[The Official RPN Character Challenge 2015]Ragya Shengli

[FewUtherClockKlik]

Name: Ragya Shengli


Age: 42


Gender: Female


Species: Demon


RP From:

The Hexosphere Chronicles

https://www.rpnation.com/threads/the-hexosphere-chronicles.66461/

Genre:

Fantasy

Combat?:

Yes

Picture:

Appearance:

Ragya gives off an aura of serene coldness with her icy, piercing stare and taut, expressionless countenance. Her skin is of a slightly darker shade than usual, heavily contrasting with her brilliant and bright green eyes that reflect light with unnatural luminescence. Ragya's hair has a faded silver shade and is usually tied into a ponytail with a ragged green bow. Her hair is often unkempt and the untied portion of her hair hangs in scraggly and loose locks that flutter at the mercy of the wind, giving Ragya a wild sort of appearance. Her facial features are firm and constantly set in hostile position, with her eyes emphasized by aggressively arching brows and mouth permanently wedged in the form of an expressionless line. Ragya's facial features are aesthetically appealing, but when meshed together into a visage they emit a powerfully solemn and stern aura that not many can stare back at. Ragya's body frame is unimposing, with her height being an average 5'6 and her weight being an also average 146 pounds. Her body is spry and lithe, with limbs extending just the right length for quick and unimpeded movement and frame neither bulky nor excessively thin, simply efficient. For choice of apparel, Ragya does not deviate from what is shown above. She prefers to wear plain white loose shirt and pants for comfort and efficient movement with the clothes being cinched together tightly against her body at her waist by a large belt and green cloth. Over her white shirt Ragya often drapes a second dark green and baggy shirt with sable linings and hood that keeps Ragya warm during cold seasons. Most of the time Ragya is seen wearing the hood to make herself as unnoticeable as possible. One peculiarity about Ragya is that she does not cover her arms in cloth. In her full demonic form, Ragya's hair turns from its silver shade into a menacing pitch black and the pupils of her eyes become circled in a fiery crimson red. However, these are the only traits that change and overall Ragya would appear much the same, with the main difference being that her usually calm and set expression is prone to being more expressive towards destructive urges.

Personality:


Personality Strengths:

Ragya is a strong willed and outwardly dispassionate woman, with her expression reflecting her inner makeup with obvious clarity. She invests little in terms of happiness or satisfaction, and at the same time she cares none for suffering and hardship she endures. Her whole persona is one that strikes firmly in an absolute neutrality. She neither loves nor hates, neither hopes nor despairs, neither enjoys nor suffers. Her detachment from the world allows Ragya to push forward through the most difficult and arduous of circumstances as she simply does not care about the pains of experience. Ragya's strong will sharply accentuates her ability to press on, and once Ragya sets her mind on a goal she will use every last breath in her body to accomplish her goal no matter the strain. However, beneath her outer layer of cold rejection, lies a being molded by ideals of nobility. Ragya upholds benevolent ideals of magnanimity and heroism with the same powerful will that drives her being at its core. To uphold noble ideals can be called foolishness, but Ragya considers this only true for those too weak to hold firm to their ideals under hardship. It is essentially impossible to hold purely noble ideals in reality, and Ragya understands this completely. Thus her set of ideals are molded and shaped by reality, and though they are pure in nature they have accomodated some darkness to exist reasonably within the real world. A good example of this is Ragya's ideal of abstaining from killing when possible. It is impossible to not kill, especially under Ragya's circumstances, so a simple "when possible" adds in a whole world of possibilities whose noble nature is determined solely by Ragya's willpower alone. Ragya is also understanding of others, and can interpret emotions and sentiments with sharp accuracy. She understands humans exceptionally well, and her mind can best be described as not demon, but human as she keeps her demonic tendencies trapped under her will.

Personality Weaknesses:

Ragya is, beneath her personality layers of coldness and nobility, afraid. She is afraid of herself mostly, as she is a demon that knows no other way of life other than a nobly human one. She fears her capacity for cruelty and bloodlust that flares up when she begins to lose control over her mental state. Her fear is further exacerbated by the fact that her demonic instincts and feeling have developed into an entirely separate personality distinct from Ragya's own through her unique circumstances. It is one that represents all of her primal desires as a demon, the strongest of these desires being the desire to slaughter and kill. It is a mass of malevolence, rage and violence that is kept bottled up under Ragya's will. Ragya's mind feels innately repelled by her savage inner self, and yet a part of her understands that it is a central part of who she is. This understanding in of itself makes Ragya shudder, as it forces her to realize that she is a demon at heart and core. All her life Ragya has lived painting layers of personality over this true inner self, and these layers have been painted with fear as energy. One could state that Ragya is who she is now simply and wholly due to her fear. Ragya's fear of herself manifests itself acutely, and often times Ragya is left shaking uncontrollably and helplessly at the mere thought of encountering her true self. This fear also severely inhibits what Ragya can do for herself as well. She keeps up a cold front to ward away any possible friendships or encounters not due to stoicism, but due to fear. Every time she kills to earn her keep, she feels not satisfaction, but fear. All the noble and lofty ideals she upholds are not to serve justice, but simply to abate her fear of becoming true to herself. Every time she draws a weapon, fear. Every time she resorts to her dark magic, fear. A fear so consuming and debilitating that it has shaped Ragya's entire being into what it is now: A broken apart and collapsing structure strung together with brittle supports of fear.

