#Seraphina the echidna

[gogocrazycocoa]

More Seraphina because she’s adorable!

[motheatenscarf]

Seraphina Actaeon

As brilliant as she was beautiful, Seraphina was a prodigy cut down in her prime.

Born to wealth and privilege, she was her mother’s sole apprentice and received a more thorough an education in Sith philosophy, alchemy, and history by the age of 15 than most of the sitting Dark Council members had received in their combined lifespans. 

A mind as keen and insightful as hers was not content to set itself upon the schemes and power-plays of her fellow Sith, however, as Seraphina examined the failing history of the Sith and began to question their supposed supremacy. This curiosity fed into her questions until a rebellious streak took shape, Seraphina no longer merely questioning but outright defying the many presumptions of what were expected of a Sith. 

Unfortunately for Seraphina, her power was not as quick to grow as her mind, and her defiance eventually cost her her life when she challenged her father and was struck down at the young age of 19. Her tragedy was avenged quickly when her father was killed moments later by her surviving sister, Eschatallia.

In spit of her short life, Seraphina’s bravery and defiance lived on in Eschatallia, whom she had shared all her doubts and convictions with. Those rebellious, heretical notions shared in hushed whispers in secret hiding places in their family’s estate were felt far and wide by the galaxy, becoming the foundation of Eschatallia’s views for reforming the Empire and eventually the moral standards by which The Alliance would conduct their operations.

Although she received no accolades in her life and had not even had the chance to set foot on Korriban to complete her trials before she was killed, Seraphina’s mother broke with tradition and gave her daughter a proper Sith burial regardless of her not having earned one in the eyes of the Sith she so loathed. 

She was buried in the Actaeon family tombs with her ancestors deep in the jungles of Dromund Kaas where she still resides over 12 years since her passing, receiving the occasional tribute from her mother and, when she can sneak home unnoticed, her still grieving sister.

[gogocrazycocoa]

Take one of my two planned christmas drawings! Didn’t turn out that good but it’s fine.

[motheatenscarf]

Lycaeon Soranus

The oldest son of Vespira Soranus and Eschaton Kallig, Lycaeon was raised with the expectation that he would one day take his mother’s place as head of the Soranus Assassins and Shadow Hand to their patron, Darth Vowrawn.

His ascension came much sooner than he’d anticipated, however, when he was forced to kill his parents to save his brother’s life.

Once able to choose his own path, the young Lord Soranus permitted his prodigal brother to continue to do as he pleased, though bearing the seed of resentment in his heart toward the twin he’d risked everything for while receiving nothing in return.

Twin daughters were soon born to Lycaeon and his wife, Echidna, with Echidna taking the younger Seraphina for her apprentice and Lycaeon raising the elder Eschatallia, named for the father he had slain.

Although Lycaeon tried to raise his own children as he wished his parents had raised him, his love for his brother slowly eroded into resentment and jealousy as he realized how easily happiness and fulfillment found Alcander and his chosen family. 

His resentment reached its peak shortly after the Sacking of Coruscant, where Lycaeon had nearly died rescuing his brother from a pair of Jedi assailants. While Lycaeon recovered from the injuries that had nearly crippled him on their family’s estate, Alcander went behind his brother’s back to create a secret alliance with the Jedi to ensure his only daughter Aerasuni a place among their ranks.

Betrayed after a lifetime of sacrificing everything for his brother, Lycaeon fought Alcander despite his injuries and was defeated. Before Alcander could deliver the killing blow, however, Lycaeon’s eldest daughter Eschatallia rescued him with a force scream so powerful it knocked Alcander off his footing, his body slamming into a wall so forcefully it killed him instantly.

Torn emotionally between gratitude, remorse, and resentment, Lycaeon’s relationship with his children grew tense after that fateful night. Pushing Eschatallia to her breaking point in her training, Lycaeon vowed that his daughter would not repeat his mistakes and sought to forge her into a weapon with no room for love or pity or remorse. He would not see her dedication to her sister repaid with treachery as his own love for Alcander had been.

