ooc: application
Feb. 12th, 2012 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pestilencebirtherNAME: Mhairi
PERSONAL JOURNAL: Just this one I'm afraid
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Over 16
CONTACT: email: eyelinerkisses[at]hotmail[dot]com||aim&plurk: deathwailart
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a
CHARACTER NAME: Valdís Œðra
BACKGROUND:
In the beginning, we were birthed from chaos, that is what the scrolls say. We came from the Void, from Oblivion, from the Old Ones who existed from a universe beyond our own; we were their experiments in shaping this world, the one good thing they created and they were horrified by us.
We were goodness. We were small. We did not have what they wished for us. We were their slaves and their playthings until they retreated and left us behind in this new galaxy. And we rejoiced. We had a chance to be more than what they had intended.
But we must always be aware. Their darkness dwells within us.
- A Counsel On Our Creation, the Book of Knowledge
Valdís was born in the Óhreinn universe, the one the Old Ones* came to from a place known as the Void and Oblivion and shaped before abandoning when it did not suit their purpose as it weakened them. Instead they left their creations behind to build a civilisation - they possessed greater knowledge of how to travel through space and how to build and so quickly they populated their worlds and moons, each world becoming suited to specific tasks: agriculture, manufacture, fishing and so on and so forth. Some though do not live planet side; Valdís was born on Fjara, a space station located on the outskirts of the Óhreinn system, used as a waystation for people making long exploration trips. One of the few children on the station, she took lessons from the people working there in language, science and engineering and her mother being a great pilot often took her daughter out on shuttle runs to explore. She was taken to nearby planets to socialise her but she never truly enjoyed her time there. Life on the waystation was fairly In her late teens, she went to the planet of Skynheima to study at one of the colleges, studying astrophysics and piloting, her parents making trips when they could.
It was in her final year that Fjara was suddenly lost entirely without a trace. Devastated, she withdrew from all life beyond her studies, graduating and gaining a pilot's license as part of an exploration crew who were chartered to look into the disappearance of the Fjara. Valdís kept herself apart from the crew save for her co-pilot in her individual shuttle, Sigurd who she confided in on long trips out, the pair more or less becoming platonic life partners, the first person she'd managed to open up to since the death of her parents.
The mission turned up very little but Valdís began to notice that something was happening to her. She was seeing things that weren't there or on her nav-console. She was hearing things. She was having strange nightmares where her parents were calling for her only to be ripped apart and contorted into horrible monsters. Sigurd convinced her to go to sickbay where she eventually submitted to being sedated as she was suffering from sleep deprivation from the nightmares and the hallucinations were getting more violent but the nightmares did not abate and worse, she was unable to wake up until the sedation wore off. Being allowed up to walk around for a while after the sedation wore off, she attacked medical staff, thinking they were the things from her nightmare as the hallucinations became more real and she ran to the launch bay, stealing a shuttle to head to co-ordinates that she had been told over and over in the dreams.
Valdís had discovered the Rift, an anomaly that had appeared the night the Fjara was lost, a sub-space portal into uncharted space. Despite launching shuttles to bring her back along with Sigurd pleading with her, she cross over the Rift and in the Void, the Oblivion from which the Old Ones had ventured to create Óhreinn.
In the Void, she learned of the Place Beyond where the Primordial Beings dwelled, the creatures that had created the Old Ones who had made her people. The Primordial Beings were coming for the Old Ones and they needed humans to be transformed into their thralls and into servants now that the race had advanced sufficiently and had proven that the influence of their makers could still manifest itself in their darker choices. The Fjara had been converted into a living ship, its life source drawn from the crew and she was kept there, safe so long as she had her attaché who took a form she was comfortable with, appearing as Sigurd. Her time in the Void was horrendous, being confronted by monsters, learning their tongue by way of emissaries, tiny grub-like forms of the Old Ones (really tentacles of the Old One, cut off to be implanted), attaching themselves to her brain to teach her their language quickly (entering by worming its way under and behind her eye) and another in her heart (entering after she was cut open with no anaesthia or pain medication) that would keep her alive should she try something stupid like killing herself. She was confronted by her parents too, now shambling creatures who lived to serve the Old Ones, a constant source of power for them.
