Application for Voidtrecker

[phobophage]

Player Information

Name: Kaja
Age: 39
Contact details: kajarainbow
Other characters: None

Character Information

Name: The Shadow Lurking Behind You (Shadow for short)
Canon: Original
Canon Point: After the ascension of her friend Charles Jackson
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OC
Age: Millions of years

World Information:
The world is formed of seven primal forces, the Facets of reality. Spiral which causes growth and chaos and hope with each turn of the spiral, for good or ill. Horizon which contains the unknown, the bygone, the distant and brings the necessary separation for everything to exist but takes precious things away. Rhythm which is complex yet stable, and the reason the world makes sense but also a force for stagnancy.

Star, that which is glorious and enlightened but also that which judges those not enlightened and overwhelms with glory. Weave, it of dreams and connections and meanings and subjectivity and influences, some manipulative. Storm, that which transforms and brings strife, testing the strength of ones desires and ability to survive. And finally, Circle, which brings all to beginning and closure, an endless varied cycle of creation and destruction.

In the distant past, those cosmic forces were easier to access and people wielded them freely, creating countless wonders and horrors, uplifting entire parts of creation and casting them down into destruction. Civilizations and even aspects of reality were developed and many destroyed by wild magics.

In the end, Rhythm acted to forcibly stabilize reality, limiting what could be done with magic. Possibilities got unlocked down, formalized and systematized so that all the Facets could express themselves smoothly. Thus, an universe with consistent, stable physics were created with a shape like ours.

On a specific planet, there were four major civilizations. The two known only as the land civilization and the sea civilization wiped each other out with powerful magics making each other retrospectively extinct by changing the laws of reality so that it was impossible for the enemy faction to exist. To be more specific, I mean retrospectively turning the sea to salt and retrospectively making plants exist to fill the world with poisonous oxygen. Only faint traces of those civilizations remain.

Incidents like this is why a difficult process called ascension was created to further limit who could wield the more powerful magics. Each person who successfully ascends is allowed a single powerful act in the material realm before they move on to a higher state of being in the metaphysical realm, a dimension created to house and contain the forces making reality possible. Various realms exist by the way, a particularly relevant one to this app being the Dream Realm, a place of surrealism and the subconscious which all visit in their sleep.

The third civilization was the dinosaur people, who walked on two legs, created tools with two arms, and practiced a more limited version of the magics wielded by the sea and land civilizations. They prospered until one of their own with a severe grudge against her own kind ascended and as her parting act retrospectively turned the dinosaurs into naught but simple beasts and to add insult to injury called down a meteor to wipe them out. Only a small fraction of the population was able to survive in special shelters prepared for an event like this, and they were unable to emerge until humans had already began spreading across the earth.

The fourth civilization are the humans and they developed in very similar fashion to our own history. Much of this is because an organization formed by some of the surviving dinosaur people and the humans who joined their cause suppressed magic as much as they could to prevent another magically caused mass extinction, hunting down occultists who showed their heads. Rhythm lent its power to this organization, the Society of Stability, giving their agents the power to suppress all magic so occultists could be taken into confinement or if necessary killed.

Thus, an underground society of occultists emerged, embracing secrecy to avoid becoming targets of the SoS. Those occultists attempted to gather every bit of information they could and saved much from being lost. Many attempted ascension, though none succeeded; to give an idea of the difficulty there were scarcely over a hundred ascensions in the entire universe during this era. Other occultists simply used the occult to enrich their own lives. And there were many whispers among the general public of strange elusive occurrences which vanished soon after sighted.

This state of affairs lasted until modern times when an unprecedented rapid-fire series of four ascensions happened. Three were ascension candidates supported by the cooperative efforts of the SoS and other similar organizations across the universe. Those three chose as their final acts to become a tribunal body evaluating all who attempt ascension, barring from ascension those who would be particularly destructive. With this, the purpose of the SoS and other organizations like it ended and they all disbanded.

The fourth ascension followed soon after, of an independent occultist called Charles Jackson who made magic more widely accessible to all as his final act. An occultist which just happened to be one of Shadow's friends. Thus, a world much like our modern times started a sudden transformation with dinosaur people and other hidden nonhumans coming out of the woodwork, magic becoming more and more commonplace, and the Internet getting linked to other realms as examples of still ongoing changes.

