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[pummelgranite]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Lady
AGE: 30???
PLURK: somarysueme
RETURNING: Current Winry Player

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Persephone (Previously Laura Wilson)
CHARACTER AGE: 18
SERIES: The Wicked + The Divine
CHRONOLOGY: end of issue 22
CLASS: Anti-hero at least, or possibly even villain. See “reapp considerations”


HOUSING: No preference! She’ll probably just go live in the sewer like a ninja turtle anyway.

BACKGROUND: Every ninety years, twelve gods return as young people. They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are all dead. It's happening now. It's happening again.”

Or so goes our introductory blurb to “WicDiv.” In a world very, very much like our own (down to having much of the identical history and pop culture), there is one very extraordinary difference, commonly referred to as the “Recurrence”. During this two-year period, exactly twelve young people (think preteens to mid twenties) will receive what seems to be divine power and inspiration. These twelve will form a group that calls itself the Pantheon, and claim to be ancient gods living in extremely mortal flesh. They perform miracles, and drive the masses into frenzies with their words and art. Then, within two years, they will all be dead. Most will die violently. The 1920s saw them fan the flames of the jazz age. This time around, obviously, they are all fucking rock stars.

Like you might expect, not everyone feels the same way about the recurrence. Many scholars dispute anything “godly” about the Pantheon. Some doubt that the phenomenon even really happens (this is, after all, be the first Recurrence that will be publicly documented to such an extent). Others have believed that the Millennial generation is lacking so far as to not deserve the Recurrence.

Laura Wilson thinks all those people are morons who should shut up. She had full faith in the Pantheon before the first of them debuted. Even as young as a kid she was drawn to and inspired by the stories surrounding the Recurrence. She’s attended lectures and conventions for and by adults who may have even done their graduate work on Recurrence-related literature. In her mind, her destiny was always to be entangled with the Pantheon, whether she was one of the chosen few, or fated to just be their single most dedicated groupie, her faith is absolute.

When the Recurrence begins, her faith seems well-placed. Each concert she attends, she can feel the divinity of the Gods’ songs. As she follows and all-but-worships them, she feels like she is coming closer to divinity herself. But as one god after another is revealed, Laura begins to confront the truth that maybe she is just a normal teen girl.

And by “confront” I mean “not confront at all and get as deeply involved in divine melodrama as possible.” When Pantheon member Lucifer is framed for murder and left to rot in jail by the rest of them, it’s Laura who reaches out to her. But the attempted rescue goes wrong- badly. “Lucifer is very publicly executed and Laura is left clutching her headless corpse on international broadcast” badly.

After Lucifer’s death, Laura spirals into a traumatized depression. She does not commune with the gods, she pulls as far away from the fandom as she can. Just seeing Lucifer’s name is enough to make her sick with flashbacks.

It’s during this depression that she’s approached by Inanna, another member of the Pantheon that knew her (and was impressed!) back from the fandom before the Recurrence. Inanna, like Laura, suspects that Lucifer was set up. Laura’s position as an outside to the Pantheon, but very knowledgeable and connected in their following, puts her in a unique position to unravel whatever conspiracy ended Lucifer’s life. This new purpose, along with Inanna’s gentle patience, optimism, and love helps Laura start to come back to herself from her paralyzing grief over Lucifer’s death.

Just as Inanna finds all the pieces to confirm that the killer is none other than the keeper of the pantheon itself (Ananke: Goddess of Necessity (And Apparently Also Ritual Child Murder)), said goddess visits Laura to name her the Secret Thirteenth God, Persephone. Anake’s plan was to resurrect and re-murder Persephone all at once. But she’s interrupted by Inanna, and the confrontation leads to not just Inanna’s death, but the deaths of Laura’s entire family as well, thereby wiping out everyone she loves in one night.

Persephone retreats to the underground where she lays in near-catatonic grief for three months until she’s ready to take her bloody, bloody revenge on Ananke, thereby also taking out the only person who actually knew the truth of their situation. It’s fine, though, she was just being a lying ass about it anyway. Old people can’t be trusted.

PERSONALITY: Though she does not identify herself as “Larua Wilson,” any longer, you can’t talk about Persephone without talking about Laura first.

