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Entry tags:
( imeeji ) application
Character name: Cut Through All Foes (“Kiri”); true name: Temptation of Angels (a.k.a. Khrysaor)
Character canon: Nobilis 3rd Edition (OC)
✧ ✧ ✧
Canon summary:
Kiri was once a cursed sword of Muramasa, infusing all who wielded her with power and unstoppable bloodlust—and the rare ability to soulcarve, that is, cut through the miraculous abilities of others. And she liked all that killing just fine, insofar as she was sentient enough to have an opinion on it. But five centuries later, she was recovered by the Imperator Leli, former angel of purification-turned devil of the night, who killed (shattered) her and remade her with a shard of reality in her, transforming her into the Power of Scars—and thus one of the Nobilis, a member of the Society of Flowers. As a Power, Kiri had a metaphysical connection to—and control over—a literal fragment of reality. With the rest of her Familia—the powers of Axes, the Quest, and Injustice (and, it turned out, Atonement, The Moon, and Sprouts, the last being a second domain of the Power of Injustice)—Kiri was meant to fight the War for reality itself, opposing the Excrucians who would unmake it.
—Except what the whole Familia cared about most was Leli, who had fallen out of sympathy for those things she had been meant to purify. This concern was especially pressing because a law among the Nobilis enforces taking revenge “in the seventhfold degree,” and the Familia was informed that Leli had failed to take sufficient revenge, and would be condemned without it.
And so they began preparing to go to war against Heaven. At the strange confluence of all this was Kiri herself—the only one among Leli’s shards of power to be a new addition post-fall. In time, several key things were revealed:
The Society of Flowers did not look kindly on what, to all outside observers, appeared to be a plan to destroy Heaven with an abhorrent weapon. And so Leli was condemned all the same, and the Familia was torn apart. Most of them were redistributed to other Imperators… but Kiri was deemed too dangerous for that. Instead, her shard was ripped from her, and she was shattered once and for all.
What remains to be seen is whether Familia Leli will put together the pieces to realize that Heaven was never meant as the legally obligated target of their revenge—rather, it was Adalet.
✧ ✧ ✧
Character in canon:
Although everything in the world of Nobilis has its own animating spirit (called a dryad) and thus at least vague consciousness, Kiri’s personality has been incontrovertibly shaped by the fact that she wasn’t truly brought to life until Leli’s act of ennobling her. As a sword, she only ever knew bloodlust; as a person, she was suddenly surrounded by people who called themselves her family—and by the overwhelming presence of the fallen angel (beautiful, and, as all devils are, wounded and ever-present) who had, in a sense, created her. Despite being over five hundred years old, Kiri’s sheer newness to personhood and any concept of emotional maturity whatsoever means that she manifested looking ~15-16, and sometimes acts outright childish. And she has taken her swordlike self-definition as a tool to be wielded in combination with her wide-eyed amazement at the experience of being someone, and translated both of them into a deep devotion to her Familia in general—and Leli in particular.
Once she awoke as one of the Nobilis, Kiri also gained the ability to hear the music of the universe—or at least the particular music of the universe she was most connected to. Perhaps because she was the first (and only) Noble that Leli created post-fall, Kiri found herself attuned to the Song of Hell. This is a song of absolute and unconditional love—for everything in the world, even the lonely and broken. And even the cruel and outright monstrous. The Song of Hell doesn’t discriminate in its love… and sometimes, it even loves the worst things best of all. It will be there for you; even if you wanted to let go of everything entirely, it will be there. This is, for Kiri, what it means to be moral—her personal Code. That worked just fine in the Society of Flowers, where everyone’s used to this shit and as long as you want reality to keep existing, you’re in the clear; other people tend to find it more than a little more unsettling once they realize there’s more to it than just love. It’s also worth noting that the Society of Flowers makes love of something specific illegal for its members, and Kiri was absolutely toeing the line of Nobilis Crimes with how much she loved Leli. After all, unlike the rest of the familia, there was a broken off piece of the angel who had been Leliel within her, and Kiri experienced this connection as a profound devotion.
