, it is easy to pretend you don’t share the same fate as the woman who raised you.

Resentment is found at the bottom of a drawer. It sits atop a pile of miscellaneous documents, and its existence surmises your fears. Hands tremble and you cannot disguise the malice you wear so honestly on your face. In the spot where your name should be printed in dark ink is the name of another less worthy than you; whose only important quality is the matter of her heritage. You leave the office silent as the shadow you’ve been made to become, and you do not forget the way betrayal tastes. You understand now that the quiet cultivation of your upbringing was made in accession. Made parallel to someone of minor talent, you were a gambit that fell out of promotion. Still, there is a gnawing at your side that compels you to be reticent, to comply with the orders of another. It is a lesson learned from days of brighter yesterdays, and it reminds you that all great and mysterious things must one day be overcome. You regret having loved them, having saved them with the invisible hand of desire, but in this renewal you will not make the same mistake. They will fall until they can fall no further.

CONNECTIONS

ROBIN﹒ AND YOU ARE NOT THERE AT ALL

She is your cousin and there is only one way to love her. She’ll think you cruel and unyielding, but a delicate hand does not destroy her in the way she needs to survive. ROBIN does not know what she would be without you, could not fathom a future of ambition, and so you take it upon yourself to give her a purpose. Her hatred is a pyre and it’s one you stoke with great care. You know what happens to girls like her, hidden and tucked away where prying eyes cannot see. They grow up and become someone like your mother, a ghost to be used and manipulated. Your love was cruel, but it tempered her apathy into something worthy of your admiration. But betrayal has a name and it calls out to her indefinitely. In a way, you’re proud of what she’s become — in another, you understand it as something to destroy. There is no one who understands her better than you, the creator of all her rage.

ALBATROSS ﹒ I AM WHAT I CHOOSE TO BECOME

It’s easy to understand your feelings for her when looked under a microscope. She saved you that spring night and for it you have made her a pawn in your game. You move her with precision and with the deftness of one who does not have time; and while it is the fault of all good people to fall to the hands of another, ALBATROSS knows exactly what you are. Her devotion to you does not have a name, nor a reason for its existence, but it acts as a soft place to land when things fall pitifully. When your best laid out plans do not go as intended it is she who shields you from blame and recompense, using her position as a means of canon fodder. You are using her, this is a fact known to everyone, but she allows it to happen. So why do you feel so guilty, why does it feel like you already have her blood on your hands?

THE CORVIDS : MAGPIE & BLUE JAY﹒   AND I AM A WITNESS WATCHING IT

The crown you wear is heavy with the burden of some other man’s sins. CROW disappears and the rest turn to you for instruction, not because they want to, but because there is no other choice. You had dreamed of power of your own before, but never in the context of this thing that made you. MAGPIE stands solemnly next to you, one foot in the abyss and the other planted firmly by your side. You watch as he follows his heart into ruin, chasing after some fairytale no one can persuade to stay, and so you do the only thing you know how: you dig your nails into his flesh and wait for him to notice the blood. Meanwhile BLUE JAY sits quietly to your left, eyes flickering back and forth between the misery of MAGPIE and your self-fulfilling prophecy. You want to reach out to him, tell him all the things you admire about his work, but you stop yourself just short of doing so. He must learn to take the things that he wants or else he will always be left empty. Your love, your devotion, it hurts because you care.

CALADRIUS. JAVIER “JAVI” CALDERON   —   32,  M.

Healing Transference: Transfer harm to another person (+) any harm can be transferred (+) harm can be spread across multiple people (-) cannot transfer to yourself (-) cannot revive someone from the dead (-) harm must be transferred to a living human (-) person has to be willing, at least subconsciously, to take on another person’s harm.

