Before the fall of the Silver Millennium a band of fairly amoral senshi, knights(?), and unpowered but useful civilians roamed the stars, willing to Get The Job Done. For a price.
Was your character motivated by money, power, or adventure a thousand years ago? Would they have occasionally worked together with other like-minded individuals doing jobs like: thieving, kidnapping, rescuing the kidnapped, assassination, smuggling, aiding government overthrow, aiding government oppression, exterminating monsters, finding treasure, or clearing out mysterious ruins? Then welcome, welcome, welcome!
This is open to anyone interested to pop their characters into the roster ~ while no specific plots are on the table yet, this will be a good backbone to build off of and refer to in play! As well as just have for funsies talk ~
Feel free to use this thread to both put your characters on the roster as well as to talk plot!
Was your character part of a similar or opposing group that they would have had run-ins with? There's now a form for that too!
MEMBER FORM
[b]Name:[/b] the name they went by 1000 years ago, doesn't have to be their real name! [b]Character Type:[/b] past life senshi? dss? past life knight? past life civ? [b]Role:[/b] their main role within the group [b]Basics: [/b] basic personality traits that others within the group would be familiar with
OTHER GROUPS FORM
[b]Relationship to Nameless:[/b] [b]Groups Name:[/b] [b]Known Members:[/b] [b]Basics: [/b] whatever general info that would be known ~ feel free to go into details
lizbot
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lizbot
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Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2023 5:06 pm
ROSTER
player: Daekie
Name:Alexis Montague / the Hunter (Roka of the Undertow) Character Type: DSS Role: Scouting, thievery, & assassination (any violence in general, but assassination specialty) as Alexis; infiltration and information-gathering as Roka Basics: Reckless, ruthless daredevil b*****d; eternally stubborn Kind of an unrepentant troll sometimes So many irons in the fire Knife Freak (.... & Harpoon Freak) (but harpoons are harder to conceal.) Civilian & powered identities were not known to be the same person (though the rest of the group would've been aware) & ran in very different circles;
player: lizbot
Name:Grieve of Grieve Character Type: Currently a basic DSS senshi, joined the group as an eternal chibi, boosted up to regular senshi at 14 Role: Unflinching, relentless brawn Basics: Stoic until she's suddenly using too many words in heavy gothic font The solution is Violence Good drinking pal Always the Bad Cop Edgelord
player: nyamomask
Name:Xochitl/Morishita Character Type: past life senshi i guess Role: scam artist, or whatever the role where she takes all the credit for everyone else's work is Basics: scam artist, traveling merchant of dubious origins, pretender to the extinct throne of her homeworld if it even is her homeworld. loves money, hates effort. buy low sell high, undercut everyone else until they go out of business, then drive up the prices
player: amorremanet
Name: Kaede Kurogane Character Type: past life civ Role: career smuggler and treasure hunter, appraiser of valuables, haggler to make sure the team gets the best price when they fence the stuff, getaway driver, distraction artist (usually of the “has T&A and is willing to put on a character and Be Sexy to make people pay attention to her and Cause A Whole Scene so the rest of the group can handle the infiltration” variety).
Basics: a younger child from a family/borderline dynasty of smugglers, petty thieves, “independent cargo pilots,” “independent archaeologists,” etc. Elder twin sister to Keishi.
One of the only people who can make her behave is her grandmother/the family’s matriarch, Harune Kurogane, an intimidating woman with extremely high standards, very little in the way of morals or ethics, and several significantly younger paramours strewn across different planets.
Frankly, Kaede thinks her big tough Saturn Knight cousin can suck it up and deal with the ~*horrible inconvenience*~ of constantly bailing her, Keishi, and the team out of stuff. It’s what he deserves for being a smug jerk. ^___^
Xingyi is the only child of their grandmother’s eldest child, and instead of getting into the family business like he SHOULD have, he ******** off to the Knight Academy as if the family didn’t matter at all to him. Rather than think about his duty to his family, he cares more about caring for a bunch of dead people. He only calls when they call him first, and usually, his first question is either “What trouble are the twins in this time” or “When are you coming with the liquor, where can I pick it up.” What the Hell, Xingyi.
Also, he is arrogant, and selfish, and he thinks he’s BETTER than the family, as if he could even DO ANYTHING back home on Murikabushi without EVERYONE who hears his name assuming that he’s a criminal who’s pretending to be a Saturn Knight (which is what he is, in her opinion, so really, he should just quit and come back to the family business now, she’ll even teach him the ropes because she is SUCH a good cousin :> )
By the way, Kaede definitely doesn’t feel hurt that Xingyi considers some Jupiter Knight [Tianyu Qiu] and another non-Saturn Knight [Yuanxin Qiu] who aren’t even related to him more family than his own blood! That’s his choice!! If he wants to choose wrong, then who is Kaede to stop him!!!
She also isn’t hurt that he’d rather hang out with some Ida Knight who he doesn’t even like very much [SilMil!Selenga]! Hearing Xingyi address [SilMil!Selenga] as “brother-in-law” doesn’t hurt Kaede’s feelings in the slightest!! She doesn’t even HAVE feelings, so joke’s on you!!!