Lycaeon’s plans backfired when Seraphina rebelled against his tyranny, defending the sister he had tormented with his expectations. Acting on instinct, Lycaeon struck down his youngest daughter in the heat of battle, not even having time to regret the mistake before Eschatallia retaliated.

As he lay dying, Lycaeon thought only of his failures, not only as a father, but as a brother and son, and hoped against reason to be reunited with his fallen family in death.

Unfortunately, Lycaeon was not permitted to return to the Force. As a renowned alchemist and practiced re-animator, Echidna bound his fading spirit to his dying body with branded runes and suppressed his will to obey her own.

Walking the galaxy in a haze of his half-life over a decade later, Lycaeon has served as the Wraith in the shadows behind Echidna’s rise to power. Unable to die or resist her commandments, he has single-handedly hunted down and exterminated what remains of the Soranus family’s famed assassins, bringing their bodies to Echidna so she might recreate the same ritual which bound Lycaeon’s will to her own. 

As punishment for destroying Echidna’s legacy in stealing her prodigious daughter’s life away, Lycaeon has been forced to destroy his own family’s legacy, turning his once proud lineage into an army of revenants for the new Empress.

Although Echidna has yet to send Lycaeon after their surviving daughter who still believes him to be dead, the rising tension between Echidna’s Empire and Eschatallia’s Alliance could mean it is only a matter of time before Lycaeon is forced to kill both of his children...

[motheatenscarf]

Day 23: Childhood

What was their childhood like? Who was their childhood best friend? What’s their best memory? Worst memory? What is their relationship with their parents?

Tallia is one of those fortunate people who was raised by both of her parents and thus had twice the opportunity for psychological scarring. 

The person her own age she was closest to was her twin sister, obviously, but Tallia really didn’t have any friends growing up. That was all part of Echidna’s plans. The only other person she was close with was her cousin, Aerasuni, and while Aerasuni was always sweet to her, even then Tallia was being raised to be completely obedient of the child. That didn’t even last long, since Echidna arranged for Aerasuni to disappear when Tallia was nine. All she had after that was her sister and their psychic bond, which I talked about at length in the segment on Tallia’s poor mental health.

She had quite a few good memories up until her uncle betrayed the family to save Aerasuni from Echidna’s manipulations but her best memory is probably any time she, Seraphina and Aerasuni were all together. They all had separate rooms in different wings of the estate but in summers when the weather was lighter and the skies were clearer, Alcander would set up a huge tent in the garden for them to camp in. It was perfectly safe, the gardens were walled with the rest of the estate and nothing bigger than a grasshopper ever made its way that far into the property, but they had fun pretending and stargazing.

Her worst memory in her life was the day Seraphina died, but she was an adult when that happened. So, the worst memory of her childhood goes to the day Aerasuni was taken away and how she was forced to kill Alcander when he nearly killed her father during his escape attempt. Given how Echidna had next to no interest in her and how Lycaeon was busy protecting Vowrawn with a war going on, Tallia spent most of her time outside of training and education with her uncle and cousin. Having Aerasuni taken away was bad enough, but when she found out her uncle had betrayed the family she was devastated, and even though she knew he was a traitor she felt horrendous guilt for years to come over killing him, even if it was in self defense.

Given that she killed his brother, Tallia’s relationship with her father was.... tense, to put it lightly. Even though she’d saved his life in doing so, Lycaeon never quite forgave her. He’d always had a temper and being Sith had never been one to shy away from a firm hand in discipline but after Alcander’s betrayal his mood swings became unpredictable and out of control- he took all his grief out on Tallia and Sera. Tallia naturally grew to resent him and regretted her choice to save him from her uncle. Things between them escalated from squabbles, to arguments, to fights, to one-sided brawls until they finally wound up in a duel when Seraphina got caught in the middle and was accidentally killed by Lycaeon’s fury. Tallia made her feelings about him clear when she finally bludgeoned him to death with the broken stub of a practice blade.

Her relationship with her mother, while complicated, wasn’t much better. 

