(no subject)

[stillwinningthehardway]

PLAYER↴ Name: Joysweeper Contact: Plurk, PM Other Characters: n/a CHARACTER↴ Character Name: Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy, aka Scout Age: 17ish Species: Human, Jedi Canon: Star Wars Legends Canon Point: On Kyrimorut, two years after RotS Character Info: Here, but the Dark Times stuff and the quote at the bottom are taken from books by a terrible author who wanted Scout to replace a fridged character. I accept these events only in broad strokes - she wouldn’t need guardians or to be adopted, and wouldn’t like being with Mandalorians. Personality: Scout’s a kind, cheerful young woman who makes friends easily and likes to teach and help people. While she’ll never bring her emotional issues to people, she’ll listen and try to help if they confess theirs. She likes to tease and give nicknames, and enjoys a friendly argument; her temper sparks easily but mildly and dies away just as fast. Her heart is on her sleeve and she laughs, cries, flushes with emotion and so on; she’s learned to hide her emotions when not doing so is unsafe, but it’s with a blank expression and flat affect. In more tense situations her friendly side folds away and she becomes more intense, though she may still smile and snark. After all she was raised from toddlerhood as a paramilitary psychic peacekeeper. To be a good, honorable Jedi is her most ardent desire, the love of her life - she was given that one, golden chance to make good, and chases it with all her might. It’s worth a tremendous amount of sacrifice. Order 66 and its aftermath - the destruction of the Jedi Order as she knew it, the need to go into hiding - was and is a massive blow. She tries to dedicate herself to the Jedi ideals, to uphold peace and freedom, but it eats at her that she has to do this alone. The structure and the history are gone. She’s not looking to replace them though. Very conscious of her relatively weak powers, she tries to make up for them by honing what she does have, observing closely, and making plans. She’s analytical and tends to evaluate people. A quick thinker, Scout is thorough and meticulous when possible, though she can still end up just charging in if it’s not. She’s been known to carefully burn herself with her lightsaber so pain wouldn’t distract her in fights, and during said fights is reckless and often injured. There’s a bloody-minded rage to her determination to do as much as she possibly can. In the Temple she was well known for being intelligent, brave, and determined to a fault. She is often jealous of peers with stronger paranormal abilities than hers. Scout’s had to fight and work very hard, and hates reminders that more gifted people haven’t had to struggle like she has to get as far or farther. She’s often friends with the same people she envies, only feeling this envy when the comparisons are made. While she respects her elders or superiors, she often makes her own judgements and is willing to argue. Tallisibeth can be anxious and is very hard on herself, downplaying her contributions and accomplishments. Her weaknesses and the relentless calculations and sometimes underhanded ways she tries to make up for them prey on her mind. Can she be tricky and still honorable? But she also feels like she can’t afford to fail, and so there aren’t a lot of things off the table. She thinks she isn’t a good person and can only aim for ‘good enough’. It barely sinks in that many people say yes, she is. She has a degree of survivor’s guilt and paranoia now. Why is she alive when so many people ‘objectively’ better than her have been killed? How can she resist the fallen Chosen One and the forces of the new Empire, when they died against it? How can she trust anyone? But she has to keep trying, and does her best to push these things aside. Abilities: On the normal side, Scout’s great at math, memorization, and meditation. She’s good with tech, surviving in rough places, concentrating, knots, and lightsaber combat, and phenomenal at hand-to-hand unarmed combat, particularly grappling. Her primary martial style is called Broken Gate, which is heavy on strikes, stomps, throws, and joint locks. She’s especially good at hitting pressure points that make limbs temporarily go slack and numb, and at chokeholds. Tallisibeth has a beautifully precise choke hold; if you have a generally humanoid body plan and organ arrangement, she can black you out in ten seconds or less. Speaking of lightsabers, she has one! It has a pale sky blue blade with two settings, one which painfully burns flesh and leaves raised weals, the second which cuts through and cauterizes nearly anything. Energy-based barriers resist, as do certain alloys and, no doubt, lots of different enchanted things. She also has a small vibroknife whose ultrasonic vibration generator also lets it cut through practically anything, but it’s pretty anticlimactic in comparison. Additionally, a blaster pistol, which can fire stun bolts or regular blaster fire. On the less normal side, Scout’s Force-Sensitive, but weakly. As such she has some inherent abilities - her reflexes are a bit faster than those of normal humans and her intuition is usually good, leading her to often be ‘lucky’. However when she’s flustered or upset any of her powers falter, and even in the steadiest moods some common Jedi abilities are beyond her. Without looking she can make a small effort to sense generally where people are in a large-room-sized area around her, and identify them by their presences. More powerful people can be sensed from farther away, and she may pick up on them without making an effort. If something dramatically good or terrible has happened in an area she can pick up on that. Sometimes she can sense inanimate objects too, but this is unreliable; she still usually needs to bring a light into a dark place so she doesn’t bump into anything or trip. If someone she cares about dies, she knows, and if a massacre happens she has a sense that something bad just went down. Her best trick is a flicker of precognition. Presented with a complex, changing situation she can understand things a little bit faster than anyone else, and during tense situations she can anticipate what people will do just before they do it. It’s this talent that gives her her nickname. She can also use it and her phenomenal reflexes to intercept blaster bolts, bullets etc with her lightsaber. Since the Vjun mission her telekinetic ability has stabilized a bit, but she can’t reliably lift or fling things that weigh more than about half of what she does; any heavier and her ‘grip’ often falters, even in a properly centered mood. She can psychically shove things heavier than her, or lift part of the weight so it’s physically lighter. It’s all an effort. Serious Force-based healing is beyond her. Still, she can meditate on herself after being given first-aid and encourage her own body to heal more quickly and without serious scars. Given