Application to imperial_saga

[canhazcookie]

Player Name: Sam
Contact Info: AIM/ironbirdobserver
Other Characters Played: N/A

Character Name: Raisa
Canon: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

Canon Background: http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Laguz

AU Background: Raisa was born in the forests of Lerrian, to a peculiar tribe of beastmen that call themselves laguz. She was of the “cat” variant, others of her tribe being the saber-fanged tigers and the regal lions. The Lerrian beast laguz are known for their unusual place between the werecreatures and what one normally thinks of as a proper beastman, and Raisa was no different. She has two distinct forms, like a werecreature—but her humanoid form retains several traits from the beast shape, most obviously in the form of a cougar-like tail and similarly catlike ears. When illuminated by light, Raisa’s eyes reflect back green like a cat, and her senses as a whole are much more catlike than human. Her ears are also very mobile and very much a part of her body language, along with her tail. When her tail was caught in a door and broken once, other tribesmen commented on how “quiet” she seemed while the injury healed.

She was born to an average family in the tribe—one free of a sullied name, but not bearing any great distinction either.

Raisa rather thought she could do much better than that.

But she also knew she was no match for the brawnier members of her tribe toe to toe; the tiger and lion laguz. On the beast laguz totem pole, cats normally rank lowest in the tribe. But exceptional individuals can exceed this natural limitation—and Raisa fully intended on being one of said individuals from an early age.

With the upper echelons of the tribe at the time occupied by great warriors that even an adolescent Raisa knew better than to challenge, she apprenticed under a local shaman instead. Though as with all things laguz she became a competent fighter no matter her profession, her primary skill became knowledge. Which plants yielded clean water to drink when the streams were dirtied with a kill, which were poison and which were not, which plants carried magical properties, which side of the tree the branches grew thickest on so that she would never become lost. With every bit of knowledge learned, the tribe would grow stronger. Raisa was part of the tribe, so she would become strong as well.

She did make some mistakes—some with rather awful consequences, such as when she mistook a poisonous plant for perfectly edible flowers. She was turning out her insides for almost a week and has never liked salads since. Or when she misidentified some mushrooms and turned her vision monochromatic blue and white for a few days. She never remembered that incident very well, only that she’d really rather not repeat that. But for all her failures, she came upon enough successes to keep her motivated. The tigers and lions usually claimed the best shares of the quarry—learning what else was good to eat was almost a necessary skill. Olvi grass was highly valuable, hard to find, but relatively easy to supplement with less effective plants to extend its use, provided one knew what to look for.

Raisa has been through no great adventures yet—something she wishes to change. The slower path she has chosen has left Raisa behind her peers in the field of battle, something she very, very much wishes to change. It is a mixture of tribal loyalty and selfish purpose that chases her steps now.

Personality: Raisa is a typical laguz in most ways; a creature possessed of a fierce racial pride and a confidence in her own strength that occasionally borders on straight-up egotism. Only occasionally! And not nearly as much as in her adolescent years, where she was truly insufferable. A few pale clawmarks linger here and there from that age—laguz discipline was usually doled out with claws. She is ambitious, certainly, but her ambition is now tempered with a bit of reason and a solid knowledge of her actual strengths.

She likens herself to a scholar at times, with a thirst for knowledge, but is more into the hands-on approach to learning rather than properly civilized reading (though she is literate.) She views book learning as something inferior to “real” learning. The laguz can’t count the number of times she learned things about this plant or another from a book that swore up and down it was edible or used in a certain way, only for that to be utterly untrue. Books are an acceptable starting point, alerting the reader to things previously unknown, but the author has to go deeper than that to impress her.

She’s gotten to the point in development where she believes herself very wise indeed, certainly much more so than her adolescent self, so clearly she is an expert in everything. Or almost. But, unlike said adolescent self, she is much more open-minded about things new to her, particularly those things she is not yet the wisest on. She greatly enjoys showing off her knowledge, either in battle or in woodlore, such as safely consuming the one particular black nightshade that doesn’t happen to be terribly and horribly poisonous. She quite likes the latter. It freaks some people out something awful and impresses others.