She REALLY doesn’t give a ******** about his ongoing Whatever The ******** It Is with that stupid senshi! Maybe if she actually had FEELINGS, watching Xingyi and that stupid senshi dance around each other and refuse to just kiss would wound her, but she DEFINITELY IS NOT UPSET that her ******** idiot cousin would literally ******** DIE!!! for the sake of some stupid, stuck up b***h of a senshi, who obviously doesn’t love him enough to just TELL HIM SO and is honestly probably toying with his heart like it’s a game—but SHE AND KEISHI can’t even get him to come HELP THEM OUT without him having a TANTRUM about how he’s soooooo embarrassed and soooooo sorry to his rogue’s gallery of fake-a** alleged “family” for dragging them into “the twins’ mess” all over again.
But, you see, Kaede doesn’t care about ANY of that at all, not even a little bit, thanks SOOOOO MUCH for ******** asking! Xingyi is probably just jealous of her for being their grandmother’s favorite!!! She’s sorry that he is so jealous of her, but she can’t help it that she’s perfect.
Kaede was not really Harune’s favorite. This would imply that Harune ever HAD a favorite and that she considered her grandchildren actual people, rather than pawns in her own schemes and her own criminal enterprises.
She did earn more praise from her grandmother than many of her other cousins, but: A. “favorite” is taking it too far, and B. that only made the blowback when Kaede ******** up that much worse, because Harune would have more reason to be disappointed.
Also, she was very jealous of the fact that Xingyi, in her eyes, repeatedly made it clear that he thought he was better than the family, and thought all of them were worth less than nothing because they did what it took to survive and their ancestors—you know, the ones who are also HIS ancestors—secured lives for themselves through less-than-legal means……but their grandmother still had an ongoing obsession with trying to get him away from his Wonder and back in the Family.
Even though, for Harune, this was only about wanting Xingyi under her thumb, Kaede mistakenly thought that it was love, and HOW UNFAIR for grandmother to love him when she worked SO HARD and he DIDN’T EVEN WANT IT!!!
Big “Victims of horrific abuse are often protective of their abusers” energy from Kaede to her grandmother. Unfortunately, she didn’t have enough people to made good on the second part of that line: “It doesn’t mean we should send them back for seconds.”
The only time she really acknowledged how terrible her grandmother was, was if Harune was trying to hurt or pick on Keishi. In that case, Kaede would do whatever it took to get their grandmother to leave Keishi alone, even if Kaede got herself put in the doghouse or on Harune’s s**t-list for a while.
Anyway, whatever, Xingyi, you ******** lush!!! Have fun with your stupid senshi and your stupid corpses and your fake-a** ““family”” who probably don’t even care about you!!! Do whatever you want, she hopes it sucks~
Dual-wielded energy pistols that she definitely found in a totally above-board and 100% legal fashion, they just fell off the back of a space truck somewhere, you can’t prove that they didn’t, she’d like to see you try [smug kitty emoji]
Skilled with traps and disarming them, but bad at balancing that with People Things, so she’d strongly prefer breaking into the Temple of Doom rather than heisting a fancy rich people party.
Willing to fight dirty (think Indiana Jones bringing a gun to a whip fight) and do the audacious things that probably shouldn’t work but somehow kinda do (think Jack Sparrow doing……pretty much anything).
Always willing to shoot first (don’t let the other guy get a chance to shoot, it’s simple logic!) or use her pistol as a bludgeoning implement if the energy clip ran out (it’s called “improvising,” DUH). Always prefers guns to melee, but if push shoves, she’ll fight like a hellcat.
Personally, out of all the rumors surrounding Xingyi’s death, Kaede most believed the one about the people who lived around Kaifeng turning on her cousin and besieging it—and she ******** TOLD YOU SO, didn’t she, Xingyi!! She told you that those people would never accept you as the Knight of Kaifeng! She told you that they’d never see you as anything more than a criminal pretending to be a Saturn Knight! If you’d just LISTENED TO HER and COME ******** HOME, maybe NONE OF THIS EVER would’ve happened!!! So much for your senshi, you poured so much love into that heartless jackass and he wouldn’t even lift a finger to save you when you needed him!!! UGH, you IDIOT.
Absolutely suggested trying to break into her cousin’s ridiculous wizard tower and steal things after he died. Never actually made moves to bring that idea to fruition, though.
Y’know, when Jin Guangyao said “Those ‘tricks’ of mine? Which ones? Da-ge, you constantly castigate me for being calculating, for being unorthodox. You say you stand tall and straight, that you are undaunted by nothing, that a real man has no need to resort to underhanded means.… You tell me not to fear heaven and earth?… It’s easy for you to say such things because you’re not in my shoes, just like those who have never known hunger can never imagine how it feels to starve!”……? Yeah, Kaede felt that s**t in her soul, and in particular @ Xingyi
When life gives you lemons, throw them back in life’s face and scream “I SAID I WANTED A MANGO!!!”
player: genovianprince
Name: Keishi Kurogane Character Type: past life civ Role: career smuggler and treasure hunter, infiltration expert, contortionist, distraction artist (of the “engineer something like an explosion or a sudden delivery of forty cakes or whatever will get the people he’s trying to heist to stop paying attention to him” variety), escape artist, always had multiple lockpicks and assorted tools for breaking out.
