Jarjammed Application

[justbeclaws]

ZHOSMA SHEELE / THE DISCIPLE
SKALD of BLOOD


PLAYER INFO:
Name: Cygna
Preferred pronoun: she/her
Preferred means of contact: AIM [Cygnahime]
Any other characters currently in-game? Yuna

CHARACTER INFO
Name: Zhosma Sheele/The Disciple
Gender: Female
Source: Homestuck
Canon point: Everything is horrible forever and has been horrible forever for about seven sweeps now. (Seven sweeps after the execution of the Sufferer.)
Age: 18 sweeps / 40 years
Colour: #416600
Chumhandle: hieraticHeretic

History: Zhosma was born into the Alternian lower-middle-class. Ironically, her comparative unimportance allowed her a great deal of freedom and, lacking psychic powers, she was able to grow up without coming to the attention of the higher-blooded adult authorities. Of course, she wasn't protected by (or from) them either. Almost as soon as she was independently mobile, she and her lusus took to the woods, and later to the roads, traveling from town to town and trading meat and animal skins for the luxuries of civilization. She never stayed in any town for long, not after the third dim season when she was five. There were highbloods who thought it was funny to burn lowblood apartments down and place bets on who would find somewhere to hide before sunup. In the wilderness, there was nothing she couldn't fight, and she could make her own terms for dealing with other trolls. She encountered another group of nomadic trolls briefly, who taught her to make horn jewelry and songs, and she began trading in those as well. It was a happy life, or so she considered it by comparison to the other choices she saw around her. She thought that she was lucky to have made it so far with so few scars.

Then one of her visits to a town market square coincided with that of a redblooded mutant, and everything changed. Signless spoke about a better world, a world in which everyone could be happy, a world in which she wouldn't have to thank her sign for letting her choose between company and safety. When he spoke, she listened, and then she stayed around to argue with him about the finer points of his sermon. When he moved on, she went with him. In time, Zhosma, who had never had an adult name of her own before, came to be called the Disciple.

It couldn't last, though for a while their little family believed it could. They were captured, Signless and Zhosma condemned to death, Psiioniic and Dolorosa to worse. For reasons Zhosma never understood, the E%ecutor stayed his hand before killing her, and she fled, instinct overriding devotion. She never saw either the Psiioniic or the Dolorosa again. Taking refuge in the wilderness of her youth, she began to record the teachings of the Signless, obsessively painting the walls with every word of his sermons, writing them down on paper stolen from nearby villages and passing them along to the few surviving followers.

Personality: Zhosma is at heart a friendly and outgoing person, albeit with a harsh edge common to most trolls. She truly believes in Signless's philosophy of goodwill and tries to live by it as much as she can. She likes laughing and joking with her friends. She's fond of wordpurrrrlay *wordplay and can keep up in a game of wits far better than her quasi-feral appearance suggests. She is also very physically affectionate with people she considers friends.

That said, she is a troll and used to living wild. She's comfortable with violence; though she tries not to resort to lethal force in conflicts with other people, she doesn't try as hard as some. She's also carrying a heavy load of grief and survivor's guilt that makes her less friendly than she would otherwise be.
Abilities & physical limitations: Strong, fast, and tough even for a troll, but not supernaturally so. No other powers or limitations.
Appearance: One of the two panels she's in in canon. She's a short troll, tightly muscled, starting to edge toward middle age, though she still looks physically younger than a forty-year-old human.
Notable AU differences from canon, if applicable: N/A