(What is your character like?)

Backstory:

Ragya remembers none of how she ventured out of her abode of darkness into the world she resides in today. She holds no recollection of her life in her natural home, or what kind of person she was before her arrival to the surface world. The only thing she definitely knows is that she left when quite young, being at the age of what would be in human years fifteen. For Ragya's earliest memory was waking up inside a shabby cottage on a remote village on the very outskirts of Vequa where a withered sage had taken her in. Apparently Ragya had been trekking with determination through the village against a violent storm, with high speed winds buffeting and spattering globules of rain across her body. Several villagers had attempted to stop her and give her rest for the night, but she had coldly refused and moved on. On the edge of the village, lightning struck close to Ragya and she had been grazed. The force of the strike knocked her unconscious for two days, and when she awoke she remembered not a single thing. The only hints to her past she had left were two beautifully crafted swords of high caliber and wear. Her clothes had been drenched in blood, but Ragya had no injuries upon her, indicating that they were the blood of others. The old man that took her in nursed her back to health and, after waiting a few days and finding that Ragya's memory was likely permanently gone, took her in as a family member. He was a baker, and Ragya quickly learned to aid his work and earn her place in his lonesome household. It had not occured to her that the old man would have known that she was a demon, as her shape shifting would have worn out during the night. In fact, due to her amnesia, she believed that her current shape shifted form was her true one and that her demonic form she naturally shifted back to was unnatural. Perhaps because of this Ragya's shape shifting became quite powerful, and Ragya managed living for almost twelve hours in her human form before being forced to phase back. This shape shifting made Ragya know that she was a demon, but she was not affected by the revelation. The old man was loving and caring and the village was friendly and kind even if they did not know what Ragya truly was. More than all of that, Ragya felt that she was happiest living as a human, as her heart told her so even if she could not recollect what her life was like before.

Slowly but steadily, Ragya began to stand out from her human brethren. Her natural capabilities were keen and sharp, with all of her senses far outmatching the humans around her and her strength eclipsing the most trained of men. Ragya also showed that she had extreme ability with her twin swords, able to wield them at an exceptional level without knowing anything about them, as the knowledge and skill was firmly embedded within her being like an instinct due to what could only have been several years of intense training. Nevertheless, she kept these traits hidden, but one cannot hide such major differences forever. Ragya was found out when she was assaulted by a few drunken men at the local tavern, and she beat them back with dark magic which she had not know she possessed. It simply crackled out from her in reaction to her fear of the men, and had torn one man apart and severely injured the others. The entire village panicked, but none was more panicked than Ragya herself, who fled with her mind in a confused jumble, for Ragya had not felt fear when the men attacked, she had felt joy so intense the adrenaline buzz she received was like that received from intense fear. When the man's face had splattered into a shower of flesh and blood, Ragya had felt a wonderful sensation welling up in her stomach telling her to kill more and more and more. Ragya camped outside of the village within the dense forest that circled it, and it was there, when she was contemplating the nature of her existence, that she met her true self. It manifested in the form of a black, crackling mass with dozens of skulls dotting its amorphous, liquid body. Though a figment of her imagination, Ragya heard its voice with distinct clarity. They were dozens of different voices of all different pitches and tones, all the voices of people she had killed. Panicked, Ragya fled back to the only place she knew: The village. There she encountered her father figure hanging from the gallows with the crime of having fostering and kept hidden a demon now responsible for the death of several men. At that moment, her wide eyes staring at the lifeless body of her father hanging awkwardly from the ruthless noose of death, Ragya's entire life was determined at that moment. Her demon surfaced, and it would have been so easy to give into her desires and slaughter as many people as she could, but she held her humanity together. She locked down her demons and bottled them up. Then she ran from the only place she could call home to get away from all the memories that now only brought pain.

Of course, Ragya moved on. She always had a strong will, and though she feared, she survived. She faced the cold harshness of the world, its cruelties and realities. At first, She took up a jobs as a freelancer, mercenary, cheap assassin, thief, and other such occupations of crime and bloodshed to sustain herself from village to village. Yet she retained her humanity in spite of all this. She clung to it desperately, not wanting to let it go as it was the only way she knew how to live. To hold onto this humanity, she forged noble ideals for herself which she believed modeled that which only humans of pure nature would follow, and desperately tried to deny that she was a demon by becoming a good human. To keep in line with her ideals, Ragya also chose only to kill people that had done wrong to others, and often times Ragya listened to the requests of the common people, bringing them a share of treasure she received or disposing of criminals and murderers for the good of good people. She always killed and always justified herself reasonably, but always with each and every kill she felt such brilliant joy that she knew she could never experience otherwise.