Basics: a younger child from the same family as his older twin sister, Kaede. Not THE youngest, since some of their cousins and siblings were younger, but also not the eldest.
Basically, he took more of the Kasumi Goto or Charlie’s Angels (2000), “get in without anybody knowing that you were there” approach while his sister had way more in common with Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, Han Solo, and Petra Aberdeen.
Definitely made more than a few people who apprehended the team boggle when they tried to turn out all his pockets and find where he had his arsenal of hidden escape equipment, because the sheer volume of tools that he hid in secret pockets or Other Places was just………okay, wow??
Nobody ever managed to confiscate all of his escape tools, whoops
When life gives you lemons, make grape juice then sit back and let the world wonder how you did it.
player: tatterpixie
Name:Hob Goodfellow / Puck of the Woods Character Type: past life senshi Role: brawling, fighting, threatening and intimidation, you name it, if it involves violence, he is all over it Basics: drinker, trickster, fond of jokes and laughing until it's time to bash someone's face in on a "see the universe/sow some wild oats" adventures before assuming his official duties on his homeworld (such as they are) ocassionally grumpy, always foul-mouthed little arse loves to take the piss out of his fellow mercs loyal to them to the death
player: Orangeish Sherbert
Name:Vulpine Character Type: DSS Role: Deals in information, crafty tricks, planning Basics: Distrustful, Deceitful, Determined, and always on top of things. She keeps her true life out of this side of things as much as possible and never lets anyone in.
player: Meighei
Name:Stargazer Character Type: Deep Space Senshi Role: (Sometimes) member. Her magic is great for movement and getting in and out of places. Also, her people made maps in the past. Loves exploration, but likely would stray away from things that were more amoral. Basics: Knows things about stars. Curiosity never hurt anyone, right? A bit of a kleptomaniac “collector”.
player: amorremanet
Name:Airan / Murikabushi of Hunger Character Type: Past life senshi Role: definitely not an official member—too many official governmental roles for that and often had his hands tied until ~*La Revolucion!*~ happened—but a willing accomplice in a lot of ways. Happy to harbor people who needed to lay low for a while and claim them as “diplomatic guests” of the senshi, or use some “bedroom diplomacy” with people who could be bought off to get the team out of trouble.
Or if not bedroom diplomacy, then putting on the right kind of airs and bullshitting a just-plausible-sounding-enough excuse for whatever suspicious thing they were being held on this time. Remember that part of “The Train Job” in Firefly, where Inara swans on in to the backwoods sheriff’s station in all her finery, slaps Mal across the face, and gets him and Zoe out of trouble? Airan would gladly give That kind of energy. Until ~*La Revolucion!*~, he didn’t have very much in the way of freedom, but whatever he did have, he always wanted to use in order to help people. So, who volunteers to get slapped in the name of a cover story to get y’all out of trouble!! emotion_kirakira
Basics: spoiler tag because……it long.
Civilian and powered identity were VERY openly known to be the same person. He lived in a gilded cage liminal state where he had a position that nominally had a lot of power, but in reality, that power had too many caveats, too much fine print, and too many fetters to really matter.
One of the only friend-adjacent people in his life on Murikabushi—their world’s queen (he/him)—was largely oblivious to his own complicity in Airan’s suffering (very big Louis XVI “I just want people to love me, even if it bankrupts the nation with the burden falling most harshly on those already living in abject poverty” energy). One of his other precious few friend-adjacent people was a courtier droid, who was more honest and more genuine than the vast majority of the non-droid people in Airan’s life.
Stepford Smiler, type D for “Depressed” (but your characters would not have been alone if they assumed type E for “Empty” instead). As long as he smiles pretty, no one will notice he’s dying inside, right (does it really matter if he is?).
Didn’t have a great reputation on his homeworld until La Revolucion happened. If you mixed with the proles (urban working class, rural poor/peasants, people aspiring towards the fledgling middle-class but in a more tenuous position, etc.)—ESPECIALLY the ones of his same ethnic minority group—then the senshi was a pampered do-nothing sell-out who had betrayed his family and his people. If you asked most of the ruling elites/nobles, most members of the farcical excuse for an elected civilian government, their counterparts in any of the mainstream religious groups, and their bootlickers among the more securely/upper middle classes, then the senshi was a vapid slut who could be bought off and pushed around as much as you wanted, to whatever end you had in mind, lol isn’t he such a cute little puppet, pretending to have feelings.
And Airan hated that reputation for a lot of reasons! Chief among them: 1. he was forcibly ripped away from his family when he was seven and a Mauvian Awakened him, then forbidden from learning about or engaging with his people or their culture outside of highly controlled and propagandistic settings; and 2. he did his best within a deeply flawed and ******** up system to try his best to help people. That was what the senshi was FOR, he thought. The senshi of hunger was supposed to help identify what people needed in their lives and help them to get it. If accomplishing that needed to mean Airan mentally/emotionally dissociating while letting men use his body and setting his own reputation on fire, then okay fine, he would accept that. The most important thing was that the people got the help they needed, whether that meant a park where some of the urban poor could have a community garden or major upgrades to infrastructure in the rural provinces.
