Sirin Schariac
Dying of Fate
"I am the every font of victory:
an altar to the honor of the Host."
Once upon a time, there was a girl who died.
She died because it was her fate to die. Because the laws of the world and the weave of dharma bent and warped to
ensure she would die. Because she had seen the glitch - glimpsed, just for a moment, one of the flaws and faults and cracks that riddle reality - and thereafter her fate was mangled and broken by what she had seen.
The form her death took was the gradual erosion of her agency - the slow, steady winnowing away of any alternatives, until the girl found she had no
choice, that there was
no other way, that nothing she could do would change anything; that circumstances would hem her in until she died, alone and afraid and in pain. That any reprieve, any moments where it seemed like her choices mattered, were transient at best and outright fabrications at worst; and merely made the inevitable moment where the world tore that gossamer illusion away all the more painful.
And because the world is wrong, because the world is
broken, even death didn't save her.
She died, yes; and then death spat her back out; and then fate and fortune and chance noticed and started trying to kill her once again. Over and over, again and again, and always, always the glitch kept coming for her.
She tried to run, and it followed. She tried to hide, and it found her. She tried to ignore it, and it came for her regardless.
In time, she tried to fight - to grasp the ragged tear in the world that had engulfed her, and
pull - for what other leverage did she have?
She fought back against a world that was trying to kill her by tearing at the rips in the fabric of reality. And eventually, by degrees, that fight stopped being about survival and started being about tearing the world apart.
Because any world in which the glitch existed, any world that manifestly, obviously
wrong -
Was not a world that
deserved to exist.
The girl gathered friends, servants, allies and armies in the lands beyond Creation. She rode back across the Weirding Wall at the head of a great host, to make an ending of the Ash and all the worlds that hang from its boughs - for why should these things exist? Why, when they are shot through, tainted to the core, with the glitch? Why, when they were built on the bones and suffering of Ninuan, of the True and Silvered Land that came before the world?
She fought, and killed, and died; and rose to fight again. She burned worlds and cut entire concepts, screaming, out of the tapestry of creation. She dueled with gods and assassinated angels. She was glorious. She was terrible.
And nothing she did made the world even the tiniest bit less broken. Nothing she did ever moved her even a single step towards escaping from the glitch. Nothing she did ever brought her safety, or joy, or the peaceful life she'd wanted, back when she started.
Cecilia Schariac, the late Power of Moonlight, forged those realizations into a lance - wounding herself mortally, to seal those truths into steel and silver - and with it struck the girl down.
Pinned to that desolate branch of the Ash where their duel had come to a close, the girl began to cry: in guilt, over what she'd done; in frustration, at how
yet again, everything she'd tried to escape her fate had been for nothing; and in terror, because even a being as relatively immortal as a Strategist fears death.
Strategists, perhaps, fear it, and have cause to fear it, more than most.
And Cecilia, herself dying, held the crying girl; the lonely, frightened child, lashing out at a world that refused to stop hurting her, for no rhyme or reason or fault of her own.
Cecilia held the dying girl, and brushed her hair, and hummed lullabies into her ear, and called the girl her daughter; even as the Rule-Lord Otto Apocalypse severed the entire branch of the Ash on which they lay and cast it into the flames of the Weirding Wall, to ensure the girl's demise.
The girl had time for one last thing, before the flames consumed her:
She made a wish that - if, by some unprecedented miracle, she could have another chance, another life, free from the burden of the glitch and the war - that she could get to be Cecilia's daughter for more than five minutes.
Wishes and miracles, it must be said, are slightly more efficacious in the hands of a Noble and a Strategist than they are for us mere mortals.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived.
Her name was - is - Kiana Kaslana.
She did not have the best life, but also far from the worst. She had a father who loved her, a doting godmother; friends, a home, a family.
She was happy. She laughed, and loved, and
was loved -
And if, at times, it felt like the world was constricting around her, cutting off her choices, forcing her down certain paths -
It was just a feeling. There was nothing behind it.
The glitch wasn't after
her, after all.
