kitten (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cooperatively) wrote2021-07-01 08:43 am
cooperatively) wrote2021-07-01 08:43 am
•info post
•world & personal history
The world is, at the beginning, much the same as out Earth. Similar histories, similar technology, up to a point. That point has come to be known, colloquially, as The Rift - a moment when the lines between worlds faded and things began to cross over to Earth - or things from Earth fell to the other planes. (Eventually, things would be mostly stabilized, and travel between planes would become a lucrative tourism business.)
Naturally, this made things rather… Chaotic. The creatures from the other plane weren’t all too keen on suddenly appearing on Earth - but unlike the humans and animals stranded in their plane, they were large and powerful enough to cause incredible amounts of damage and kill countless people. Some of the creatures seemed sapient enough to not mind the travel and were content enough to wait for travel to stabilize, but there were creatures more akin to wild animals that began to rampage. There was also the matter of what to call these creatures - there seemed to be two defining features. Creatures that seemed to be made of flesh and bone, and ones that seemed almost inorganic, made primarily of things that seemed like stone or metal. The words they called themselves had no equivalent in any human language, and so humans eventually decided if it could bleed, it was a demon. If it couldn’t, it was an angel.
(None of them really cared what they were called, and a lot found the need for a species name to be kind of silly.)
Over time, demons and angels integrated with society. Some decided to stay on Earth once travel between planes became something that could be controlled, as they quite liked it. Some demons even took up human lovers, though angels seemed less keen on it. Both tended to enjoy mundane human jobs and lives for how different of a life it was - but there was another good reason for them to stay. Someone needed to protect the creatures of Earth from the more violent, unstable, and less intelligent creatures while humanity tried to find their own means of protection.
That was one thousand years ago - humanity has continued to expand, with cities growing larger and some cities moving across planes to what was now known as the Other. They’ve also poured billions into research and manufacturing, building large, mechanical suits that could host one to three pilots depending on size. These mecha were the turning point in humans being able to fight off demon and angel threats on their own, and also helped advance several other aspects of human life. (Fuel and communications were two things that have really changed.) Smaller mechs also became a staple of military and police forces.
Species mixing continued - it’s not uncommon for people to have at least one person in their family with demonic ancestry, whether by blood or marriage. Angel and human procreation was more difficult, because, to put it bluntly, angels don’t reproduce via sex. They divest some of their energy, and combine it with another angel’s, creating a third (or fourth, or fith, or whatever, depending on how many angels are involved) lifeform. While mixing energy with a human was possible, the sheer amount of effort and energy would severely weaken the angel, if not kill it outright. Most weren’t willing to take the risk. A few did, over the years, but many were uninterested.
Lorellon was very interested - an incredibly powerful angel, Lorrelon had grown interested in the human Theresa, and the two occasionally spoke of having a family. Theresa proposed adoption, while Lorellon proposed seeing if they could create a child. They debated which would be better, before deciding to hell with it. They would try this whole energy share thing - and thus Kathanriel Foley was born. For a certain definition of born.
Kathanriel’s early life was remarkably mundane, for having one parent being a wheel of fire with countless eyes and the other being a human. Theresa worked to provide for her child. Lorellon taught it’s child how to do magic and use their nonhuman strength and abilities, and also tutored Kathanriel on history. (And math. Lorellon was actually very good at math.)
Then, a few weeks after Kathanriel turned 15, it all went off the rails.
A gang of half (and quarter) demons had started roaming their neighborhood, harassing the residents of Kathanriel’s building for money, threatening violence, and generally being a nuisance. There were rumors that they were being paid for this - organized crime never went away, after all, and everyone knew their part of the city was being fought over by at least two syndicates - but nobody could do anything about it. The police turned a blind eye, but everything would come to a head after the leader of the gang stole Theresa’s purse. Fed up and infuriated, Kathanriel decided to take matters into their own hands - they marched right to the apartment the gang was living in to demand they return their mother’s money and belongings, and when they were laughed at things escalated to violence. They didn’t kill anyone, but they were vicious and powerful enough to scare the gang away… And capture the attention of their employer.
