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Jun. 7th, 2020 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysWith the availability of a desktop laptop I've finally picked up Tyranny again, but have opted not to return to my last playthrough. It's a very lore-driven game, and the decisions and conversations are highly dependent on the player's understanding of the world and what they're trying to provoke within it, and I just do not remember enough of what was going on to be able to jump back into that with any kind of ease. Instead I'm taking things from the top! It means settling back into the setting properly and also allows me to tweak one or two choices with the benefit of having a more solid concept for the character I'm playing.
That character is Fatebinder Djoli: the last soul from a scorched village, raised among the Beasts, and finally captured and brought to serve as a vassal of the Archon of Justice, who shaped her into as loyal a subordinate of Kyros the Overlord as you could hope... except for the part where her single overarching goal is to find a way to get within striking range of this faceless unknown who cost her family twice over and tear out their throat. It is entirely personal.
Djoli is, at heart, a predator masquerading as a survivor. In some ways the seeds were planted young - her family worked as butchers and tanners, and she began using a bow as soon as her stubby little fingers were strong enough to string one. The penchant for lying came more from the cluster of siblings, and Djoli was very much the bratty baby sister for the few sweet years she spent among her first and blood-born family.
The village kept a wary peace with the Beast tribe that prowled the mountains; the matriarch of the Bounding Vipers scorned the feeble sport offered by domestic livestock and wide-eyed travellers, so the village leader endeavoured not to provoke hostilities in return. When an arrogant young beastman defied his Prima's authority and killed several goats, she reigned her own angry villagers back and left the matter to the Beasts; and perhaps this was why when a dangerous pack of wolves moved into the area during a hard winter, the tribe seemed to take particular pleasure in demolishing them. It wasn't a partnership, but it was an existence both parties could sustain.
If only the village leader had been similarly circumspect with her bitter protestations of Kyros' rule: the razing of a seditious settlement in the dead of winter was a night's work for the overlord's agents, but the dying took a little longer.
When the Vipers came cautiously sniffing about the smoking ruins of the blunt-claws' territory, Djoli was the last warm piece of meat remaining, curled in the half-collapsed shelter of the tannery. It was Prima Cold-Maw herself who snarled down those who would have suggested meat was all that was worth taking and instead claimed the human child, dumping her among the rest of her latest litter of broodcubs to thaw.
Life among the Bounding Vipers was no gentle Jungle Book tale. Though the society of the Beasts is far more complex than many condescending humans would credit the bear-like creatures, it is a distinctly inhuman one, and they had little interest in moulding themselves to suit their hairless adoptee's needs. Djoli learned to lie with heart and not just tongue; to mimic and adapt and learn the mechanisms by which she could earn respect amongst a tribe of hulking predators driven by kill-fight-rut. Wit and creativity might be received with indulgence; but dutifully guarding a litter, pulling down a boar, and bloodying her hand striking at the bared-fang face of a challenging male was what forged her the lasting place that allowed for such indulgence. From the crushed remains of ignorant brattiness sprang a steelier defiance.
There was comfort, too. Cold nights curled close together in rank warmth, fingers grooming coarse fur, the howling satisfaction of completed rites, the simple joy of growling and wrestling with new cubs. A focus on the here and now that dulled the need to think too hard about what had happened before. This was enough. This was family.
Time passed. Hard winters became the norm. The tribe was not over-large to begin with, and their numbers fell with every turn of the seasons. When Cold-Maw lost her leadership to a younger beastwoman, so too the Vipers lose some of their reservations about preying on human lands - but the Disfavored would have come for them anyway. The proudest branch of Kyros' army had no respect for Beasts and preferred to see them eradicated from the conquered lands, and they dispatched the weakened tribe without much issue. They also captured the oddity that was a human living among these creatures as if one of them, but this time Djoli was dumped into a cage rather than a home.
The time spent as a curiosity of nobles was the closest Djoli came to despair. When the Tunon, the Archon of Justice came to view the northern wild child, it's hard to say what he saw in her; certainly she was not at the peak of her wit, passion, or health. He asked her thoughts on what she had witnessed among the court; she answered with disinterested, vicious honesty. Perhaps he thought that outsider's view useful, an eye that would see what others overlooked as the norm. Perhaps he thought there was merit in having someone who understood the Beasts, a species that rarely bowed to the overlord but sometimes stood against them. Perhaps he simply thought her an interesting challenge that would raise his own status. In any case, when he claimed her as one of his vassals - to be trained as a Fatebinder, pledged to the keeping of Kyros' laws among their armies - Djoli did not resist. Anything was better than a cage.