And, curled up at the bottom of her soul, Sirin Schariac slept, untroubled, dreaming the gentle dreams that filtered down to her from Kiana's life.
It couldn't last.
Some things cannot be outrun. The glitch cannot be waited out. And if wishes and miracles sufficed, to fight the glitch -
If a true and daring heart, if hope, if faith and love could take on the fundamental wrongness of the world and
win, once and forever -
well -
then the world wouldn't
be wrong.
Avatar Diagram
Star of Bethlehem (X), the Key of the Scarred
You turned away from the war suddenly, as a result of a single, transformative moment. You cling to it, to the memories of it, to remind you of how far you've come - and of why you can't go back.
Heart - DISCONTINUITY
What happened, broadly speaking?
- Cecila called me her daughter.
- Cecilia died, because I don't get to have happy endings.
- Cecilia forced me to realize what I was doing - the cost, and how futile it all was.
- My fate and wyrd are already set in stone - but that doesn't mean I can't fiddle with some of the details.
Shadow - BUILT ON THE ASHES
...and what did it do to you, specifically?
Water Lily (XIV), the Key of Retreat
You don't want any of this - any more fighting, any more struggle against a fate you can't change. You just want to curl up and sleep inside Kiana's soul. But you
can't. Why?
Heart - SANCTUARY
What makes hiding so tempting?
- I just want to hide and let Kiana live for both of us.
- If I hide in my sanctuary, I can avoid my doom, for a while.
- All I can do outside is doom things to die, just as I am doomed. I don't want to.
- My pet dragon Benares is cute and cuddly and adorable.
- Otto is out there. I'm safe in here.
- St. Freya's is … noisy, and busy, and literally on the front lines of the war. It's full of annoying, mistrustful people, like Ai or Theresa or Bronya or Fu Hua. I don't like it. But it has Kiana, so I guess I have to tolerate it.
Shadow - CURSED
...and why can't you actually do it?
- Creation has tainted me
- Hiding is behaviour unbecoming a queen of Ninuan.
- Kiana is a sweetie, and I don't want her to be hurt.
- Maybe there's room to be the good kind of fairytale royalty.
- Kiana is mom's daughter, too. She's my little sister. I need to look after her.
- Mei can't save me. She can't save us. She has to stop before she kills herself, or worse.
- Kiana's friends are going to get themselves killed. What the hell was Theresa thinking, enlisting children in the war?
Convergence
Certain things belong to the Heart of both of your Keys, reinforce both parts of your story. Which things, and how?
- Fate and wyrd alike demand my death.
- I just want the hurting to stop. ☆
Game Traits
Infection
Sirin is fated to die. When she was younger, this fate took different forms from one brief, tormented period of life to the next; after her declaration of war against the world, though, her fate crystallized: she made herself an enemy of the world, and so the world has decreed that she will
die as one of its enemies.
As Sirin's Infection mounts, fate and chance cut away at her options, attempting to force her into over-the-top villainy. She can resist this, can fight back, to an extent - but eventually, her Infection
will manufacture some situation where Sirin has no choice - whether through coercion, mind control, or because all alternatives are morally unacceptable - but to commit some crime in the eyes of the Nobilis, and be branded once more an enemy of the world.
The act of choosing - particularly, making
important choices - aggravates Sirin's Infection. In her Sanctuary, where her choices have no great impact upon world or void, and thus do not count, she is safe … for a time.
Eide 3 - Defined
Eide is the Dream-of-Self, a reflection of the narrative nature of the void. It is Sirin's ability to be perceived
as she wishes to be perceived.
Sirin built her Eide during her time in the war, and has had little
time to try and update it - she was sleeping for fifteen years, and just woke up. As a result, her presentation is still that of a Queen of Ninuan; of the distant and imperious queen of a far-off land, half primordial chaos, half fairy-tale country, and a third half the home of the enemies of all that Is.
Technique - Unland Royalty
This is a Technique of being a goddess-queen of the lands beyond the world. It allows Sirin to do appropriately void-queen-like things, such as rule the λ-things of Ninuan, scorn the disgusting products of Creation, destroy things, inspire fear or awe, lounge about menacingly on some doomful throne, etc.
