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 Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 5:02 pm
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Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:32 pm
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NAME
Rosalie de Clare
AGE
22
FACTION
Council of Sciences [Theology student]
REGION
Gadu, Imisus [Born and raised in Mishkan]
APPEARANCE
• Height: 5'3"
• Weight: 115lbs
• Eye Color: A blue-gray color
• Hair: Blonde, with a slight wave to it. While it could be beautiful, Rosalie has never been to the kindest to her hair; it is usually tied back in some way, since she hardly takes the time to brush it beyond a few ragged swipes.
• Build: She's of average build for a girl her size, neither too thin nor too stocky. She has thin, graceful hands--though you wouldn't know it, as they're often dirty or running busily through her hair if it's left untied.
• Clothing: Despite her mother's efforts, Rosalie gives no more attention to her clothes than she does her hair. Although her clothes are made of decent materials, they are frayed around the hemlines, with small rips and tears here and there. She wears earthen tones (at her mother's insistence, so that the dirt she accumulates can at least be hidden better), but ties her hair back in brightly colored ribbons. After arriving in Gadu, she wears clothes and colors more befitting her station in an attempt to better assimilate into this new society.
PERSONALITY
Rosalie is intelligent and opinionated, even sly and dryly sarcastic...but don't count on seeing that in the presence of her mother. She can put on a good show of being gentle and mild-mannered (although admittedly, she slips some subtle barbs in anyway), but would rather not talk to most people in the first place, finding them to be interesting only in passing, like animals in a zoo. Instead, she wanders if into the vivid worlds she can create in her mind without much effort at all, content to pretend her shyness doesn’t bother her.
If asked why she drifts off in such a fashion, Rosalie might tell you that it is an unfortunate thing she cannot help, that her mother says she was born with fluff between her ears--a nicer way of saying she was born 'slow'. But in truth, with little mental stimulation in a role too simple for her own perceived intellectual abilities and too complex for her social abilities, she created her own, where she could come up with puzzles to solve and places to explore.
Often, from her rough memory of various maps, Rosalie pictures the lines of the roads and creates mental mazes from them, challenging herself to figure out the various ways to get a specific location (such as her home, or an obscure tree she remembers) without ever writing it down or sketching it with her fingers in the air. Sometimes she makes it harder on herself; mentally creating a map of the environment she’s envisioned that day or week and trying to get to the rabbit hole her bizarrely detailed mind added to the landscape. Rosalie does the same thing with true puzzles; were she to be presented with a modern day Rubiks cube, she would try to figure out in her mind the steps to solving it.
Sometimes, however, Rosalie forgets she is in fact not of incredible intelligence and ability, and makes these tasks too hard on herself. It would be obvious to anyone who knows her antics; an impatient creature who does not take kindly to being bested by any kind of tasks—especially ones born of her own mind—Rosalie’s expression will suddenly go from glassy stare to sullen, stormy pout. She hates trying things more than two or three times and failing, and this isn’t reserved just for her puzzles; sewing, cooking, embroidery, sidesaddle horseback riding, braiding…and Panyma Himself, dancing especially are all things that at one point in time have made her want to sulk in a corner for minutes or hours or days or weeks or a year for having the audacity to challenge her. But eventually the childish pouting gives way to her strong desire to fix this problem. No challenge is too big for her, and she will prove it—especially to her snobbish etiquette teacher who giggled behind her hand at Rosalie pricking her fingers with needles all the time.
Domestically related or not, Rosalie is a silent competitor. In all aspects of life she mentally gauges herself against others who she deems better in some way, and tries to improve herself to match them so that—once again—she is at the top of the heap. Of course, her antisocial behavior does not lend itself well to this mental game, and sometimes doesn’t help. Rosalie is not only reduced to just watching peoples’ behavior rather than getting to know them and learning the subtle details of some trait, but she also has odd standards that don’t often connect with what society wants out of a well-bred young woman; she is more likely to try and imitate a loud, self-confident opinionated individual than a demure little mouse who sits prettily in the corner. Rosalie’s bad choices in choosing who to compare herself to only drive her problems, for these poor choices lead her to act in a ‘deviant’ manner, further pushing people away from her. But try as she might when she realizes her error, Rosalie cannot become that demure mouse for more than a day without wanting to rip her ragged blonde hair out.
Her odd behavior has of course kept her distant from other people, and only sometimes by choice. Despite putting up her distant and detached front, Rose often finds herself lonely as she watches ‘normal’ people interact, and desperately wishes she could do the same. But she’s shy at heart, and despite previous attempts to socialize, she’s never had much luck with friends, or even her own siblings. Instead, Rosalie frequently visits the Cleric of her chantry.