The Old Ones planned to return to Óhreinn to finally use the race they had created as a great army to attack the Primordial Beings, to take their power and gain control of the universe that they came from. Valdís was to be the one to bring them back to Óhreinn although she was told that it was nothing to do with her personally, only that she had been the one to listen to their call when it had been given. She was presented to the Eldest One, the first of the Old Ones to be made who had been weakened by the Primordial Beings. Upon meeting him, she blacked out and woke again, not in a shuttle but in a stasis pod on an unknown ship. When she woke, she was told that she had been found drifting in an escape pod from the wreckage of her ship, all of them slain by some unknown plague, turned into abominations and monsters the likes of which no one had seen before.
Horrified, she tried to escape the ship but was isolated. After that, she attempted to kill herself only to find out that the act was physically impossible. Then, it started. An unknown urge possessed her and she found herself able to use the call of the Old Ones to lure them, bringing them close enough to mark sigils into their flesh, allowing them to be seized by them, their bodies turned into nightmarish forms so that they could spread the influence of whichever Old One (or Old Ones, if more than one sigil was used, allowing for varying forms and for stronger soldiers for the Old Ones in their war) had laid claim to it through the sigil used. The crew were massacred and part of her mind went quiet, the emissary in her mind taking control of her to guide her to a space station to spread the influence again. She left co-ordinates on nav-consoles to the location of the Rift so that more like her could be made to spread the influence to those on the planets. Valdís was safe from being harmed so long as she did not attack the creatures she had helped to create, being seen as their mother figure.
Deciding that she would not allow her race to be turned into abominations for the Old Ones, she began to attack them, fighting them off one by one until her mind was wrenched from her and she sent out a distress signal, being picked up by a shuttle heading to a space station. Full of traffic to and from the planets and other ships, it was the perfect location from which to strike, for the Old Ones to infect through her influence.
*the Old Ones are not Lovecraft's Old Ones, just the name given to similar beings in this universe
AGE: 25
APPEARANCE: PB is Jessica Lowndes
Valdís is fairly short and slender, stronger than she appears now, especially with the healing abilities granted by the emissary the Old Ones implanted in her. She is far paler than she used to be, her hair is very seldom washed and her eyes are usually bloodshot with dark circles beneath them. She usually looks rather gaunt and haggard, no longer healthy and well-trained the way she was before she graduated. When using the Call, her eyes become completely black with silvery pupils. When the emissary attached to her brainstem takes control, she looks very glazed; her eyes are hollow and blank and her smile or expressions are just ever so slightly off.
PERSONALITY:
Once, Valdís was a normal young woman with a promising future, great under pressure with a tight-knit circle of friends. After the disappearance of the Fjara she became utterly withdrawn from all social activities save what she had to go through, functioning but not truly living, suffering from bouts of insomnia and a complete inability to deal with day to day life. But her desire to know what had happened to her parents and the home she had known gave her something to live for and she managed to make it through to graduation, eventually signing on with an exploration crew; working stopped her from thinking about what might have happened to her loved ones.
She was known on the crew as anti-social as she socialised little, offered little of her personal history and preferred to read in her quarters but Sigurd, her shuttle co-pilot, eventually managed to befriend her during their long hours of patrols together by not pushing her to talk. She does not respond well to people forcing her to do anything as her friends had tried that when she had learned of the disappearance of the Fjara but Sigurd eventually managed by volunteering himself, backing off when she told him to do so and she finally spoke about herself freely.
Alas, things took a turn for the worst.
Hearing the Call of the Old Ones from a distance gave her horrific nightmares and waking hallucinations and she began to see danger at every turn, things that weren't there and believed that she was going insane, terrified she'd hurt herself or someone else and never learn the truth of what happened to her. The sleep deprivation from being too frightened to sleep in the first place combined with being woken from the nightmares increased her sense of paranoia that there was something out there and she is still incredibly suspicious of anything that seems remotely out of the ordinary or that cannot be explained entirely.