Personal History:
Much of Shadow's past is forgotten or lost even to her, as she came into existence long ago as a simple dream realm entity terrorizing the earliest Earth lifeforms capable of dreaming with nightmares of predators lurking and stalking them. It wasn't until the earliest sapient lifeforms on the Earth that she became sapient herself.

It was during the advent of the lost land and sea civilizations that she first gained her appreciation of art and of people in general. Not only that but with the rich array of occult knowledge those civilizations held she learned much about the nature of reality and how to apply it to practical ends, though she was more interested in poking more and more into reality itself. She made many friends within the artistic and research communities. However, the destruction of those civilizations happened. Deep in grief and upset that she couldn't even remember what her friends looked like because the memories of them were retrospectively erased for the most part, Shadow decided to go into deep hibernation until the advent of the dinosaur people awoke her.

Still grieving, Shadow was slow to embrace the new civilization. However, she found much to love. The dinosaur people truly appreciated art, even more so than humans, and many artistic movements and traditions prospered with full and unlimited support. For Shadow those were some of the best times of her life, even if the mortality of her dinosaur friends bothered her. But she was able to make new friend after friend, helping her deal with the wounds to her heart. A large part of why she was able to persist in existing for this long was her stubborn will to live, after all.

It was during this time that Shadow pursued the path of ascension before deciding to abandon it and stay her own woman, instead pursuing an alternative but lesser path to power. After all, it was more interesting to her to witness reality from the perspective of a single woman than as an aspect of the reality she was studying. She reached the heights of this path and just sat there poking at reality to see what happens and doing art.

Then the dinosaur people got wiped out, and Shadow managed to retain her memories of them by dashing rapidly into the deepest regions of the Dream Realm, where reality begins to break down. There, she weathered the retrospective erasure of the dinosaur civilization and emerged so upset that for two centuries she planned and prepared to assassinate the ascended entity responsible. It isn't so simple to kill someone who's become part of the fabric of reality, I'm saying. But she managed to pull it off through use of particularly esoteric sympathetic magic, a bunch of pissed off dinosaur ghosts who volunteered, and the creation of one of the biggest literal spirit bombs seen.

That done, she decided not to hibernate and instead spent her whole time fucking around in the dream realm befriending other dream entities, experimenting with dream stuff, creating art, and building a huge monument to dinosaurkind that still exists to this day. She even created a few sapient beings, some accidental and some intentional. For example, at least three of her statues came to life, the leader of a gang of moon-pusher minions she created to steal a haughty dream realm noble's favorite moon turned out more sapient than she expected, and so on. All of them she treated as her children. Like this, she managed to spend the millions of years until humanity emerged on earth.

It took her a while to notice but when she did, she cautiously poked at those new people, gradually falling back into her habit of making friends with people she considered interesting. Then the SoS began imposing themselves on humanity and Shadow became more secretive about her involvement with humans, taking on many manufactured identities in order to walk among them.

She witnessed a number of historical events, and that was interesting, but what really attracted her attention was humans' art. As such, she's quietly involved herself whatever artistic movements intrigued her under an assortment of identities. Despite her efforts to stay out of the spotlight, she's produced some famous works under various guises. Likewise, she interacted closely with the underground occult network's artistic community.

In case, that was when she met and taught, messed with, and occasionally protected some random newbie. That newbie underwent many trials and tribulations and, with Shadow's and others' help, successfully ascended. All while she kept stealing his yogurt, even after he ascended. Hey, he had good taste in yogurt. Having watched a friend ascend, Shadow suddenly realized that she might finally have a friend who wouldn't leave her with time. What the future will bring is unknown but for the first time Shadow is hopeful that she might not feel so lonely again. Besides, she has an ascended being she can point at and say "Hey, I taught that one."


Personality:

As an embodiment of nightmares about lurking predators, Shadow enjoys scaring people, but in specific ways. She might hide then do a sudden jump scare. Or she might prowl behind someone until they notice the slowly increasing sense of dread she's incurring in them. And then there's all the stuff she can do with dream powers. Basically she gives no shit about frightening people now and then. It's not only her nature and necessary for her continued existence, it's fun.