No matter what she says, Rosalie is also more sheltered than she’d have you believe. Growing up in the aristocracy, she has had little real life experience with the world she’s read about. She bases most of her impressions about the world on her estate, sometimes mistakenly. She doesn’t seem to realize she can even be a know-it-all from time to time, and has snobbish moments. Were she to abandon her lineage, Rosalie would find herself in a world of trouble, overwhelmed by the true chaos that has always loomed outside her door but that she has never been taught to see. For some time she would be miserable and lost in this new world, before finally her stubbornness would force her to find the solution. Permanently giving up is not a fault of Rosalie’s.
Rosalie certainly thinks she has faults, though, even if she doesn't quite see her biggest ones. If she’s not just talking with the Cleric, Rose is confessing even her most minor digressions. While she seemingly is clueless to the fact that she is arrogant, rebellious in her own fashion, snobby and just downright obnoxious sometimes, Rosalie will gladly tell you that she talked too fast during her reading in last Saturday’s sermon or that she forgot to pray to Panyma last night or that last week she was the one who accidentally spilled the milk but blamed it on her younger siblings because she tires of her mother lecturing her to be more mindful. Rosalie is forever haunted by the little slip ups, and these little slip ups build up and up until they seemingly become an insurmountable sin. This comes from Rosalie’s attention only for the details, down to how a tree looks disproportional in her daydreams, and not for the big picture. So concerned is she with the fact that yes, maybe she lied about remembering to feed the chickens that morning, that she fails to notice she didn’t feed them because she was too busy watching one of the servants sweeping and pridefully thinking about how she could sweep that corner better. Rosalie tries desperately to confess all of her perceived ‘sins’, for she believes God has punished her for such misdeeds by making her unable to interact with others properly and having no true friends.
HISTORY
Rosalie is the fourth child and second daughter of Emery and Alanna de Clare. She has spent her whole life in Mishkan; her father, as the younger son of a minor noble family, was moved there and married to a minor noble's daughter.
From a young age she showed signs of not being entirely ladylike, although she would concede major arguments to her mother. She always preferred the company of her father, however, and would often sit in his lap while he kept an eye on his brother's finances. It was from these interactions with her father that Rosalie learned to read, as eventually he could no longer bear his Little Rose's constant questioning. Although it was not entirely acceptable in his social circles, he taught his daughter how to read basic Panymese in the early evenings.
From that moment on, Alanna fiercely believed his decision to be a mistake. Emery, however, would find the entire situation hilarious; Rosalie had a fierce hunger to learn more, and he did little to stop the petite girl from climbing shelves to reach the books she wanted.
The more she read, the more expansive and vivid her imagination became. What started as exciting dreams at night slowly leaked into her waking life.
To say that Rosalie was never social would be a huge understatement. Although Rose gets on well enough with her siblings, even at a young age she was never close to them. She’d find it to be much the same with the other boys and girls of the neighboring families. Most of her conversations took place at the chantry, where Cleric Boniface told her stories and discussed Lucianism with her. She began volunteering at the chantry to fill her time when she came of age, helping to distribute food and clothes to the poor.
With the arrival of the plague, Rosalie grew uneasy. As tensions rose in town, a mounting fear built in the young blonde; knowing that her cousin, who lived in the center of town, was in greater in danger than her immediate family spurred her into calling on the family's faith. She went to the Cleric and asked for a blessing for her cousin and his wife, but instead, for her service to the chantry, was given an old censer that had at one point warded off evil before being retired; if anything could keep the plague away from the family, a Lucian symbol of blessing and cleansing could. She delivered it to her cousin at once.
All too soon, however, Rosalie found herself retrieving it under unfortunate circumstances. The censer had seemingly failed her cousin, and within weeks he and his wife had passed from the disease. Now more shaken than ever, and perhaps even a little bit angry at her God for failing her family, she took back the censer for herself. Maybe it was useless, maybe her cousin hadn't been holy enough: there were many maybes, but Rosalie didn't much care at the moment. It was a piece of the church that had brought her solace many times in the past, and if it was comforting at all in the ensuing chaos, then that was enough for her. If it smelled bad, that was to be expected; it had spent much time in a damp storage closet, and she connected the odd scent to the decaying wood and mildew it had lived with.
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Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:33 pm
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NAME
Gabriel
APPEARANCE
Coming later!
