VEDIKA MUKTI / 30 YEARS OLD / POLICE OFFICER AT ECHO VALLEY POLICE DEPARTMENT / EASTCLIFFE
FULL NAME:
Vedika “Veda” Priyanka Mukti
BIRTHDAY:
23 March, 1987
SPECIES:
Black Mataku
AREA OF RESIDENCE:
Lives alone in an apartment in Eastcliffe
BIOGRAPHY: (tw: trigger, trigger)
Vedika was the middle of three wild daughters who from their very first steps were responsible for every grey hair on the heads of their parents and all their extended family. She and Anandi and Maina crashed through their childhood home in the mountains of Nepal like feral creatures, leaving destruction in their wake wherever they went. Their grandparents and aunties and uncles, of which there were many, used to tut and shake their heads, and their parents used to try and make them behave with stories of monsters coming in the night to gobble up bad children. But the girls seemed to already know their own power, and they weren’t afraid… Perhaps they should have been.
Sometime in their youth, the girls all awoke at the same time in the middle of the night, and without speaking made their way out into the mountainous wilderness together until they reached a dark and winding cave. Within, they met Banjhākri & Banjhākrini, a wedded pair of demons who were notorious for devouring mischievous children. But they wanted something else from the triplets that night… The girls were put through rigorous magical testing, for not only are the Banjhākri demons, but also powerful shamans of the highest order- gods in fearsome form. Night after night the girls returned to the cave silently in the dead of night, and each night their testing was inconclusive. It was hard to determine the value of the triplets- individually they each had their flaws- inhibition, indecisiveness, recklessness… but together… oh the three of them were possibly one of the most promising magical forces they had seen. Finally, the demon gods agreed to assess their powers in a few years, when they had more fully developed… They were warned that their final tests would be much more difficult…
Shortly thereafter, their parents chose (for their own good) to move them from their beloved village in the dense wilderness, to a girl’s academy in Scandinavia, which specialized in the teaching of young women with magical potential. The girls protested, as they knew the dangers of abandoning their training with the Banjhākri, but numerous plots to run away from home were foiled, and soon they had no choice but to leave. Each mile of distance maddened them, to the point that they were like uncaged animals at school. They each felt a driving need during their studies there to return to Nepal, to the cave of the demons. And as a result of their restlessness, they often misbehaved and in fact ruled over the other girls at the school with a sort of gang of delinquents. Chief among them was none other than Vedika herself, notorious for crafting a weapon out of anything, and a penchant for sneaking out after hours which was strictly forbidden. There wasn’t a single professor that could match her, magical though they were, and she often found herself in the Headmistress’s office for private and mandatory lessons in control and restraint. But in the end, the great Lady of the school only managed to put a pretty wrapper around Veda’s ambition. A cage that a tiger can walk freely in and out of is still a cage after all…
Regardless, Anandi, Vedika, and Maina all completed their training together with quite promising marks, and a delinquency report longer than their arms. The second they were free of the place, they all returned to their village, to the cave, where Banjhākri & Banjhākrini were impatiently waiting. Here…the sisters learned their lesson about recklessness… Of the two survivors, neither of them could explain exactly what went wrong with their final test, just that the youngest of them, Maina, was devoured in front of them. And when they emerged they forgot so much more, all of their tests, and even what they encountered inside the cave. But the horrors of that faithful night still come to them in terrible vision… and Vedika emerged with something worse…
The scar the incident left on her mind has never ceased in swelling and irritating her already unstable psyche. Strange dreams that once haunted her in her early childhood have returned with a vengeance, and after the incident she often found herself sleepwalking… waking up in a place with no memory of how she’d gotten there, or what had happened in her unconscious state. Desperately, after years of wandering aimlessly she returned to the only other place she felt any sense of belonging- the Academy. She owes the Headmistress her life for so graciously taking her in, and upon evaluating her power and control making her the Deputy Headmistress, a position that came with responsibilities and distractions. It was her duty to discipline the very girls she counted herself among in her own school days- she roamed the halls at night and sent misbehaving girls back to their rooms. She saw to their protection and well-being every night, and taught them each day the values of discipline and restraint… for none knew better than she the potential consequences of faltering.
For years, she grew close to these girls and guarded them, and for a while she felt better, even though she still occasionally woke up in odd places. She felt removed enough from the demon’s influence that the nightmares didn’t feel as real as they had before, and she convinced herself that the sleepwalking came from her irregular schedule and the odd hours she kept for the sake of her girls. But she would quickly find that there was still very much for her to be fearful of in the night.
