The Basics
Character Name: Irinei Vorakh
Nicknames: Ilya
Age and Birth Year: 26 (169AP)
Race: Short-lived
Caste: Healer
Birth Territory: Chaillot
Home Territory: Dena Nehele
Birthright Jewel: uncut Sapphire
Offering Jewel: uncut Gray
Role: First Escort
Faction: District Court of Lesser Caecian
Appearance
Play By: Erika Linder
Distinguishing Features: Ilya wears the same outfit every day. (He's got multiple copies of every item in his closet.)
Personality
Personality: Ilya is a prickly prick and one day he's going to get himself Broken or killed. People don't like him, by and large, and he's fine with that. His Dark-Jeweled temper rides high with him, and he's prone to a defensive lashing-out if he judges that someone doubts his presentation or his expertise. He clings to his independence viciously, and reacts with malice aforethought if he judges himself to be backed into a corner. He is stubborn: utterly unwilling to compromise his tightly-held moral code or go against his own lights. His bedside manner leaves much to be desired.
However, his stubbornness leads him to press his luck on cases that other Healers might abandon (at the behest of their Escorts or out of the need to help less dire cases). His passion and energy drive him to explore the world around him and research the things that puzzle him. He's more than happy to share his discoveries as he experiments, though he has difficulty playing second fiddle to anyone when he collaborates. He has difficulty relating to people, and he can come off as brusque at best, but he deeply desires to advance the art of Healing so that people--all people, landens included--will live longer, healthier, and more pain-free lives. His idea of a Healer's stereotypical kindness is making sure that his patients are well-equipped to return to their lives; his instinct to nurture and support the people around him is often funneled into the study of illness, injury, and the body.
This is not to say that his motives are completely altruistic. He doesn't charge for Healing if his patients can't afford it; he isn't greedy as people usually understand greed. Money has no appeal to him once his basic needs are met. He'll spend it all on funding his travel or his research without thought for the future. Power doesn't get his attention either. Ilya is driven by a desire to be admired. He wants people to think he's brilliant, and he reacts poorly if people treat him like a child or like he doesn't know what he's doing.
Even though money doesn't interest him, he still values security. For Ilya, security means control over his surroundings, the clothes he likes, and decent food. He doesn't want to yield control of his schedule to anyone else. He doesn't want to change his habits for other people. He wants to feel safe--something that's rare for a Dark Jeweled person in his home Territory--and when he doesn't feel safe, he wears his prickly nature like a shield to drive away strangers.
It's difficult enough to get to know him (or to want to) with his prickly nature and his poor social skills, but Ilya also seems to actively repulse attempts to befriend him. He doesn't trust kindness very much and deals best with others when it's an obvious quid-pro-quo arrangement. Where people seem to admire him for his Jewel, he resents them; where people want to befriend him for his Caste, he rejects them. Ilya wants to be recognized for his intelligence and his creativity. His Caste is something he values, because it gives direction to his passion and drive, but it's not what he defines himself by.
Ilya has horrible dysphoria about his body: he directs his research into herbs, potions, and poisons that change the hormones his body produces. He experiments on himself, despite knowing it's unsafe, to make changes to get himself across the social divide between who he knows he is and who he is initially perceived to be. While he is fascinated by disease and surgery, his main focus is redesigning his own body to transcend the limitations into which he was born. Because of his dysphoria, he's a private person. He doesn't want to be seen vulnerable or share his thoughts because they embarrass him, and he's deeply averse to being embarrassed--so he doesn't. The quickest way onto his shit list is to refer to him as "Lady" anything, and he's even more offended to be referred to as "Lord"; he prefers to be titled Healer.
Likes: - Surgery - The patient's unconscious. He's got a plan. He knows what he's doing and he's able to execute his work on his own time. To Ilya, there's something zen about surgery because he feels in control: he doesn't have to check in with the patient. If there are problems, there are solutions that he knows the answer to. He feels like he just understands the human body peeled open, and feels comfortable in an operating room.