When Echidna found Tallia in a bloody heap surrounded by her dead father and sister, sobbing uncontrollably and the most vulnerable she had ever been in all her life, she grabbed her by the arm, dragged her to a shuttle, and sent her to Nar Shadda without so much as a comforting word, only telling her “I will fix your mistakes.”

Echidna had stopped Lycaeon the one or two times it seemed like he might go to far and wind up killing the children in one of his rages, but she never stopped him from hurting them outright. Tallia knew Echidna had the power to control him but never understood why she didn’t. And although Echidna had always been distant during her childhood, her only interest in Tallia being her larger place in Echidna’s plans for establishing a legacy to leave her mark on the Empire, Tallia finally came to resent her mother when Lycaeon’s abuse inevitably crossed the line and resulted in Sera’s death. Tallia blamed Echidna, believing she could have stopped the whole thing from happening if she’d ever cared enough to protect her children or show the slightest interest in their wellbeing.  Echidna, of course, blamed Tallia for never knowing when to back down or bide her time and always pushing Lycaeon’s buttons to provoke him into a challenge. 

Even still, Tallia knows her mother saved her from the Inquisitors by covering for the fact that she had murdered a Lord of the Sith in claiming her revenge against Lycaeon. And Echidna, for all her flaws, knows Tallia is her only remaining heir and has gone to great lengths to protect her, from cashing in most of her favors to keep Tallia safe from the Inquisitors and getting her early admittance to Korriban to making the deal with Zakuul that she would arrange for the Empire’s surrender as Empress if they would only keep her daughter alive in carbonite. Tallia doesn’t see it, but Echidna does genuinely love her, in her own way. Hell, in her own twisted view she’s provided for Tallia as best she can be expected to in giving her the tools she would need to survive an Empire that would never show her mercy. She even has her moments of protectiveness and genuine longing for a closer relationship with Tallia, why else would she punish Lycaeon so horrendously by condemning him to an undead half life and then spare Tallia the pain of knowing that her father still existed in some form?

But at the end of the day, they’re Sith, and Tallia knows better than to expect her mother to show her any kind of love or comfort. She knows this, but she can’t help but lament the cold and clinical relationship she has with her and wishes things could have been different. Especially whens he sees mothers like Senya who sing to their children when they’re hurt, and sacrifice everything to save them from themselves.

[motheatenscarf]

Who wants to hear about what an awful person Echidna is?

So, I’ve talked about how Tallia and Seraphina were raised in isolation to facilitate their co-dependence and to make Tallia a better, more loyal dragon to her sister’s commands, right?

Well, that was always Echidna’s plan, but those weren’t always necessarily Lycaeon’s plans.

When Tallia was born, the Soranus family was still sworn to serve Darth Vowrawn. Since it didn’t seem like he was likely to fall out of favor with the Council anytime soon and since the Soranus family had already been serving him as his assassins and bodyguards for the better part of 30 years, it was just assumed that Tallia would be raised to protect him and his heirs like Lycaeon and Alcander had.

I mean, hell, their families were pretty interwoven at this point- Alcander, Tallia’s uncle, had married Vowrawn’s niece and had a child who was likely to become Vowrawn’s heir herself. And since that child, Aerasuni, was only a year younger than Tallia, Lycaeon and Alcander did their best to try and make sure that the naturally protective Tallia was deferential to Aerasuni since she’d obviously grow up to be her Shadow Hand.

So, Echidna sees this and thinks “Hmm... I’ve already spent a lot of time and energy trying to ensure that Sera only trusts Tallia and Tallia’s good at taking orders from her sister, but Aerasuni’s too much of an unknown factor. How do I remove this child from the equation?”

And she comes up with a solution!

Darth Vowrawn is always looking to get a leg up in the Empire. Wouldn’t he love to have the Emperor’s favor? What better way than to have his own flesh and blood be unquestioningly devoted to the Emperor as one of his Children. So, using her mother’s contacts on the Dark Council, Echidna arranged to have the Hand take Aerasuni initiated into the Emperor’s Children while making it seem like something Vowrawn would clearly want to be amenable to.