The name he chose to go by was Erikson - he was a demon who had moved to Earth roughly five hundred years ago, and he was fascinated with how someone with no combat training could defeat no less than six half (and quarter) demons without a scratch. (They had been scratched. They had actually taken quite a thorough beating, but had been able to heal faster than they could be taken down. They didn’t bother to correct Erikson.) Kathanriel would accept his offer to work for him - they were young, poor, and found the rush of fighting to be exhilarating. They wanted to capture that feeling again.
They worked for Erikson for five years, mostly as an enforcer and fixer, before they decided to try their hand at a more subtle, freelance form of violence. People would pay money to see other people end up dead, after all, and if they could choose who they would be sent after it was a win-win, wasn’t it? They got into enough trouble over refusing targets from Erikson, so they’d like to be able to have complete control over it. They only wanted to hurt people who hurt others - not people who didn’t deserve it. A poor family not being able to pay back a loan didn’t deserve to be terrorized, for example. They might be a murderer, but maybe being an assassin would be a bit more moral. Maybe. With their new job, they decided they shouldn’t be Kathanriel Foley anymore, and settled on the name Kitten.
It would be a solid rebranding, they think.
Their latest gig is the assassination of a woman named Erika Sonlamb - or at least that's what they were told, when in actually that's just a ruse to get Kitten's attention. Erikson's son Geoffrey has a big plan for shaking things up, and he wants Kitten's help... But he knows they're unlikely to agree if asked directly. Whoops!
•personality
Kitten is the sort of person who doesn’t care much about just about anything - this isn’t to say they’re entirely heartless or cruel, they just don’t see the point in getting overinvested or taking just about anything seriously because life is too short for things like taking everything personally. They want to enjoy life, not spend it dwelling on things that upset them or thinking about everything that’s wrong with the world. They know things are fucked up, but they don’t see why they should make it their problem. This tends to mean they don’t take things seriously, laughing just about everything off or making light of everything going on around them. They try to distance themself from having to care about things, because at the end of the day does any of it matter?
Though, again, they’re not heartless and they know that people generally tend to care more than they do. They get that, and they try to keep their nihilism under wraps because it seems like ankinder then to do than tell people that nothing in life matters - or that most things in life don’t matter, because they do think the people around you can be pretty important. They can change the way your life is, whether they be your friends, your family, or your employer, and even if knowing them could be fleeting, they can still have an impact and change the course of your life. So they try not to be too much of an asshole, and watch what they say to people. Really, they try to be friendly and casual with most people they meet, which can have it’s own set of problems. They treat everyone the same, regardless of what status a person may or may not have.
Kitten also lacks patience - they want things to be over and done with befote they begin, and they would rather not deal with people squabbling or making things harder for everyone around them. They prefer to work alone for this reason, because while they try to be friendly and cheerful, they don’t want anyone dragging them down by refusing to cooperate or by lacking the skill to keep up. The quickest way to guarantee they’ll lose their temper is to make their job harder than it has to be. They just want things to get done as easily as possible, really. Is that too much to ask for?
Their job is one of the few things Kitten takes pride in, as they know they’re good at it and they don’t see why they shouldn’t even if it basically boils down to “they kill people for a living”. They find themself enjoying violence and the thrill of it, being one of the few things that gets through the drudgery and meaninglessness of life. They’re well aware that most people would find that pretty fucked up, because why is that the one thing they enjoy - but, again, they don’t really care. People’s opinions on them and what they do are unimportant, even if they can objectively understand why people would think that.
They just want to be left to their own devices to live life as they please, taking money to do what they’d want to do anyways, and being left alone by people who want to change them or tell them what to do. They can be incredibly stubborn, digging their heels in over the little things, and that’s half the reason they took all their contacts and stopped working for Erikson. They don’t handle being monitored or scrutinized very well - they’ll do things their way and to hell with anyone who thinks that’s the wrong way. They just want things to be easy, and questioning what they do or who they are makes everything harder.
All in all, they try to pretend to be someone who cares more than they actually do, and they want to live a life that’s not at all peaceful, but where they get to do what they please. Just, you know, sometimes that means causing problems on purpose.
•abilities
•Enhanced healing factor, nigh immortal. Can recover from most injuries. Limit currently unknown.
•Enhanced physical ability. Stronger than a human, faster, and with better reflexes and sharper senses.
•Transformation, into a larger, more “angelic” form. All abilities enhanced in this form, and said form is also capable of flight.
•Influential aura - Kitten can influence the emotions and opinions of others, which usually makes them calmer or more agreeable and cooperative.