With the influence of the emissaries in her body, there are periods of blackout where she is unable to communicate except in the tongue of the Old Ones that is absolutely incomprehensible and sounds like like gargles, screeches and grunts. She is vaguely aware (after the first attack against her original crew where she was so traumatised she completely disassociated with the memory of what she had done or been forced to do) of what is going on when she uses the Call to spread the influence of the Old Ones but she is powerless to fight it. The emissary overrides her if she attempts to warn others of what is about to happen and can control her if she attempts to kill herself although it has allowed her to try as the other emissary in her heart will heal any damage to keep her alive to continue to spread the influence. Her only real hope is that if there are others who are turned in the same way as she that she will no longer be needed and will be allowed to die although she sincerely doubts it.
These days, Valdís does not react well to stressful situations, either going into a complete and utter shut down or the flight or fight response: depending on just how much she is pushed she will either lash out with undue force for an extending period with whatever is at hand or she will run and keep running until she finds somewhere she deems safe enough to hide, retreating into herself, usually rocking back and forward and muttering to herself as she attempts to calm down.
When comes to meeting people, she no longer trusts herself. She will try to warn them if the emissary lets her but usually she keeps her distance. She has killed innocent people and is set to inflict devasting horror on the human race and if someone reaches out to her, she attempts to back off, to warn them that they shouldn't trust her, that she's crazy and that she'll hurt them. She still has nightmares and on her own, she is distraught, unable to escape her fate or to save people, doomed to spread the influence of the Old Ones as far as possible before they are dragged into a brewing war none of them know of.
ABILITIES:
Prior to passing through the Rift, Valdís was an average human. At her college she studied astrophysics and piloting, she understood how to repair her ships and work with problem computers that had suffered damaged and needed to be rebooted and she took basic self-defense and shooting should she get into any sort of trouble. Fairly fit and well-adjusted, she coped extremely well under pressure.
After passing through the Rift, Valdís gained the ability to speak the language of the Old Ones, understanding their language and their sigils as well as gaining an ability known as The Call. The Call functions like a glamour allowing her to bring people closer to her at the urging of the emissary attached to her brainstem. The person under the influence of the Call will become very calm and forgetful as if they are under sedation and they will not remember what has been done to them, thinking they just fell asleep or zoned out.
Not strictly an ability she possesses properly, the emissary in her heart functions to heal her from any damage, usually very quickly although it can take its time as a punishment and a warning if she has misbehaved. It is the emissaries that stop her from being attacked by the creatures she has helped to make, with her functioning as a 'mother' to them that they will obey so long as she is obeying the orders of the Old Ones.
POSSESSIONS:
1x assault rifle (with additional ammo)
1x plasma pistol
1x duffel bag containing: surgical scalpels, medkit, toolkit, journal written in the language of the Old Ones with sigils, spare clothing (tank tops, BDUs, hoodies, boots)
As a God.
REPRESENTATION:
Valdís represents pestilence and nightmares. Her temples are dark and sparse, altars made of bone with sigils carved into the floors. Recitation of the names of the Old Ones is standard as well as knowing the constellations so that the Rift can be found as well as the positions of the Old Ones in the Void. There are no statues and worship must be conducted at night to show the black of the Void, of Oblivion. Blood sacrifice is common; the blood of those who fail their ritual is drained entirely and stored with the survivors having a vial taken for safekeeping.
They tend to be skittish, avoiding large groups unless they are to spread their influence and create monsters. It is usually accepted practice for them to create a monster or to allow themselves to become one as the highest form of tribute. They rarely look to Valdís herself for guidance, only for commands issued by the emissary that controls her when it is time to sow the seeds of chaos.
FOLLOWERS:
Followers of Valdís are usually young men and women who have experienced great loss. They are plagued by nightmares and hallucinations from past events that she can use to her, people who were once able to submit to the Call but now they can use it themselves. They can speak and read the tongue of the Old Ones and will carve sigils into their flesh as tribute before they have a sequence of sigils drawn on them by Valdís herself that plunge them into a haze of nightmares and hallucinations when they cannot tell if they are asleep or awake. If they survive, then they are expected to sow their influence when told but it must be done carefully so that the balance is not upset too greatly.
Valdís is seen as a figure to be revered yet feared. She is the one who speaks to the Old Ones. She is the Mother of Monsters and Horror. Some allow themselves to become monsters as a form of tribute, hoping it will bring them closer to her when she is not in the mortal world.