Ragya has continued to lead this lifestyle, hunting down criminals with ruthless and merciless efficiency while constantly conflicted. She travels to the Kael festival whenever it occurs to ease her mind with the festivities, but this year she goes in search of a certain killer that leaves very little traces. The only physical traces he left were crow feathers, which Ragya now had quite a collection of as she had shadowed him but had never been able to pinpoint him. He had killed a man whose sister was a kindly and friendly woman who had dearly loved her brother, even if she acknowledged that whatever business he was into that made him so prosperous was quite shady. Seeing no reason to refuse the request, and because this man had killed before, Ragya took the request of killing the murderer whom Ragya strongly suspected would be at the Kael festival.

Abilities:


Dark Magic

Ragya's dark magic manifests in the form of black, viscous yet gaseous matter that crackles with teal green energy. It is completely designed to kill humans quickly and efficiently, with the crackling eclectricity like dark energy being the main tool of destruction. The black substance is merely present as a conduit to channel this lethal bolts of energy. The bolts of electrical dark energy are incredibly thin and numerous, and can coil around an object, most notably Ragya' sword. Once the sword cuts into flesh, the bolts jump into the cut and ravage from the inside, the countless little coils of dark energy rupturing blood vessels and tearing apart muscle mass. This makes all of Ragya's blows highly dangerous and, with her dual wielding style, forces opponents to be on the defensive. The electricity only conducts on the black matter that Ragya produces and organic flesh, so wearing full body armor is good protection against this dark magic. Additionally, the electricity can only conduct around a conductor and not outward from it, making Ragya's effective range limited to her sword reach. The black matter also has to stay on Ragya's body and cannot leave it, which restricts Ragya's range heavily. Ragya only uses a fraction of the power her dark magic gives, simply choosing to envelop the tips of her swords in the black matter to conduct the electricity. This is because further and more extensive use causes Ragya's mental state to slip towards her demonic side, where her bloodlust makes her unable to control herself and causes her to burn out of energy fast. When Ragya does unleash all of her energy in one burst, her appearance takes the form above, with two massive wings of black matter expanding out and bursting with bolts of dangerous energy. This increases her effective range and her physical parameters and additionally grants her extensive coverage of the additional range granted, but forces her into a bloodlust fueled insanity where she does not hold back her powers, causing her to burn out of energy within a few minutes to leave her unconscious.

Expert Swordsmanship

Ragya's swordsmanship with her two rapiers of 60 cm is exceptional. Her dual wielding style allows her to press on powerful offense where a target has to defend from multiple angles at once. The style also conversely grants her greater parrying strength when fighting defensively. Ragya can also parry and counterattack simultaneously through her two weapons, allowing for versatile stances. Ragya always aims for vital spots as even slicing the vicinity of a vital spot with her dark magic would cause horrible damage to the struck being. One weakness of the dual wielding style is that the speed of the style is slower than regular one handed wielding, and thus Ragya is prone to being overwhelmed, though getting past two angles of parrying from a skilled swordsman to inflict serious damage would be difficult in any case. Another weakness is that Ragya's strikes would lack the force of a two handed wielder, but this is partly mitigated by Ragya's dark magic dealing serious damage with small injury. However, this lack of focused strength hampers Ragya's ability to parry strong blows, and committed two handed grip blows will push back Ragya or break a parrying stance with relative ease. Ragya's movements are best described as wild. She moves with unpredictable, but beast-like efficiency, surprising enemies that would expect a calmer and more formal method of fighting. All of Ragya's offensive strikes are swung with reckless abandon, all aimed to kill and all thrust with maximum force, making Ragya's offense considerably difficult to defend against when forced to parry, but at the same time easier to dodge and counter attack if one can begin to read the wildness of Ragya's movements.

Other:
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Spoiler

In the regular world, Demons usually make an appearance as average, if roguishly handsome/alluring, human beings. However, this is not their true form: they skin is standardly coal black, eyes blood red, with long claws on both hands and feet. Despite their fairly regular build, they are all just as physically strong as Angels are, and their senses are so well refined that they are highly alert and observant. This makes them highly battle-ready, and their ability to use minor destructive dark magic makes them quite a fighting force. Like Angels, they live twice as long as humans do.


Demons also have developed temporary powers of bodily manipulation, or shapeshifting. They can change their bodies to be that of animals they know, although the greater difference between them and the animal, the shorter they can transform for. An example: due to being very similar to humans, a Demon can stay in human form for about four hours before returning to base state, whereas they can only stay in pig form for a matter of minutes. As a result, there are numerous Demons integrated secretly into society, walking around unnoticed. Every single demon has jet black hair though, and they cannot transform their faces to look like other people's faces.


Unlike the peace loving Angels, Demon's revel in chaos in destruction, so much so that they find true beauty in disorder. Thus, their aim is to cause as much chaos as possible above. Most of their attempts to break through are intercepted and shut down by Angel officers before they can even reach mainland, due to there being no real connection between all the Demons, and no organisation behind their attempts. However, some do slip through the net, and can hide for several years through their shape-shifting.