But like, if he slows down and lets himself be as upset as he feels about how much the people he wants to help despise him, then he might freeze over in sadness and that’s Not Acceptable To Him. He can grieve later, when he’s dead and some other beautiful little fool is this planet’s senshi. Low-key but high-key hoped that the next Murikabushi would never Awaken because he mistakenly believed it would mean they never had to suffer like he did. :<
Absolutely preferred to think of the merc group as fighting against oppression and toppling unjust hierarchies (or at least pushing back against them if not toppling them outright). He believes in you guys so much, and he’s sure you wouldn’t kill anybody just for fun or take on jobs without considering their moral and ethical ramifications, right, guys? ………Right, guys?? :<
If you need Valentin for anything, either Song or I can give him a more detailed write-up (since his reincarnation is on her Future Characters list). But the most important notes here are:
“think Robespierre if he were a sexy romance novel love interest (upstart lawyer from a pretty messed up, working class background; will passionately fight anyone in defense of the underdog; became a firebrand figurehead and thought-leader in the revolution because he fought like Hell, fought with basically everyone, and wrote a lot of really angry and confrontational pamphlets about liberty and ******** the monarchy and What If Everyone Had Equal Rights; eventually became judge jury and executioner in the capital city because he got appointed to chair a committee on public safety and convincingly argued that counterrevolutionary sentiments were a major threat to that)”
“probably had to be at least somewhat involved in any rescue missions of the ‘dress up fancy, swish into some place where Airan’s finery would have shocked people into submission, and act like you know what you’re doing’ variety, because he used his position in the governing assembly [lol, it didn’t actually govern s**t] to facilitate getting Airan off-world”
and “eventually got glommed onto by Chaos and like, he had not been a perfect saint before that by any means—revolutions are bloody and violent, this is just part of how they work—and yeah, he had in fact executed some people from the elites/nobility whose actual crimes were incredibly debatable/possibly not actually crimes so much as misunderstandings………but things on Murikabushi only really started turning into The Terror when he got glommed on by Chaos, then ordered Airan and one of his oldest friends executed. And sure, this led directly to his own downfall and summary execution—this is what happens when you take a figure who is widely loathed by the public and turn them into Princess Diana overnight by telling the truth about them for once—but, like……still. :<”
player: lizbot
Name:Hybris of Reflection Character Type: past life senshi Role: not an actual member of the group, but occasionally useful to kidnap from his tower prison and use for his ability to briefly transform into an exact doppelganger Basics: useless except for one (maybe two /eyebrows) things annoyingly vain faints when in danger, unless it looks like he'll be left behind in said danger easily pacified with books, praise, and threats
player: amorremanet
Name:Xingyi Kurogane / Kaifeng of Saturn Character Type: Past life knight Role: definitely not an official member (too many official duties and too much concern for how people were jerks to him for Space Classism reasons, also cared too much about NOT looking like a ******** in the eyes of his beautiful senshi Crush Boy)………but he WAS the semi-regular victim of “Don’t worry, I know a guy” from two little past life civ gremlins [to be detailed after i get some sleep] who happened to be his cousins, because he could never bring himself to just tell them “no” when they called him to pretty please come bail the team out (or rescue them from something other than getting arrested)
Basics: sorry he’s late, he didn’t want to come
tried very hard to project the image that he thought Saturn Knights were supposed to project to people………so, basically: grim goth trash edgelord who will remind you of your own mortality whenever he feels like it and/or thinks you’re being really annoying, liberally quotes from ancient Saturnian poetry about death and dying and how everyone you love will die someday and the enviable tragedy of someone dying young and beautiful, takes his duties more seriously than he takes you, etc.
was actually quite soft at heart—hence him constantly showing up: he “knew” that the Kurogane twins didn’t really want to spend family time with him, their boring Saturn Knight cousin, but he really hoped maybe, this time would be different—and as much as he genuinely enjoyed classical poetry about heady, serious things, he would’ve preferred to be laughing.
despite his protests, was fine with being effectively paid in liquor that the team paid for or at least didn’t tell him which cargo ship it fell off before coming into their hands. his blasé and unbothered attitude about getting blackout drunk……sure was a thing. He liked to pretend that it didn’t mean anything serious, please stop acting like it does. :<
if the Crush Boy Senshi in question—Xin Huanxi/Sailor Helene of Inhibition—ever accompanied him to rescue the team, it probably wasn’t hard to see that they were obsessed with each other and should have just kissed already. they never managed to do that by the time Xingyi died. still, he would have smiled and laughed more easily when said senshi came with him
may have also, at times, shown up in the company of Yuanxin Qiu, a Knight (not of Saturn) who was basically his adoptive brother except that Yuanxin’s blood family never formally adopted Xingyi. Yuanxin was sharp-tongued, hot-tempered, and he wanted to be here even less than Xingyi did. Frankly, he wanted Xingyi to just cut his father’s family out of his life entirely because, as far as he was concerned, all they ever did was make him miserable and take advantage of him. Yuanxin’s only here to make sure Xingyi’s okay at the end of it, high-key ******** the rest of you.
Several rumors about what happened went around when Xingyi died, including but not limited to: suicide over a broken heart; turned on by the people in the town around his Wonder; ripped apart by the ghostly shades of Kaifeng; suicide to protect his Wonder from Chaos; murdered by his non-Saturn Knight “siblings”’ father, who’d always hated him; drank himself to death; drank himself to death on purpose; suicide over being an alleged failure as a knight; and murdered by some jealous twink who wanted to get with Xingyi’s Senshi.