Sirin doesn't really want to
do any of those things anymore, and is actively attempting to change her Eide. She's tacking towards more of a 'fairytale princess' sort of vibe, but it will take time to redefine how world and void perceive and relate to her.
Flore 2 - Envoy
Flore is the art of awakening hidden potentials in the things of Creation. It is Sirin's power to guide, protect, and empower people and things of this wretched world.
It is, perhaps, a measure of how entangled Sirin has become with the world she once set out to destroy.
Flore 2 is still a fairly light entanglement - Sirin spends much of her time alone in her Sanctuary, not engaging with the world - but it still suggests that she has, in some fashion, a foot in both Ninuan and Creation.
Treasures
Kiana Kaslana
Sirin's little sister, her closest friend, her host. Presumably as a result of Sirin and Cecilia's wish, Sirin's Sanctuary - the little waylet she calls home - is lodged inside of Kiana's soul. For fifteen years, Sirin slept there in peace, dreaming slow and warm and gentle dreams, colored by Kiana's life. Now, Sirin is awake, and spends much of her time in her Sanctuary, looking out through Kiana's eyes and offering the occasional backseat miracle.
Lore 2 - Dustcloak
Sphere - λ-Destined Things
Sirin's Sphere, the things of Ninuan which she may bind and control, are those relics and hangers-on which litter the epics and fairytales of the Not. She may lay claim to foretold enemies, fated allies, or artifacts destined to be wielded by some heroine yet unborn, and appropriate them for her own use, for a time.
Arcana
Benares
Sirin has a pet dragon - an ancient, apocalyptic terror, originally fated to die to some fabled heroine whose story will now never come to pass, as she was swallowed up by Creation in the moments of its birth and lost.
Benares is mostly akin to a gigantic scaly cat, when she is not busy being a cute girl, and keeps Sirin company in her Sanctuary.
Wyrd 5 - Postulant
Wyrd is the Dream-of-Being. It is the self beneath the self, the true face of the story Ninuan is using the Strategist to tell. It is a measure of how deeply a Strategist understands their own fate and nature.
Sirin has learned that it is not merely the chaotic jumble of Creational destiny that has doomed her - rather, it is
her wyrd-nature that causes her to be again and again doomed to die. Her Wyrd - the story Ninuan writ for her to act out - is one of futile struggle.
But she also cannot escape the understanding that
the world is wrong. That Ninuan
was something good and beautiful, that
her wyrd was something soft and kind and pastoral, once - before Creation's crafting. That this ruined world is responsible for all of her suffering.
It's just - killing the world isn't really
fixing anything. So she'll have to try something else.
Sanctuary - The Empty Waylet
There's nothing much in Sirin's Sanctuary. A sourceless warmth, a gentle light from somewhere, a comfortable place to rest, curled up against her dragon - and an awareness of the outside, of Kiana and her life and her actions in the wider world, which Sirin can watch without having to actually venture into the wide, frightening world.
Destruction - The Foreboding Wyrd
Sirin may ordain that something, anything, is soon to die - and it will be so. She doesn't get to specify the exact details, and there's room for even mortals to try and duck out if it, though it won't be easy; but otherwise, she need merely point at a thing, and declare that its doom is near at hand - and it is.
Ability 0 - Hopeless
Some people are good at … at living in the world. At paying attention, at keeping things in order, at accomplishing tasks. At
being an adult, more or less.
For others, this is really hard.
Sirin is part of this latter camp.
Geasa
Cecilia's Other Daughter
"My mother is Cecilia Schariac, and I am her daughter."
The lingering metaphysical weight of Sirin and Cecilia's wish manifests as a Geas, as a law of Sirin's nature and the way she interacts with the world.
Mostly, this means that her status as Ceciia's daughter is unquestionable - it is
true, it is
manifestly obvious to miraculous senses, and any attempt to make it
not true runs into a Ward with a strength equal to Sirin's Wyrd.