ITEM HISTORY
The censer was crafted with special care, the experienced hands of metalworkers creating movement in gold metal where previously there had been none, creating spirals for the thickly scented smoke to travel through until it found its escape in tiny windows. Delicate chains were attached, and it was deemed ready for use.
The gleaming gold object found its way to a Lucian chantry, the home of believers in reconciliation. Here, it became a vital part of ceremonies. Altar boys were charged to clean it and make sure it stayed filled with incense during masses, and the leader of these people gently swung it back and forth on its thin chains.
The hands that cleaned it changed many times over. Some were less gentle than others, and small dings eventually showed up along the once smooth surface. Years—perhaps centuries—wore off some of its shine, and even more times over, the hand that swung it changed. The worn chains were replaced at some point as an old one snapped, and the chains have ever since been slightly shiner than the rest. The censer had begun to resemble a child’s teddy bear; beaten, worn, patched in places, but still as beloved as it was the first day. Special care was taken to try and maintain some of its shine, and hands that cleaned it were seemingly more gentle over the years—possible because they had been strictly warned to be so.
Things changed around the censer, but the constant flow of Lucians did not, and many hundreds of faithful found themselves soothed by the familiar blessing the scented smoke bestowed on them until one day, when the church found that its dull gleam no longer could reflect the splendor of the religion. Funding was acquired for a new one, golden and polished and beautiful, and the old was replaced. The old censer's new home became a dank storage room, to seemingly live forgotten amongst tarnished candlesticks and pews in need of repair.
When the plague began to appear around Panymium several years later, things would change for it again. The plague eventually made its arrival in the town of the censer's chantry, and panic spread amongst the townsfolk. A young woman who volunteered at the chantry became worried for her extended family, as they lived in the center of the panic. She came to the priest, with whom she had a close relationship, and asked for a blessing; in return for her dedication to the chantry and her family's patronage, the priest instead brought out the old censer and gave it to her to give to her family to ward off the disease. It was a very generous gift; censers were the primary means of blessing and cleansing in the censer's religion, and thus as important symbol to any Lucian as Panyma's circle.
The very next day, before the plague has spread too far in the town, Rosalie delivered the censer to her cousin and his wife; the couple, grateful for the blessing, placed the censer on their bedside table. It stayed there for two weeks.
By the end of the second week though, things had gone wrong around it. Rosalie's cousin had caught the plague, and his wife had been forced into quarantine with him and fell ill as well. Dying together in their bed, both began coughing up blood as the plague progressed; the young man, facing the bedside table in his misery, began coughing his blood onto the censer, where it slid down through the decorative holes and festered within.
It didn't take long for both of them to die, and when they finally passed and the bodies were disposed of, the family was sent to collect the few belongings they could. As the family sorted through items, Rosalie found her censer and, more shaken than ever now with the passing of her cousin, took the battered object back to act as a ward for herself.
PERSONALITY (AS AN EXCITO)
Gabriel is caught constantly between two paths: the pure, holy being he wishes to be, and the imperfect reality of who he really is. Gabriel is aware from his early life that he represents the hypocrisy of church; he is supposed to advocate for equal treatment of all people, including the poor, and yet the gilded censer he comes from represents the wealth that the church chooses to spend on itself. As an Excito he makes some attempts to reconcile this by being charitable, even just by giving out kind words, but is discouraged by the fact that he cannot openly aid strangers without risking his Grimm. He tries to influence Rosalie to be more charitable on his behalf, but his existence gives her enough grief, and her constant dismissals on the subject will leave him feeling like equality is futile.
Because of his early experiences trying to deal with the large gap between the classes in Panymium and watching humans act harshly with each other, Gabriel is cynical. He believes that mankind might not be so redeemable as the Book describes, as they have failed God by falling into sin. It will not be impossible to stir his affections for people, however; Gabriel is drawn to people who embody the purity of his religion, and he can often find reassurance—and maybe even happiness—in the company of people who strive to do good. Since Gabriel has high standards regarding who truly embodies Panyma’s Light though, the judgmental plague is often left to his jaded moods, unable to see past flaws. It is uncommon for him to smile, and even rarer for him to laugh; typically, the only person who can draw this out of him is Rosalie, the one person he can fully forgive for their imperfections. Emotional expression in general is hard for him, as he usually dwells in apathy after seeing the failures of Man. Perhaps the only time he shows emotion outside interactions with Rosalie and the rare pure individual is when he reflects on Panyma; that mankind is so cruel and sinful is not Panyma’s doing, and the plague will be loyal to the god of his religion in spite of his cynicism towards people.
