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I created this journal for playing Need, the sword with a cranky older angel bound to it. This has extended to also being used for Need without the sword, who's manifesting as in the spirit world with a simulacrum of her living body; and Sister Lashan, her pre-death identity. As Need she loses many memories including of her old name and culture but carries a very strong impression of being a woman.

Lashan's powers are less strong than they are when she's an angel. Unless she's making an effort the only active one is emotion-sensing. She's still strong but is also about seventy, and her age is starting to wear on her, so she's reluctant to get into altercations.

Lashan was born to a clan of plainsfolk, nomadic horse-riders and goat herders, and proved a promising fighter with some magical and psychic aptitude. She's a butch form of transfemme and identifies as both a woman and a "bayot", a plainsfolk third gender. Her people are good to their own in-group but often punishing and harsh to outsiders, such as one who attached herself to Lashan's more kindly brother and tried to follow the family as they traveled. Lashan considered herself soft for tolerating this woman at all but in hindsight realizes that she was uncaring and terrible, herself.

After completing her adulthood rites Lashan was chosen to witness a once-in-a-century multi-clan event in which an elder's spirit was bound to a holy weapon. On the way back she and her brother smelled smoke and found the camp razed. A monster called by the outcast in a moment of desperation had killed everyone in the night and went after these latecomers. Lashan's brother sacrificed himself so she could escape. Though Lashan helped in the effort to contain the situation, she was the last of her family and, feeling some responsibility, voluntarily went into exile, heading into the colder, wetter, forested lands of the people she called "housefolk".

From there she worked as a mercenary for some years before ending up training as a blacksmith, work that she took to well, being able to bring old skills in enchanting objects to give her work certain properties and tendencies. In her older years she also found redemption with a plainsfolk-influenced religious order of mainly women and joined a remote enclave, making swords for them to sell and regularly bringing outcasts and the desperate in from the cold. She taught and took apprentices, the final one being a girl named Vena, a former petty thief who took to swordsmithing with a will.

Character info

Character name: Need, also Sister Lashan
Canon: Heralds of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey
Canon point & release date: The end of Storm Breaking, 1996
History: History (as Lashan), (as Need) (content warning for suicide)
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Need is a haunted sword with very little ability to perceive the world except through her extensive psychic powers! This post is here to explain them and allow you to opt out of any or all of them.

Empathy: Strong emotion radiates out from people. Need is sensitive to that at a wide range. She can generally tell if someone's in desperate trouble and the general direction, and if someone is closer she can perceive more detail..

Surface Thought Reading/Sense Sharing: What people are thinking right now, including visualizations, and also what they're physically seeing/hearing/feeling etc. For wilderlands Need must have either been seen by the character in question or been within a hundred feet in order to do either. After that, she can monitor them from quite far away.

Mindspeech: This form of telepathy comes with fragments of imagery and emotion, and more context in general than normal speech. It's not possible for Need to lie convincingly in Mindspeech. She picks up on responses via thought reading/sense sharing, so as with those, someone has to have seen her or been in her vicinity for her to be able to talk to them.

Probing: Need can probe more deeply into someone's intentions and memories. In Wilderlands, they have to be within ten feet of her and may or may not know they're being looked into. I will always propose this oocly first.

Possession: Need can try to take control of someone's body. They can fight back! She doesn't like to overrule people and will capitulate unless someone's about to do something really evil. Even if she's willingly given control, she will give it up quickly. Relatedly, she also has 'guiding', Possession Lite, where Need simply physically suggests what to do and her direction can be followed or not at the character's discretion. I'll ask oocly first, Need... may ask icly. You've got to be touching her for her to do this, but 'through clothing/armor' works.

Memory Sharing: What it sounds like! Memories shared this way come with the POV of whoever's memory it is, to the point where a receiver can forget their own identity for the duration. (It's very disorienting.) For wilderlands, it's possible for receivers to pull free part of the way through instead of being a captive audience. Need can also just kind of take memories shared with her and share them with others. I won't have her share memories without building up to it in the thread, and I won't have her sharing other's memories without a lot of ooc planning. She's got to be fairly close for this.

Need is old and hard to shock, and doesn't get prurient, announce that she's listening in and has Opinions, or share what she finds in someone's head unless it's really important. She also respects stated boundaries. Functionally, the first two - Empathy and Surface Thought Reading/Sense Sharing - are always on and I default to having Need be aware of whatever other characters are thinking in a thread she's part of. However there can be any number of reasons for her not to know! I'm happy to work with limits.

APPLICATION

Player Name/Handle: Joysweeper (Joy, Joys)
Plurk Handle: joysweeper
Preferred pronouns (optional): she/her
Player Status: New!
Other characters: Also gonna bring Alloran-Semitur-Corrass
Invited by: I was in wilderlands v1 and p90!
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