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Dec. 30th, 2025 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steelfeatheredPlayer Name: Joysweeper
Player Contact(s): Plurk, Discord
Are you over 18? yes
Do you have any other characters in game?: no
Who invited you?: If during an open period, put NA.
Character Name: Hisako Godsup
Canon: Tortall Universe
Canon Point: About eighty years before Emperor Ozorne starts opening the barrier and bringing Immortals through.
Age: Hisako appears to be in her late thirties, maybe forty. She is three hundred ninety two, though she's lost track of the exact number.
History:
Hisako was a poor city kid who was friends with some Stormwings, nearly immortal steel-feathered harpies made from nightmares of war and who draw strength from human suffering. This sounds bad, but they're people, and this flock mainly subsisted on the ambient misery of a large city with major inequities during a period of strife. Hisako became a thief-mage as she grew up, trying and failing to get free of the criminal underworld and find a way to let her and her family prosper. In a moment of frustration she told her Stormwing friends she'd like to be one of them. They remembered this, and when the king of thieves had Hisako badly wounded they turned her into a Stormwing herself to save her.
Very shortly after that, events she'd been completely unaware of transpired and she, the other Stormwings, and every other lesser or greater Immortal in that part of the world were forcibly transported into the Divine Realms and barred from returning to the Mortal Realms. Decades of trouble ensued as thousands of displaced Immortals vied for limited space with resident Immortals and minor gods. Things never settled completely but stability came in time. Hisako adjusted slowly and made friends with various other Immortals and gods.
Cut off from sustenance, Stormwings were unable to reproduce often enough to replace those who were killed. Hisako with her friends joined the largest Stormwing nation, Mortal Fear, soon before Jachull became its queen. Hisako herself was briefly Queen Jachull's consort and found her unsettling and amoral, monofocused on the survival of the race, but thought maybe they needed someone like that. Hisako tried to determine if a (willing) recently-ascended minor god was close enough to mortal to provide what was needed, but he wasn't and she found the experience very upsetting.
Four hundred fifty years after their exile, the mortal Emperor Ozorne started to put holes in the barrier and pulling Immortals through for his own ends, making deals with some, coercing others. This included plenty of Stormwings, and Jachull was entirely willing to commit her people to helping him, even if that meant fighting in mortal wars, to access mortal fear and flesh again. Flying over a battlefield with a flock for the first time was profoundly affecting for Hisako, who'd been cut off from crucial aspects of Stormwing life for all this time. Combined with humans seeing her as a horrible monster, she finally fully accepted what she was and let go of her lingering human identity and mores.
Ozorne himself was transformed into a Stormwing, and despite him breaking Stormwing law and betraying allies to gain power, Jachull continued to support him as he found ways to keep waging war. Hisako was disgusted on a profound moral level and managed to convince a number of other Stormwings not to go along with this. They fled Mortal Fear rather than face execution for this betrayal, though they didn't up and support the Stormwings and other forces who opposed Ozorne and etc either. Entirely different characters killed them both.
Later it was revealed that Ozorne had begun to serve a primordial goddess of Chaos who'd eagerly devour everything if she won. Despite this, the new leader of Mortal Fear - once Hisako's first and best Stormwing friend - regarded her as a traitor who had weakened them at a critical moment, and she was unable to return. In the Mortal Realms, Hisako and her small flock went north and established a territory, following premonitions of war. The knight guardian of a refugee camp refused to allow Stormwings to consume enemy dead, and a slighted Hisako, entirely alienated from humanity, offered no help, even when the camp's children were rounded up to be delivered to a necromancer.
Is this character an AU? What type?: Nope. Tortall OC. I do draw a bit of worldbuilding from a fic called In The Realms of the Immortals but said worldbuilding doesn't actually contradict canon.