FIRST PERSON SAMPLE:
[to be read as Valdís talking to one of her followers]
It's meant to be painful. There are no two ways about it. You think you know what pain is when it's only an abstract concept or when you've been hurt. You think you can build up a tolerance. But you can't. Oh you have limits. Limits that maybe you test over and over. I used to. Once. I used to run until I hit the wall, until my muscles screamed and I couldn't take another step, lactic acid building up, everything cramping.
That was foolish. I didn't see then. My eyes are open now. So wide. So very, very wide.
[She walks a slow circuit around a kneeling man as she speaks, her boots making a muffled thump on the stone floor, disturbing the fine layer of dust and dirt that has built up. His head is bowed. So few of her followers will meet her eyes.
So she stops. Crouches low like the feral wildcats she saw on the Fjara as a girl. So long ago.]
Who do I give you to? Hmm? [His chin is lifted up. It's a fight. He does not want to look in her eyes but he will not disobey and so the resistance fades and she gives an approximation of a smile, producing a knife from her boot.] There are so many Old Ones. Do I give you to the Chaos? To Snakes? To Poisons? [She does not use the names her emissary taught her, the ones that make her throat burn when she chokes them out. She cannot teach them those words.]
You would do well to meditate. Think on why you're doing this. Let it anchor you. This is a holy rite. You will spread the pestilence and nightmares, you will let the horror take you, let it boil in your blood. You will scream. You will wish for Death to take you, for any of them to grant you what little mercy they possess. But you will not fail. You are strong. You will survive.
[Her eyes close, her hand trembles around the knife and her voice shakes as she drops down to her knees fully, mirroring his position and the hand holding his chin is gentle.]
I wish it didn't have to be this way. But there is no other way. Not now. I will be here when you make it through, you will need me and I will need you, just like the others. You already know but after this, you will understand. You will despise me for it.
[She watches him swallow and her eyes become black with silver-grey pupils, her expression lax as she gets to her feet, walks behind him in measured paces and then kicks him hard so he sprawls, his bare back displayed to her. One part of her mind rails but it is shut away, unable to fight as she raises the knife.]
PERSONAL JOURNAL: Just this one I'm afraid
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Over 16
CONTACT: email: eyelinerkisses[at]hotmail[dot]com||aim&plurk: deathwailart
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a
CHARACTER NAME: Valdís Œðra
BACKGROUND:
In the beginning, we were birthed from chaos, that is what the scrolls say. We came from the Void, from Oblivion, from the Old Ones who existed from a universe beyond our own; we were their experiments in shaping this world, the one good thing they created and they were horrified by us.
We were goodness. We were small. We did not have what they wished for us. We were their slaves and their playthings until they retreated and left us behind in this new galaxy. And we rejoiced. We had a chance to be more than what they had intended.
But we must always be aware. Their darkness dwells within us.
- A Counsel On Our Creation, the Book of Knowledge
Valdís was born in the Óhreinn universe, the one the Old Ones* came to from a place known as the Void and Oblivion and shaped before abandoning when it did not suit their purpose as it weakened them. Instead they left their creations behind to build a civilisation - they possessed greater knowledge of how to travel through space and how to build and so quickly they populated their worlds and moons, each world becoming suited to specific tasks: agriculture, manufacture, fishing and so on and so forth. Some though do not live planet side; Valdís was born on Fjara, a space station located on the outskirts of the Óhreinn system, used as a waystation for people making long exploration trips. One of the few children on the station, she took lessons from the people working there in language, science and engineering and her mother being a great pilot often took her daughter out on shuttle runs to explore. She was taken to nearby planets to socialise her but she never truly enjoyed her time there. Life on the waystation was fairly In her late teens, she went to the planet of Skynheima to study at one of the colleges, studying astrophysics and piloting, her parents making trips when they could.
It was in her final year that Fjara was suddenly lost entirely without a trace. Devastated, she withdrew from all life beyond her studies, graduating and gaining a pilot's license as part of an exploration crew who were chartered to look into the disappearance of the Fjara. Valdís kept herself apart from the crew save for her co-pilot in her individual shuttle, Sigurd who she confided in on long trips out, the pair more or less becoming platonic life partners, the first person she'd managed to open up to since the death of her parents.
