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. However, her full knowledge of the possible consequences of breaking Heaven's laws at the wrong time or in the wrong situation keeps her from going entirely out of line.

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
Experience: 20/24

Virtues

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

Intimacies (10)

Ever-Distant Paradise (Childhood Friend)
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-

Combat

Dodge DV: 5 (max 9) Performance DV: 6 (max 11)

Forty-Four Imperishable Nights
Speed 5; Accuracy 11; Damage 5L; PDV 5; Rate 3

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 +3; Damage +4L; Defense +2; Rate 3

Artifact: ●●
(Silken Armour)
Magic armoured lingerie suitable to wear under or in complement to almost any outfit!

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 to Ten Desires 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 her 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.

The shrine's hearthstone is known as Heart's Trillion, a clear, sharply cut crystal that glints in accordance to the four virtues as the bearer acts by them. Each time the bearer spends a virtue channel, the results are in successes rather than dice.

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 access to many books and no chances to romp around Creation with a daiklave.

Sifu: ●●
Her Yu-Shan shopping girlfriend. Also a provider of romantic advice. Has been teaching her Dreaming Pearl Courtesan thus far.

Attributes

Physical

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

Social

Charisma: ●● [4XP]
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

Excellencies

Second Bureaucracy Excellency (2m per success)

Second Investigation Excellency (2m per success)

Third Larceny Excellency (3m)

Third Performance Excellency (3m)

Third Stealth Excellency (3m)

Skills

Perfection in Life (5m; Supplemental (Scene); Combo-OK; Virtue (Compassion))
This Charm enhances a social attack that encourages belief or behaviour. Those convinced by the Sidereal and do not spend Willpower to resist regain 1wp, even if this would grant them more than their normal maximum. Characters that accept this reward cannot later resist the influence for the rest of the scene. A character cannot gain more than 1wp per scene from this Charm.

Defense of Shining Joy (5m, 1wp; Simple (Scene))
Allows using Performance to calculate Dodge DV and Performance Excellencies to replace Dodge Excellencies to increase DDV if desired. Both external and internal penalties to Dodge DV are each reduced by <Performance>. Moreover this can be applied while using Defend Other, even if using Parry DV.

Heart-Brightening Presentation Style (Permanent; Virtue (Compassion))
Allows full interchange of Bureaucracy, Performance, Presence and Socialize Excellencies with each other and channelling Compassion for them at any time. The first such use in each scene costs no willpower. (It still uses up a Virtue Channel.)

Methodology of Secrets (5m; Reflexive (Sleeps))
Activated during sleep to receive instructive dreams/visions which grant three Specialties until she next sleeps. These Specialty dice can apply to uses of astrology involving the College corresponding to the Ability to which the Specialty is attached.

Martial Arts

Demure Carp Feint (4m; Reflexive (Action; Step 2); Combo-OK) Increase both DV's by <Essence>.

Pearlescent Filigree Defense (1m per 1L/2B; Simple (Scene); Obvious)
Max expenditure of <Essence> motes. Counts as natural soak.

Lethal Paper Fan Attack (3m; Supplemental; Obvious; Combo-OK)
Treat props as wind-fire wheels and clothing as seven-section staves that inflict lethal damage. Actual weapons gain a bonus of <Essence> to Speed (minimum 1), Accuracy, Damage or Defense.

Astrology

The Ewer (Dodge): 1 (p.198)
The Lovers (Socialize): 5 (p.199)
The Musician (Performance): 1 (p.199)

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/Exp

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