One evening, she woke to find herself standing in a cold, wet field, facing the east and the bloody red sunrise… and when she turned back, the Academy she had grown to love so dearly was engulfed in flames. She got most of them out, but a student and two professors succumbed to the smoke and flames… and what student of course but her most beloved… The cause of the fire was never determined, but afterwards Veda could not remain there, the charred halls brought back too many painful memories, and her grip on reality faltered. To escape, she moved again to the other side of the world, to an island her family often spoke of as a haven for magical folk such as her; Echo Valley. The place was instantly calming… a powerful forest stood testament to the potent magical forces there, forces she knew she could learn from, for the desire in her to be the best shaman she could had not faded, even after her vital lesson about control. As soon as she moved there she felt right again, comfortable, and she fell back into some of her old ways. Still a wild child, she sought every opportunity to display her power, and eventually landed a job with the local police department; most notably due to her reference from the Headmistress lauding her as a considerable security force, and her ability and willingness to take down any manner of perpetrator with efficient competence. She found her home among the other “Mataku” as they were called here, and was determined to continue her pursuit of knowledge and influence, making a home for herself alone in Eastcliffe with a considerable collection of grimoires.
But the nightmares followed her even here, and she only had a few nights of uninterrupted sleep before she started waking again to find herself in odd places, like the edge of the forest, or in the middle of the city in her nightgown. She chalked it up to moving so far from home, and from the new traumas she experienced across the globe. She felt safe here, her midnight visions of demons were certainly only dreams… surely nothing could follow her so far away… And then came the wildfire, in the forest… Vedika disappeared on the night the fire began… and even her coworkers on the police force have begun to doubt if she will ever emerge again… Despite their determination to find her, many are beginning to lose hope…
But… what’s this? Magic users along the forest’s edge have grown restless and uneasy with a sudden surge of magical energy and emotions… What could such a presence be, and why has it suddenly come into being where nothing was felt before?
Extra Details:
“Vedika” means ‘altar’, or ‘full of knowledge’. The eldest triplet is Anandi (which means ‘jovial’), and the youngest was Maina (which means ‘singing bird’). Their mother is named Nandita (meaning ‘cheerful’ or ‘happy’), and their father is Ravi (meaning ‘sun’). Their surname “Mukti” means ‘freedom from life and death’.
Vedika’s tattoos cover both her arms down to her hands, half of both legs, and her entire chest and back. She collected them in the years following Maina’s death, when she restlessly traveled around to different places both alone and in the company of her surviving sister, Anandi. Each piece has considerably meaning to her, but she has yet to speak of any of it to her acquaintances here. Those that ask about them often find themselves on the receiving end of a pointed glare, and as a result most that know her have learned to mind their own business. However, they only serve to further complicate the elaborate rumors about her past, and at this point she might be keeping their stories secret as a way to entertain herself.
Anandi is an airline stewardess that lives primarily out of London with her husband and their two children. Vedika still keeps in regular contact with her, but she hasn’t seen her sister or her niece and nephew in person for years.
Around her neck, Vedika always has a small glass vial which contains a pinch of black ash, and a small shard of bone. She doesn’t talk about it, and most of the time she doesn’t even acknowledge or seem to recognize its presence there, but the bone shard is Maina’s recovered from her cremation ceremony. She never takes it off, but she often touches it when thinking of her sister. It’s another one of those things she simply doesn’t talk about, and that people have learned not to ask about… not because she gets angry with them, but because any questions about it confuse her to such a degree that no one can get a straight answer out of her.
PERSONALITY:
Vedika has always been one of the most gossiped-about people wherever she goes, and her odd personality is the likely culprit in this. All at once, she can be brash and open- she will embrace strangers openly as her friends, and her vibrancy draws people of all kinds to her, a talent which suits both her line of work and her fiery demeanor. And at the same time, there is something cold and guarded about her, like a steel plate put into a wall. She can be very exacting and disciplinary when it comes to others putting themselves in harm’s way, that’s the nurturing school guard in her… And she has her secrets, in fact she’s likely told no one here about the earlier hardships of her life… But it’s obvious to anyone with a sense of these things that she has been touched by trauma and fear. She still acts out, even as a law enforcement officer, but they’re used to their reckless cops here and so she blends in more than she probably should. She’s gone back to being a bit reckless, although she’ll still reprimand others for the same, and she can be quick to anger or to act. She notoriously does not wait for backup when she should… She’s just very confident in her abilities and the level of control she’s managed thus far. Veda knows she can get herself out of nearly any dangerous situation she might encounter, and there is very little on this island that frightens her more than the storm of emotional confusion inside her own head. No one will hear her talk about the nightmares, or the sleepwalking, in fact she doesn’t talk much about herself at all. That, added to the fact that she is utterly covered in intricate tattoos have led some to believe that she’s in Echo Valley to escape a notorious East Asian crime syndicate, and she laughs along with these stories and others that people have come up with about her. She’s more than content to be mysterious, for she has often found that fear and respect go hand in hand.
FACE CLAIM: DICHEN LACHMAN ✗ MUN: Mae, EST, 26, She/Her