She didn’t expect that Alcander would wind up betraying their family to get Aerasuni out of the Empire and into Jedi protection, but either way, the girl was gone and her plans could resume so it didn’t especially matter to her. It actually wound up being surprisingly beneficial since Alcander’s betrayal made Lycaeon more paranoid than ever and she could keep the girls even more isolated than she had before.

Anyway, Echidna is a monster and tried to sell an eight year old Aerasuni into the Emperor’s thralldom just so she could have more psychological control over her daughters and it worked and neither Tallia nor Aerasuni knows the whole truth to this day and someone needs to stop her.

[motheatenscarf]

Day 25: Downtime & Hobbies

What does your OC do in their downtime? Do they drink, gamble, play cards? Visit bars, surf the holonet, go to performances? Read? Other stuff? What’s their favorite hobby and why?

Day 26: Skills & Talents

What non-combat skills does your OC have? What ‘crew skills’ do they have? Why? Are they something your crew does or do you consider it something your OC knows? Does your OC have any particular talents, such as singing or dancing? What skill/talent does your OC lack that they wish they had?

Lol, I don’t craft so she has zero actual crew skills in game.

In meta? Ehh. Tallia tries her damndest not to have enough spare time for hobbies or side interests. The less time she has to spend inside her own head, the better.

What little time she’s had in the past for non-Wrath business and now non-Commander business has been dedicated to ... let’s just call it militant philanthropy; things like founding The Broken Chain, training recruits, planning liberation strikes, things of the like. She really only has the one skill in her prowess as a warrior and she’s DAMN good at what she does.

She didn’t wind up like this on accident.

Echidna wanted Tallia to be the best right hand possible to Seraphina’s mastermind. She doesn’t have many non-combat skills because Echidna wanted Tallia to be completely reliant upon Seraphina. Lycaeon had to teach her a few things, since she was supposed to take over as head of the Soranus family, but that mostly meant learning to balance a checkbook with their finances, and how to train and deploy assassins. 

Even Tallia’s hobbies are combat related. Lycaeon didn’t want her distracted and Echidna was EXTREMELY controlling of her schedule and interests. Tallia had to learn how to ask for things by framing them in such a manner that they’d make her into a better warrior, like tricking Echidna into allowing her to learn to dance by saying it would help her add a unique aspect to her fighting style that would make her more difficult to anticipate.

Tallia’s sense of self revolves around how efficient she is as a killer for a reason. She didn’t have any other sense of identity beyond it for most of her life... she wasn’t ALLOWED to even try to find any sense of identity beyond that.

As a child, Lycaeon used to bring her to Coliseum bloodsport matches and Echidna had dragged her to more than a few operas - she’s, understandably, grown to hate both in the years since. As an adult with her own free time however, Tallia’s preferred to keep busy. She’s definitely an example of Chris Traeger’s wisdom that if she keeps busy and keeps moving, it’ll keep her from being alone with her thoughts and thus sinking into despair. So, Tallia doesn’t especially like hobbies that require her to be by herself- reading, craft projects, things of that nature.

Her only real hobby, as I mentioned, is dancing. Which she almost never does as a solo act outside of martial training. There are a lot of things she wishes she knew how to do, but she’s at kind of an impasse because she doesn’t want to teach herself and is too proud to ask someone to teach her. Thankfully, there are people who care about her who know how to coax her into learning and trying new things.

 For down time, Tallia and Vette would sometimes go out to the casinos/bars to meet up with some of Vette’s old friends, whom Tallia had taken a keen interest in and learned a great deal about twi’lek history and culture from them. She’s actually sponsored them on more than a few jobs towards reclaiming twi’lek artifacts and has maybe handed them a few blood stained relics or two she found when deposing of certain Darths and Lords of the Sith who happened to have them in their collections. 

Pargal’s something of a card shark and dejarik master, and he and Tallia usually go over briefings and reports over a game or two. Koth has also tried to convince her that cooking isn’t just for droids, and Senya’s not-so-subtly been sure to compose her new songs whenever Tallia is nearby and has been learning to read music sheets. Hell, even Aerasuni’s worked up from dragging her into the garden as a good place for light-side meditation to trying to teach her how to actually do something with her garden. Although Tallia insists that rooting around in the dirt is for boars.... she’s trying though, at least.