(There is an actual right answer about the truth of his death, but it wasn’t as widely known and probably didn’t filter down to the merc group unless someone actively went looking for it. But if anyone wants to plot about their characters/characters’ past lives having found out about it, hmu and we can work something out!)
Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2023 5:07 pm
wahmbulanceALLY, ENEMY, AND RIVAL GROUPSwahmbulance
player: Sweenys_Revenge
Relationship to Nameless: The Mercenary Corp from Acubens. Groups Name: Senshi Squadron Known Members: Tangled in Weeds, Senshi of Acubens leading six elite warriors from the planet. Basics: Acuben's Senshi Squadron enjoyed a friendly competitive relationship with Nameless. They were known to compete for marks and met on the field with some good natured ribbing. They also offered assistance and back up when needed.
lizbot
No Faun
Offline
Meighei
Bishoujo-senshi Mahou-shoujo
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Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2023 5:30 pm
Name:Stargazer Character Type: Deep Space Senshi Role: (Sometimes) member. Her magic is great for movement and getting in and out of places. Also, her people made maps in the past. Loves exploration, but likely would stray away from things that were more amoral. Basics: Knows things about stars. Curiosity never hurt anyone, right? A bit of a kleptomaniac “collector”.
Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2023 5:43 pm
Name:Alexis Montague / the Hunter (Roka of the Undertow) Character Type: DSS Role: Scouting, thievery, & assassination (any violence in general, but assassination specialty) as Alexis; infiltration and information-gathering as Roka Basics: Reckless, ruthless daredevil b*****d; eternally stubborn Kind of an unrepentant troll sometimes So many irons in the fire Knife Freak (.... & Harpoon Freak) (but harpoons are harder to conceal.) Civilian & powered identities were not generally known to be the same person (though the rest of the group would've been aware) & ran in very different circles
Name:Xochitl/Morishita Character Type: past life senshi i guess Role: scam artist, or whatever the role where she takes all the credit for everyone else's work is Basics: scam artist, traveling merchant of dubious origins, pretender to the extinct throne of her homeworld if it even is her homeworld. loves money, hates effort. buy low sell high, undercut everyone else until they go out of business, then drive up the prices
Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:50 pm
Name:Airan / Murikabushi of Hunger Character Type: Past life senshi Role: definitely not an official member—too many official governmental roles for that and often had his hands tied until ~*La Revolucion!*~ happened—but a willing accomplice in a lot of ways. Happy to harbor people who needed to lay low for a while and claim them as “diplomatic guests” of the senshi, or use some “bedroom diplomacy” with people who could be bought off to get the team out of trouble.
Or if not bedroom diplomacy, then putting on the right kind of airs and bullshitting a just-plausible-sounding-enough excuse for whatever suspicious thing they were being held on this time. Remember that part of “The Train Job” in Firefly, where Inara swans on in to the backwoods sheriff’s station in all her finery, slaps Mal across the face, and gets him and Zoe out of trouble? Airan would gladly give That kind of energy. Until ~*La Revolucion!*~, he didn’t have very much in the way of freedom, but whatever he did have, he always wanted to use in order to help people. So, who volunteers to get slapped in the name of a cover story to get y’all out of trouble!! emotion_kirakira
Basics: spoiler tag because……it long.
Civilian and powered identity were VERY openly known to be the same person. He lived in a gilded cage liminal state where he had a position that nominally had a lot of power, but in reality, that power had too many caveats, too much fine print, and too many fetters to really matter.
One of the only friend-adjacent people in his life on Murikabushi—their world’s queen (he/him)—was largely oblivious to his own complicity in Airan’s suffering (very big Louis XVI “I just want people to love me, even if it bankrupts the nation with the burden falling most harshly on those already living in abject poverty” energy). One of his other precious few friend-adjacent people was a courtier droid, who was more honest and more genuine than the vast majority of the non-droid people in Airan’s life.
Stepford Smiler, type D for “Depressed” (but your characters would not have been alone if they assumed type E for “Empty” instead). As long as he smiles pretty, no one will notice he’s dying inside, right (does it really matter if he is?).
Didn’t have a great reputation on his homeworld until La Revolucion happened. If you mixed with the proles (urban working class, rural poor/peasants, people aspiring towards the fledgling middle-class but in a more tenuous position, etc.)—ESPECIALLY the ones of his same ethnic minority group—then the senshi was a pampered do-nothing sell-out who had betrayed his family and his people. If you asked most of the ruling elites/nobles, most members of the farcical excuse for an elected civilian government, their counterparts in any of the mainstream religious groups, and their bootlickers among the more securely/upper middle classes, then the senshi was a vapid slut who could be bought off and pushed around as much as you wanted, to whatever end you had in mind, lol isn’t he such a cute little puppet, pretending to have feelings.