Among the other Fatebinders-to-be, Djoli soon earned herself a reputation for unpredictability and violent temper that was not quite accurate to her nature - with Beasts it was simply a given that a challenge was to be met with the immediacy of your strength. She remained a quick learner, though, and soon realised that once again she would have to reshape her nature if she wanted to stay a hunter in this different landscape. Maybe a leopard can't change its spots, but a leopard that refuses to change its tactics when hunting crocodiles instead of antelopes is a short-lived leopard. Here, wit and creativity were respected - sometimes, in small, loyal measure. It pleased Tunon to see her tamed but not broken, so she learned to demonstrate respect and use polite words, but never to become meek or grovelling. She voiced appropriate ambition. She made harsh judgements where it seemed fitting. She did not seek friends among the other Fatebinders.
Unhappiness was still rooted deep within her, a fracture unhealing. Unlike the Bounding Vipers, the Court of Tunon was no home and would never become one. There was no forgetting her losses, nor who was responsible for both. The armies of Kyros continued to raze seditious villages; they continued to slaughter and enslave the Beasts. When Beasts lost their kith to a challenger, they either submitted to a stronger power or they raged. Djoli chose rage. While they thought her a survivor, doing what was necessary to adapt to a new life, she began to lay her snares for the earnest hunt.
*
Spoilers here for: companion names and small details.
Most of the backgrounds suggested by Tyranny are quite fun, but the "hunter" backstory offered a mix of motivations I couldn't turn down: not just an early link to one of the major factions you have to deal with, but an intimate connection to the one sentient non-human race in the setting. On a blind-play through the game, it's useful to have such a firm guide on what opinions and leanings my character might have. Most importantly, it gives me an ambition and a chosen method of seeing it through!
It's a little bit having it cake and eating it too, insofar as Djoli is anti-Kyros deep down and so will sometimes show mercy where she feels it justifiable to the forces desperately struggling against the overlord's rule. She sees the clearest path to killing Kyros to be from within, however, so also regularly acts under that facade of loyalty. She seeks what will gain her glory, what will make her a good Fatebinder (a good Fatebinder like they wanted), what will somehow elevate her high enough to do what none have managed before. She has no expectations of surviving a strike on Kyros; she is also aware that there is every chance her goal is truly impossible. Maybe she'll have to settle for killing Tunon instead. It would be something.
Of course there are other feelings and grudges and hurts too, muddying the waters of her vision. Kyros is distant and unknowable; the Disfavored she must deal with regularly. Bias is not desirable in a Fatebinder, but more than once she slips. Of her companions, she has the rockiest relationship with Barik, devoted soldier of the Disfavored. The Scarlet Chorus, on the other hand, don't always delight her with their backstabbing and scrabbling disrespect, but there is a comforting familiarity to some aspects of their hierarchy and values - as evidenced by the fact they're the one faction open to having Beasts among their number. She and Verse, the grinning violence from the Chorus, form a peaceable partnership quickly.
Of the outsiders, Kills-in-Shadow is, unsurprisingly, the companion to whom Djoli feels the greatest kinship. They share a loss and a drive for vengeance. I love the descriptions on her Wiki page, for the record: "Kills-in-Shadow is intelligent but uneducated, hulking but agile, and an unapologetic killer but not evil. She’s a highly evolved predator, forever marked by the magic of Haven’s dark forests–primarily driven by instinct and an insatiable lust for violence. She is also boastful, daring, smart, easily excited, and has a quirky sense of humor. [...] If most Beastwomen are hyenas, Kills-in-Shadow is a lone lioness–proud, regal, and wholly deadly." To Djoli, she is a taste of home that has been denied her for years - and perhaps she is something similar to the last Shadowhunter.
Lantry is difficult for Djoli to respect - he has his uses, but he's often cowardly and very much the condescending scholar towards the Beasts. Eb, on the other hand, she came to like fairly quickly, though the road to true friendship is greatly stilted by the long years of fighting on opposite sides of the war. Neither she particularly trusts, but it is nonetheless valuable to have allies outside the overlord's factions, given her overall goals.
