Cinaed

SKIN: Phoenix

NAME: Cinaed

LOOK: Afraid / Golden Eyes

ORIGIN: Martyr

===STATS===

HOT (Turn someone on, manipulate an NPC):  1

COLD (Shut someone down, hold steady): -1

VOLATILE (Lash out physically, run away): -1

Dark (Gaze into the Abyss): 2

=== SEX MOVE/DARKEST SELF===

SEX MOVE

When you have sex with someone, a little of your Grace rubs off on them. They do not take the next Harm dealt to them. However, they know your soul a little better, and gain a String on you.

DARKEST SELF

You have been used and made vulnerable too many times, and you must get away -but not before taking away anyone’s reasons to follow you. Destroy your relationships with anyone who cares about you, with anyone who knows about you, and then just maybe you’ll be able to get away clean. You escape your Darkest Self when someone lets you go, even though they care for you.

===MOVES===

Grace of the Phoenix

When you gain your fourth harm, you rise again. Roll with dark. On a 10-up, you rise from the dead with 0 harm. Also choose one:

-      You rise immediately

-      Mark an experience

-      Give the person who dealt the fourth harm the condition guilty

.

-      On a 7- 9, your body spontaneously bursts into flames, dealing harm to those near you, and you gain the condition drained

.

-      On a miss see above, but instead of the condition, trigger your Darkest Self.

Phoenix Tears

Your tears have the legendary healing properties of true phoenixes. Roll with dark.On a 10 up, you may choose to either remove all Conditions, or all harm, from one character. On a 7-9, you may heal one harm or remove one Condition. This move cannot be done on yourself.

===BACKGROUND===

There was once a phoenix who loved a man.

Her love for him burned and burned and burned, burned enough to call down the envy of the stars in heaven and the ire of the fires in hell. There is purity in flame, and her love held no secrets, no motives, no lies. It was a love men would fight and die for. It was a love most could not muster in a thousand lifetimes.

''I am looking for an inspiration, and I think I found it in your heart

It was a love he had no use for.

''It’s the kind of thing you get when you’re not looking… it’s the kind of thing you had from the start.

His hands held no interest in her body and his eyes held no interest in her heart. His mind, however, burned and burned and burned with thoughts of possession, thoughts of power. She was no lover to him but a tool, a songbird, his succor, his treasure. She was his. For he was a greedy king, and his hunger was poised to devour the world. He was the immortal king, the undying flame, propped up in his campaign of monstrous cruelty by a woman who saw only the goodness that wasn’t there. Her tears brought life to his dead body. Her flames brought ruin to his foes.

''Put me on a ship that is sinking… on a voyage to an untamed land….''

At every victory he would twist her wings until she sang so sweetly for him; at every defeat he would shatter her hollow little bones. Still, she loved him. Still, she wept for him. For phoenixes do not end, and neither do the flames in their hearts.

''Take away the freedoms I wanted''

They can, however, destroy.

I understand….

There was one night when it was all too much; when her dried-out eyes couldn’t muster another tear, when her broken throat couldn’t trill out a single song. When she lay broken and frightened on the floor, unable to do anything but wait for his hands to fall. Untold years of meek obedience, blind adoration, unfathomably cruel abuse had fanned the coals of her heart and in that moment, when his hands were closest and the rage was boiling in his eyes, when froth flecked his beard and his teeth gnashed, she shattered. She shattered, and all the flames came roaring out. In a single glorious conflagration the phoenix died and rose from the ashes of her old frightened self, powerful and perfect and beautiful, her flames fed by his torn, crackling corpse.

''Please, don’t take your love away from me''

Spite and cruelty can be terrible beasts, however, and the king had not lain idle all the years he turned her magic to his own ends. With one final roar of defiance he stole her fire, he tore out her pinions, he flung her down to earth in a plummeting comet that sang a song of ruin and death. He had taken from her the very thing that made her mighty, and left her ruined and bleeding on earth, a mere…fragile… mortal.

''Put me inside flesh that is dying

She did not understand mortality; it choked her, terrified her. She could feel her body dying all around her and for a time she wandered the earth mad and lost. At times she slept, and as the years slipped away and her undying fire fanned to life once more, she regained at least a shadow of what she once was.

''A ghost that wanders without rest

She has awoken again, promethean flames burning brighter behind her eyes than she’d known in her time as one of the frail creatures she had once loved. She watched… she learned. In time, she insinuated herself into the foster care system and took great pains to ensure she was adopted out by an appropriate family. An artistic family, warm and kind – though they could not match her flames, they yet reminded her of what she was. In time she learned to love them as dearly as if they had raised her from an egg. Singing, violin, dancing, friendship and compassion – all these skills learned, or relearned, at their hands.

''Buried by desires and weakness''

She needed school for her own edification as much as she did for appearances. Before she was a wild thing, a free thing, with no need of education or human values. She ate dewdrops and barely bent the blades of grass as she walked, lest she harmed it. But now? She had to swallow the coals of defeat, and learn to be the awkward, fumbling human she was trapped within. At least, for a time.

Because fire can lick through the smallest of cracks. And a body of flesh can’t hold a legend forever.

I understand….