And Airan hated that reputation for a lot of reasons! Chief among them: 1. he was forcibly ripped away from his family when he was seven and a Mauvian Awakened him, then forbidden from learning about or engaging with his people or their culture outside of highly controlled and propagandistic settings; and 2. he did his best within a deeply flawed and ******** up system to try his best to help people. That was what the senshi was FOR, he thought. The senshi of hunger was supposed to help identify what people needed in their lives and help them to get it. If accomplishing that needed to mean Airan mentally/emotionally dissociating while letting men use his body and setting his own reputation on fire, then okay fine, he would accept that. The most important thing was that the people got the help they needed, whether that meant a park where some of the urban poor could have a community garden or major upgrades to infrastructure in the rural provinces.
But like, if he slows down and lets himself be as upset as he feels about how much the people he wants to help despise him, then he might freeze over in sadness and that’s Not Acceptable To Him. He can grieve later, when he’s dead and some other beautiful little fool is this planet’s senshi. Low-key but high-key hoped that the next Murikabushi would never Awaken because he mistakenly believed it would mean they never had to suffer like he did. :<
Absolutely preferred to think of the merc group as fighting against oppression and toppling unjust hierarchies (or at least pushing back against them if not toppling them outright). He believes in you guys so much, and he’s sure you wouldn’t kill anybody just for fun or take on jobs without considering their moral and ethical ramifications, right, guys? ………Right, guys?? :<
If you need Valentin for anything, either Song or I can give him a more detailed write-up (since his reincarnation is on her Future Characters list). But the most important notes here are:
“think Robespierre if he were a sexy romance novel love interest (upstart lawyer from a pretty messed up, working class background; will passionately fight anyone in defense of the underdog; became a firebrand figurehead and thought-leader in the revolution because he fought like Hell, fought with basically everyone, and wrote a lot of really angry and confrontational pamphlets about liberty and ******** the monarchy and What If Everyone Had Equal Rights; eventually became judge jury and executioner in the capital city because he got appointed to chair a committee on public safety and convincingly argued that counterrevolutionary sentiments were a major threat to that)”
“probably had to be at least somewhat involved in any rescue missions of the ‘dress up fancy, swish into some place where Airan’s finery would have shocked people into submission, and act like you know what you’re doing’ variety, because he used his position in the governing assembly [lol, it didn’t actually govern s**t] to facilitate getting Airan off-world”
and “eventually got glommed onto by Chaos and like, he had not been a perfect saint before that by any means—revolutions are bloody and violent, this is just part of how they work—and yeah, he had in fact executed some people from the elites/nobility whose actual crimes were incredibly debatable/possibly not actually crimes so much as misunderstandings………but things on Murikabushi only really started turning into The Terror when he got glommed on by Chaos, then ordered Airan and one of his oldest friends executed. And sure, this led directly to his own downfall and summary execution—this is what happens when you take a figure who is widely loathed by the public and turn them into Princess Diana overnight by telling the truth about them for once—but, like……still. :<”
Name:Xingyi Kurogane / Kaifeng of Saturn Character Type: Past life knight Role: definitely not an official member (too many official duties and too much concern for how people were jerks to him for Space Classism reasons, also cared too much about NOT looking like a ******** in the eyes of his beautiful senshi Crush Boy)………but he WAS the semi-regular victim of “Don’t worry, I know a guy” from two little past life civ gremlins [to be detailed after i get some sleep] who happened to be his cousins, because he could never bring himself to just tell them “no” when they called him to pretty please come bail the team out (or rescue them from something other than getting arrested)
Basics: sorry he’s late, he didn’t want to come
tried very hard to project the image that he thought Saturn Knights were supposed to project to people………so, basically: grim goth trash edgelord who will remind you of your own mortality whenever he feels like it and/or thinks you’re being really annoying, liberally quotes from ancient Saturnian poetry about death and dying and how everyone you love will die someday and the enviable tragedy of someone dying young and beautiful, takes his duties more seriously than he takes you, etc.
was actually quite soft at heart—hence him constantly showing up: he “knew” that the Kurogane twins didn’t really want to spend family time with him, their boring Saturn Knight cousin, but he really hoped maybe, this time would be different—and as much as he genuinely enjoyed classical poetry about heady, serious things, he would’ve preferred to be laughing.
despite his protests, was fine with being effectively paid in liquor that the team paid for or at least didn’t tell him which cargo ship it fell off before coming into their hands. his blasé and unbothered attitude about getting blackout drunk……sure was a thing. He liked to pretend that it didn’t mean anything serious, please stop acting like it does. :<
if the Crush Boy Senshi in question—Xin Huanxi/Sailor Helene of Inhibition—ever accompanied him to rescue the team, it probably wasn’t hard to see that they were obsessed with each other and should have just kissed already. they never managed to do that by the time Xingyi died. still, he would have smiled and laughed more easily when said senshi came with him
may have also, at times, shown up in the company of Yuanxin Qiu, a Knight (not of Saturn) who was basically his adoptive brother except that Yuanxin’s blood family never formally adopted Xingyi. Yuanxin was sharp-tongued, hot-tempered, and he wanted to be here even less than Xingyi did. Frankly, he wanted Xingyi to just cut his father’s family out of his life entirely because, as far as he was concerned, all they ever did was make him miserable and take advantage of him. Yuanxin’s only here to make sure Xingyi’s okay at the end of it, high-key ******** the rest of you.
