RE: The Sleeping Orange (Signups Open!)
02-11-2013, 02:33 AM
Name: Vox Populi
Race: Lifetaker
While Vox Populi claims to be a conglomeration of restless souls, it is actually a single mind and was never alive. Though largely incorporeal and composed of spiritual energy like many true ghosts, the masks that form its physical body serve as both focus and storage for its metaphysical form; destruction of its manifested components would leave it powerless and it would wither away without access to a new source of vim.
Gender: None
Color: The decadence of dead kings
Biography: Vox Populi, as the spirit likes to call itself, does not truly have a story; a biography would imply progression, but Vox merely moves in circles, the same events happening time and again with the faces and details changing with each iteration. Without life, it sees no need for advancement or change, and what worked in the past is all it needs. It found a man, or maybe it was a woman; it convinced her she was special, that it needed help; it strung her along with promises and pity, slowly leeched her life from her until it could strike, wove a story to keep her distracted and pliant; when its cocoon of lies and deceit was fully woven, it struck. She died, and it lived just a little more. It found a woman, or maybe it was a man.
But its strength was only in its untruths, its victims only victims if they were ignorant. As societies grew and knowledge spread, it found itself starving. It was warded and rebuffed, forced into the few dark places left in the world. Forced to feed on fools and children with little life to give. Forced to seek out its own young and consume them, worried its siblings would one day seek it out. It railed against the cage of truth and skepticism that had been thrown up around it, seeing no way to escape right up until it was set free and spirited away.
Needless to say, any being that saw fit to give it another chance would not reveal too much about its nature.
Weapons/Abilities: Being largely formless, Vox Populi lacks and real weapons to speak of. The masks that form its physical body are capable of interacting with the environment, but are limited by the fact that they have no fine manipulators to speak of. Each mask has about the strength of a human arm, so acting in concert they can shift fairly heavy loads, but their ability to grasp and use is essentially restricted to things that can be bitten.
More salient is the manner in which it feeds: simply by being around living sentient beings, it siphons off tiny portions of their life energy. This vim drain isn’t significant enough to harm anyone who isn’t already at death’s door, but it is also barely enough to sustain the creature; if it wants to grow and multiply, which are the only things it’s capable of wanting, it must kill. Any being that voluntarily wears one of its masks will immediately be fully under its control, and it will begin draining their life force in earnest. This process can take anywhere from an hour to a few weeks, depending on how much it wants to keep their body for its own use or how desperate it is to build up enough vim to split.
It cannot actively read minds, but as it consumes vim, it does gain insight into the life of the person it’s consuming; the little bit of energy it gets just by proximity is just enough to give it a general understanding of its victim’s culture and maybe a few important life events, but when it finishes a victim, it absorbs the totality of their personality and memories. This has left it idiosyncratically knowledgeable and wise, but it also loses this experience and learning as it decays or is harmed.
Description: Vox appears as a cloud of several dozen floating masks carved seamlessly out of an ivory-like material. Each one bears a different expression, ranging from subdued to near-caricature; while it is incapable of emotion itself, it understands the idea of emotions fairly well, and tends to present a mask with the right expression for whatever feeling it’s feigning. Since its preferred tactic is to pretend to be a number of ghosts with unfinished business, it often has conversations with itself to perpetuate the illusion.
It is scheming and manipulative and more than passingly clever, but it also lacks real creativity and much ability to change and adapt. At its core, it is essentially a simple animal with simple, monolithic needs and goals. While many of its kind have adapted to their changing world, it has stayed constant; it may be unable to do anything else.
Race: Lifetaker
While Vox Populi claims to be a conglomeration of restless souls, it is actually a single mind and was never alive. Though largely incorporeal and composed of spiritual energy like many true ghosts, the masks that form its physical body serve as both focus and storage for its metaphysical form; destruction of its manifested components would leave it powerless and it would wither away without access to a new source of vim.
Gender: None
Color: The decadence of dead kings
Biography: Vox Populi, as the spirit likes to call itself, does not truly have a story; a biography would imply progression, but Vox merely moves in circles, the same events happening time and again with the faces and details changing with each iteration. Without life, it sees no need for advancement or change, and what worked in the past is all it needs. It found a man, or maybe it was a woman; it convinced her she was special, that it needed help; it strung her along with promises and pity, slowly leeched her life from her until it could strike, wove a story to keep her distracted and pliant; when its cocoon of lies and deceit was fully woven, it struck. She died, and it lived just a little more. It found a woman, or maybe it was a man.
But its strength was only in its untruths, its victims only victims if they were ignorant. As societies grew and knowledge spread, it found itself starving. It was warded and rebuffed, forced into the few dark places left in the world. Forced to feed on fools and children with little life to give. Forced to seek out its own young and consume them, worried its siblings would one day seek it out. It railed against the cage of truth and skepticism that had been thrown up around it, seeing no way to escape right up until it was set free and spirited away.
Needless to say, any being that saw fit to give it another chance would not reveal too much about its nature.
Weapons/Abilities: Being largely formless, Vox Populi lacks and real weapons to speak of. The masks that form its physical body are capable of interacting with the environment, but are limited by the fact that they have no fine manipulators to speak of. Each mask has about the strength of a human arm, so acting in concert they can shift fairly heavy loads, but their ability to grasp and use is essentially restricted to things that can be bitten.
More salient is the manner in which it feeds: simply by being around living sentient beings, it siphons off tiny portions of their life energy. This vim drain isn’t significant enough to harm anyone who isn’t already at death’s door, but it is also barely enough to sustain the creature; if it wants to grow and multiply, which are the only things it’s capable of wanting, it must kill. Any being that voluntarily wears one of its masks will immediately be fully under its control, and it will begin draining their life force in earnest. This process can take anywhere from an hour to a few weeks, depending on how much it wants to keep their body for its own use or how desperate it is to build up enough vim to split.
It cannot actively read minds, but as it consumes vim, it does gain insight into the life of the person it’s consuming; the little bit of energy it gets just by proximity is just enough to give it a general understanding of its victim’s culture and maybe a few important life events, but when it finishes a victim, it absorbs the totality of their personality and memories. This has left it idiosyncratically knowledgeable and wise, but it also loses this experience and learning as it decays or is harmed.
Description: Vox appears as a cloud of several dozen floating masks carved seamlessly out of an ivory-like material. Each one bears a different expression, ranging from subdued to near-caricature; while it is incapable of emotion itself, it understands the idea of emotions fairly well, and tends to present a mask with the right expression for whatever feeling it’s feigning. Since its preferred tactic is to pretend to be a number of ghosts with unfinished business, it often has conversations with itself to perpetuate the illusion.
It is scheming and manipulative and more than passingly clever, but it also lacks real creativity and much ability to change and adapt. At its core, it is essentially a simple animal with simple, monolithic needs and goals. While many of its kind have adapted to their changing world, it has stayed constant; it may be unable to do anything else.