EDIT: I forgot to mention! She also raises varactyls and rehabilitates injured or mistreated predators before sending them back to the wild or to a safe habitat!! She’s done this with quite a few critters, most recently a few exoboars she rescued from Vaylin’s palace. So, kind of fitting with the theme of “reckless as fuckall” and “militant philanthropy.” 

Tallia actually has a low grade empathic power over specifically large predators which enables her to not outright control them, but communicate simple concepts telepathically, usually meaning she can easily convince them she is not a threat and that she is either one of them or there to help. Which probably says something unfortunate about her psychologically but whatever, she uses it to help them. She’s actually used a lot of her own money to rebuild the Coronet zoo and has personally donated a lot of the current inhabitants, since she can’t help but want to visit them.

[motheatenscarf]

Day 14: Limits

Do they dedicate themselves to a cause or ideal? Why do they dedicate themselves? Is it they would sacrifice everything for?  Almost everything? What wouldn’t they sacrifice? What lines will they never cross?

Tallia was raised to be the ultimate Dragon. It isn’t in her to dedicate herself to a cause or ideal or even a concept. Tallia dedicates herself to people. For those people, there’s nothing she wouldn’t do.

The hard part for her has been finding the right people to attach herself to- people who wouldn’t ask of her what she was uncomfortable with. Although her judgement has lapsed from time to time, allying with Tremel to survive the Academy, allying with the Emperor to take her revenge on Baras, these were largely instances of convenience rather than true loyalties Tallia felt attached to.

Thankfully, she’s been largely fortunate in her selection of more emotional attachments who don’t ask her to help them eat entire planets in a campaign of galactic genocide. Usually, they actually wind up having to ask her to tone her intensity down- not everyone who looks at Vette sideways or makes a snide comment under their breath about her being a twi’lek needs to have the life choked out of them slowly and painfully, Tallia (although it’s sweet that you want to). 

That’s not to say that people have certainly tried to force her attachment to them as her commander- Baras, Tremell, even the Sith Emperor. Unfortunately for them, Tallia was raised to be in deference to those she felt safe around, thanks to Echidna isolating her children so that Tallia was wholly reliant upon Seraphina for the only affection she received, returning that affection with undying loyalty.

Echidna’s upbringing of course never accounted for what would happen to Tallia if and when her sister died. As such, Tallia imprints heavily onto anyone who shows her the least bit of kindness. 

She’s naturally paranoid but easily won over by a combination of persistent displays of concern for her wellbeing and being shown any kind of vulnerability from those trying to earn her friendship.She needs to feel as though she can rely upon the people she lets in, and she needs to feel as though they trust her enough to let her in as well.

For a skilled manipulator, it’s all too easy to get one’s hooks into Tallia’s vulnerabilities. Something her mother has tried repeatedly to do ever since Seraphina’s death. Were it not for Vette and Jaesa, Echidna would have succeeded long ago.

The people Tallia’s most loyal to are a better conversation for a few days down the road in this meme, but the people who have most recently found themselves the beneficiaries of Tallia’s loyalty have been Senya, and by extension, Arcann.

I’ve mentioned before that Tallia’s relationship with Echidna is... complicated. She imprinted heavily onto Senya as a maternal presence and the dynamic seemed to fit- Senya’s children had forsaken her, Tallia’s mother had long since written her off as anything but a useful tool. The two had gotten close and Tallia was grateful to have someone to go to for advice when she needed it - until of course Senya was willing to throw everything on the line for her real son and left the Alliance to save its mortal enemy. 

If Tallia had pursued her own code of ethics, Arcann would have died for tearing her apart from her friends and loved ones for five years alone, let alone the war crimes he committed while she was frozen and after. But Tallia couldn’t betray Senya. So against reason, experience, and her own gut feeling, Tallia chose to save Arcann and has taken in a former enemy she planned to turn into a trophy on her wall until Senya begged her not to.

And all because Senya was nice to her. Tallia’s loyalty is a powerful and all consuming thing.