- Research - Ilya loves doing research: understanding the theory behind the spread of disease or the function of an herb on the human body gives him a thrill like nothing else. Simply reading the theory is good, but he likes to do research as well: the process of planning, executing, and recording is comforting. He always has at least one research project going and is happiest when he has two or three to fill up his long hours.
- Traveling - Different regions have new information, but it's more than that. Ilya likes the neatness of hotels and the opportunity to make new connections. He enjoys facing new problems and discovering new questions. Different areas all have new problems: he believes travel is essential to understanding the world and growing as a person.
Dislikes: - Fashion - It's a pain. It's always changing. Ilya likes things to be just the way he likes: he's got one outfit that works for him and he's got five duplicates of all the pieces required. He's the kind of person who's incredibly picky about comfort and flexibility, so when he finds a piece of clothing he likes, he buys at least two copies of it. He'd rather bring an old, out of date piece of clothing to a tailor and get a copy made or repairs done before going through the whole rigamarole of getting new clothing.
- Arguing - He's not good at it. Bringing other people around to his side isn't really something he's ever felt the need to do; he feels strongly that people should just realize he's correct and knuckle under, and otherwise he simply has enough power to get what he wants. His idea of negotiating is this: he tells you how it's going to be, and then it is that way, whether you cooperate or not. If someone's a patient and they're very against his recommended treatment route, he'll send them to another Healer before he goes against his own belief in what is best.
- Treating Pregnant Patients - He despises treating pregnant people. He saw a woman give birth once in the process of his training and he promptly refused to attend lessons until he was allowed to study the theory alone. He has no interest in children and is definitely not a pediatrician or a midwife. While he will happily perform surgical interventions to help someone get pregnant, if someone wants further fertility help he is sending them to another Healer. Being around pregnant people is deeply upsetting to him for reasons he does not want to examine; it is a constant reminder of his natal sex and the expectations for it.
Fears:- Collaring - When Alois Oberonn came to power in Chaillot, she put draconian restrictions on all of the Dark-Jeweled members of the Blood in her territory. Wearing the Gray, he was especially targeted by the new restrictions. He is someone who greatly prizes the freedom to choose his involvement with his Caste and his future. He prizes control above all things, and to him, collaring represents complete loss of power. Even beyond the danger it poses, he has never taken well to following another person's lead, and a collar would make him comply. He has left Chaillot to avoid that inevitability, and part of the reason he elected to go to Dena Nehele rather than anywhere else is its friendliness towards Dark Jewels and death penalty for possession of a collar.
- Losing his competency - If Ilya were in an accident that changed his ability to think or reason, or if he were to lose the ability to move or care for himself, he would rather die than be Healed. Ilya has repetitive, recurrent nightmares of being paralyzed, losing limbs, or becoming somehow dependent upon others. He needs independence; to be anything else is unthinkable, and that can lead him to avoiding physical risk for himself even if it puts other people in danger. He would feel incredibly guilty if someone were harmed by his absence, but he will not risk his mind for anyone.
- Irrelevance - Ilya dreams of going down in history. He cannot stand being mediocre, being standard, or being a cog in a machine. He needs to be essential: not just to his close friends and family, but to the world. People need to know who he is and think he's important. He wants to change the way the world works. His fear of being irrelevant--someone who can be forgotten or abandoned or left behind--drives a great deal of what he does, even as his fear of losing himself is a stumbling block to achieving true greatness.
Craft Strengths:
- Mending Flesh - A certain facility with mending flesh is very useful to a surgeon. Ilya has that facility. It takes less Craft than usual for him to accomplish the same amount of flesh-mending, though he isn't any better at preventing or reducing scarring than anyone else of his Jewel level.
- Curing Poison - Ilya has a fascination with herbs and chemicals, particularly their effects on the body. While he's no gardener, he has previously traveled great distances to observe a case of a rare or unusual poison. He's very good at countering unknown poisons, even for the Gray, and usually takes less time to identify the components of a poison than others at his Jewel level would.