Several rumors about what happened went around when Xingyi died, including but not limited to: suicide over a broken heart; turned on by the people in the town around his Wonder; ripped apart by the ghostly shades of Kaifeng; suicide to protect his Wonder from Chaos; murdered by his non-Saturn Knight “siblings”’ father, who’d always hated him; drank himself to death; drank himself to death on purpose; suicide over being an alleged failure as a knight; and murdered by some jealous twink who wanted to get with Xingyi’s Senshi.
(There is an actual right answer about the truth of his death, but it wasn’t as widely known and probably didn’t filter down to the merc group unless someone actively went looking for it. But if anyone wants to plot about their characters/characters’ past lives having found out about it, hmu and we can work something out!)
lizbot
soz for another quote, but song got the crush-boy senshi stamped! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ heart
Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2023 3:32 pm
Name: Kaede Kurogane Character Type: past life civ Role: career smuggler and treasure hunter, appraiser of valuables, haggler to make sure the team gets the best price when they fence the stuff, getaway driver, distraction artist (usually of the “has T&A and is willing to put on a character and Be Sexy to make people pay attention to her and Cause A Whole Scene so the rest of the group can handle the infiltration” variety).
Basics: a younger child from a family/borderline dynasty of smugglers, petty thieves, “independent cargo pilots,” “independent archaeologists,” etc. Elder twin sister to Keishi.
One of the only people who can make her behave is her grandmother/the family’s matriarch, Harune Kurogane, an intimidating woman with extremely high standards, very little in the way of morals or ethics, and several significantly younger paramours strewn across different planets.
Frankly, Kaede thinks her big tough Saturn Knight cousin can suck it up and deal with the ~*horrible inconvenience*~ of constantly bailing her, Keishi, and the team out of stuff. It’s what he deserves for being a smug jerk. ^___^
Xingyi is the only child of their grandmother’s eldest child, and instead of getting into the family business like he SHOULD have, he ******** off to the Knight Academy as if the family didn’t matter at all to him. Rather than think about his duty to his family, he cares more about caring for a bunch of dead people. He only calls when they call him first, and usually, his first question is either “What trouble are the twins in this time” or “When are you coming with the liquor, where can I pick it up.” What the Hell, Xingyi.
Also, he is arrogant, and selfish, and he thinks he’s BETTER than the family, as if he could even DO ANYTHING back home on Murikabushi without EVERYONE who hears his name assuming that he’s a criminal who’s pretending to be a Saturn Knight (which is what he is, in her opinion, so really, he should just quit and come back to the family business now, she’ll even teach him the ropes because she is SUCH a good cousin :> )
By the way, Kaede definitely doesn’t feel hurt that Xingyi considers some Jupiter Knight [Tianyu Qiu] and another non-Saturn Knight [Yuanxin Qiu] who aren’t even related to him more family than his own blood! That’s his choice!! If he wants to choose wrong, then who is Kaede to stop him!!!
She also isn’t hurt that he’d rather hang out with some Ida Knight who he doesn’t even like very much [SilMil!Selenga]! Hearing Xingyi address [SilMil!Selenga] as “brother-in-law” doesn’t hurt Kaede’s feelings in the slightest!! She doesn’t even HAVE feelings, so joke’s on you!!!
She REALLY doesn’t give a ******** about his ongoing Whatever The ******** It Is with that stupid senshi! Maybe if she actually had FEELINGS, watching Xingyi and that stupid senshi dance around each other and refuse to just kiss would wound her, but she DEFINITELY IS NOT UPSET that her ******** idiot cousin would literally ******** DIE!!! for the sake of some stupid, stuck up b***h of a senshi, who obviously doesn’t love him enough to just TELL HIM SO and is honestly probably toying with his heart like it’s a game—but SHE AND KEISHI can’t even get him to come HELP THEM OUT without him having a TANTRUM about how he’s soooooo embarrassed and soooooo sorry to his rogue’s gallery of fake-a** alleged “family” for dragging them into “the twins’ mess” all over again.
But, you see, Kaede doesn’t care about ANY of that at all, not even a little bit, thanks SOOOOO MUCH for ******** asking! Xingyi is probably just jealous of her for being their grandmother’s favorite!!! She’s sorry that he is so jealous of her, but she can’t help it that she’s perfect.
Kaede was not really Harune’s favorite. This would imply that Harune ever HAD a favorite and that she considered her grandchildren actual people, rather than pawns in her own schemes and her own criminal enterprises.
She did earn more praise from her grandmother than many of her other cousins, but: A. “favorite” is taking it too far, and B. that only made the blowback when Kaede ******** up that much worse, because Harune would have more reason to be disappointed.
Also, she was very jealous of the fact that Xingyi, in her eyes, repeatedly made it clear that he thought he was better than the family, and thought all of them were worth less than nothing because they did what it took to survive and their ancestors—you know, the ones who are also HIS ancestors—secured lives for themselves through less-than-legal means……but their grandmother still had an ongoing obsession with trying to get him away from his Wonder and back in the Family.
Even though, for Harune, this was only about wanting Xingyi under her thumb, Kaede mistakenly thought that it was love, and HOW UNFAIR for grandmother to love him when she worked SO HARD and he DIDN’T EVEN WANT IT!!!
Big “Victims of horrific abuse are often protective of their abusers” energy from Kaede to her grandmother. Unfortunately, she didn’t have enough people to made good on the second part of that line: “It doesn’t mean we should send them back for seconds.”