The mission turned up very little but Valdís began to notice that something was happening to her. She was seeing things that weren't there or on her nav-console. She was hearing things. She was having strange nightmares where her parents were calling for her only to be ripped apart and contorted into horrible monsters. Sigurd convinced her to go to sickbay where she eventually submitted to being sedated as she was suffering from sleep deprivation from the nightmares and the hallucinations were getting more violent but the nightmares did not abate and worse, she was unable to wake up until the sedation wore off. Being allowed up to walk around for a while after the sedation wore off, she attacked medical staff, thinking they were the things from her nightmare as the hallucinations became more real and she ran to the launch bay, stealing a shuttle to head to co-ordinates that she had been told over and over in the dreams.
Valdís had discovered the Rift, an anomaly that had appeared the night the Fjara was lost, a sub-space portal into uncharted space. Despite launching shuttles to bring her back along with Sigurd pleading with her, she cross over the Rift and in the Void, the Oblivion from which the Old Ones had ventured to create Óhreinn.
In the Void, she learned of the Place Beyond where the Primordial Beings dwelled, the creatures that had created the Old Ones who had made her people. The Primordial Beings were coming for the Old Ones and they needed humans to be transformed into their thralls and into servants now that the race had advanced sufficiently and had proven that the influence of their makers could still manifest itself in their darker choices. The Fjara had been converted into a living ship, its life source drawn from the crew and she was kept there, safe so long as she had her attaché who took a form she was comfortable with, appearing as Sigurd. Her time in the Void was horrendous, being confronted by monsters, learning their tongue by way of emissaries, tiny grub-like forms of the Old Ones (really tentacles of the Old One, cut off to be implanted), attaching themselves to her brain to teach her their language quickly (entering by worming its way under and behind her eye) and another in her heart (entering after she was cut open with no anaesthia or pain medication) that would keep her alive should she try something stupid like killing herself. She was confronted by her parents too, now shambling creatures who lived to serve the Old Ones, a constant source of power for them.
The Old Ones planned to return to Óhreinn to finally use the race they had created as a great army to attack the Primordial Beings, to take their power and gain control of the universe that they came from. Valdís was to be the one to bring them back to Óhreinn although she was told that it was nothing to do with her personally, only that she had been the one to listen to their call when it had been given. She was presented to the Eldest One, the first of the Old Ones to be made who had been weakened by the Primordial Beings. Upon meeting him, she blacked out and woke again, not in a shuttle but in a stasis pod on an unknown ship. When she woke, she was told that she had been found drifting in an escape pod from the wreckage of her ship, all of them slain by some unknown plague, turned into abominations and monsters the likes of which no one had seen before.
Horrified, she tried to escape the ship but was isolated. After that, she attempted to kill herself only to find out that the act was physically impossible. Then, it started. An unknown urge possessed her and she found herself able to use the call of the Old Ones to lure them, bringing them close enough to mark sigils into their flesh, allowing them to be seized by them, their bodies turned into nightmarish forms so that they could spread the influence of whichever Old One (or Old Ones, if more than one sigil was used, allowing for varying forms and for stronger soldiers for the Old Ones in their war) had laid claim to it through the sigil used. The crew were massacred and part of her mind went quiet, the emissary in her mind taking control of her to guide her to a space station to spread the influence again. She left co-ordinates on nav-consoles to the location of the Rift so that more like her could be made to spread the influence to those on the planets. Valdís was safe from being harmed so long as she did not attack the creatures she had helped to create, being seen as their mother figure.
Deciding that she would not allow her race to be turned into abominations for the Old Ones, she began to attack them, fighting them off one by one until her mind was wrenched from her and she sent out a distress signal, being picked up by a shuttle heading to a space station. Full of traffic to and from the planets and other ships, it was the perfect location from which to strike, for the Old Ones to infect through her influence.