Personality:
Hisako tends to come across as cheerful, friendly in a slightly malicious way, and laid back, someone who doesn't take things all that seriously or worry or care deeply about much. She's playful and always open to try new things and generally have a good time, whatever form that takes. Teasing and light bickering are a particular favorite and to Stormwings her being "Godsup" invites this.
This covers a tendency towards depression. Hisako's had a lot of time to adapt to losing her family, body, and mortal life and to adjust to being a Stormwing in the Divine Realms and would say she's great, thanks. Really she is and always has been someone without a great deal of power, who has little to no recourse when her life is casually upended. Getting angry about it has only ever made things worse. If you asked her she'd say of course she doesn't get mad, she knows she's a small bird in a gale, it's better to put that energy into adjusting. Naturally there's still a lot of feeling there that she rarely feels safe expressing or even acknowledging. She makes nice with people who hurt her and smiles frequently with dull eyes.
On top of the rest, in the Divine Realms Stormwings are cut off from their purpose and nourishment and are consequently a slowly-dying race. Hisako's lived with a constant hunger for long enough that she's not fully conscious of it anymore, and feels aimless and at loose ends. Actually flying over battlefields and feeding with a flock is going to hit very hard and rearrange some things for her, but simply encountering mortals on her own in an RP context is different. It feels really good to finally get to drink suffering and she doesn't trust that feeling. Uncomplicated good things just don't happen to her and she's never fully reckoned with being something that lives on misery. That she doesn't have to cause or make it worse does help, there's little to no real cruelty in her and she's always found violence disturbing.
On some levels she still considers herself human or human-adjacent, so she's got higher hygiene standards than the typical Stormwing and some remnant of the desire to wear clothes in public. The idea of turning someone who doesn't fully understand and accept what it means, as had been the case with her, makes her break out in a cold sweat. Hisako's decided that if it happens she's going to be as responsible as she can and take the new Stormwing under her wing, but she thinks poorly of herself and believes she'd do a bad job. Despite this, she hasn't actually defied her Queen and carries a cured feather around. Hisako's pretty susceptible to peer pressure and can become apathetic if she can get away with it, she may second guess right and wrong, write some people off as not worth caring about, and follow her friends into bad places. If she openly takes a moral stand in defiance of friends and authority, it's a huge deal. She'd rather not rock the boat and take risks, and seems very unambitious.
If she's not flying she prefers to be around people (and flying with people is good too) as even wordless proximity is better than being alone too long. It's not hard to see that while she pretends cynical aloofness she does care about people and want them to do well, which shows in her rare moments of sincerity. Hisako has some artistic inclinations towards music and poetry.
Powers and Abilities:
Hisako is a Stormwing. She's essentially a metal-feathered harpy with shearing metal teeth. Her body is neither fast nor graceful on the ground, taking off or landing can be challenging, and flight is harder in wet conditions. In the air, she's fast and can stay aloft for days, soar over a mile up, and even hover. She's quite strong, is minimally affected when injured, and could carry a smallish human - ideally a rope sling is involved - for a short distance. All of her feathers, plus the scales and the short claws on her feet, are a steely metal that largely acts like keratin when attached to her, but the larger feathers have extremely sharp edges that cut like knives and are reflective enough to dazzle in bright light. They're as good as armor at protecting the underlying flesh. Her eyesight is very good, able to sharpen to hawklike intensity, and she's got a keen sense of smell.
Removed feathers cure and become rigid, and take on a couple of specific properties. One is that they can be used to make weapons with high penetrative power and a particular lethality towards mages. The other property is that if someone deliberately drives the feather into their own flesh, they are permanently transformed into a Stormwing and lose all previous authority and powers, gaining Stormwing powers instead. On the plus side, transforming heals even lethal wounds. Hisako is very against turning people casually and it'd only be done with significant OOC plotting. Accidental or non-self-inflicted cuts are just cuts, probably wanna wash that out to prevent (non-transformative) infection.