And the early events of the game have brought that goal in far closer reach than ever before. This, perhaps, is the trail she has been searching for over the past few years, and it is with prickling eagerness and wariness that she sets her nose to it.
That character is Fatebinder Djoli: the last soul from a scorched village, raised among the Beasts, and finally captured and brought to serve as a vassal of the Archon of Justice, who shaped her into as loyal a subordinate of Kyros the Overlord as you could hope... except for the part where her single overarching goal is to find a way to get within striking range of this faceless unknown who cost her family twice over and tear out their throat. It is entirely personal.
Djoli is, at heart, a predator masquerading as a survivor. In some ways the seeds were planted young - her family worked as butchers and tanners, and she began using a bow as soon as her stubby little fingers were strong enough to string one. The penchant for lying came more from the cluster of siblings, and Djoli was very much the bratty baby sister for the few sweet years she spent among her first and blood-born family.
The village kept a wary peace with the Beast tribe that prowled the mountains; the matriarch of the Bounding Vipers scorned the feeble sport offered by domestic livestock and wide-eyed travellers, so the village leader endeavoured not to provoke hostilities in return. When an arrogant young beastman defied his Prima's authority and killed several goats, she reigned her own angry villagers back and left the matter to the Beasts; and perhaps this was why when a dangerous pack of wolves moved into the area during a hard winter, the tribe seemed to take particular pleasure in demolishing them. It wasn't a partnership, but it was an existence both parties could sustain.
If only the village leader had been similarly circumspect with her bitter protestations of Kyros' rule: the razing of a seditious settlement in the dead of winter was a night's work for the overlord's agents, but the dying took a little longer.
When the Vipers came cautiously sniffing about the smoking ruins of the blunt-claws' territory, Djoli was the last warm piece of meat remaining, curled in the half-collapsed shelter of the tannery. It was Prima Cold-Maw herself who snarled down those who would have suggested meat was all that was worth taking and instead claimed the human child, dumping her among the rest of her latest litter of broodcubs to thaw.
Life among the Bounding Vipers was no gentle Jungle Book tale. Though the society of the Beasts is far more complex than many condescending humans would credit the bear-like creatures, it is a distinctly inhuman one, and they had little interest in moulding themselves to suit their hairless adoptee's needs. Djoli learned to lie with heart and not just tongue; to mimic and adapt and learn the mechanisms by which she could earn respect amongst a tribe of hulking predators driven by kill-fight-rut. Wit and creativity might be received with indulgence; but dutifully guarding a litter, pulling down a boar, and bloodying her hand striking at the bared-fang face of a challenging male was what forged her the lasting place that allowed for such indulgence. From the crushed remains of ignorant brattiness sprang a steelier defiance.
There was comfort, too. Cold nights curled close together in rank warmth, fingers grooming coarse fur, the howling satisfaction of completed rites, the simple joy of growling and wrestling with new cubs. A focus on the here and now that dulled the need to think too hard about what had happened before. This was enough. This was family.
Time passed. Hard winters became the norm. The tribe was not over-large to begin with, and their numbers fell with every turn of the seasons. When Cold-Maw lost her leadership to a younger beastwoman, so too the Vipers lose some of their reservations about preying on human lands - but the Disfavored would have come for them anyway. The proudest branch of Kyros' army had no respect for Beasts and preferred to see them eradicated from the conquered lands, and they dispatched the weakened tribe without much issue. They also captured the oddity that was a human living among these creatures as if one of them, but this time Djoli was dumped into a cage rather than a home.
The time spent as a curiosity of nobles was the closest Djoli came to despair. When the Tunon, the Archon of Justice came to view the northern wild child, it's hard to say what he saw in her; certainly she was not at the peak of her wit, passion, or health. He asked her thoughts on what she had witnessed among the court; she answered with disinterested, vicious honesty. Perhaps he thought that outsider's view useful, an eye that would see what others overlooked as the norm. Perhaps he thought there was merit in having someone who understood the Beasts, a species that rarely bowed to the overlord but sometimes stood against them. Perhaps he simply thought her an interesting challenge that would raise his own status. In any case, when he claimed her as one of his vassals - to be trained as a Fatebinder, pledged to the keeping of Kyros' laws among their armies - Djoli did not resist. Anything was better than a cage.
