Ten Desires

Ten Desires vaguely remembers being Ever-distant Paradise's childhood friend; the girl half of a girl x tomboy duo and those were pretty happy days. After childhood however, things get a little hazy. They separated...one of them left town...and then what? Before she knew it, she was a young Sidereal exalted. Her teachers were many and impersonal, her training was perfunctory and her tasks menial and easy. That is, until one day it was revealed to her that her former childhood friend was a Solar Exalt and it would be her mission to keep close to Ever-distant Paradise, assist her, gain her trust and follow orders from there. Exalting one of their own out of a future Solar's childhood friend is just the sort of stroke of genius, manipulation and planning that one can expect from the Sidereal community...or is it? Ten Desires feels that something isn't quite right. Her own fate is tangled and obscured to her vision and every time she visits the Loom it seems the Pattern Spiders regard her with something like mechanical pity. Even her own exaltation's memory is obscured - as far as she remembers, she exalted from within a dream and her indirect inquiries in heavenly archives seems to suggest that such a phenomenon is unprecedented. She still has dreams - sometimes prophetic, sometimes terrifying or both.

Ten Desires has no proof it is happening or whether the author of her strange destiny is beneficent or malevolent, but where a mortal might be satisfied with restoring her memory, Ten Desires has resolved to seize back control of her fate and find its meaning within the great weave of the Loom of Fate on her own terms. And if it so happens that this destiny is a good one, she'll fulfill it on her own terms too, and exceed the expectations of her secret patron by the breadth of Creation.

Always the lady-like side of the coin with Ever-distant Paradise, Ten Desires' Sidereal upbringing in Yu-Shan has only made her more polite and lady-like as a woman - at least on the surface. In reality, she can be petty and jealous. Bending rules for personal gain is definitely the foremost lesson she learned during her post in heaven's bureaucracy, along with haughtiness and arrogance whenever she can get away with it.

Vital Statistics

Name: Ten Desires
Age: 18
Concept: Advice Childhood Friend
Caste: Serenity
Motivation: Seize control of her own and her exaltation's destiny and find their meaning within the Loom.
Essence: ●● (personal: 11/11; peripheral: 20/20; committed: 8)
Essence Recovery: (hearthstone: +6; relaxed: +4; resting: +4)
Willpower: 7/7

Virtues

Compassion: 3
Conviction: 1
Temperance: 2
Valor: 3

Intimacies (10)

Celestial Law (Healthy Fear)
Personal Fate (Curious Defiance)

Backgrounds

Artifact: ●●
(Dragon's Tear Tiara)
Matches with her usual selection of headdresses. Contains the Heart's Trillion from Starfall Honden.

Grants +1 Perception; +3 for geomancy, astrology, detect spirit, and any other tasks requiring occult sensitivity besides sorcery.

Artifact: ●●
(Starmetal Heaven Thunder Leaves)
Forty-Four Imperishable Nights is a set of starmetal heaven thunder leaves that formed part of a noted collection in the First Age, with each pair depicting a different war story from the Primordial War. Its name refers to the forty-four nights during which a perfect circle battled the endless sequence of fetich and major souls of All-Embracing Spiral, eventually reducing him to the Neverborn Event Horizon. Properly wielded, each fan's eleven panels are displayed and held to the light in different numbers and combinations to form the innumerable scenes of battle. Although the story is produced by light playing on orihalchum engraving, the fans are mostly made of starmetal to honor the perfect circle's Vizier who cleared the way by downing Kierre's gatekeeper.

They are +1 Performance to dance with. At 3 successes, the dance attracts local terrestrial gods. Each success beyond that adds 1 dice (max 6) to the wielder's next social action towards them.

Speed 5; Accuracy 14; Damage 5L; PDV 7; Rate 3

Artifact: ●●
(Silken Armour)
Probably slightly scandalous when worn on its own.

Soak 5L/3B

Celestial Manse: ●●● (Starfall Shrine)
Starfall Shrine was kept by a shrine maiden god for some seven hundred years, allegedly skipping one incarnation of Ten Desires' exaltation before handing it over and declaring the debt to her grand-ancestor repaid. After a quiet round of politicking, the Bureau of Destiny found it most convenient to let Ten Desires keep the place rather than risk having it fall to the claims of the innumerable major gods that want it for themselves. Since its status as a manse is unique, Ten Desires' naturally prefers it over the other, often larger palaces that she has title to, converting the offertory box (which is the size of a building) into the office where she spent basically all of her first year's exaltation doing celestial paperwork that was foisted on her by superiors.

Salary: ●●●●●
Ten Desires is ridiculously rich from a host of sources. In addition to a high salary supplemented by her incredible talent for graft, she's been given a mind-boggling expense account allegedly grown and held over from immediately after the Usurpation as dictated through a mighty prophecy (some say by the Maiden of Serenity herself). Then there's the celestial inheritance trust fund that came with Starfall Shrine's offertory box along with title deeds for what had previously been thought of as heavenly squatter-properties in Yu-Shan's slums. Class action squatter's rights lawsuits were launched but there were so many numbers involved that the case is currently bogged down, likely for the next sixty years at least, with both parties' advocate's representative's draft-and-review committees twice removed.

Savant: ●●●
The hobby of a girl with many books and no chances to romp around Creation with a daiklave.

Sifu: ●●
Yu-Shan shopping girlfriend. Also romantic advice.

Attributes

Physical

Strength: ●
Dexterity: ●●●●●
Stamina: ●

Social

Charisma: ●
Manipulation: ●●●●●
Appearance: ●●●●

Mental

Perception: ●●
Intelligence: ●●●●
Wits: ●●●●●

Abilities

Archery: -
Athletics: -
Awareness: ●●
Bureaucracy: ●●●●● (Muddying Waters ●●●)
Craft: -
Craft (Fate): -
Dodge: ●●●
Integrity: -
Investigation: ●●●●●
Larceny: ●●●
Linguistics: ●●●
(Flametongue; Old Realm; High Realm; Riverspeak)
Lore: ●●●
Martial Arts: ●●●
Medicine: ●●
Melee: -
Occult: ●●
Performance: ●●●●●
Presence: ●●●
Resistance: -
Ride: -
Sail: -
Socialize: ●●●
Survival: -
Stealth: ●●● (Indoors ●)
Thrown: ●
War: -

Magic

Charms

Third Performance Excellency (3m)
First Performance Excellency (1m/d)
Perfection in Life
Defense of Shining Joy
Heart-Brightening Presentation Style

Astrology

The Ewer: 1
The Lovers: 5
The Musician: 1

Traits

Advantages

Luck: 3 (1)
Allows her to reroll whenever she likes. The pool regenerates by one for every week it is unused and fully recovers between each Story.

Oneiromancer (1)
Ten Desires has a lot of dreams, some of which are prophetic.
Allows her to spend 1 willpower and roll Intelligence + Occult at difficulty 5 (3 if she can stay lucid)

Disadvantages

Amnesia (-3)
She can't remember the time between the end of her childhood and working a desk job in Heaven some time after a dreamlike exaltation.

Obligation: Life Debt (-4)
Something or someone has a heavy hand on Ten Desires' destiny, sealing her memories, maybe even messing with them. On some nights, its influence seeps into her dreams. She has no idea who it is, how far it extends or whether it's good or evil. But before she can break off onto her own path, she must walk this one and find where it leads.

Bonus Points

1 Attribute (4)
2 Backgrounds > 3 (4)
2 Backgrounds < 4 (2)
11 Abilities (11)
2 Willpower (2)