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[hasapoint]

🕱 PLAYER INFO 🕱

NAME: Joys/Joysweeper
OVER 18?: Oh yes.
CURRENT PLAYER?: n/a
PREFERRED CONTACT: I'm joysweeper on plurk and discord!

🕱 CHARACTER INFO 🕱

CHARACTER NAME: Need. Her name in life was Sister Lashan.
CANON: Heralds of Valdemar, a series by Mercedes Lackey.
CANON POINT: Post-Storm Breaking, after she appeared in the dream/spirit world to bid farewell to two of the living.
HISTORY: She's not an OC but the wiki's pretty flimsy so I'll summarize.

Most of Lashan's life is unknown. I can speculate but regardless, she forgot most after becoming Need. Lashan was a warrior-mage, then a swordsmith-mage, then retired to be a lay Sister in a religious enclave, creating magic swords. Then the enclave was razed by a warlord who abducted some of the younger women and killed everyone else. Only Lashan and her apprentice, Vena, escaped. Lashan was too old to follow, while Vena was strong but untrained. Seeing no other option to stop the warlord and rescue their remaining Sisters, Lashan killed herself with her best sword and bound her spirit to it. As "Need" she could work through Vena, using her body and magic with an expert's skill as well as her own magic, but primarily gave advice and lent strength to her.

When it was over, Need remained. The gods she had served in life had a use for her. Most angels - humans transformed after death - are reincarnated as horselike beings who guide chosen humans until they're recalled or killed. Need chose to bind herself to an unbreakable artifact, so she never cast very far into the world of spirits and remained close to the living world. Her task was to act as an instrument of justice and answer the need of (mostly) women, responding to the same kind of desperation that had driven her to her death.

To facilitate this Need chose bearers who she advised, taught, and directed, sometimes possessing them, to help her rescue or avenge those without recourse. She picked people who could be or with her guidance became smart, moral, level-headed, capable, and independent of her, and could spend years healing them physically and mentally. Whenever a bearer reached their middle years, Need supported them retiring to a more stable life and chose someone new. She became very powerful over time, but when drained (such as after overextending herself) she fell "asleep", her consciousness going dormant and emotion and purpose taking over, choosing bearers and being passive when not driving them with pain and longing, for decades or centuries before slowly "waking". Need is not sure how old she is.

Civilization became more advanced until magic nukes were created and caused the Cataclysm, which warped the world, killed uncounted millions, and set society back immensely. Need survived and continued to fill her purpose. Her last bearers (the only ones shown) were Kethry, Kerowyn, Elspeth, Nyara, and Firesong. Two thousand years after the first Cataclysm she helped those last three kill a revenant spirit lingering since that time while sparing his innocent host body. When a second Cataclysm threatened Need and Firesong helped stop it, but in the process her sword dissolved into molten droplets, and she moved on in the afterlife.

SUITABILITY:
Need's been dead for thousands of years and wouldn't find losing her tie to her sword to be that different. Since she's favored by certain gods they circumvent whatever Velgarth's normal afterlife is and allow her to choose between resting in a heaven and various forms of reincarnation. In the last scene where she appears, Need hasn't chosen yet. She would have preferred to hang on for longer but is also glad of the chance for something different.

She is fairly enigmatic to most people, extremely open about some things and entirely secretive about others. Need's role is to be unshakeably calm and confident, the one who's always paying attention and knows more than anyone else, who can (if she's not trying to keep people from getting dependent on her) always lend strength and provide support but never requires it herself. Those are real, major traits, but from time to time she hints at some more vulnerable aspect that no one in her canon is interested in. I'd like for her to be at a bit less of a remove and to actually have, and have to acknowledge, needs of her own. She's also been unusually independent for an angel for a very long time. It must chafe to be the one guided rather than the guide.

There's an arrogance to her, as she generally thinks she's right about everything and can swing between being very high-handed and more sensitive and considerate. She's been known to push people into difficult situations and refrain from helping them to make a point of how much they can do on their own. But she does respect stated boundaries even when she finds them absurd, which for this setting is impressive.

Need's pragmatic, cautious, even paranoid - in situations where another character's instincts lead him to check twice, Need checks twelve times - and accustomed to forgetting things. Normally most memories can still be accessed, just not consciously recalled, but I think without powers she only remembers the time after she put herself into the sword, some scattered impressions, the time around the Cataclysm, and from Kethry on. Otherwise there'd be an absurdly huge pool of completely mysterious memories there. She'd be inclined to forget but it will all depend on circumstances.

There's a lot of righteous anger to her that she only lets show in extraordinary circumstances (or when "asleep", but that's not likely to apply here). At times she'll show a cranky, irritable aspect and she can be very blunt but has enough self control that she keeps this modulated. If she lets someone see her annoyance it's usually leavened with amusement. Need can make or take a joke at her own expense.

A central aspect of Need is that she cares easily and passionately about people, especially those who are struggling but still care about others and want to do the right thing, and anyone she relates to. She's an idealist, but covers it with cynical detachment and irritation, not wanting to care too quickly or easily, or for that care to be exploited. Once she sends herself to sleep magically transitioning a bearer who had painful gender dysphoria. Need also spends years building up a badly abused young woman, helping her to see her own value and choose what she wants from life and burying great fury for the one who did this to her. She doesn't seem to have goals for herself, her existence being basically "learn" and "help people".

Thanks to so long existing without a human body her emotional depth is strange, with all but forms of love and rage being worn down and dulled. She may have some trouble with those returning.

FIRST TOLL: Her name in life - she can remember that she was a lay Sister, but not that her name was Lashan. It's not the first time she's forgotten her name and she doesn't really use it, but it will bother her mildly.

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