As the Power of Scars, Kiri’s own conception of scars also defined how her abilities manifested. She defined “scars” around the following rules: scars reveal history; scars are proof of survival; scars are permanent; and scars come from wounds. This collection of traits derives strongly from her reverence for battle—and respect for pain; these are the core around which one builds a history and identity. Being connected to scars in this way gave Kiri the unique ability to learn about being a person from very specifically the trauma of other people: she could manifest herself in their scars to experience their pain. This is to say that, for all her often childish excitability, Kiri also has the capacity for moments of profound empathy, particularly for those who have (pun somewhat intended) been through hell. She’s just still pretty bad at having any kind of middle ground between those extremes.
In general, Kiri is something of a gremlin in character, albeit a well-meaning one. She is enthusiastic and caring in her way, but she is also borderline incapable of self-restraint, on top of having a pretty shit sense of judgment when left to her own devices. This is to say: she’s still extremely new at solving problems with anything besides violence, and it shows. For all her forays into humanity, she retains a fascination with “warriors” (they’re the best and coolest) and hasn’t really stopped defining personal success as finding a strong master to wield her. She wanted to be Leli’s weapon, and would have gladly served her to the edge of destruction and beyond. Indeed, even though she has been firmly recruited to the cause of reality, Kiri remains, at an essential level, aligned with nonexistence—not just destruction, but annihilation. Discovering that she was an abhorrent weapon was horrifying to her because of the implication that she was meant to hurt Leli—not because of the awful purpose within her. Getting to know—and eventually, learning to wield—the true nature of the power within her felt a bit like looking over the edge of a cliff: thrilling and terrifying and thrilling because it is terrifying. It’s l’appel du vide, basically: knowing she must not jump—but sometimes that annihilation feels more right than anything else.
✧ ✧ ✧
Character in Imeeji:
For audition corruptions, I want to play with referencing Kiri’s “abhorrent” nature—that is, her being something outside of reality. In Nobilis, this is traditionally indicated with blue flame (which is what makes up the Wyrding Wall dividing existence from nonexistence). In canon, she has several crack-like scars across her body from when Leli originally shattered her; in Imeeji, she will have more of these cracks, which glow with faint blue light (much more prominent in the dark). And, like true Excrucians in Nobilis, her eyes will seem to have falling stars in them.
More significant, though, is the “corruption” of simply no longer being able to have Leli(el)’s fragment of holiness in her. While Kiri would still be, on some level, the Power of Scars, obviously there’s no way she’s retaining a piece of an angel in her after all that. There could be something fun, there, with one of the demon princes having laid claim to “El,” which would function as further leverage over Kiri. (Let me know if that’s something you all want to do something with.) Regardless, without that connection, Kiri will feel an intense sense of loneliness and loss—there’s a literal gap in her sense of self, and that gap is shaped like a lot of (now undirected) devotion.
Because of this, though nothing can replace Kiri’s Familia, she will latch onto her unit quickly and with intensity—and she’ll need a unit which can handle that. Furthermore, without the humanizing influence of El in her, she’ll start out strongly thinking of herself as a tool to be wielded, so… well, they’ve got to be able to handle that, too.
In Tokyo-F, Kiri will (in theory, depending on what nerfs are deemed appropriate) have at least a few advantages: even in human form, she’s still fundamentally a sword, without the need for food, water, or air. However, she’s also faced with a much more substantial drawback: as with all Nobles, damage dealt to Kiri’s core concept wounds her on an existential level. And, with “scars are permanent” being a concept that people are constantly fucking with in Imeeji… idk, is it possible for someone’s “rations” to be scarred things (scarred limbs—for appreciating, not eating; stories about scars; the existential concept of Scars, but in a mason jar…). It’s possible that, regardless, every time someone in Tokyo-F removes a scar she’ll have at least a moment of uncomfortable dizziness (let me know if I’m cleared for that, though).