Laguz, as a rule, generally dislike telling lies; Raisa sometimes may step close to that line by not telling all she knows and otherwise being a bit of a crafty individual, but she is otherwise perfectly honest. Honestly! (Her tail tends to give her lies away by twitching. And lies about feelings clearly weren’t lies at all.)

As a journeyman shaman, part of her endeavor to become a fully realized one is travelling widely to learn the resources of new lands—whether as plants for medicine or food, what quarry can be found to hunt and what hazards to avoid, all to add to her tribe’s collective knowledge. She is very much at home within the forest of her birth, where she can recall its topography as it were imprinted on her hand—but the rest of the forest is a slightly bigger unknown. Many of the plants and beasts are the same—but a few plants are unknown to her except in secondhand accounts, let alone the rest of the world at large.

Curiously, she almost always refers to humans as “beorc”, in polite conversation. She considers calling beorc “humans” to be mildly insulting. By the same token, implying that she is in some way inferior or outright calling her “sub-human” is guaranteed to invoke her ire. It’s an almost universal berserk button in her tribe. She much prefers to converse with her own tribesmen, but being away from her homeland as she so often was put a damper on that. When she does meet another beast laguz, Raisa generally reacts with enthusiasm, greeting them as one would a brother even if they are complete strangers. She's quite friendly with non-laguz beastmen as well. Her perspective and understanding of the world is often more understandable to beastfolk. Humans, well...Raisa holds humans at a distance; tolerating their company but not actively seeking said company out until outside forces jam them together. And she has an additional reason.

From the oldest stories passed down through the tribal elders, Raisa has developed an acute distaste for the Church. How the Church didn’t notice or care when local bishops made slaves of the laguz, until the laguz threw away their chains and fled to the forest where the humans were afraid to go. What probably happened was a simple cover-up, enacted by ancient and corrupt local officials, but Raisa doesn’t know that truth or cares to learn it. The Church’s general attitude of bigotry towards the beastmen only reinforces this view—and fosters further ideas in her mind, that the laguz weren’t alone under the lash. So no, she doesn’t like the church. Humans…on a case by case basis. She often dismisses human achievements and philosophies wholesale.

Their tools could be quite clever, though, and entirely responsible for Raisa developing an embarrassing weakness for baked goods—particularly cookies. She loves cookies.

However, she doesn’t like doors—hailing from a childhood incident in which her tail ended up broken. The bones knit right again, but the last few inches of her tail are a bit stiff to this day.


Combat Style: Though when compared with a human Raisa’s strength is formidable, compared to the brawnier members of her tribe it becomes laughable. She’s a cat, not a tiger or lion; her true strength is in her speed and agility—in beast form, being able to out-sprint a horse on open ground, scrabble up broken surfaces like a mountain goat and scale trees and similar vertical surfaces like a monkey. She can dent armor by tackling an armored foe, but can’t penetrate metal without augmentation—and she can only keep up such a burst of speed for a short period of time. The person inside that armor would probably be rattled around something awful, though, and studded leather and horn plates are much more susceptible to her claws—though still mostly at the joints. When possible, she attempts to gain the high ground to attack from; failing that, she remains almost constantly in motion, leaping and jumping about to add momentum and force to her otherwise lackluster strikes.

Raisa assumes her beast form within moments, with her human form smoldering and flickering away until a cat remains—a very, very large cat, half again as big as a mountain lion. Fully shifted, she can only remain in this form for a limited amount of time—by controlling the metamorphosis, she can remain in her beast form longer but at a cost to her overall strength. Consuming particular herbs—such as one called Olvi grass—can prolong her transformation significantly, though if Raisa takes too much she’ll start to feel sick and complain of things tasting “green” for days. In either form, she is more resilient than one would expect of an ordinary human and she heals fast, the fast healing of a laguz augmented by her own knowledge of medicine. For perspective, she considers most broken bones a “relatively minor injury”. She is also moderately resistant to most magics, though she can’t use it herself--fire-based magics being the exception, as they burn her terribly.