Among the other Fatebinders-to-be, Djoli soon earned herself a reputation for unpredictability and violent temper that was not quite accurate to her nature - with Beasts it was simply a given that a challenge was to be met with the immediacy of your strength. She remained a quick learner, though, and soon realised that once again she would have to reshape her nature if she wanted to stay a hunter in this different landscape. Maybe a leopard can't change its spots, but a leopard that refuses to change its tactics when hunting crocodiles instead of antelopes is a short-lived leopard. Here, wit and creativity were respected - sometimes, in small, loyal measure. It pleased Tunon to see her tamed but not broken, so she learned to demonstrate respect and use polite words, but never to become meek or grovelling. She voiced appropriate ambition. She made harsh judgements where it seemed fitting. She did not seek friends among the other Fatebinders.
Unhappiness was still rooted deep within her, a fracture unhealing. Unlike the Bounding Vipers, the Court of Tunon was no home and would never become one. There was no forgetting her losses, nor who was responsible for both. The armies of Kyros continued to raze seditious villages; they continued to slaughter and enslave the Beasts. When Beasts lost their kith to a challenger, they either submitted to a stronger power or they raged. Djoli chose rage. While they thought her a survivor, doing what was necessary to adapt to a new life, she began to lay her snares for the earnest hunt.
*
Spoilers here for: companion names and small details.
Most of the backgrounds suggested by Tyranny are quite fun, but the "hunter" backstory offered a mix of motivations I couldn't turn down: not just an early link to one of the major factions you have to deal with, but an intimate connection to the one sentient non-human race in the setting. On a blind-play through the game, it's useful to have such a firm guide on what opinions and leanings my character might have. Most importantly, it gives me an ambition and a chosen method of seeing it through!
It's a little bit having it cake and eating it too, insofar as Djoli is anti-Kyros deep down and so will sometimes show mercy where she feels it justifiable to the forces desperately struggling against the overlord's rule. She sees the clearest path to killing Kyros to be from within, however, so also regularly acts under that facade of loyalty. She seeks what will gain her glory, what will make her a good Fatebinder (a good Fatebinder like they wanted), what will somehow elevate her high enough to do what none have managed before. She has no expectations of surviving a strike on Kyros; she is also aware that there is every chance her goal is truly impossible. Maybe she'll have to settle for killing Tunon instead. It would be something.
Of course there are other feelings and grudges and hurts too, muddying the waters of her vision. Kyros is distant and unknowable; the Disfavored she must deal with regularly. Bias is not desirable in a Fatebinder, but more than once she slips. Of her companions, she has the rockiest relationship with Barik, devoted soldier of the Disfavored. The Scarlet Chorus, on the other hand, don't always delight her with their backstabbing and scrabbling disrespect, but there is a comforting familiarity to some aspects of their hierarchy and values - as evidenced by the fact they're the one faction open to having Beasts among their number. She and Verse, the grinning violence from the Chorus, form a peaceable partnership quickly.
Of the outsiders, Kills-in-Shadow is, unsurprisingly, the companion to whom Djoli feels the greatest kinship. They share a loss and a drive for vengeance. I love the descriptions on her Wiki page, for the record: "Kills-in-Shadow is intelligent but uneducated, hulking but agile, and an unapologetic killer but not evil. She’s a highly evolved predator, forever marked by the magic of Haven’s dark forests–primarily driven by instinct and an insatiable lust for violence. She is also boastful, daring, smart, easily excited, and has a quirky sense of humor. [...] If most Beastwomen are hyenas, Kills-in-Shadow is a lone lioness–proud, regal, and wholly deadly." To Djoli, she is a taste of home that has been denied her for years - and perhaps she is something similar to the last Shadowhunter.
Lantry is difficult for Djoli to respect - he has his uses, but he's often cowardly and very much the condescending scholar towards the Beasts. Eb, on the other hand, she came to like fairly quickly, though the road to true friendship is greatly stilted by the long years of fighting on opposite sides of the war. Neither she particularly trusts, but it is nonetheless valuable to have allies outside the overlord's factions, given her overall goals.
And the early events of the game have brought that goal in far closer reach than ever before. This, perhaps, is the trail she has been searching for over the past few years, and it is with prickling eagerness and wariness that she sets her nose to it.