*the Old Ones are not Lovecraft's Old Ones, just the name given to similar beings in this universe
AGE: 25
APPEARANCE: PB is Jessica Lowndes
Valdís is fairly short and slender, stronger than she appears now, especially with the healing abilities granted by the emissary the Old Ones implanted in her. She is far paler than she used to be, her hair is very seldom washed and her eyes are usually bloodshot with dark circles beneath them. She usually looks rather gaunt and haggard, no longer healthy and well-trained the way she was before she graduated. When using the Call, her eyes become completely black with silvery pupils. When the emissary attached to her brainstem takes control, she looks very glazed; her eyes are hollow and blank and her smile or expressions are just ever so slightly off.
PERSONALITY:
Once, Valdís was a normal young woman with a promising future, great under pressure with a tight-knit circle of friends. After the disappearance of the Fjara she became utterly withdrawn from all social activities save what she had to go through, functioning but not truly living, suffering from bouts of insomnia and a complete inability to deal with day to day life. But her desire to know what had happened to her parents and the home she had known gave her something to live for and she managed to make it through to graduation, eventually signing on with an exploration crew; working stopped her from thinking about what might have happened to her loved ones.
She was known on the crew as anti-social as she socialised little, offered little of her personal history and preferred to read in her quarters but Sigurd, her shuttle co-pilot, eventually managed to befriend her during their long hours of patrols together by not pushing her to talk. She does not respond well to people forcing her to do anything as her friends had tried that when she had learned of the disappearance of the Fjara but Sigurd eventually managed by volunteering himself, backing off when she told him to do so and she finally spoke about herself freely.
Alas, things took a turn for the worst.
Hearing the Call of the Old Ones from a distance gave her horrific nightmares and waking hallucinations and she began to see danger at every turn, things that weren't there and believed that she was going insane, terrified she'd hurt herself or someone else and never learn the truth of what happened to her. The sleep deprivation from being too frightened to sleep in the first place combined with being woken from the nightmares increased her sense of paranoia that there was something out there and she is still incredibly suspicious of anything that seems remotely out of the ordinary or that cannot be explained entirely.
With the influence of the emissaries in her body, there are periods of blackout where she is unable to communicate except in the tongue of the Old Ones that is absolutely incomprehensible and sounds like like gargles, screeches and grunts. She is vaguely aware (after the first attack against her original crew where she was so traumatised she completely disassociated with the memory of what she had done or been forced to do) of what is going on when she uses the Call to spread the influence of the Old Ones but she is powerless to fight it. The emissary overrides her if she attempts to warn others of what is about to happen and can control her if she attempts to kill herself although it has allowed her to try as the other emissary in her heart will heal any damage to keep her alive to continue to spread the influence. Her only real hope is that if there are others who are turned in the same way as she that she will no longer be needed and will be allowed to die although she sincerely doubts it.
These days, Valdís does not react well to stressful situations, either going into a complete and utter shut down or the flight or fight response: depending on just how much she is pushed she will either lash out with undue force for an extending period with whatever is at hand or she will run and keep running until she finds somewhere she deems safe enough to hide, retreating into herself, usually rocking back and forward and muttering to herself as she attempts to calm down.
When comes to meeting people, she no longer trusts herself. She will try to warn them if the emissary lets her but usually she keeps her distance. She has killed innocent people and is set to inflict devasting horror on the human race and if someone reaches out to her, she attempts to back off, to warn them that they shouldn't trust her, that she's crazy and that she'll hurt them. She still has nightmares and on her own, she is distraught, unable to escape her fate or to save people, doomed to spread the influence of the Old Ones as far as possible before they are dragged into a brewing war none of them know of.
ABILITIES:
Prior to passing through the Rift, Valdís was an average human. At her college she studied astrophysics and piloting, she understood how to repair her ships and work with problem computers that had suffered damaged and needed to be rebooted and she took basic self-defense and shooting should she get into any sort of trouble. Fairly fit and well-adjusted, she coped extremely well under pressure.
After passing through the Rift, Valdís gained the ability to speak the language of the Old Ones, understanding their language and their sigils as well as gaining an ability known as The Call. The Call functions like a glamour allowing her to bring people closer to her at the urging of the emissary attached to her brainstem. The person under the influence of the Call will become very calm and forgetful as if they are under sedation and they will not remember what has been done to them, thinking they just fell asleep or zoned out.