Character canon: Nobilis 3rd Edition (OC)
✧ ✧ ✧
Canon summary:
Kiri was once a cursed sword of Muramasa, infusing all who wielded her with power and unstoppable bloodlust—and the rare ability to soulcarve, that is, cut through the miraculous abilities of others. And she liked all that killing just fine, insofar as she was sentient enough to have an opinion on it. But five centuries later, she was recovered by the Imperator Leli, former angel of purification-turned devil of the night, who killed (shattered) her and remade her with a shard of reality in her, transforming her into the Power of Scars—and thus one of the Nobilis, a member of the Society of Flowers. As a Power, Kiri had a metaphysical connection to—and control over—a literal fragment of reality. With the rest of her Familia—the powers of Axes, the Quest, and Injustice (and, it turned out, Atonement, The Moon, and Sprouts, the last being a second domain of the Power of Injustice)—Kiri was meant to fight the War for reality itself, opposing the Excrucians who would unmake it.
—Except what the whole Familia cared about most was Leli, who had fallen out of sympathy for those things she had been meant to purify. This concern was especially pressing because a law among the Nobilis enforces taking revenge “in the seventhfold degree,” and the Familia was informed that Leli had failed to take sufficient revenge, and would be condemned without it.
And so they began preparing to go to war against Heaven. At the strange confluence of all this was Kiri herself—the only one among Leli’s shards of power to be a new addition post-fall. In time, several key things were revealed:
- Leli fell because she willed it, and in fact worked a powerful miracle to force herself to fall.
- Adalet, the Power of Injustice, was also the “missing” Power of Sprouts, and in fact had used the nature of Sprouts to return to the “beginning” multiple times—because Leli, as Leliel, had repeatedly gone mad with excess purification. But this was the first timeline where she Fell instead.
- Kiri, already known to possess the rare power of “world-breaker’s hand,” didn’t just have the power to break reality on a small scale by coincidence. Instead, she was what was known as an “Abhorrent Weapon”: a powerful weapon forged by Excrucians for the express purpose of being used to destroy reality. Specifically, Kiri’s true name was “Khrysaor, Temptation of Angels,” and desire for her had been a driving force behind Leli’s eventual fall.
- When Leli ennobled Kiri, she inadvertently did so by merging Kiri with her own holiness—the fragment of her identity that could be called “-El.”
The Society of Flowers did not look kindly on what, to all outside observers, appeared to be a plan to destroy Heaven with an abhorrent weapon. And so Leli was condemned all the same, and the Familia was torn apart. Most of them were redistributed to other Imperators… but Kiri was deemed too dangerous for that. Instead, her shard was ripped from her, and she was shattered once and for all.
What remains to be seen is whether Familia Leli will put together the pieces to realize that Heaven was never meant as the legally obligated target of their revenge—rather, it was Adalet.
✧ ✧ ✧
Character in canon:
Although everything in the world of Nobilis has its own animating spirit (called a dryad) and thus at least vague consciousness, Kiri’s personality has been incontrovertibly shaped by the fact that she wasn’t truly brought to life until Leli’s act of ennobling her. As a sword, she only ever knew bloodlust; as a person, she was suddenly surrounded by people who called themselves her family—and by the overwhelming presence of the fallen angel (beautiful, and, as all devils are, wounded and ever-present) who had, in a sense, created her. Despite being over five hundred years old, Kiri’s sheer newness to personhood and any concept of emotional maturity whatsoever means that she manifested looking ~15-16, and sometimes acts outright childish. And she has taken her swordlike self-definition as a tool to be wielded in combination with her wide-eyed amazement at the experience of being someone, and translated both of them into a deep devotion to her Familia in general—and Leli in particular.
Once she awoke as one of the Nobilis, Kiri also gained the ability to hear the music of the universe—or at least the particular music of the universe she was most connected to. Perhaps because she was the first (and only) Noble that Leli created post-fall, Kiri found herself attuned to the Song of Hell. This is a song of absolute and unconditional love—for everything in the world, even the lonely and broken. And even the cruel and outright monstrous. The Song of Hell doesn’t discriminate in its love… and sometimes, it even loves the worst things best of all. It will be there for you; even if you wanted to let go of everything entirely, it will be there. This is, for Kiri, what it means to be moral—her personal Code. That worked just fine in the Society of Flowers, where everyone’s used to this shit and as long as you want reality to keep existing, you’re in the clear; other people tend to find it more than a little more unsettling once they realize there’s more to it than just love. It’s also worth noting that the Society of Flowers makes love of something specific illegal for its members, and Kiri was absolutely toeing the line of Nobilis Crimes with how much she loved Leli. After all, unlike the rest of the familia, there was a broken off piece of the angel who had been Leliel within her, and Kiri experienced this connection as a profound devotion.