Stormwings are a kind of lesser Immortal; that is, she won't age past the point of looking to be in her fifties and can be killed through accident or malice but not disease, starvation, age, exposure... Non-magical fire and heat can't harm her and similarly she's comfortable in icy temperatures. She may enjoy a bit of regular food but gets little from it. Hisako's fasted for most of her life as her only sustenance is the fear and suffering of mortals and the bodies of people killed in war. Being in the vicinity of a mortal experiencing negative emotions strengthens and energizes her, and she can analyze the "taste" to understand the nature of the emotions and glean something about who's having them. There are no effects on the person having the emotions.
She also has Stormwing magic. To someone who can see or sense magic, hers has a bright red-gold aura that's very easy to identify. She can enhance her flight, shield herself from harm, cast a destructive bolt at something she's pointing at, see and hear spirits and astral projections, sense death, and inspire war-related terror in people in her vicinity. To compensate for losing her human hands, she's refined a telekinesis-like magic that functionally makes up to two semi-tangible invisible hands appear within her wingspan. They're geared more for dexterity than strength or speed. Since these "hands" appear and disappear at will and aren't connected to her body, she can manipulate something on the other side of glass, but can't pull herself up a ladder.
Hisako has some skill in scrying, which is an inexact art. She can pour magic into still water (or other fluids, including mercury or especially blood), a mirror, or fire to remotely see and hear things happening in the past or present. Some things are protected and unscryable, and scrying anything in the vicinity of something protected can result in a uselessly blurred image and garbled sound. She's more likely to succeed if trying to scry a person or place she or a participating second party knows well. I'm gonna say she can't look into minds or the future. Normally she can look into other realms. Per the FAQ question, in game she'd only be able to see still images of home at the moment she left. She may be able to scry other characters' homes with their participation, and get either nothing or similarly frozen results.
She can also work magic on her own shed blood to make semiliquid, amorphous black blobs called "darkings" which can be reshaped in the hands to act as jewelry, pockets, and portable scrying tools. If she gives a darking to someone who contributes essence, it can work like a private network device. (Another transformed Stormwing will make much more advanced, independent, even sapient darkings but Hisako's not aware that that's possible. Creating life in the Divine Realms can get fraught.)
Finally, she can understand animal communication. This is helpful with unusually smart animals, but since she has no power to make them understand her, let alone obey, in most cases she's functionally just very good at reading their body language. Many mortal animals are inclined to dislike Stormwings too so a lot of that communication is along the lines of "What is that! Go away!"
Inventory: Hisako's wearing a set of necklaces with various small objects on them. These include: a glazed potato flute/ocarina left from her human life, ornaments made from griffin feathers (held to the eye, they allow someone to see through illusions), and tokens from various minor gods that usually let them track her and allow her to contact them (the most notable is a silvery human vertebra).
She also has one of Queen Jachull's feathers, partially stripped so she can use it as a hair stick. It has the same properties of any Stormwing feather but not as much edge.
Sample: the TDM
When presented with a choice, is the character more likely to stick with tried and true methods? Or make something new up on the fly? Tried and true to start, definitely. Lower risk! Hisako doesn't trust herself to have very discerning judgement when it comes to working on the fly. She's much more inclined to try something new if she's had a while to think about it and has consulted others.
What is more important to your character, preserving the past or forging a future? Hisako sees no future for herself or her kind but a slow-decaying stasis, but dwelling in the past just brings pain too. She mainly tries to live in the present. Ultimately though she does look to the future over the past, and much more eagerly when she can actually see something there.
How does your character influence their own story? What about the stories of others? She considers herself small fry caught in large events with little to no ability to affect things, to the point where she doesn't feel she has control over her own story and is a footnote in others'. That's partially the hunger and depression. Hisako is certainly not a major player but she does make small choices all the time, she tries to find solutions to problems, and has her own little sphere of influence that becomes more apparent when she's actually moved to act strongly.
Are you alright with your character’s canon being used as a Recommended Reading?: Sure! It might be better to go with canon Tortall events and characters (Hisako has very little overlap with them) just because there's more there.