An additional very large, very glaring drawback to all of that is the fact that Raisa will refuse to fight out of her beast form or use weapons—she would rather die than pick up a sword at her feet. It’s a personal honor thing. She will defend herself with her fists in human form if attacked, but will not engage with any seriousness of her own volition or use her claws.

Her punches do pack quite a bit of punch, but mostly to lightly armored opponents. She’s brutal in barroom brawls, but not in scuffles with guardsmen, for example. In beast form, while she does move fast, she has no real ranged capabilities. All melee all the time.

Halfshift--This ability is not yet learned and requires a specific item, but when Raisa engages this ability she can remain in her beast form indefinitely—at a cost to her strength and size. She is only half as powerful as she would be otherwise and little bigger than an ordinary mountain lion, so this skill is most useful in scouting and against unarmored opponents.

Rend--Raisa has also not learned this technique yet and probably won’t for some time, as it requires a relatively rare item and a good bit of learning. When engaged, it triples Raisa’s strength and her beast form can shear through metal and similar substances with ease. She can’t use this skill in human form.

Kingdom or Faction: Luna’s Call

Primary Role: Intelligence Operative, Agent (Journeyman shaman)

Soldier or Siege Company: (This section is for commanders and engineers. If you have soldiers or siege companies under your command, describe them. This can include the name of the unit or company, the type of soldier they are, and even an image for their unit standard, if you feel so inclined.)

Tarot Cards:

Past: Strength
Present: The Fool
Future: Wheel of Fortune

Title: Listener

Artifacts: N/A

Setting Considerations: None that I can think of.

Notes: N/A

Sample Post:

You are about to embark upon a grand journey. What do you carry in your satchel?
-Well, the where is kind of important, you know. Within the forest? A knife, nothing more—the forest is my home already, why should I burden myself with clattering pots and armor and false claws, when I possess them already? The desert? Water! The mountains? Fire; even for me, it gets cold there.

You are presiding over a murder trial where both suspects claim innocence. What do you do?
-Nothing a little judicial fisticuffs wouldn’t handle!

…oh, I suppose beorc don’t really understand justice, do they?

When one laguz has a quarrel with another, such issues are sorted out between them in a duel—either with words or with claws and fangs. The loser is most often guilty, but that all depends. Is the chieftain biased? Does the tribe know what is true as a certainty? What does Fortune dictate? Justice isn’t all clean-cut black and white like beorc like to think of it. It has a greater purpose than just being easy to scrawl in a list.

Your rival in court knows something that you do not, and this knowledge is giving them the advantage. How do you address this issue?
Challenge them! The strongest always prevails—through force, through the strength of wit, through the strongest faith in Fortune.

Beorc always get that wrong. They see “strength” and think only in terms of brawn or cruelty.

What are your aspirations?
-I wish to be a great shaman—one worthy of sharing my strength with the tribe, so that all may become stronger. Such is the wish of any laguz, no?

It is the eve of a great battle, and the troops have made camp for the night. Where are you and what are you doing?
-Evening? Why stop when darkness falls? My eyes will guide me in the dark, and there is battle to be had! What are you waiting for? Evening is the best time to hunt!

What do you make of your dreams?
-For a shaman, dreams are important. They teach us answers, if only we know how to see them.

I am not full-rank yet; my dreams do not always make much sense. But someday—someday soon, I hope—they will. And be more consistent about it.

Who deserves to pass judgment upon you, and who do you deserve to judge?
-The king of my tribe, the elders, my teacher, the pack leader—whether father or mother to me—all deserve judgment of me. I judge those of lesser station than I; subordinates, students, those of younger age sets, and most beorc.

What is god to you?
-I do not know. Nor do I care to. I have seen the other side, in pieces during my teacher's dream-walks; there is the land of the living, the land of the dead, and only Corruption everywhere else. No one I have yet met has been able to paint a more complete picture in a way that makes any kind of sense.

...I suppose it is none of my business what the beorc choose to worship.

At the end of the journey, what remains in your satchel?
-Well, I’d hope my knife is still there. Good tools are so hard to find nowadays.