Craft Weaknesses:- Bone Shaping - Ilya has very poor control over bone growth, unfortunately. His facility with flesh has led to him neglecting bone, and attempts to regrow or to alter the growth of a bone tend to hurt his patients more than help: either the bone overgrows its bounds, like a cancer, or the material of the bone is too weak and breaks or degrades. If he judges bone shaping to be necessary, he'll send the patient to another Healer.
- Telekinesis - Ilya has poor force control and always has. Attempting to float something tends to send it rocketing towards the ceiling. With his Jewel strength, that usually means that it will bust through the ceiling or at least make a sizable dent. If he wants something from across the room, he has to get up and get it himself.
Life Story
Family:Mother: Nataliya Vorakh, White Jeweled witch, b. 131AP
Father: Katerin Aegle, Blood male, b. 133AP
Siblings:
Alphonsine Vorakh, Blood female, b. 160AP
Ludovine Vorakh, White Jeweled witch, b. 160AP
Pelagiya Vorakh, Blood female, b. 165AP
Childhood Tutor: Yeva Morozova, Purple Dusk to Green witch, b. 145
History:Ilya was born in 169 in Beldon Mor. His parents--the children of Dena Nehelean immigrants, there to establish a new foothold for their family's business--were delighted at the first of their children to wear a Caste at birth. Aided by their family's funds, they were able to acquire the best tutors for Ilya's burgeoning Healer caste; when Ilya announced he no longer desired to be seen as a girl and would prefer to be addressed as Irinei, thank you very much, their delight was not at all dimmed. They'd always wanted a son.
Their delight dimmed a great deal when he came away from the altar at his Birthright with an uncut Sapphire. Though they were nowhere near struggling to feed such a Dark Jewel and their relatively recent arrival from Dena Nehele meant that they didn't have such a deep fear of the Dark Jeweled as the rest of their Territory, they knew that Chaillot was growing more and more unfriendly to the Dark Jeweled. It had never been precisely friendly in their family's time, but the animus was growing. Exposing their child to such a thing wasn't their preferred avenue, but their other option--returning to Dena Nehele, where Healers were a commodity--was completely unworkable. (They didn't even consider Shalador, Raej, or Pruul: Shalador was much too savage, Raej much too hot, and Pruul was completely landlocked, so they'd have to sell their business.)
The family elected to stay. It became a struggle to find Craft tutors willing to work with a child already wearing a Dark Jewel and promised an even more unstable Offering, but they made do by hiring a general Craft tutor from Dena Nehele. Yeva Morozova agreed to come to Chaillot provided the family protected her from its prejudices, which they did. She taught Ilya much of his paranoia around other people with her deep caution. They worked together for four years, until he was twelve, at which point she returned to Dena Nehele with a sizable severance package.
When Ilya was twelve, his family sent him to a boarding school for young Blood females with Dark potential. The decision wasn't made because they didn't want him, but because he needed more training in his Caste than they could provide at home; Dena Nehele didn't have Healers to spare, and no Chaillotan Healer wanted to instruct an unstable Sapphire. He was often pulled out of school on rest days to spend time with his family, and never doubted that he was loved by them. Even at school, while his attitudes and Sapphire made him unpopular, he wasn't mistreated or lonely; he made friends with other students, including Arkadie Graveworthy and Marie-Victorique Fortier, mostly due to their own bullheaded desires to befriend him. He did have difficulties at school because of his gender, but Chaillot's more libertine interpretation of gender presentation meant that it was not much worse than a male-sexed student would have gotten.
At the boarding school, his interest in surgery was piqued during an autopsy lesson. The idea that human beings could be so complex and tangled beneath the surface was intoxicating to him; he especially liked that during surgery, patients were generally anesthetized and therefore quiet. (He had always had a difficult time connecting with people.) Around this time, as he hit puberty, he also became interested in the uses of herbs, plants, and other tonics to manipulate the way the human body worked. He was uncomfortable in his own skin, and it soothed him to study the way chemicals interacted with the natural elements of the body.