a moment to concentrate she can dull someone’s pain and stop them losing blood. Scout can also help to neutralize poisons and toxins in the body, but this takes time. Scout can encourage plants to grow stronger and faster and bear more fruitfully; this is closer to the level of “really good fertilizer” than “master of plants”, though. She can sleep soundly with the Force to wake her if danger comes, she can observe things closely without appearing to stare, she can temporarily boost her normal senses, her stamina, her speed. Sometimes, she can influence minds, though her Mind Trick is really, really feeble. Rarely, her strength in the Force swells greatly and she feels guided by it and by deceased friends and teachers, being both more capable with her powers and more certain of herself and what to do. She can’t predict or cause these, and it’s not that they occur when her life’s at risk either, it’s happened during the last battle in a friendly tournament. Seems to be “when it’s most dramatically appropriate”. CARNIVAL↴ Soul Colour: Quite pale blue, like the blade of her lightsaber. Ideal Jobs: Repairwoman, scout, nurse Relevant Experience: Scout’s decent with machinery, though she does tend to consult manuals and write her own rather than winging it. Not the fastest worker but thorough and careful. She’d most prefer to be… a scout. Visiting new places, observing and evaluating them, fighting if need be to get back out, she’s very good at all that. It’s in her name! She’s got a very good grasp of how bodies are put together - knowing these is part of her preferred martial art - and has recently had some medical training. Carnival History: Scout came in post-Dark Rendezvous and looked the carnival over, asked some employees, considered things for a while, and went for a contract. After all, being actually more capable might mean no more being helpless while people she loves are killed! That’d totally be worth a year and looking like a member of another species. Scout lasted a while with the rules lawyers before ending up in jail. And escaping. And later in jail again. It was a pain. She tried making friends with the Grey Aliens and was still glad to see the last of them, they just didn’t reciprocate. The immortal children were okay for a while but disastrously ill-behaved by the end. She had more fun in the 60’s, or if not ‘fun’ then ‘fewer problems’. Fashion World was fun at first, and then she tolerated it. She was dismayed when the brass claws they foisted on her turned out to have stuck. Fortunately, she could trim them, and found brass nails far less objectionable. The Asgardians were better, if difficult. Scout spent most of that event as a wrestler, showing off her Broken Gate skills. While she wasn’t the most honorable fighter, perhaps, her determination and underdog appearance proved really popular. Her final round, when she choked a huge blonde warrior into unconsciousness despite being injured from a previous round, ended in her being carried around the carnival on her audience’s shoulders. Scout later swore she’d only do that again on rare occasions. This also resulted in her becoming somewhat taller and more muscular, if less so than those Asgardians. She liked that - her body’s naturally slim and she’s had to fight to build and keep muscle. Scout liked the Nether Realm. She kept half-expecting to see someone she knew, though she also knew they wouldn’t linger in a place like this. It was a challenge sometimes, and she was sorry to see this one go. The Wizards… Scout believes all the magic fits into her understanding of the Force. Basically the idea is that the vast energy field is a river, and her way of interacting with and understanding it is one cup, though she also believes that cup is the best and most accurate cup. The wizards had a way more restrictive version of that belief and were pushy about it. She got into arguments a lot. The Scifi Utopia was nice, she enjoyed confusing people and made a half-hearted attempt to buy a flying car, but that fell through. Scout felt overshadowed a lot among the Superheroes and was reminded that her powers are pretty low-level compared to most people who have powers. Steampunk left little impression on her, save that the technology was so overly elaborate to fit the #aesthetic that it was frustrating to work with. The OSB made Scout think that this was what the Force would be in a universe where it manifested so physically. She became very homesick and decided against making another contract, something she’d been back and forth about before. Dracula World was sobering. Scout’s not at all unfamiliar with death, but she’d come to think of the carnival, for all its inconveniences, as safer than the real world. She gladly went to help the human resistance and was upset when the troubles came back, and definitely killed some draculas. She left, as she’d decided before, though she stated a desire to come back once she was a Knight. Existing Contract:For her first contract, Scout wanted to be able to act effectively and use the Force against droids and opponents with powers, which were both major concerns on the Vjun mission. She came back more recently wanting ways to hide herself and others from the perceptions of Imperial forces - including Dark Jedi, normal humans, and droids. Details: The Ringmaster focused a little harder on the second part of the request, and gave her… an energy-feeding antenna! Scout can siphon power from robots and powers being used against her and channel both of those into her own connection with the Force, making it briefly more reliable for her. She can’t just deactivate robots unless they’ve got pretty low batteries to begin with, but they become more sluggish unless and until they start drawing more power to compensate. Robots have to be fairly close for her to do that. Strong opponents feel no effect themselves, but Scout can take a small portion of the powers they are exerting on her, making spells and etc less accurate and effective. If someone tries to psychically choke her, as has happened, she can weaken that grip enough to wrest free. She can still get taken out, but it’ll take at least another try. For the fresh contract she’s learning a complex spell for concealment. Current Changes: Rare: a lure-shaped energy-feeding apparatus, like that of a Hoojib, on her forehead. It uncoils into a bulb on the end of a four-inch flexible stalk when in use, and when not recedes into a bump like a small skin-covered horn. Uncommon: A gualama tail, long enough to drag on the floor if it wasn’t so flexible. Instead of blue-gray and white it's red and white, though. Common: taller bulkier build; small horns; patches of tiny soft bronze-colored scales at her throat, on her stomach, and the insides of her elbows and knees; finger and toenails made of brass. They grow, but very slowly, which is good because it’s a huge pain trimming them. SAMPLES↴ TDM, still a Jedi Bakerstreet, lost in the woods