Laura was, primarily, a sort of Millennial Every Teen. She obsesses over pop stars and twitter followers. She fights with her parents for no particular reason. She thinks most baby boomers should probably shut up. She can absolutely be short sighted, selfish, and immature. At the same time, her faith in her generation and pseudo-religious poptimism are driven by ideals she is truly dedicated to, and backed up by courage and loyalty. She has a hard time seeing these things about herself, however. She thinks her life can only have meaning if it’s embroiled with the Pantheon, which leads to a lot of completely undeserved self-loathing.

Laura had always been drawn to the mythos of the Recurrence. But it’s not just spiritual faith (though that is a factor)- Laura has faith that her generation will rise up with the inspiration of the gods, and faith that the gods themselves have something important to offer. She has faith that Lucifer is innocent. Even when suffering from depression, Laura never becomes truly jaded or disillusioned.

But! This is not to say that she’s all heroic piety (or. Even slightly pious and heroic). Laura can absolutely be short sighted and selfish as anyone else. It is no secret from herself or anyone else that she wanted more than anything to be a member of the pantheon herself, and when the twelfth member is revealed to not be her she is devastated. Laura is way more interested in being famous and cool and inspiring for a few months than living to see twenty. And even if she’s not one of the Pantheon herself, she drops out of school so that she can further embroil herself in their affairs.

She’s also brave to the point of foolhardiness. Girl is seriously made of condensed YOLO and absolutely all about sneaking into jail to hang out with Lucifer. While the violence of Lucifer’s death traumatizes her, it obviously does not scare her away from the gods. There’s also something to be said here about a self-destructive (or at least self-disregarding) streak that has always been there, just waiting to be exacerbated by the trauma she suffers.

Because, at her core, she also has a lot of depression and self-loathing to work through. Up to her ascension and the murder of her family, Laura truly thinks she deserves any hard times that befall her, and that she’s totally worthless if she doesn’t achieve some arbitrary goal she’s set for herself. This too, of course, is made worse with trauma. As mentioned above, for a long time after Lucifer’s death, she simply withdraws into herself, unable to face the world at all.

As she spends time with the boundlessly supportive and kind Inanna, opens up to her parents, and has a lot of REALLY GOOD therapy, she begins to come out of the darkness she’d fallen into with Lucifer’s death. She starts to see the gods as real people in a horrible situation, rather than the distant heroes she’s worshipped. She comes to respect and even befriend her philosophical opposite.

That all goes right out the fucking window when she loses her family. Persephone considers herself a separate person from Laura-- moreso than anyone else we’ve seen in the Pantheon. To her, Laura Wilson is dead- fell deep enough into the darkness that something else entirely clawed its way back up.

Persephone inherited Laura’s bravery and steadfast faith, but that self-destructive and short-sightedness are now turned up to 11. She’s also now has wrathful, selfish and dishonest streaks to add to the mix. She might still hate herself, but she hates a lot of things now- just about everything, probably. In a world where no one gets what they deserve, why not just take whatever she wants? She sleeps with a guy in a serious monogamous relationship (while both Persephone and the guy were both in bad places, he is worried about how his SO will deal, and Persephone doesn’t seem terribly bothered by the homewrecking). She lies to her allies in storming Ananke’s stronghold: telling them it’s a rescue mission when her true goal is revenge. The rescue might be a necessary step in the process, but she has no trouble telling them “no one will die tonight,” when she’s already made up her mind about Ananke’s fate.

There’s still glimpses of the sweet, gutsy girl she used to be, but by and large the world is dealing with an angry, determined, deeply lost young with way more power than she knows how to deal with, and not a lot of time left to learn. When asked what the Pantheon is expected to do without their caretaker Ananke around to direct them, her answer is simply “whatever we want.”

Reapp considerations: Laura’s time in Mask or Menace the first time around wasn’t all that great. She had Inanna to keep her stable, but without the purpose of investigating Lucifer’s death she simply drifted, got clingier to him and disinterested in this world that should have been a really cool detour. (A HUGE pantheon, none of them with death sentences? Really honestly would have been a dream come true for a slightly less traumatized Laura.) The only good CR she made was with Lucifer, who is now gone.

