ᗙ core information
Ailanne Rei
full name
25
age
prideful • irreverent • sarcastic • loyal • biased
key traits
Ruby, back of the left hand
gembond & location
ᗙ physicality
height: 6'2"
build: Lithe but muscular
skin: Brown
hair: Brown
eyes: Brown
facial hair: Goatee
distinctive features: A pale scar on his right cheek
bearing: A very practiced casualness.
ᗙ personality
Look. Ai is also dumb. He's sarcastic and rude and drives people away as much as he can, but underneath it all he'll do whatever it takes to protect the people he cares about.
ᗙ abilities
▶︎ Air Manipulation:
• Augment acrobatics and jumps
• Halt free-falls
• Form semi-transparent (but very solid) objects
▶︎ Assassin:
• hand-to-hand combat
• knows where to hit and how much it will hurt
• excellent at disappearing from sticky situations
• knowledge of poisons
ᗙ background
▶︎ Steps for creating an asshole with a variety of complexes:
➥ add a dash of innate talent in all the things required to be a good murderer
➥ mix in a complete dick of a dad betraying your tribe and getting himself and your preferred parent offed by mages
➥ raise two younger siblings and push yourself to be BEYOND REPROACH
➥ really dig into that beyond reproach vibe -- your dad did a Big Betrayal and that mark is floating over you if you screw up
➥ just when things are starting to look chill, HERE COMES middle bro's teenage years
➥ middle bro has noped off, shirked cultural mores, and is planning to do literally anything other than become an assassin
➥ bake at intense pressure for the 30 seconds it takes to realize that you (yes you!) are the guy who is supposed to take out traitors (yes, yeeting himself out into the world at large makes your middle bro a traitor).
➥ enjoy!
▶︎ Setting:
The country of Sena has been ravaged by an unnatural drought for the last half of a century. The tangled forest on the country’s border is the only place where anything still grows, but most continue to steer clear of it without express permission of the community of assassins who live there. What makes everything go from bad, to worse, is that the country of Anterni is threatening to cut off shipping routes in a ploy to force Sena’s government into an agreement that will basically hand over all control to Anterni in exchange for aid. They’ve even dangled the particularly sweet deal of finding a way to end the drought. Sena’s ruling parties aren’t prepared to go down without a fight, though. Usually they’re too preoccupied with plotting intrigue and ordering hits on one another to be very effective, but with a common enemy to work against, an agreement is formed and a call goes out with a reward for any adventuring party willing to find the cause of the drought and lift the curse.
In terms of physical setting, Sena is still very grounded in the horse and carriage days. There’s running water, but electricity is uncommon – there simply aren’t enough magic users to make the generation of electricity a viable option for most people in the country. The majority of the population consists of uneducated laborers with a very small faction of the elite enjoying a certain amount of decadence at the expense of the rest of society.
▶︎ A more detailed account:
Ailanne grew up in a village just outside of what one might call civilized society. His people were strictly against outsiders, proudly ethnocentric, and religious to a fault when it came to the Fates. The Fates ruled their lives, they believed, picking and choosing everything that was to befall those loyal to them while letting the strings of destiny tangle how they would for the unbelievers.
Despite believing that everything is predestined, Ai's people were practical and knew they needed to help themselves without waiting on their deities to hand-feed them good fortune. They couldn't support their culture internally, so they hired themselves out to the world as professional assassins and bodyguards. They had a bit of the unnatural to them (the ability to manipulate air into a solid form), and used it to their full advantage in their chosen professions.
Ai started his training in the assassin's arts at a young age. He breezed through his training as a happy young boy right up until the incident -- the biggest controversy to hit his people in a hundred years. While his parents and a handful of other high-ranking assassins were out on a mission in Sena's capitol, they were sold out. A field was put up by the magicians employed by the elite living there and no one survived. Slowly, the news was whispered that the elite had not simply gotten lucky. They had been delivered the tribe's prized assassins by one of their own. Ailanne's father had betrayed his own people, costing all of their lives, including his own and his wife's.
It rocked Ailanne's young world. He was only eleven at the time with two brothers -- one barely seven years old and the other having only just reached his first birthday. Immediately, suspicions turned on those who shared the Rei family name and most of his relatives fled rather than wait to see where the ax might fall. A few of the kinder souls in their village took the brothers in, but everyone was wary of them. The brand of traitor hadn't trickled down to rest on the brothers' shoulders yet, but it was clearly something that would happen soon. Ai didn't let it. He threw himself into his training, determined to protect his brothers and prove that they were all loyal. He cursed his father's name, disowning him and lashing out at anyone who tried to associate him with the elder Rei.
Ai's fervor and his natural talents did eventually win over his instructors, and eventually the brand of traitor stayed firmly fixed to the dead without being inherited by the living. Ailanne climbed the ladder of success with diligence until he managed to get a fancy elite title that would have set him for life both inside his society and in the world at large.
Thanks to his hard work, everything seemed to be bright in his future.
Until a minor snag appeared.
One thing that must be known about his people is that desertion is simply not an option. You are born into the Sien'tai and then you die. There is no branching out to be an artist, a student, or a bum on the side of the road. You stick with your people and you do everything in your power to preserve the culture and the lives of your fellows.
Ai's middle brother was a snot-nosed little idiot who wouldn't appreciate his heritage if it danced naked in front of him. As such, he chose a festival night when teens sneaking off to more private locations didn't raise eyebrows, then made a break from the village and out into the world. Fates be damned.
Unfortunately, Ai's title didn't just come with a certain amount of respect. It was his duty -- no one else's -- to track down traitors and kill them. At the same time, the call came in that the elite of Sena wanted their village's very best hired on to protect their prized adventuring team and make certain they survived bandits and the potential machinations of Anterni's dictator long enough to free the land from the drought
His morals (what little were left of them) gnawed holes in Ailanne's general mental stability, but he set out to do what he had to do... and then the Fates decided that they had a much more entertaining game to play with him.
ᗙ permissions
In-Character
Physical Affection: Shoot me a message first. He might be violently opposed and we need to be on the same page for that.
Romance/Flirting: Go for it!
Sex: Nah.
Fighting: Yes.
Injury: Yes.
Killing: Nah.
Mind Reading/Manipulation: Reach out to me first.
Out-of-Character
Preferred Contact: Jadity#7485 on Discord
Tagging Times: Lunch hour and after 8pm Central time
Tagging Style:
Backtagging: Yes!
Threadjacking: Yes
Fourthwalling: Nah
Shipping Preferences: Bro-mance
Personal Triggers: Child harm/death
Anything else? Shoot me a PM and we will get it sorted!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
