Cinaed

SKIN: Phoenix
NAME: Cinaed
LOOK: Afraid / Golden Eyes
ORIGIN: Martyr
===STATS===
HOT (Turn someone on, manipulate an NPC):  1
COLD (Shut someone down, hold steady): -1
VOLATILE (Lash out physically, run away): -1
Dark (Gaze into the Abyss): 2
=== SEX MOVE/DARKEST SELF=== 
SEX MOVE
When you have sex with someone, a
little of your Grace rubs off on them. They do not take the next Harm dealt to
them. However, they know your soul a little better, and gain a String on you.
DARKEST SELF
You have been used and made vulnerable too many times, and you
must get away -but not before taking away anyone’s reasons to follow you.
Destroy your relationships with anyone who cares about you, with anyone who
knows about you, and then just maybe you’ll be able to get away clean. You
escape your Darkest Self when someone lets you go, even though they care for
you.
===MOVES===
Grace of the Phoenix
When you gain your fourth harm, you
rise again. Roll with dark. On a 10-up, you rise from the dead with 0 harm.
Also choose one:
-      
You rise immediately 
-      
Mark an experience
-      
Give the person who dealt the fourth
harm the condition guilty
.
-      
On a 7- 9, your body spontaneously
bursts into flames, dealing harm to those near you, and you gain the condition drained
.
-      
On a miss see above, but instead of
the condition, trigger your Darkest Self.
Phoenix Tears
Your tears have the legendary healing properties of true
phoenixes. Roll with dark.On a 10 up, you may choose to either remove all Conditions,
or all harm, from one character. On a 7-9, you may heal one harm or remove one
Condition. This move cannot be done on yourself.
===BACKGROUND===
There was once a phoenix who loved a man.
Her love for him burned and burned and burned, burned enough
to call down the envy of the stars in heaven and the ire of the fires in
hell.   There is purity in flame, and her
love held no secrets, no motives, no lies. 
It was a love men would fight and die for.  It was a love most could not muster in a
thousand lifetimes.
I am looking for an inspiration,
and I think I found it in your heart
It was a love he had no use for.
It’s the kind of thing
you get when you’re not looking… it’s the kind of thing you had from the start.
His hands held no interest in her body and his eyes held no
interest in her heart.  His mind,
however, burned and burned and burned with thoughts of possession, thoughts of
power.  She was no lover to him but a
tool, a songbird, his succor, his treasure.  She was his.  For he was a greedy king, and his hunger was
poised to devour the world.   He was the
immortal king, the undying flame, propped up in his campaign of monstrous
cruelty by a woman who saw only the goodness that wasn’t there.  Her tears brought life to his dead body.  Her flames brought ruin to his foes. 
Put me on a ship that
is sinking… on a voyage to an untamed land….''
At every victory he would twist her wings until she sang so
sweetly for him; at every defeat he would shatter her hollow little bones.  Still, she loved him.  Still, she wept for him.  For phoenixes do not end, and neither do the
flames in their hearts.
Take away the freedoms
I wanted''
They can, however, destroy.
I understand….
There was one night when it was all too much; when her
dried-out eyes couldn’t muster another tear, when her broken throat couldn’t
trill out a single song.  When she lay
broken and frightened on the floor, unable to do anything but wait for his
hands to fall.  Untold years of meek
obedience, blind adoration, unfathomably cruel abuse had fanned the coals of
her heart and in that moment, when his hands were closest and the rage was
boiling in his eyes, when froth flecked his beard and his teeth gnashed, she
shattered.  She shattered, and all the
flames came roaring out.  In a single
glorious conflagration the phoenix died and rose from the ashes of her old
frightened self, powerful and perfect and beautiful, her flames fed by his
torn, crackling corpse.
Please, don’t take
your love away from me''
Spite and cruelty can be terrible beasts, however, and the
king had not lain idle all the years he turned her magic to his own ends.  With one final roar of defiance he stole her
fire, he tore out her pinions, he flung her down to earth in a plummeting comet
that sang a song of ruin and death.  He
had taken from her the very thing that made her mighty, and left her ruined and
bleeding on earth, a mere…fragile… mortal.
Put me inside flesh
that is dying
She did not understand mortality; it choked her, terrified
her. She could feel her body dying all around her and for a time she wandered
the earth mad and lost.  At times she
slept, and as the years slipped away and her undying fire fanned to life once
more, she regained at least a shadow of what she once was.
A ghost that wanders
without rest
She has awoken again, promethean flames burning brighter
behind her eyes than she’d known in her time as one of the frail creatures she
had once loved.   She watched… she
learned.  In time, she insinuated herself
into the foster care system and took great pains to ensure she was adopted out
by an appropriate family.  An artistic
family, warm and kind – though they could not match her flames, they yet
reminded her of what she was.  In time
she learned to love them as dearly as if they had raised her from an egg.   Singing, violin, dancing, friendship and
compassion – all these skills learned, or relearned, at their hands.
Buried by desires and
weakness''
She needed school for her own edification as much as she did
for appearances.  Before she was a wild
thing, a free thing, with no need of education or human values.   She ate dewdrops and barely bent the blades
of grass as she walked, lest she harmed it. 
But now?  She had to swallow the
coals of defeat, and learn to be the awkward, fumbling human she was trapped
within.  At least, for a time.
Because fire can lick through the smallest of cracks.  And a body of flesh can’t hold a legend
forever.
I understand….