•AND MUCH MUCH MORE
The world is, at the beginning, much the same as out Earth. Similar histories, similar technology, up to a point. That point has come to be known, colloquially, as The Rift - a moment when the lines between worlds faded and things began to cross over to Earth - or things from Earth fell to the other planes. (Eventually, things would be mostly stabilized, and travel between planes would become a lucrative tourism business.)
Naturally, this made things rather… Chaotic. The creatures from the other plane weren’t all too keen on suddenly appearing on Earth - but unlike the humans and animals stranded in their plane, they were large and powerful enough to cause incredible amounts of damage and kill countless people. Some of the creatures seemed sapient enough to not mind the travel and were content enough to wait for travel to stabilize, but there were creatures more akin to wild animals that began to rampage. There was also the matter of what to call these creatures - there seemed to be two defining features. Creatures that seemed to be made of flesh and bone, and ones that seemed almost inorganic, made primarily of things that seemed like stone or metal. The words they called themselves had no equivalent in any human language, and so humans eventually decided if it could bleed, it was a demon. If it couldn’t, it was an angel.
(None of them really cared what they were called, and a lot found the need for a species name to be kind of silly.)
Over time, demons and angels integrated with society. Some decided to stay on Earth once travel between planes became something that could be controlled, as they quite liked it. Some demons even took up human lovers, though angels seemed less keen on it. Both tended to enjoy mundane human jobs and lives for how different of a life it was - but there was another good reason for them to stay. Someone needed to protect the creatures of Earth from the more violent, unstable, and less intelligent creatures while humanity tried to find their own means of protection.
That was one thousand years ago - humanity has continued to expand, with cities growing larger and some cities moving across planes to what was now known as the Other. They’ve also poured billions into research and manufacturing, building large, mechanical suits that could host one to three pilots depending on size. These mecha were the turning point in humans being able to fight off demon and angel threats on their own, and also helped advance several other aspects of human life. (Fuel and communications were two things that have really changed.) Smaller mechs also became a staple of military and police forces.
Species mixing continued - it’s not uncommon for people to have at least one person in their family with demonic ancestry, whether by blood or marriage. Angel and human procreation was more difficult, because, to put it bluntly, angels don’t reproduce via sex. They divest some of their energy, and combine it with another angel’s, creating a third (or fourth, or fith, or whatever, depending on how many angels are involved) lifeform. While mixing energy with a human was possible, the sheer amount of effort and energy would severely weaken the angel, if not kill it outright. Most weren’t willing to take the risk. A few did, over the years, but many were uninterested.
Lorellon was very interested - an incredibly powerful angel, Lorrelon had grown interested in the human Theresa, and the two occasionally spoke of having a family. Theresa proposed adoption, while Lorellon proposed seeing if they could create a child. They debated which would be better, before deciding to hell with it. They would try this whole energy share thing - and thus Kathanriel Foley was born. For a certain definition of born.
Kathanriel’s early life was remarkably mundane, for having one parent being a wheel of fire with countless eyes and the other being a human. Theresa worked to provide for her child. Lorellon taught it’s child how to do magic and use their nonhuman strength and abilities, and also tutored Kathanriel on history. (And math. Lorellon was actually very good at math.)
Then, a few weeks after Kathanriel turned 15, it all went off the rails.
A gang of half (and quarter) demons had started roaming their neighborhood, harassing the residents of Kathanriel’s building for money, threatening violence, and generally being a nuisance. There were rumors that they were being paid for this - organized crime never went away, after all, and everyone knew their part of the city was being fought over by at least two syndicates - but nobody could do anything about it. The police turned a blind eye, but everything would come to a head after the leader of the gang stole Theresa’s purse. Fed up and infuriated, Kathanriel decided to take matters into their own hands - they marched right to the apartment the gang was living in to demand they return their mother’s money and belongings, and when they were laughed at things escalated to violence. They didn’t kill anyone, but they were vicious and powerful enough to scare the gang away… And capture the attention of their employer.
The name he chose to go by was Erikson - he was a demon who had moved to Earth roughly five hundred years ago, and he was fascinated with how someone with no combat training could defeat no less than six half (and quarter) demons without a scratch. (They had been scratched. They had actually taken quite a thorough beating, but had been able to heal faster than they could be taken down. They didn’t bother to correct Erikson.) Kathanriel would accept his offer to work for him - they were young, poor, and found the rush of fighting to be exhilarating. They wanted to capture that feeling again.