Player Contact(s): Plurk, Discord
Are you over 18? yes
Do you have any other characters in game?: no
Who invited you?: If during an open period, put NA.
Character Name: Hisako Godsup
Canon: Tortall Universe
Canon Point: About eighty years before Emperor Ozorne starts opening the barrier and bringing Immortals through.
Age: Hisako appears to be in her late thirties, maybe forty. She is three hundred ninety two, though she's lost track of the exact number.
History:
Hisako was a poor city kid who was friends with some Stormwings, nearly immortal steel-feathered harpies made from nightmares of war and who draw strength from human suffering. This sounds bad, but they're people, and this flock mainly subsisted on the ambient misery of a large city with major inequities during a period of strife. Hisako became a thief-mage as she grew up, trying and failing to get free of the criminal underworld and find a way to let her and her family prosper. In a moment of frustration she told her Stormwing friends she'd like to be one of them. They remembered this, and when the king of thieves had Hisako badly wounded they turned her into a Stormwing herself to save her.
Very shortly after that, events she'd been completely unaware of transpired and she, the other Stormwings, and every other lesser or greater Immortal in that part of the world were forcibly transported into the Divine Realms and barred from returning to the Mortal Realms. Decades of trouble ensued as thousands of displaced Immortals vied for limited space with resident Immortals and minor gods. Things never settled completely but stability came in time. Hisako adjusted slowly and made friends with various other Immortals and gods.
Cut off from sustenance, Stormwings were unable to reproduce often enough to replace those who were killed. Hisako with her friends joined the largest Stormwing nation, Mortal Fear, soon before Jachull became its queen. Hisako herself was briefly Queen Jachull's consort and found her unsettling and amoral, monofocused on the survival of the race, but thought maybe they needed someone like that. Hisako tried to determine if a (willing) recently-ascended minor god was close enough to mortal to provide what was needed, but he wasn't and she found the experience very upsetting.
Four hundred fifty years after their exile, the mortal Emperor Ozorne started to put holes in the barrier and pulling Immortals through for his own ends, making deals with some, coercing others. This included plenty of Stormwings, and Jachull was entirely willing to commit her people to helping him, even if that meant fighting in mortal wars, to access mortal fear and flesh again. Flying over a battlefield with a flock for the first time was profoundly affecting for Hisako, who'd been cut off from crucial aspects of Stormwing life for all this time. Combined with humans seeing her as a horrible monster, she finally fully accepted what she was and let go of her lingering human identity and mores.
Ozorne himself was transformed into a Stormwing, and despite him breaking Stormwing law and betraying allies to gain power, Jachull continued to support him as he found ways to keep waging war. Hisako was disgusted on a profound moral level and managed to convince a number of other Stormwings not to go along with this. They fled Mortal Fear rather than face execution for this betrayal, though they didn't up and support the Stormwings and other forces who opposed Ozorne and etc either. Entirely different characters killed them both.
Later it was revealed that Ozorne had begun to serve a primordial goddess of Chaos who'd eagerly devour everything if she won. Despite this, the new leader of Mortal Fear - once Hisako's first and best Stormwing friend - regarded her as a traitor who had weakened them at a critical moment, and she was unable to return. In the Mortal Realms, Hisako and her small flock went north and established a territory, following premonitions of war. The knight guardian of a refugee camp refused to allow Stormwings to consume enemy dead, and a slighted Hisako, entirely alienated from humanity, offered no help, even when the camp's children were rounded up to be delivered to a necromancer.
Is this character an AU? What type?: Nope. Tortall OC. I do draw a bit of worldbuilding from a fic called In The Realms of the Immortals but said worldbuilding doesn't actually contradict canon.
Personality:
Hisako tends to come across as cheerful, friendly in a slightly malicious way, and laid back, someone who doesn't take things all that seriously or worry or care deeply about much. She's playful and always open to try new things and generally have a good time, whatever form that takes. Teasing and light bickering are a particular favorite and to Stormwings her being "Godsup" invites this.