The only time she really acknowledged how terrible her grandmother was, was if Harune was trying to hurt or pick on Keishi. In that case, Kaede would do whatever it took to get their grandmother to leave Keishi alone, even if Kaede got herself put in the doghouse or on Harune’s s**t-list for a while.
Anyway, whatever, Xingyi, you ******** lush!!! Have fun with your stupid senshi and your stupid corpses and your fake-a** ““family”” who probably don’t even care about you!!! Do whatever you want, she hopes it sucks~
Dual-wielded energy pistols that she definitely found in a totally above-board and 100% legal fashion, they just fell off the back of a space truck somewhere, you can’t prove that they didn’t, she’d like to see you try [smug kitty emoji]
Skilled with traps and disarming them, but bad at balancing that with People Things, so she’d strongly prefer breaking into the Temple of Doom rather than heisting a fancy rich people party.
Willing to fight dirty (think Indiana Jones bringing a gun to a whip fight) and do the audacious things that probably shouldn’t work but somehow kinda do (think Jack Sparrow doing……pretty much anything).
Always willing to shoot first (don’t let the other guy get a chance to shoot, it’s simple logic!) or use her pistol as a bludgeoning implement if the energy clip ran out (it’s called “improvising,” DUH). Always prefers guns to melee, but if push shoves, she’ll fight like a hellcat.
Personally, out of all the rumors surrounding Xingyi’s death, Kaede most believed the one about the people who lived around Kaifeng turning on her cousin and besieging it—and she ******** TOLD YOU SO, didn’t she, Xingyi!! She told you that those people would never accept you as the Knight of Kaifeng! She told you that they’d never see you as anything more than a criminal pretending to be a Saturn Knight! If you’d just LISTENED TO HER and COME ******** HOME, maybe NONE OF THIS EVER would’ve happened!!! So much for your senshi, you poured so much love into that heartless jackass and he wouldn’t even lift a finger to save you when you needed him!!! UGH, you IDIOT.
Absolutely suggested trying to break into her cousin’s ridiculous wizard tower and steal things after he died. Never actually made moves to bring that idea to fruition, though.
Y’know, when Jin Guangyao said “Those ‘tricks’ of mine? Which ones? Da-ge, you constantly castigate me for being calculating, for being unorthodox. You say you stand tall and straight, that you are undaunted by nothing, that a real man has no need to resort to underhanded means.… You tell me not to fear heaven and earth?… It’s easy for you to say such things because you’re not in my shoes, just like those who have never known hunger can never imagine how it feels to starve!”……? Yeah, Kaede felt that s**t in her soul, and in particular @ Xingyi
When life gives you lemons, throw them back in life’s face and scream “I SAID I WANTED A MANGO!!!”
Name: Keishi Kurogane Character Type: past life civ Role: career smuggler and treasure hunter, infiltration expert, contortionist, distraction artist (of the “engineer something like an explosion or a sudden delivery of forty cakes or whatever will get the people he’s trying to heist to stop paying attention to him” variety), escape artist, always had multiple lockpicks and assorted tools for breaking out.
Basics: a younger child from the same family as his older twin sister, Kaede. Not THE youngest, since some of their cousins and siblings were younger, but also not the eldest.
Basically, he took more of the Kasumi Goto or Charlie’s Angels (2000), “get in without anybody knowing that you were there” approach while his sister had way more in common with Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, Han Solo, and Petra Aberdeen.
Definitely made more than a few people who apprehended the team boggle when they tried to turn out all his pockets and find where he had his arsenal of hidden escape equipment, because the sheer volume of tools that he hid in secret pockets or Other Places was just………okay, wow??
Nobody ever managed to confiscate all of his escape tools, whoops
When life gives you lemons, make grape juice then sit back and let the world wonder how you did it.
genovianprince
Prince may wish to add more here? Keishi’s reincarnation is on his “to get at some point” future characters list, so I leave the rest in his hands heart
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2023 2:05 pm
Relationship to Nameless: The Mercenary Corp from Acubens. Groups Name: Senshi Squadron Known Members: Tangled in Weeds, Senshi of Acubens leading six elite warriors from the planet. Basics: Acuben's Senshi Squadron enjoyed a friendly competitive relationship with Nameless. They were known to compete for marks and met on the field with some good natured ribbing. They also offered assistance and back up when needed.
All of this was cleared with Liz on discord heart
Sweenys_Revenge
Dangerous Lover
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tatterpixie
Tipsy Codger
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Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2023 9:20 pm
Name:Hob Goodfellow / Puck of the Woods Character Type: past life senshi Role: brawling, fighting, threatening and intimidation, you name it, if it involves violence, he is all over it Basics: drinker, trickster, fond of jokes and laughing until it's time to bash someone's face in on a "see the universe/sow some wild oats" adventures before assuming his official duties on his homeworld (such as they are) ocassionally grumpy, always foul-mouthed little arse loves to take the piss out of his fellow mercs loyal to them to the death
Name:Vulpine Character Type: DSS Role: Deals in information, crafty tricks, planning Basics: Distrustful, Deceitful, Determined, and always on top of things. She keeps her true life out of this side of things as much as possible and never lets anyone in.