Humanity does not bear all of his misgivings alone, however. Gabriel is always aware that he could be better, that he should be better. He has trouble reconciling his religious obligations with the behavior of people, and that he cannot shrug off his judgments bothers him. He will be terrified as an Excito that because he comes from the plague and is not as holy and forgiving as he should be Panyma will punish him and he will become an Infitialis, which he thinks surely is Hell for plagues. Unwilling to voice this concern for fear that others will notice his unholiness, Gabriel self-punishes through intense silent prayer that can last for over an hour. He plays it off as reflection to anyone who asks, but really he apologizes for his own sins and asks for patience with mankind so that he can avoid damnation. That he still receives no patience must be a sign of his own personal weakness.
As an Excito he is entirely co-dependent on his Grimm, not only for protection, but for reassurance. He relies on her for even small tasks, because while he’d never admit it, Gabriel is afraid of two very real things: failing, and the unknown. As an Excito he is ill-equipped to deal with the reality that even he cannot always be perfect or right, and that he cannot see what lies ahead. Both these fears can provoke an intense anxiety in the normally stoic plague, who clings to Rosalie to protect him. |
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Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:35 pm
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BASIC PREMISE
Lucianism is at its heart a religion focused on the battle between good and evil, symbolized as light and dark respectively. A small sect religion, Lucianism's parent religion is Panymisian; the sect diverted from pure Panymisian after disagreements over the nature of Panyma, and a focus on the darker side of the spirit.
Lucians maintain that Panyma is male, not female as ancient scriptures dictate, and He is commonly referred to Panyma the Light, for He is seen as the embodiment of Light. Lucians believe they can never truly know what He looks like, and forbid human depictions of Panyma, seeing them as unworthy and insulting. Instead the symbol of the Flame is used, sometimes in the center of the Panymisian circle, to represent the light it is believed God cast into the souls of the virtuous when he bestowed Ada upon Profugus. The sun is also an important symbol of light, used often inside churches.
While they are not the only Panymisians to believe that God is actually male, Lucians take a unique approach to Panymisian and place an unusual emphasis on darkness as well. Lucians go beyond the descriptions of the Sins and Hell and believe that Panyma is in eternal battle with his darker half, a malicious spirit which resides in the inky black shadows between the stars. Unnamed, but also believed to be male, this spirit is simply referred to as the Darkness, and his dominion is Irritum, the Nothingess. From this impenetrable dark he seeps evil into Profugus, tempting mortals away from Panyma and reeking chaos. Natural disasters, famine and disease are not seen as punishments from Panyma; they are instead the work of the Darkness, who is seen as equally strong as God. Lucians believe they were created to be a part of this war; as followers of the Light, it is their duty to put their strength into their love of God, to work with Him to hold the forces of Darkness at bay. Those who fail, who give into Sin, are taken by the Darkness to reside in Irritum, the Lucian depiction of Hell.
RITUALS AND TRADITIONS
• Sermons are held early Saturday mornings, in the hour before and following dawn. At the beginning of any ceremony or mass, the Cleric uses a censer to cleanse the souls of all in attendance and bless the church. The first hour encompasses sermons heeding warnings against the Irritum; at daybreak, sermons switch to praise of Panyma. Commonly, the period right before dawn is used for group singing, as Lucians raise their voices together against the Darkness to give God the strength of their faith for yet another week.
Important ceremonies, including funerals and marriages, always begin at dawn.
• The Passing of the Light is Lucianism's coming of age ceremony. It takes place on the Spring Equinox, when light rules longest over Earth. A child born into Lucianism undergoes the ritual in the year of their 15th birthday, and members who come to the faith as adults may partake in the ritual after three years of devoted following.
• Confession is also vital to Lucianism. Members are assigned a constant day and time to meet with the Cleric to discuss their sins of the week and ask for penance. After confessing, the Cleric offers ways to achieve reconciliation and blesses the member, so that they may be successful in their penance in the course of the next week and their purity may aid Panyma.
Lucians also engage in private prayer each morning when there is no mass.
LUCIAN HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Lucianism builds intricate houses of worship, with the hope that no Lucian has to travel more than an hour or two to reach their house of worship, and thus can be closer to Panyma. These buildings are maintained by a network of clergy members, and only have one person in charge for day to day operation; the church's Cleric. The Cleric leads sermons and funerals, teaches apprentices, maintains the church's finances, and handles Confessional.