This covers a tendency towards depression. Hisako's had a lot of time to adapt to losing her family, body, and mortal life and to adjust to being a Stormwing in the Divine Realms and would say she's great, thanks. Really she is and always has been someone without a great deal of power, who has little to no recourse when her life is casually upended. Getting angry about it has only ever made things worse. If you asked her she'd say of course she doesn't get mad, she knows she's a small bird in a gale, it's better to put that energy into adjusting. Naturally there's still a lot of feeling there that she rarely feels safe expressing or even acknowledging. She makes nice with people who hurt her and smiles frequently with dull eyes.
On top of the rest, in the Divine Realms Stormwings are cut off from their purpose and nourishment and are consequently a slowly-dying race. Hisako's lived with a constant hunger for long enough that she's not fully conscious of it anymore, and feels aimless and at loose ends. Actually flying over battlefields and feeding with a flock is going to hit very hard and rearrange some things for her, but simply encountering mortals on her own in an RP context is different. It feels really good to finally get to drink suffering and she doesn't trust that feeling. Uncomplicated good things just don't happen to her and she's never fully reckoned with being something that lives on misery. That she doesn't have to cause or make it worse does help, there's little to no real cruelty in her and she's always found violence disturbing.
On some levels she still considers herself human or human-adjacent, so she's got higher hygiene standards than the typical Stormwing and some remnant of the desire to wear clothes in public. The idea of turning someone who doesn't fully understand and accept what it means, as had been the case with her, makes her break out in a cold sweat. Hisako's decided that if it happens she's going to be as responsible as she can and take the new Stormwing under her wing, but she thinks poorly of herself and believes she'd do a bad job. Despite this, she hasn't actually defied her Queen and carries a cured feather around. Hisako's pretty susceptible to peer pressure and can become apathetic if she can get away with it, she may second guess right and wrong, write some people off as not worth caring about, and follow her friends into bad places. If she openly takes a moral stand in defiance of friends and authority, it's a huge deal. She'd rather not rock the boat and take risks, and seems very unambitious.
If she's not flying she prefers to be around people (and flying with people is good too) as even wordless proximity is better than being alone too long. It's not hard to see that while she pretends cynical aloofness she does care about people and want them to do well, which shows in her rare moments of sincerity. Hisako has some artistic inclinations towards music and poetry.
Powers and Abilities:
Hisako is a Stormwing. She's essentially a metal-feathered harpy with shearing metal teeth. Her body is neither fast nor graceful on the ground, taking off or landing can be challenging, and flight is harder in wet conditions. In the air, she's fast and can stay aloft for days, soar over a mile up, and even hover. She's quite strong, is minimally affected when injured, and could carry a smallish human - ideally a rope sling is involved - for a short distance. All of her feathers, plus the scales and the short claws on her feet, are a steely metal that largely acts like keratin when attached to her, but the larger feathers have extremely sharp edges that cut like knives and are reflective enough to dazzle in bright light. They're as good as armor at protecting the underlying flesh. Her eyesight is very good, able to sharpen to hawklike intensity, and she's got a keen sense of smell.
Removed feathers cure and become rigid, and take on a couple of specific properties. One is that they can be used to make weapons with high penetrative power and a particular lethality towards mages. The other property is that if someone deliberately drives the feather into their own flesh, they are permanently transformed into a Stormwing and lose all previous authority and powers, gaining Stormwing powers instead. On the plus side, transforming heals even lethal wounds. Hisako is very against turning people casually and it'd only be done with significant OOC plotting. Accidental or non-self-inflicted cuts are just cuts, probably wanna wash that out to prevent (non-transformative) infection.
