Daciana Dusk

**Daciana Dusk** is one of the four central protagonists of **A Midnight Tale**. She makes her debut in Chapter 1, **A Moment Of Respite**.

Her weapon of choice is **The Silver Quarter**. Her symbol is a theater mask with wolf ears, that's half silver, half black, half smiling, half frowning. Half the time, her aura color is silver with grey lines forming as an aftertrail if she moves fast. The other time the colors are inverted.

## Appearance

She’s best described as an unusually short girl. She’s unusual not because of her size though, but because of the reason why she’s short. Simply put, her hands and feet share the same length, meaning she takes nearly 3 steps for every 2 steps most other people do. As an result, she learned to run on all fours in order to keep up with other people that run “the old fashioned way”, as she puts it.

### **Hunter Outfit**

Her combat outfit consists of a silver button up blouse with a pair of fitted brown pants, held together with a thick leather belt with a silver square buckle. She wairs a matching pair of dark purple gloves and boots with grey fur on the rims, as well as a dark grey stole around her neck.

### **Casual Outfit**

Her caual outfit consists of a white shirt covered by a boat neck grey sweater with a pair of red jeanes. She discards the gloves but keeps the boots, while wearing a silver fouldar around her neck.

## Personality

Despite her condition, there are a couple of common personality traits that are always there regardless of the time of day. She's always outgoing and competitive, making friends fast with anyone and everyone, but also loosing her temper just as fast.

Her condition, however, makes it hard for her to focus on anything for long periods of time, and makes her wonder how dreaming is like, which results in her frequently asking others about them.

If she is awake, she prefers closed spaces, taking things slow and tries to be polite to everyone…but frequently barks back with a sarcastic retort. If asleep, she rambles when she talks, prefers the fresh air, can’t stand still and playfully flirts with anyone, while punching first when angered.

## Weapons and Abilities

### **Weapon**

Her weapon of choice is The Silver Quarter. It is a two handed, double edged, short sword with a silver handle(Blade is about 3 times the size of the handle). The blade can split up in order to become a sharp tuning fork. As an aura mage, she can amplify the sounds emanating from the blade in order to create projectiles, shockwaves and shields when in fork mode, or add splash and shatter damage to her attacks when in sword mode. She activates her stronger "spells" by flicking the blade.

### **Semblance**

Her semblance is called Phases. It is a relatively simple semblance…although due to her unique condition she might be the only person that possesses it. When awake, she has exponentially increased aura regeneration as well as proficiency with aura techniques, but the user’s reactions are halved. When asleep, it exponentially increases physical capabilities as well as reaction speed, but aura regeneration is halved; Mastery allows the user to temporary access the other phase for a short time at the cost of aura.

### **Combat**

Like a hunter going after an unknown prey. She is proficient with using the sword in both hands and with different grips and will not hesitate to switch stances and main hands in order to catch opponents off guard. When awake she will try to fight opponent’s from ranged and switch phases in melee as a trump card in order to catch opponents of guard with the increased strength and speed. When asleep she will gauge out opponents with hit and run melee tactics on all fours (well…3 since she is usually holding the blade in one hand) and will switch phases to disengage out of a ruff spot with shock waves.

## Backstory

Suffering at a very early age from a condition that gave her a never ending case of insomnia. In simple terms, her mind refused to rest, and much like a muscle getting torn while running, a mind that wasn’t allowed to rest would inevitably break...except unlike a damaged muscle, the mind cannot put itself back together.

Doctors have been forced to unlock her aura earlier than necessary in hopes that it could supply her with the energy she was losing from lack of sleep. It worked…but not how they expected. They expected that instead of sleeping, her body would slow down at night as her aura would start depleting itself in order to supply her with "sleep".

What actually happened was that if she was asleep, her personality would do a 180 as a side of her brain would "shut down" while another would become dominant, creating 2 polarizing personalities that inhabited the same body. However, despite the differences between the two personalities, the choices, likes and dislikes where shared by both sides.

## Trivia

* Personalities F.A.Q:
	+ How does her second personality work? The easiest way to view the two personalities is like this. Say you have some spare cash in your pocket and feel the need to eat something salty and something sweet, but only have money for one. If she where awake, she would have chosen something salty and vice versa. Regardless of the time of day her goals are the same, she just takes a different route to pursue them depending on her…mood.
	+ Are her personalities timed and can only appear whe it’s night and day? No, her asleep side can appear during the day and vice versa, just like a human can stay awake at night or take naps during the day, with the appropriate grogginess to follow when she goes back to the side that should be on.
	+ Can you force her to sleep with a knock on the head? She cannot be knocked out…not in the traditional sense.  She can become to exhausted to move, but she will still be awake and aware; the day she sleeps is the day she dies. As a side note, she can be knocked from awake to asleep and shocked from asleep to awake.
	+ Are her semblance and personalities conected? No, Using her semblance in order to switch phases does NOT also switch personality, although it does invert her aura colors so you know which is currently active.
	+ Are there any noticeable side effect to her condition? She eats on average somewhere between 2 and 3 people, although it’s hard to notice since she spaces it over the course of the day. She also finds it imposible to meditate, even in her calmer, awake state.
	+ Does she even blink? I don’t see why not, eyes need to be moisturized and all that.
* She is based on Riluri from “Planeta cu doi Sori” and the werewolf mythos as a whole:
	+ Her outfit colors are based on the gray wolf, arguably the most known kind.
	+ Personality is loosly based on a wolfs pack instincts.
	+ Her sound motif comes from the wolfs howl, which sometimes signals bad omens.
	+ The silver aspect of her aura and weapon is based on the silver bullet myth, which was originally one of the few ways to kill a werewolf.
	+ Her semblance, weapon name and symbol ties to the moons phases;
* Her full name is Daciana-Maria Rochelle Dusk, but she tries really hard to keep that fact a secret, mostly out of embarrassment.