Not strictly an ability she possesses properly, the emissary in her heart functions to heal her from any damage, usually very quickly although it can take its time as a punishment and a warning if she has misbehaved. It is the emissaries that stop her from being attacked by the creatures she has helped to make, with her functioning as a 'mother' to them that they will obey so long as she is obeying the orders of the Old Ones.
POSSESSIONS:
1x assault rifle (with additional ammo)
1x plasma pistol
1x duffel bag containing: surgical scalpels, medkit, toolkit, journal written in the language of the Old Ones with sigils, spare clothing (tank tops, BDUs, hoodies, boots)
As a God.
REPRESENTATION:
Valdís represents pestilence and nightmares. Her temples are dark and sparse, altars made of bone with sigils carved into the floors. Recitation of the names of the Old Ones is standard as well as knowing the constellations so that the Rift can be found as well as the positions of the Old Ones in the Void. There are no statues and worship must be conducted at night to show the black of the Void, of Oblivion. Blood sacrifice is common; the blood of those who fail their ritual is drained entirely and stored with the survivors having a vial taken for safekeeping.
They tend to be skittish, avoiding large groups unless they are to spread their influence and create monsters. It is usually accepted practice for them to create a monster or to allow themselves to become one as the highest form of tribute. They rarely look to Valdís herself for guidance, only for commands issued by the emissary that controls her when it is time to sow the seeds of chaos.
FOLLOWERS:
Followers of Valdís are usually young men and women who have experienced great loss. They are plagued by nightmares and hallucinations from past events that she can use to her, people who were once able to submit to the Call but now they can use it themselves. They can speak and read the tongue of the Old Ones and will carve sigils into their flesh as tribute before they have a sequence of sigils drawn on them by Valdís herself that plunge them into a haze of nightmares and hallucinations when they cannot tell if they are asleep or awake. If they survive, then they are expected to sow their influence when told but it must be done carefully so that the balance is not upset too greatly.
Valdís is seen as a figure to be revered yet feared. She is the one who speaks to the Old Ones. She is the Mother of Monsters and Horror. Some allow themselves to become monsters as a form of tribute, hoping it will bring them closer to her when she is not in the mortal world.
FIRST PERSON SAMPLE:
[to be read as Valdís talking to one of her followers]
It's meant to be painful. There are no two ways about it. You think you know what pain is when it's only an abstract concept or when you've been hurt. You think you can build up a tolerance. But you can't. Oh you have limits. Limits that maybe you test over and over. I used to. Once. I used to run until I hit the wall, until my muscles screamed and I couldn't take another step, lactic acid building up, everything cramping.
That was foolish. I didn't see then. My eyes are open now. So wide. So very, very wide.
[She walks a slow circuit around a kneeling man as she speaks, her boots making a muffled thump on the stone floor, disturbing the fine layer of dust and dirt that has built up. His head is bowed. So few of her followers will meet her eyes.
So she stops. Crouches low like the feral wildcats she saw on the Fjara as a girl. So long ago.]
Who do I give you to? Hmm? [His chin is lifted up. It's a fight. He does not want to look in her eyes but he will not disobey and so the resistance fades and she gives an approximation of a smile, producing a knife from her boot.] There are so many Old Ones. Do I give you to the Chaos? To Snakes? To Poisons? [She does not use the names her emissary taught her, the ones that make her throat burn when she chokes them out. She cannot teach them those words.]
You would do well to meditate. Think on why you're doing this. Let it anchor you. This is a holy rite. You will spread the pestilence and nightmares, you will let the horror take you, let it boil in your blood. You will scream. You will wish for Death to take you, for any of them to grant you what little mercy they possess. But you will not fail. You are strong. You will survive.
[Her eyes close, her hand trembles around the knife and her voice shakes as she drops down to her knees fully, mirroring his position and the hand holding his chin is gentle.]
I wish it didn't have to be this way. But there is no other way. Not now. I will be here when you make it through, you will need me and I will need you, just like the others. You already know but after this, you will understand. You will despise me for it.
[She watches him swallow and her eyes become black with silver-grey pupils, her expression lax as she gets to her feet, walks behind him in measured paces and then kicks him hard so he sprawls, his bare back displayed to her. One part of her mind rails but it is shut away, unable to fight as she raises the knife.]