HISTORY

cw: death, hospitals / doctors

YOU CANNOT BURY THE PAST, it is too large of a body to hide. You were incorrigible, inconsolable, ineffective in your pursuit toward happiness. Joy found itself lodged in-between the incisors of your smile, reason found refuge in the knowledge of your own infallibility. You were born a God among men whose little lives paled at the mention of yours whose life was bright and infectious with meaning. Birthright made you insatiable but it was terror that forced you to submit. On that bloodless paper your future was planned; each detail, every milestone, penned in ink like fate. You were expedited to be someone extraordinary, unfathomably brilliant, and you were, would still be, if the truth had not come stumbling out and made a corollary of your life. They gave you five days to leave. Five days to forget who they were, and who you thought you could ever be. There is nothing but fear and loathing now, nothing for you to do but surrender.

You’re dead before it can even begin. Today a nurse calls you, murmurs your name, and you’re frozen. The air is stale with yesterday’s memories and it hurts to breathe, hurts to remember. Your hands grow weary and the scalpel in your hand blurs into a scythe. You want to destroy it, bend it to your will, but the nurse is looking at you strangely and your moment of hesitant violence is over. There’s a ringing in your ear now, the sharp trill of chaos, and it follows without even having to be asked. It hurts. You think you’re bleeding. You know you are. It’s better this way. You can’t stand the sound of idle chatter in the silence of the room, the lackadaisical chime that occurs most often at times of near death. Don’t they understand the significance of the thing which you are about to do? The role of arbiter has never been an easy task, but to you who truly understands the meaning of effects and consequence, it seems all the more difficult. All the more painful to choose who lives, who dies, who will be given a second chance. Time ticks away and you don’t recognize the person acting on your behalf. In some far off place your mind wanders and the boulder falls to the bottom of the mountain. Once more you are tasked with pushing it up the hill and once more you believe it will mean something. This time will be different, you think. This time, I’ll be changed.

CONNECTIONS

ROBIN  ﹒  BEYOND A CERTAIN POINT THERE IS NO RETURN

If man is a creature like the Beast, then what is to be said of a woman like ROBIN? Her hand catches yours, turns it upside down to reveal the lines of soft flesh, and cuts open your nature as a gaping wound. She knows your weakness and will do most anything to exploit it for her amusement. There is care lingering in the breath between your hate, and it’s only felt when there is something to worry for. She, pressing her luck too many times to be accidental; and you, securing a patient stupid enough to sacrifice themself for her. It’s easy enough to do if you try, but on most days you feel as though should fail your oath and let her bleed out amongst the drivel. What would become of her if she was forced to be her own person, if she weren’t so cruel in the face of fate? You hate her for all she has and will do to you, but you can’t help but try and save her.

ALBATROSS  ﹒  EGO ARTEMITIA. I MADE THIS — I

It’s a game of who can sacrifice more — who will be the most venerated once they have died. There is a sick truth to the heart of all this: you are not good, you are only repaying what you owe. There is no such thing as redemption for people like you, but still you cling onto hope that there could be. ALBATROSS in a similar way understands this need to be useful, to make your life mean more than the harm you have done. This is a friendship built on the communication of the unsaid, a silent recognition of each other’s past mistakes. It is as if to say, “I see you just as you see me, there is no other way for us.” When Caedes Corvi dissolved and you went your separate ways, it was a farewell but it was not forever. Somehow, you knew your paths would cross again, and so too would the game of surrender. It is only a matter of time now before one of you must win.

BLACK HERON  ﹒  TODAY WE WILL TALK ABOUT BLOOD

They know what you are before you can even admit it to yourself. One leveled stare and they have seen you as you have never wished to be seen before. It is as though they have pried open your chest and made a terrible home in marrow of your guilt. They want to expose you, display your organs on a table for all to see and know and touch. You do not know what motivates them, what compels them to dissect you for public consumption and humiliation, and perhaps you never will if mercy stays on your side. When you hold their limp body in your arms and spare them from the ragged embrace of death, you watch as resentment forms like a blood clot. You might have been their salvation but they will try and be your end, you will not let them.