As he got closer to his Offering, he began to specialize further into surgery and theoretical brewing of tonics and potions. The few other Healers in his training cohort had always found him a little strange, and seemed (to him) to be relieved that he wasn't interested in following their more people-oriented paths. By this time, Aravice Laurent's Court had been destroyed by a rogue Green and the Dark Haven had been established; despite requests from local Courts, Ilya had not presented himself at the Haven for an examination. He had always been very level--his Dark Jeweled passion largely presenting itself as single-minded focus--so no one pushed too hard. The pressure was constant, in consideration of his Sapphire, but the school had a very good record and a sterling reputation. As long as he caused no problems, he would be fine.
However, the particularly strange manifestation of his Healer traits soon began to turn that perception of him from positive to ... not. Ilya did not like people, and people generally did not like him. He desired to help others, like all Healers, but his idea of helping was pioneering new surgical techniques and experimenting with more effective brews. He preferred prophylaxis to the cure and had a horrendous bedside manner. Under increased scrutiny, he attempted to make himself serve as a Healer should. He tried to focus on improving his manners and pretending to be meek and mild, but he chafed at the bonds imposed upon him by trying to fit a model that wasn't his.
When he was twenty, about two months after his Gray Offering, his parents arranged his Virgin Night--or they tried to. They were ultimately unsuccessful: Ilya dosed the wine so that the dose of safframate the male intended to complete the rite would take would put him to sleep. Without any Craft influence, the drug was not detected by the male, and he consumed it unquestioningly. The interaction of Ilya's drugged wine with the safframate fogged the male's memory of the night, and Ilya was able to claim that his Virgin Night had been completed without having to actually do it. While he knew he was taking a risk with his future power, he believed his Gray Jewel would be more than enough to protect him from anyone who attempted to hurt him--and if he did end up losing it due to misadventure, he would be changed, but less changed than attempting to kill the male who was only intended to help him.
Two years after his Offering, he resigned the post he'd taken in Beldon Mor and tried to lose himself in the wilds of Chaillot.
It was difficult, especially for a sheltered 22-year-old. Food was scarce in Chaillot beneath the warring factions and behind the blockades, and his Dark Jewels made survival difficult to afford. He wrote back to his parents for money often, between inflation and scarcity, and they did what they could to help while keeping the business afloat. Still, times were lean. People took advantage of his naivete by overcharging him or underpaying him, so he became suspicious. They wanted things he couldn't give--healing during his moontimes, money, protection, kindness--so he became angry and closed-off. Surrounded by filth and discomfort, often thrown into situations outside of his control, he reacted by leaning harder into the things he could control, developing an obsessive need for cleanliness and routine where he had previously been at relative ease with squalor. He followed news of strange diseases and poisonings, spent a week in a drug den learning about recreational poisons, and ran whenever Courts looked at him too hard. For a summer season, he followed a trail of skirmishes and taught himself battlefield surgery.
Then, in 194 when he was 25, the civil war ended. Alois Oberonn came to power, and the noose on the Dark Jeweled began to tighten. Even sticking to landen areas was no longer enough to make him feel safe, and he had no knowledge of how to conceal his psychic scent. The Gray made him a figure of note, and the Chaillotan government wanted him under control. When the order for all Dark Jeweled to be collared was handed down from on high, he tried to play least-in-sight, but his prodigious luck was running out and he knew it. He wrote to his parents one more time. This time, he was asking for the money to run.
They arranged to send him to Dena Nehele, where Dark Jewels were welcomed. Specifically, they sent him to Caecian, where their cousins--the Aegles--lived. His cousin Menachem Aegle welcomed him with open arms, inviting him to get to know the Territory from which their family had come.