Stormwings are a kind of lesser Immortal; that is, she won't age past the point of looking to be in her fifties and can be killed through accident or malice but not disease, starvation, age, exposure... Non-magical fire and heat can't harm her and similarly she's comfortable in icy temperatures. She may enjoy a bit of regular food but gets little from it. Hisako's fasted for most of her life as her only sustenance is the fear and suffering of mortals and the bodies of people killed in war. Being in the vicinity of a mortal experiencing negative emotions strengthens and energizes her, and she can analyze the "taste" to understand the nature of the emotions and glean something about who's having them. There are no effects on the person having the emotions.
She also has Stormwing magic. To someone who can see or sense magic, hers has a bright red-gold aura that's very easy to identify. She can enhance her flight, shield herself from harm, cast a destructive bolt at something she's pointing at, see and hear spirits and astral projections, sense death, and inspire war-related terror in people in her vicinity. To compensate for losing her human hands, she's refined a telekinesis-like magic that functionally makes up to two semi-tangible invisible hands appear within her wingspan. They're geared more for dexterity than strength or speed. Since these "hands" appear and disappear at will and aren't connected to her body, she can manipulate something on the other side of glass, but can't pull herself up a ladder.
Hisako has some skill in scrying, which is an inexact art. She can pour magic into still water (or other fluids, including mercury or especially blood), a mirror, or fire to remotely see and hear things happening in the past or present. Some things are protected and unscryable, and scrying anything in the vicinity of something protected can result in a uselessly blurred image and garbled sound. She's more likely to succeed if trying to scry a person or place she or a participating second party knows well. I'm gonna say she can't look into minds or the future. Normally she can look into other realms. Per the FAQ question, in game she'd only be able to see still images of home at the moment she left. She may be able to scry other characters' homes with their participation, and get either nothing or similarly frozen results.
She can also work magic on her own shed blood to make semiliquid, amorphous black blobs called "darkings" which can be reshaped in the hands to act as jewelry, pockets, and portable scrying tools. If she gives a darking to someone who contributes essence, it can work like a private network device. (Another transformed Stormwing will make much more advanced, independent, even sapient darkings but Hisako's not aware that that's possible. Creating life in the Divine Realms can get fraught.)
Finally, she can understand animal communication. This is helpful with unusually smart animals, but since she has no power to make them understand her, let alone obey, in most cases she's functionally just very good at reading their body language. Many mortal animals are inclined to dislike Stormwings too so a lot of that communication is along the lines of "What is that! Go away!"
Inventory: Hisako's wearing a set of necklaces with various small objects on them. These include: a glazed potato flute/ocarina left from her human life, ornaments made from griffin feathers (held to the eye, they allow someone to see through illusions), and tokens from various minor gods that usually let them track her and allow her to contact them (the most notable is a silvery human vertebra).
She also has one of Queen Jachull's feathers, partially stripped so she can use it as a hair stick. It has the same properties of any Stormwing feather but not as much edge.
Sample: the TDM
When presented with a choice, is the character more likely to stick with tried and true methods? Or make something new up on the fly? Tried and true to start, definitely. Lower risk! Hisako doesn't trust herself to have very discerning judgement when it comes to working on the fly. She's much more inclined to try something new if she's had a while to think about it and has consulted others.
What is more important to your character, preserving the past or forging a future? Hisako sees no future for herself or her kind but a slow-decaying stasis, but dwelling in the past just brings pain too. She mainly tries to live in the present. Ultimately though she does look to the future over the past, and much more eagerly when she can actually see something there.
How does your character influence their own story? What about the stories of others? She considers herself small fry caught in large events with little to no ability to affect things, to the point where she doesn't feel she has control over her own story and is a footnote in others'. That's partially the hunger and depression. Hisako is certainly not a major player but she does make small choices all the time, she tries to find solutions to problems, and has her own little sphere of influence that becomes more apparent when she's actually moved to act strongly.
Are you alright with your character’s canon being used as a Recommended Reading?: Sure! It might be better to go with canon Tortall events and characters (Hisako has very little overlap with them) just because there's more there.