As a result, when she comes back, she will feel the loss of Inanna and her own Lucifer keenly again, and come in with a chip on her shoulder against this whole setup. In other words? She may spend a little time in the villain zone, depending on how her arrival goes.


POWER:

Persephone, the Destroyer (canon powers): Super strength/speed/stamina/durability etc seem pretty standard to the Pantheon. Persephone is a brutal brawler- her own strength and durability seem above and beyond the rest of the pantheon, though she seems towards the back of the pack as far as speed goes. Her main weapon are vines that she summons from the earth. They can be used as whips, shields, tentacles, battering rams- at one point she makes a construct out of them the size of a multi-story building, other times we see them taking out walls easily.

As a Chthonic god, she also has an underworld affinity. This means she can travel straight through the earth very quickly (though not in fact instantly) using her vines. While she’s under the earth, both mundane and magical tracking of her will be much more difficult, and it’s implied that she just has a general overall Home Turf Advantage.

Finally, there’s her Voice, the song she can sing that allows others to experience a small piece of her divinity. Short story, when she sings, people lose their shit. No one will honestly disagree that it’s a beautiful song by a beautiful voice (though for a select few, that’s all it will be). For most people, it’s the most intensely awesome rock concert conceivable. Just. Fucking. Awesome. For many people, her meaning will be clear even though the lyrics are entirely in tongues- this is left mostly ambiguous in canon, but I infer that the themes are about grief, depression, but also hope, about living in hell, but still living. And with that, will feel like a huge hit of whatever shit they are most into. For people prone to hearing this sort of thing, there may be some loss of personal control in their reaction- crying, fainting, smashing objects, etc. I did a bit of a more practical how-to-play-with-this-ICly writeup over here that I’ll be converting into more of a game-focused info gathering/permission post if I get in.

Also she seems to have an infinite supply of pomegranates?

Enhanced Vines (porter power): building permanent structures out of vines, particularly when underground and using the roots. IE, I’d like her to be able to make a sweet underground lair/concert venue out of creepy roots n shit.

Decay (Porter power) ability to rapidly induce decay at by touch- infections, even gangrene to living tissue, weaken structures, rot wood, etc. As a limit on this one, let’s say she can spoil a glass of milk instantly, it would take 30 seconds of maintained contact and use of the power to kill a healthy human being, and several minutes of concentrated effort to bring down any kind of stable building, depending on supplies. It needs to be used intentionally, she’s not ACTUALLY a Shit Midas.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE: Test Drive!

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

[ The posters she had blown a month of stipend on producing and put up herself had read:

Persephone, Live At The Music Box
Tickets 15$ Presale, 18$ at the door
Special Discount to anyone with a valid death certificate

The place she pics for her debut show isn't big: she is, of course, the more underground type. Opening for someone else was out of the question; she wasn’t going to share the spotlight. She was a headliner, or she was nothing.

So exactly at 7:17 sharp, really, not that late at all, a girl with curly hair, adorable freckles, and some deeply troubled eyes strides her way onstage. ]


Hey, De Chima. I'm Persephone. Welcome to Hell.


[ And then she starts to sing. It's almost certainly like nothing anyone's heard before- rock music and verse without any backup besides the stomping of her foot against the stage. The lyrics are complete gibberish, tongues, but it is fucking awesome. Her voice is impossibly, inhumanly beautiful and powerful. For many of the audience even without sensible lyrics the profound sense of rage, defiance, grief, and hope shine through. For some- those prone to hear her Gospel, it may be even more than that.

She takes no breaks, no rest between sets. Not when a man up front doubles over, wailing and sobbing. Not when a woman collapses, shaking in her companion's arms. Not when the bartender turns around and puts his fist right through the mirror behind him. Not when she herself is openly weeping, tears of barely leashed rage splattering silently down on to the stage around her feet. Just relentless, heart wrenching song after song poured out without accompaniment.

Unless she's stopped, she'll sing like this for a full two hours, before wiping her eyes and taking quick advantage of the audience's stunned silence. ]

Thank you, uh- . . . thanks for listening to me. Drink some water if you're dehydrated, and tell your mum you love her if you get the chance.

Oh, shit. Also keep an eye out for my album coming to GrandCamp and myTunes September 9th.


FINAL NOTES: pomegranate dot gif