Teyud za-Zhalt

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Subject Line: Application | Name of Character IN WESTERN ORDER | Canon

♚ OOC
Name: Eric
Age: 31
Contact: overbringer
Character In-game: none

♛ IC
Name: Teyud za-Zhalt (assumed name). Deyak sa-Vowin (real name)
Canon: In the Courts of the Crimson Kings
Canon Point: Shortly before the events of the book
Age: 60 of your Earth Years.
Gender: Female
Species: Martian
Appearance: Could pass for a strange looking human. 7'2", Wirey and skinny as hell. "Aquiline features", large yellow eyes, auburn hair. Only obviously inhuman feature is nicitating membranes for keeping dust out of her eyes. Generally prefers long robes over shirt and trousers.

History/Background: Millions of years ago, aliens as mysterious as they were powerful terraformed Venus and Mars to be able to support life, then seeded them with life from Earth. 200,000 years ago, they came back and moved over some primitive humans as well. As Mars was a more hostile environment even WITH the terraforming, the new Martians received a bit of help: The bioscience necessary to reshape the life on Mars to suit their needs, and The Invisible Crown, an artifact that gave the wearer strange psychic powers. Using both of these, the Martians were able to forge a planetwide empire that lasted for thousands of years.

Fast forwards to the twentieth century. Due to a lack of fossil fuel and radioactive material, the Martians had never managed space travel. And so it was Earthlings that reached Mars first. They found a world that was slowly dying. The terraforming was failing, and the royal family had lost the invisible crown centuries ago leading to their power dwindling.

Teyud za-Zhalt (born Deyak sa-Vowin, but she changed it to help hide.) was the illegitimate daughter of the 225th emperor of the crimson dynasty, still the most powerful man on Mars. The dynasty had slipped enough, however, that his subordinates now sought to make sure he was the LAST Crimson King. If they found out he had a daughter, her life would have been very exciting and very short, so she was sent into hiding. She eked out a life as a humble mercenary far from the capital (Known on Earth as Olympus Mons, and on Mars as Dvor Il-Azadar, The City That Is A Mountain.).

In the year 2000, she got a job guarding an Earthling archaeological expedition out into the desert. That's the bulk of the book. She had a lot of adventures, fell in love with an Earthling, found the Invisible Crown, and ended up as the new emperor of Mars. Hooray!

Personality: The initial impression an Earthling might get on meeting Teyud is that she is distant, reserved, and that she talks like an android. Indeed, these are what must Earthlings think of most Martians (On the other hand, they see us as emotional, overbearing, and irrational). A big part is that her face is less mobile than normal. A small smile means a lot more to a Martian than to a Earthling. Their language, demotic, is also not a very expressive one. It does not lend itself well to emphatic language. Demotic doesn't even have any swear words. Insulting or complimenting people in Demotic takes effort.

There is a cold core of pragmatism to her. "Martian sensibleness" is fairly well known among Earthlings. If she has a tool at her disposal that is effective but morally repugnant by our standards (torture, biological weapons, hostage taking, weapons of mass destruction, etc.) and she thinks that using them would be effective, she won't hesitate to use them. The idea of hesitating out of concern for her enemies would be bizarre to her. She will generally assume that enemies will be working with the same state of mind.

The other side to Martian Sensibleness is that she won't keep fighting past the point of usefulness. She'll struggle with every tool she has as long as she thinks she can win. If she doesn't see any chance of victory, and does see a chance in survival through surrender or parley, she will immediately go for that. She's a professional soldier, after all. Soldiers who fight for a doomed cause don't have a high expectancy, after all. Indeed, it is not an uncommon thing on Mars for two armies of relatively equal strength to decide the battle by having their commanders duel or play a game of atanj (Martian Chess) to avoid unnecessary loss of life. When this happens, both sides almost always accept the result.

Underneath the grim sensibleness and brutal practicality is a very passionate woman, though it isn't very obvious at first. She falls in love quickly and shows incredible loyalty to those she chooses. It can even overcome her instinctive pragmatism. She makes multiple tactical blunders when attempting to protect her Earthling boyfriend from fates worse than death. She also has a surprising sense of humor that will poke it's head up unexpectedly in the most grave of situations. Expect very deadpan delivery of dry jokes as a reaction to the threat of death.

Teyud is very interested in Earth. She took the time to learn English and Russian (In this timeline, the Cold War never ended on Earth, so the USA and the USSR both have research bases set up on Mars.). The idea of an entire world that isn't slowly dying like her own is fascinating to her. On top of that, while most Martians find Earthlings startlingly ugly (to them, we look short and hairy, we are constantly dripping with sweat, and our facial expressions are grotesquely exaggerated. So, I guess we kind of look like Fantasy Dwarfs to them.). Teyud agrees that Earthlings look strange, but she generally doesn't find them ugly. When describing us, she uses words like "Rough Hewn", "Striking", or even "Passionate". She shows great interest in the Earthling protagonist's life on Earth, and indeed eventually falls in love with him.

She has a pretty pessimistic view of her own future. Before her adventures in the book begin, she does not see the possibility that she might someday claim her throne as likely, or indeed even possible. She sees her own future as one of just working small time jobs for the rest of her life until she loses a fight and dies or gets old and dies of other means. If she is particularly unlucky, the enemies of her father might find her and have her assassinated. Multiple times throughout the book she mentions that their current adventures as a nice diversion from the boredom of her regular life.

Skills/Abilities: Teyud is a Coercive of the Thoughtful Grace caste. A coercive is anyone who makes their living through violence, and can apply to bandits, soldiers, or police officers equally. In her case she is a mercenary. The Thoughtful Grace caste is the bloodline bred for thousands of years to be military officers. They have an instinctive sense for tactics, a natural talent for violence, above average physical abilities compared to other martians, and a voice that makes people want to listen to them. Teyud received additional training in all of these fields before being sent into exile. The end result is that she is a VERY dangerous lady.

On top of that, there are a few biological differences between Martians and Earthlings. They are:
- In times when resources like food and water are limited, Martians can enter a hibernative state at will, lowering energy intake until they need almost no food but spend all their time sleeping.
- Martian ears are pointed (think elf), and can move around to help with directional hearing (useful in Mars' relatively thin atmosphere) and to convey emotion.
- Martians have a transparent inner eyelid (nicitating membrane) that helps keep dust out of their eyes.
- Martians are comfortable at much lower temperatures than Earthlings, and require much less water to survive.
- Martians live about twice as long as Earthlings on average. Martians of the imperial bloodline (Teyud is half of that bloodline) can live even longer. With good medical care, Teyud could probably live for as long as four hundred years.

Magic Weapon: Robes of the Storm - A set of desert robes, similar to those worn by Bedouins. They can be activated to fill the area around them with a localized sand storm, obscuring the vision of everyone in the area. As the wearer grows in skill and power, they can exclude themselves and even their allies from the vision obscuring effect. At the very highest level of power, the wearer can direct the power of the robe into an intense enough blast as to actually hurt people. Imagine being blasted in the face by a giant sand blaster, if you will. As a weapon, it is not very effective against heavily armored targets, but extra effective against unarmored ones.

If you need an element attached to it, call it Wind/Earth, or just Wind. If you can come up with a more exciting name, I am all ears.
Carrier: If I can get something kind of weird, how about some kind of walking or even flying octopus. If that's too out there, then a falcon will be fine.

Sample: Here's one testdrive thread and here is another.