Churches very closely resemble cathedrals, but for the one thing every true church has, regardless of where it is built: each church, if possible, is built to face the sunrise, and yellow-stained glass in the image of the rising sun catches this sunrise, so that by the time sermon ends each week, the room is meant to bathed in a golden light (see symbol at the top of the page!). This trick is not always successful in each church because of poor building locations, lack of funds and/or low quality artisans, but is attempted nonetheless. Candles are lit at all hours in churches so that even at night it is never dark, and the oil candle that is lit during a church's first sermon is never allowed to be extinguished.
HIERARCHY OF LUCIANISM
Lucians created their own authority structure not long after diverting from Panymisian, believing that Panymisian authority is misguided. Because Lucianism remains relatively small, not many of each position are required. The Grand Cleric is emphasized to be more an incredibly enlightened spiritual leader than the physical embodiment of Panyma; Lucians believe the Emperor in Panymisian to be a false prophet, as he insists on allowing female interpretations of Panyma.
• Grand Cleric: Akin to the Pope, the Grand Cleric leads all Lucians in what is named the Grand Chantry, which was built in Helios. Grand Clerics serve for life, and are elected by the Council of Light, a collection of Illuminated Clerics. They, and all other priests, are always male.
• Illuminated Clerics: Illuminated Clerics control certain regions of the continent. They are appointed by the Grand Cleric and work for him, maintaining Lucianism in their specific areas.
• Clerics: The priests of each church. They are responsible for the day to day running of their church, as well as the spiritual needs of their followers.
• Apprentice Clerics: Young men who have recently graduated their religious study programs but have yet to be assigned their own church to lead. They are usually used for dirty work, such as cleaning and running errands, but are also allowed to provide spiritual guidance if called upon to do so.
ORIGIN MYTH
Lucians widely believe in the basic story of Panymisian, including the six days of creation. Where they divert is in their belief in the Darkness. Lucians believe that at one point, long before humanity, God was not an entirely pure being, able to feel the temptations that now plague mortals. Striving to break free of these temptations, the Seven Cardinal Sins, Panyma began an intense internal battle. When He could not eradicate these sins, God instead split Himself into two parts; Panyma, the True God, and the Darkness, an unintended manifestation of all that is evil and wrong. The Darkness began to assault Panyma once more, craving to destroy the purity God now fully embodied. Unwilling to allow the Darkness to claim ownership over the universe, Panyma quickly created Profugus in six days, imbuing his new mortals with His purity, so that there would always be a harbor against evil.
Unfortunately, the Darkness tempted humanity, and humans were now sinful. It became the duty of all virtuous humans to shed their sins so that they could return to the pure state of origin, for it was only through purity that they could aid God in defeating the Darkness.
HISTORY
Lucianism began several hundred years ago after breaking away from Panymisian. Although Lucians were in the minority over depicting God as a male at the time, they began to rapidly progress from this difference into a different idea of how both humans and sin came to be. A small group of Panymisians, the first Lucians, presented to a Panymisian council the idea that God Himself was at one time the embodiment of right and wrong, an imperfect being whose greatness came not from His original purity, but from His strength of will to cast off sin.
Upon rejection, these few followers diverted from original Panymisian and began to preach to others to change their views. Although their unusual depiction of Panyma kept their numbers relatively small, Lucianism quickly changed itself from original Panymisian in fundamental ways. In their revised Book of Ada, God was not only male, He had unintentionally created Sin Itself, the Darkness, which through an alliance with humanity he seeks to defeat. While many other characteristics of Panymisian stayed the same, including the story of Ada, these new changes led to a new way of thinking. Lucians became more focused on mankind's power to aid God and less on God's ability to aid mankind (although He is still frequently called upon to aid His followers, especially so that they may fight at their strongest in the battle against the Darkness). Criticized for being self-centered by outsiders, Lucians nonetheless strove forward in establishing themselves as a strong offshoot of Panymisian, developing their own system of churches and rankings within it.
Currently, Lucianism has few followers outside of Panymium; the church's focus has not typically been conversion in the last century or so, and so few but Lucian immigrants have carried the religion off the continent. Churches have become more innate as Lucianism has gained more affluent followers, and many are beginning to seek solace in these large cathedrals as the plague advances. In very rare instances, Lucians have begun to pack tightly into their churches for the duration of the plague, so as to form one strong unit against the Darkness, which is believed to be the cause of the epidemic.
Some Lucians have begun to rely more on individual prayer and penance to aid God and less on formal sermons to reduce the risk of catching ill. Still, the average Lucian regularly attends Confessional and Mass, and as a whole Lucians have kept their heads low as they brace for the oncoming chaos, which they believe will be the strongest assault by the Darkness in human history.
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Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:39 pm
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Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:40 pm
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