Strife Specibus: Clawkind
Prototyping: A book of Signless's sermons. (Imps that have book-like mouths.)
Title: Skald of Blood
In-game abilities: As the Skald of Blood, Zhosma has a talent for touching the emotions of others through storytelling or poetry. When translated to game powers, this gives her a kind of projective empathy. She can use this to inspire courage (and greater combat ability, in a game-mechanics sense) in allies, fear (and reduced combat stats) in foes, concentration on one goal, distraction from it, or possibly calming enemies as long as no one is directly in combat with them. At very high levels, this might even give her the ability to cause illusions with the right evocative language in the right place.
Planet: Land of Ash and Bows. The land alternates between gently rolling rowan forests and hillier ground, on which are the cave entrances to the network of tunnels below the earth. Ribbons and other furbelows bedeck the trees, the caves, and the tails of the ocelot consorts that inhabit both. Unfortunately, the echoing howls of the Denizen Fenrir disturb the peace, as do the other sounds -- every word spoken in the forest echoes there, fainter and fainter but never quite disappearing, forever. The ocelots have been driven into the tunnels by the distraction, a fact which bothers them because without the regular small fires they set in the forest, mast is building up, and any fire could easily turn into a planet-wide conflagration.

RP Sample: [Excerpt from Acts of the Signless, initial draft]

AND when the waxing of the green moon and the waning of the pink moon were equal for the third time in the dim season, the Signless and others with him came to a town which he had not before visited, nor was there any among his following who could go to one among the townspeople and say unto them, I am come with a troll who says what some may not wish to hear, is there a safe place where he may speak and take no harm? For they were not yet so many as to come into even the smallest of towns and speak before all if there ruled there one who would strike at the Signless where he stood, though he spoke not of violence against them.

But in this town no one was known to them and word of them had not spread, so there was no one who might greet them and tell them how it was in the town, whether it was good or bad for them there. Signless knew this, but he was not afraid, even though he should have been! and he said to his people, I will go myself into the town and see how it is there, and do you remain outside. At this many who were with him, who had not known him long, were surprised that he would hazard himself, and those who were craven in their hearts were relieved that they would not be called to go into such unknown danger, but those who had known him long and with courage were furrious worried most deeply for his safety.

We have spoken before of your tendency to take unnecessary risks, the Dolorosa said unto him, and it was so. Many many, MANY, does he neverr learrn? times before had the Signless been of bolder mind than those who cared for him, and dispute had come about, whether it was just to ask another to take a greater risk than he did. But in this the Signless did not heed his lusus, insisting that the risk must be taken.

The cause is your cause, and you are the cause; it is you, the Psiioniic said because hes the smarrt one when it was clear that the Dolorosa's words had not swayed the Signless from his course. To this the Signless rejoined that as all trolls were in themselves equal, how could he remove himself from danger on account of importance drawn from blood without showing himself the worst of all hypocrites? This was an argument he often advanced when his own importance was brought home to him, because he doesnt believe it urrgh stupid dumb for he resisted all who would call him greater than others, even as he resisted all who would call themselves so.

When the Signless had so answered two of his good companions and true, who spoke with the voices of many, he turned to answer also the Disciple in whatever argument she might put forth against his going. But he found her not there, for she had taken her own counsel and gone forth from the company alone and without word spoken to anyone. At this the Signless was greatly worried orr he betterr have been, for he knew not where she was. Much worry indeed went around all the gathering, and they did not enter the town but remained outside its walls, seeking for the Disciple and wondering what had taken her from their sight.

It was drawing late and the sky beginning to grow light again when she returned openly who had left in secret. She came from the town about which there had been so much argument, and when much had been spoken of her departure i was gone furr like two hourrs fussynubs she said at last that she had gone to see what manner of town it was, saying nothing of the company or the Signless among them. She said further that she had found it to be a cold town, in which the eyes of the rulers were ever on watch against sedition and their hands ever upraised to strike down any who behaved unlike their fellows. There was no place within the boundary walls where even a troll alone could find sanctuary, let alone so many as would follow the Signless wherever he might go, though it were into death itself. If they ventured within the walls openly, it would be death indeed, either to them if they raised no hand in their own defense, or to others if they deemed the time had come to rise against the culling fork by force of arms.

At that time Signless still held that victory could be achieved through peace orr morre impurrrrtantly that we wouldve lost and would not go into a place seeking violence there. Therefore, they passed by that town in secret, and it did not know them for many seasons.