However, again, Ilya ran up against a Territory's culture. This time, it was because Healers were rare, much less Dark Jeweled Healers, and Dena Nehele had a desperate need. He was told to either get to work or leave. Unprepared to be on his own again after finally finding somewhere safe, he agreed to sign a contract with one of the Courts on offer and to teach seminars on surgery and poisons at the Conservatory. It would probably be good to be less reliant on the support of his family, he supposed.
The matter remained: which Court was he going to sign a contract with?
Show Us What You've Got
Character in Play:The evening of his Offering was hot and damp. The perils of Beldon Mor in the summer, he supposed, and fairly standard. It'd been hot and damp during his sisters' Offerings, too, though only Ludovine had come away from the Altar with a Jewel. His Caste had marked him early: he would someday wear the Darkest Jewel in his family, whether he wore the White or the Red at his Birthright. They just hadn't reckoned with
how Dark he would be, inevitably. The White was expected, not the Sapphire the Darkness handed out, and now his Descent would bring a Jewel no Lighter than the Red.
No matter what Ilya took away from the Darkness, it was going to mark him as even more dangerous; the letters from the Dark Haven would come more often, demanding his presence for examination and certification as harmless. He had no intention of answering those letters or attending those appointments unless he was directly commanded to go by the Territory Court, and even then it was iffy. His Jewels didn't make it easy to disappear unless one went among the landen, but he would still try. That would likely be evidence of his own instability, he supposed.
If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, or something like that.
His mother and father, on the opposite bench in the carriage, smiled at him when he looked across to them. Then his father tugged at his starched white collar and said, "So, son... your mother and I have been thinking that it might be best for you to... restrict your Descent."
"How do you mean," said Ilya, though he was sure he already knew. There was only one kind of effect one could have on one's Descent, as far as he knew. One could try to push further than Mother Night wanted, but one's success wasn't guaranteed. One could also try to limit themselves and remain at some higher level of Jewel than they were capable of. Ilya didn't think he was the sort who could stand to accept less than he could've had. He still felt the question had to be asked.
His father sighed. "You have great potential," said Katerin, "but I don't want to see you locked up in the Dark Haven for nothing more than being what Mother Night made for you. A single-step Descent has the chance of limiting the danger to you..."
"And to the people around me," Ilya interrupted. He tucked his arms around himself and stared out the carriage window. His father had a point. It would be better if the Dark Haven never had a reason to look twice at him, and a single rank Descent of Red would do a great deal to reassure the people around him. Red was still awful, but it was markedly better than the Gray or the Ebon Gray. However, it would also limit the good he could do. There was good that only he could do, with his mind and his power, and he knew it. Wasn't that worth it?
"That's not the only reason we want you to consider it." Katerin and Nataliya exchanged a glance. Ilya knew that glance well, so he braced himself. "It's already been hard enough to arrange your Virgin Night, Ilyushka, and every extra step into the Darkness makes it harder--"
Ilya frowned and hugged himself tighter.
This again? Why did it keep coming up? "I told you, I'll handle it myself. In my own time."
It was a stupid concern anyway. He could just do it himself with his fingers, couldn't he? Or a toy? That was how it was done with a female as the performant, wasn't it? He really, sincerely doubted that the process of fucking would actually mar his sense of self so much that he would Break his own Jewels.
This was a major disagreement between Ilya and his parents, and it had been since his seventeenth birthday. After three girls, they knew better than to spring it on anyone, but it was different for him especially. "Ilyushka," said Katerin, "be reasonable. It's not done that way for a reason."
"I am being reasonable," he said. "Outcomes get much worse for people put to their Virgin Night early. I'll have better results if I wait until I'm ready or if I have a part in arranging it, and--I don't want to think about this right now."
He did not slap his hands over his ears, but neither did his parents force the conversation.
"Well, consider it," sighed Nataliya. "But yes, you should be thinking about your Offering. I'm sure whatever Jewel you rise with is the precise one you're meant to have."
And that was where they left it.
Player Name: Reid
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