As the Power of Scars, Kiri’s own conception of scars also defined how her abilities manifested. She defined “scars” around the following rules: scars reveal history; scars are proof of survival; scars are permanent; and scars come from wounds. This collection of traits derives strongly from her reverence for battle—and respect for pain; these are the core around which one builds a history and identity. Being connected to scars in this way gave Kiri the unique ability to learn about being a person from very specifically the trauma of other people: she could manifest herself in their scars to experience their pain. This is to say that, for all her often childish excitability, Kiri also has the capacity for moments of profound empathy, particularly for those who have (pun somewhat intended) been through hell. She’s just still pretty bad at having any kind of middle ground between those extremes.
In general, Kiri is something of a gremlin in character, albeit a well-meaning one. She is enthusiastic and caring in her way, but she is also borderline incapable of self-restraint, on top of having a pretty shit sense of judgment when left to her own devices. This is to say: she’s still extremely new at solving problems with anything besides violence, and it shows. For all her forays into humanity, she retains a fascination with “warriors” (they’re the best and coolest) and hasn’t really stopped defining personal success as finding a strong master to wield her. She wanted to be Leli’s weapon, and would have gladly served her to the edge of destruction and beyond. Indeed, even though she has been firmly recruited to the cause of reality, Kiri remains, at an essential level, aligned with nonexistence—not just destruction, but annihilation. Discovering that she was an abhorrent weapon was horrifying to her because of the implication that she was meant to hurt Leli—not because of the awful purpose within her. Getting to know—and eventually, learning to wield—the true nature of the power within her felt a bit like looking over the edge of a cliff: thrilling and terrifying and thrilling because it is terrifying. It’s l’appel du vide, basically: knowing she must not jump—but sometimes that annihilation feels more right than anything else.
✧ ✧ ✧
Character in Imeeji:
For audition corruptions, I want to play with referencing Kiri’s “abhorrent” nature—that is, her being something outside of reality. In Nobilis, this is traditionally indicated with blue flame (which is what makes up the Wyrding Wall dividing existence from nonexistence). In canon, she has several crack-like scars across her body from when Leli originally shattered her; in Imeeji, she will have more of these cracks, which glow with faint blue light (much more prominent in the dark). And, like true Excrucians in Nobilis, her eyes will seem to have falling stars in them.
More significant, though, is the “corruption” of simply no longer being able to have Leli(el)’s fragment of holiness in her. While Kiri would still be, on some level, the Power of Scars, obviously there’s no way she’s retaining a piece of an angel in her after all that. There could be something fun, there, with one of the demon princes having laid claim to “El,” which would function as further leverage over Kiri. (Let me know if that’s something you all want to do something with.) Regardless, without that connection, Kiri will feel an intense sense of loneliness and loss—there’s a literal gap in her sense of self, and that gap is shaped like a lot of (now undirected) devotion.
Because of this, though nothing can replace Kiri’s Familia, she will latch onto her unit quickly and with intensity—and she’ll need a unit which can handle that. Furthermore, without the humanizing influence of El in her, she’ll start out strongly thinking of herself as a tool to be wielded, so… well, they’ve got to be able to handle that, too.
In Tokyo-F, Kiri will (in theory, depending on what nerfs are deemed appropriate) have at least a few advantages: even in human form, she’s still fundamentally a sword, without the need for food, water, or air. However, she’s also faced with a much more substantial drawback: as with all Nobles, damage dealt to Kiri’s core concept wounds her on an existential level. And, with “scars are permanent” being a concept that people are constantly fucking with in Imeeji… idk, is it possible for someone’s “rations” to be scarred things (scarred limbs—for appreciating, not eating; stories about scars; the existential concept of Scars, but in a mason jar…). It’s possible that, regardless, every time someone in Tokyo-F removes a scar she’ll have at least a moment of uncomfortable dizziness (let me know if I’m cleared for that, though).