They worked for Erikson for five years, mostly as an enforcer and fixer, before they decided to try their hand at a more subtle, freelance form of violence. People would pay money to see other people end up dead, after all, and if they could choose who they would be sent after it was a win-win, wasn’t it? They got into enough trouble over refusing targets from Erikson, so they’d like to be able to have complete control over it. They only wanted to hurt people who hurt others - not people who didn’t deserve it. A poor family not being able to pay back a loan didn’t deserve to be terrorized, for example. They might be a murderer, but maybe being an assassin would be a bit more moral. Maybe. With their new job, they decided they shouldn’t be Kathanriel Foley anymore, and settled on the name Kitten.
It would be a solid rebranding, they think.
Their latest gig is the assassination of a woman named Erika Sonlamb - or at least that's what they were told, when in actually that's just a ruse to get Kitten's attention. Erikson's son Geoffrey has a big plan for shaking things up, and he wants Kitten's help... But he knows they're unlikely to agree if asked directly. Whoops!
•personality
Kitten is the sort of person who doesn’t care much about just about anything - this isn’t to say they’re entirely heartless or cruel, they just don’t see the point in getting overinvested or taking just about anything seriously because life is too short for things like taking everything personally. They want to enjoy life, not spend it dwelling on things that upset them or thinking about everything that’s wrong with the world. They know things are fucked up, but they don’t see why they should make it their problem. This tends to mean they don’t take things seriously, laughing just about everything off or making light of everything going on around them. They try to distance themself from having to care about things, because at the end of the day does any of it matter?
Though, again, they’re not heartless and they know that people generally tend to care more than they do. They get that, and they try to keep their nihilism under wraps because it seems like ankinder then to do than tell people that nothing in life matters - or that most things in life don’t matter, because they do think the people around you can be pretty important. They can change the way your life is, whether they be your friends, your family, or your employer, and even if knowing them could be fleeting, they can still have an impact and change the course of your life. So they try not to be too much of an asshole, and watch what they say to people. Really, they try to be friendly and casual with most people they meet, which can have it’s own set of problems. They treat everyone the same, regardless of what status a person may or may not have.
Kitten also lacks patience - they want things to be over and done with befote they begin, and they would rather not deal with people squabbling or making things harder for everyone around them. They prefer to work alone for this reason, because while they try to be friendly and cheerful, they don’t want anyone dragging them down by refusing to cooperate or by lacking the skill to keep up. The quickest way to guarantee they’ll lose their temper is to make their job harder than it has to be. They just want things to get done as easily as possible, really. Is that too much to ask for?
Their job is one of the few things Kitten takes pride in, as they know they’re good at it and they don’t see why they shouldn’t even if it basically boils down to “they kill people for a living”. They find themself enjoying violence and the thrill of it, being one of the few things that gets through the drudgery and meaninglessness of life. They’re well aware that most people would find that pretty fucked up, because why is that the one thing they enjoy - but, again, they don’t really care. People’s opinions on them and what they do are unimportant, even if they can objectively understand why people would think that.
They just want to be left to their own devices to live life as they please, taking money to do what they’d want to do anyways, and being left alone by people who want to change them or tell them what to do. They can be incredibly stubborn, digging their heels in over the little things, and that’s half the reason they took all their contacts and stopped working for Erikson. They don’t handle being monitored or scrutinized very well - they’ll do things their way and to hell with anyone who thinks that’s the wrong way. They just want things to be easy, and questioning what they do or who they are makes everything harder.
All in all, they try to pretend to be someone who cares more than they actually do, and they want to live a life that’s not at all peaceful, but where they get to do what they please. Just, you know, sometimes that means causing problems on purpose.
•abilities
•Enhanced healing factor, nigh immortal. Can recover from most injuries. Limit currently unknown.
•Enhanced physical ability. Stronger than a human, faster, and with better reflexes and sharper senses.
•Transformation, into a larger, more “angelic” form. All abilities enhanced in this form, and said form is also capable of flight.
•Influential aura - Kitten can influence the emotions and opinions of others, which usually makes them calmer or more agreeable and cooperative.
•AND MUCH MUCH MORE