Not only that, but she gives no shits about trolling people, though depending on the situation she might tone it down or turn it up. For example, someone she really dislikes might get the full horrorterror treatment, while someone she likes might just get her stealing their yogurt. She often decides how to treat someone based on their reactions to her trolling. For example, someone who laughs or cheerily trolls her back quickly gets pegged as potential friend, while those who with more plain reactions get pegged as boring. And if someone has especially entertaining reactions, she might continue playing with them.

But in the end, she ultimately is a friendly person who will often, for example, give a huge hunk of mammoth meat to someone she only knows a little. While stealing their yogurt. But, yeah, ultimately she likes people and likes meeting them. It's just that they're also fun to scare and troll. It isn't often she dislikes someone, even someone doing stuff that might piss most people might just get her more interested in that person. She often cheerily greets people when she isn't in a mood to mess with them.

After all, she's sentimental enough to do her best to remember every and every friend and lover she has had, even to the point of creating hidden caches full of copies of her memories of them. Sure, some of them get found, but she doesn't mind if others remember her friends too. But the point is, she's the type that gets attached and as such has known grief many, many times as life and/or death separated her from her friends. And yet this doesn't stop her from liking people and getting attached.

A major thing with Shadow is her curiosity. In fact, that's a big reason she's so interested in people. They just keep doing such interesting things and are so complicated! But that curiosity also extends to many things, including the fundamental workings of the world, what kind of fun stuff she can do with her dream abilities, and what hilarious things occultists are gonna get up to. Hey, she once saw someone dance around naked and painted purple while doing a chicken impersonation as a ritual! It didn't work, but it was funny.

A big passion of Shadow's is art. She fell in love the moment she saw someone painting on a rock wall and that love hasn't waned since. If anything, it only intensified once she saw more elaborate art, and she became an eager participant since. Now she spends a significant part of her on various artistic forms, including structure, painting, drawing, carefully arranged snot, and creating artistic dreams and nightmares.

CRAU developments:
N/A

Key themes:
Friendship, loss, perseverance.

Main Motivation:
To do and discover and meet and create what is interesting.

Skills:
Shadow has learned many things... and forgotten most of them. In general she has those specific fields of expertise:

1. Occult Shit
Shadow's fairly knowledgeable about all kinds of occult rituals, though her biggest fields of expertise are creation, travel, and intrusion/escape related. For creation, stuff like creating blocks of marble and other materials for artistic structures, creating simple minions that can follow simple orders, painting without a brush (that one she can do at will), and so on. She can even create fully sapient beings, but that particular endeavor takes multiple years, putting it out of reach of a DWRP game.

She can teleport short distances and bypass simple anti-intrusion measures pretty much at will. Longer distances take more effort, up to requiring a full-fledged ritual. Similarly, stronger defenses take more time to circumvent. And escaping is easier than entering for her. She is also able to pass between different realms of reality, though she can't travel to, say, another universe.

She also knows miscellaneous stuff such as speaking to the dead, wards, communication rituals, and other utility stuff. Also, how to kill an ascended being with two hundred years of preparation.

2. Dream Fuckery
Shadow is herself a creature of dreams and as such, some things are native to her. She can freely shift her shape, as changeable as dream. She can enter dreams and manipulate them. She can broadly inflict illusions upon others, particularly of dangerous predators stalking them. She can create a sense of unease, as if you're being followed by something dreadfully dangerous. She intuitively senses fear and can extend her senses to other emotions, but fear is something she senses without any effort.

3. The Predator Lurking Behind You
She's adept at combat while in the form of a predator, though she has rarely used this capability. Still, she's extremely being good at being an ambush predator and can fight with claw and fang when necessary. She's also supernaturally gifted at getting and staying behind someone by various means, such as teleportation and really good footwork. Mind, a skilled enough person can manage to fight her from the front or at least the side. She also has good senses of hearing and smell.

4. Other skills.
Considering how long she's been practicing art, she's extremely good at it. She also has a bunch of useless or formerly useful skills picked up over the many years she's been alive. As an example, for some reason she remembers very precisely how to hook up a Roman chariot to horses. And how to use a magical egg whisker meant for dinosaur hands.

Item:
...A container of really good yogurt.

Sample:
TDM thread

TDM 2
Notes: