(no subject)

[spitemancer]

PLAYER STUFF
Name: Siadea
Pronoun: female
Email address: siadea@gmail.com
Preferred contact: Skype: siadea, tumblr: siadea, AIM: siadea
Other characters: Amaterasu

CHARACTER STUFF
Name: Nivata
Aliases: "Necromancer," "Golemancer"
Canon: Guild Wars 2
Role: Research consultant? Antihero?
Species: Asura
Gender: Female
Age: Adult
Appearance: Nivata is an asura, a little less than three feet tall, with braided dark hair, nice clothes, gloves, and relatively small ears that she is very self-conscious about. She tends to smell like formaldehyde, and always has a set of rubber gloves around. She dresses very neatly and nicely, from her perspective: silks, velvets, embroidery, and lace may come off as decadent or costumey to other people. There is an actual cravat. Also, you'll probably see her undead minions sooner or later. They are gross, and you can tell they're made out of people, but at least they smell more like formaldehyde than actively rotting flesh. It's the little things?

Origin story: Not From Around Here. Nivata is from a world called Tyria, a mix of fantasy, more fantasy, steampunk, and science magic. Magic science? There's a lot of stuff going on in Tyria, like gigantic Elder Dragons capable of raising entire islands of undead and so forth. Nivata's race, the asura, are the science magic/magic science division. They are disgustingly smart, and disgustingly obnoxious about it. Their capital city is like a giant cube of academia and spite.

Nivata got extra spite. Unlike many of her peers, Nivata is fascinated not with technomagical feats of awesome, but rather the considerably more organic processes of death and decay. Sent to intensive schooling throughout her life, like most of her kind, Nivata wasn't interested in technomagical advances like golems and teleportation and scathing commentary on your peers' inadequate brains. Nivata was the one who, when tasked to go out and build a rudimentary golem, got distracted by taking apart a dead frog and making it into a tiny undead construct. ...Yeah. Her classmates rejected her, and she rejected them right back. This continued for a while. Even among the necromantic community of Cubeville, she didn't quite fit in. She is a much better scientist than many of her peers, but like real science, Nivata's advances seldom involved big, flashy, intuitive leaps forward. It's not uncommon for asura to reject academia entirely, but that's not the same thing as "lacking vision" and being "a dull plodder." (Direct quotes from a former supervisor.)

So she relocated from Cubeville (fine, it's named Rata Sum) to the cities of taller, stupider people. Humans especially studied necromancy as well, even if they got it all tied up with their stupid human religions, and the sylvari plant people were making some remarkable advances for all their youth. Furthermore, a lot of people were interested in fighting the gigantic Elder Dragon of undeath and his minions, which was right up Nivata's alley. Funding is important; equipment is expensive! This resulted in a lot of "fieldwork," because it turns out that ancient waterlogged corpses held together by draconic magic and hatred don't last long once they're re-killed. Her especial interests came to include the retention of personality and thought in Risen, and studying why plant people can't be made into undead. The latter is considered the creepier of the two interests.

Unfortunately, one of the temporary work krewes she joined during college had been involved with asura gate experimentation, which came back to haunt her. Despite her (much more valuable in her opinion) work on the undead, she wound up as part of a project to locate more resources in the Mists - what Tyria calls 'all the inter-dimensional stuff that has Underworlds and Heavens and other universes in it, and also probably the afterlife according to some people.' One of the most important things about the Mists is the ability to essentially gather free resources from unclaimed land. Unfortunately, the alternate Tyrias have already had the same thought, so Nivata's krewe was tasked to range further afield and try to find lands that had less competition. Being asura, they naturally defined "people" as "asura" in their selection matrix. (To their credit, they have located some and established outposts accordingly.) As a result of an argument with the krewe leader, Nivata demanded to be the first to go through this new experimental gate and stabilize it from the other end.

Earth, coincidentally, has no asura.

Her arrival in LA was kind of a big incident, truthfully, because she'd had her minions with her for protection. Since some of them incorporated human skulls, CONDOR made a logical assumption and considered her hostile. ...There are a few heroes that she may have put in the hospital before she was captured and successfully questioned. CONDOR has made it clear that she will be under observation and that this particular reality is not interested in being plundered. Nivata's arguments that trade would be more valuable anyway have not borne much fruit. (She's not the best diplomat ever.)

Currently, Nivata is not sure if her krewe has abandoned her or if CONDOR has just confiscated the gate construction materials she should have arrived with. CONDOR has not been forthcoming, though they have made it clear that she is going to be under observation and should be on her best behavior. She has strict and semi-condescending instructions to leave all dead bodies for law enforcement, not to use her minions, et cetera.

Fortunately, if infuriatingly, Nivata has basic (for asura) knowledge in technomagical manipulation, golemancy, and "normal" asuran magitechnology. She's had to re-invent things from scratch where she can, do without certain other things (there's a serious lack of magic-imbued crystals here in her opinion), and cope with absolutely nobody willing to look at her best research into more efficient flesh golem designs. You cannot imagine how angry she is that people are so interested in everything except her own field of study.

She's surreptitiously trying to see if she can make even a temporary gate out of native materials, because she is absolutely not going to stay here for the rest of her life among ignorant humans who can't even levitate a crystal. Nivata has also enrolled at UCLA to avoid complete intellectual stagnation, since her necromantic research is interdicted.

Personality: Prickly, a little amoral, arrogant, disdainful... basically a typical asura. Underneath her abrasive exterior, Nivata expects to be considered inconsequential, and therefore comes out with all verbal weapons swinging. This is surprisingly well-tolerated, because that's what other people expect from the arrogant little bigears. Even at her most polite, Nivata's abrupt and very fact-oriented. Small talk is not her strong suit, and neither are feelings. Terrifyingly, she's actually LESS disdainful of humans than the norm; she's worked extensively with necromancers of all races. (Even if the humans got their weird religious ideas all over everything. Gross.) She's probably very lonely, somewhere inside. She wants respect and acknowledgment, and possibly a little bit of admiration. In return, you get an unfriendly friend who will pull you out of trouble if possible, no questions asked but lots of haranguing delivered. She won't remember your birthday, won't make social calls, and will absolutely call you an idiot, but if you need help, she'll be there for you. What friends she has back on Tyria are mostly the Spartan militaristic charr, who don't remember birthdays or make social calls either, but never leave their comrades behind.

Trans-dimensionally landing on Earth has not done her personality any favors. Expect extreme arrogance, instant hostility, and wariness even to the most benign of friendship overtures. She especially hates you if you're interested in the asura technology that she's trying to reconstruct, and she has not been known for being cooperative about it. That is to say, she cooperates on minor improvements so that her funding continues apace, but anything significant is going to be like pulling teeth. Nivata's teeth are remarkably sharklike, both literally and metaphorically.

Differences from canon: Nivata isn't involved in any "Personal Storyline" missions; she graduated without much fuss, never even dreamed about a Snaff Prize, and is based out of Fort Trinity. Think "NPC."

Power level: B

Powers:
Genius: The asura have specialized in intellectual endeavors rather than physical ones. (This is what you do when you're three feet tall and dealing with other species that average around eight or nine feet tall.) They teach just about all their progeny incredibly advanced material, then sort them into three colleges, each of which is designed with a particular focus. Currently, Nivata is trying to occupy her time with an unholy amount of courses from UCLA. Most of them have bio- as a prefix, but there are some computer science courses in there. She's finding that in some areas, humans are much more advanced than the ones from back home (some more advanced than asura back home!!), while in others, they are tiny little progeny toddling around and banging a screwdriver on things. Furthermore, measurement conversions are terrible and human electronics and asuran electronics are completely different. She is very, very frustrated by this.
Asuran Technology: Asura incorporate both magic and technology in every part of their lives, making golems (OK, magic-powered robots), forcefields, gravity-defying structures, and so forth. Nivata has been working on re-constructing basic items of asuran technology, because she is living in a stupid city full of even stupider humans, with no access to things she considers routine. Unfortunately for Nivata, she didn't really focus on any of those perfectly normal studies. No, she studied necromancy, and how life force and undeath tie in to the underlying principles of the world. (The other two colleges agree that Synergetics is where you put the weird ones.) So she only has the 'basic' asura instruction in their technomagical feats. Nonetheless, it's pretty cool.
Necromancer: THE FUN PART :D You may not see a lot of this at first, since CONDOR was pretty firm on the idea of "please don't make small children run screaming." Nivata makes flesh constructs that obey her will. She can have five or six out at a time, unless she's around a lot of dying people or animals, in which case she can slap together little corpse monsters using whatever's around. (Her usual minions are 'pre-assembled' and don't need any new dead bodies or anything; the slapdash ones will degrade quickly and then fall apart.) Also, she curses people (temporarily!) and sometimes goes into a shadow form where she's sucking out the life force from nearby enemies. More benevolently, she can pull other peoples' curses (and even non-magical things like bleeding) to herself and sustain others with her siphoned life force, but she won't do that unless she likes you. Technically, she can also cut you with a hatchet or dagger or something, but it's not her primary skill set. ...You don't want to mess with her bonesaw, though.

Team affiliation: Enclave, CONDOR (reluctantly)

First person sample:
I am Nivata, a necromancer unfortunately based in Los Angeles. I will make several points, hopefully in words simple enough for you to understand.

1. Necromancy is perfectly legal where I'm from. My minions have been obtained legally. I have already been through an incredibly stupid discussion with CONDOR about this. I am not going to repeat it.
1a. It's not a "robot." It's a golem. No, you can't touch it.
2. I'm here as a result of inter-planar and inter-dimensional travel. If you think that you can return me to my home without violating CONDOR's incredibly stupid rules about it, I'm interested. I have a copy of the rules if you want them, but the gist is "no permanent installations that would help someone invade Earth." I have TOLD them that would defeat the entire purpose of my krewe's work, but apparently the logic is too complex for them.
3. If you're having issues with Risen or undead of any kind, I have the expertise you'll need to deal with it. I will do on-site consultations if you provide the transport.
4. Gawkers will not be tolerated. I know how to blind you with magic and I WILL do it.

Any questions had better be relevant.

Prose sample:
Nivata tried to avoid going outside, whenever possible. All the courses that she could take online had been, food could be delivered, and those were some of her most important needs. Still, hardware and electronics stores were much less likely to deliver, biology labs were hardly remote-accessible, and some of these so-called professors refused to acknowledge the clear superiority of self-paced online courses. Therefore, sometimes Nivata had to go out.

Being stared at was inevitable in this disgustingly homogenous city, but Nivata had resolved to get used to it. She had trained those humans she had to come into frequent contact with not to gawk, but she'd spend all day berating passers-by if she started bothering with them, too. (She could put magical fear into them, which would take much less time, but that would cause a panic and generally be more trouble than it was worth. The police, she had learned, were stringent about that kind of thing.)

Of course, it was possible that at least some people were staring at the glowing crystal floating in mid-air that was carrying Nivata's books and other essentials. It was one of her early prototypes, and had the infuriating tendency to wobble when burdened with more than fifteen pounds of material (she would much rather have used her bone fiend, which had never wobbled a day in its unlife) but humans always were dazzled by even the most flawed inventions as long as they were shiny enough.

"Touch that and you'll regret it for the rest of your miserably short life," Nivata snapped, seeing an adventurous hand reaching out toward her crystal. Another UCLA student, doubtless. Idiots.