hexarchate_rpg | Character Applications

Player name or handle: Kai

RPG DW account (if separate): I just made this account for this purpose, so this works :)

How can we get in touch with you? (email, DW messaging, other): DW is fine!

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Character name: Cherrewin Yehan

One-paragraph (100 words) summary of your character.
Cherrewin Yehan is a talented linguist who joined the Shuos because she was too socially inept to be Andan and too uninterested in the mathematic/logical side of linguistics to be Nirai. Staunchly proud of her heritage, Yehan has a penchant for underdogs and a devotion to diversity in all forms, which over time turned into disapproval of the hexarchate’s cultural imperialism.

How did your character first learn of the hexarchate?
Yehan is from an ethnic minority on her planet of origin that was liberated from slavery by the hexarchate long before her birth. While the whole planet adheres to the high calendar, the ethnic majority is still grumbly about losing “their workforce;” meanwhile Yehan’s group tends to revere the hexarchate and Yehan’s family encouraged her to work in its service.

Why did your character join this rebellion?
Her extended in-depth studies of the temporal logics embedded in other languages as a Shuos linguist-cryptographer-interpreter made her question whether the hexarchate was destroying valuable diversity by imposing their calendar and language.

What would make your character consider giving up the cause?
She would be sorely tempted by reform measures that give stronger support to different cultures and languages, but she sees that as unlikely to happen to standards of her satisfaction. Serious danger posed to her home community would also be major leverage against her.

Name something your character does not want to lose.
Since joining the rebellion, she has had no contact with her family or her home community, but she is terrified of losing their approval.

Name something your character would die for.
She would die in a heartbeat if it meant keeping her people or any other group of people out of enslavement. Similarly, if facing captivity she has decided that she would rather kill herself than endure it.

Name something your character would kill for.
She doesn’t develop many strong relationships, but she would unhesitatingly kill anyone who was seriously threatening to harm one of the people she considers to be important to her. It would probably surprise her what she’s actually capable of.

Who is your character's best friend?
Her best friend growing up was a girl named Senna, who despite being from the ethnic majority of their country was raised among Yehan’s people. Although she hasn’t seen Senna since joining the rebellion, she still thinks about her every day. She worries about whether Senna would approve of her actions. On the one hand, Senna is a fierce ally to Yehan’s people and other minorities; on the other hand, she can be a bit of a clueless privileged girl at times. Yehan’s not sure what impulse would win out if she told her.

Describe your character's perfect partner (romantic or friend or coworker, your choice).
What Yehan wishes for most of all is someone to be a permanent social wingman. She struggles with social interaction (which was a serious failing as a Shuos, at least in the area of seduction) and she just wants a partner (romantic or friend or work) who understands that she doesn’t get it and A) translates for her when she’s around others, and B) doesn’t force her to fit into a certain mold the rest of the time.

What is your character's secret dream or desire, the one they've never told anyone?
Secretly, Yehan sometimes wishes she had been one of the flashy Shuos—well, insofar as Shuos are ever flashy, but you know, one of the smooth, devious ones you never see coming and never know what hit you.

How will your character die?
If unnaturally, probably after flubbing some social cue while undercover, or being executed upon being discovered for her cryptological and linguistic work for the rebellion.

Does your character have any powers that the hexarchate would consider "exotic" (magical)?
No.

What do you (the player) enjoy most in an RPG?
I’m going to be really honest and say, I’ve never actually participated in an RPG before. I’ve watched many happen online over the years, but this is new to me (I hope that’s okay!) I like seeing characters develop and worldbuilding funtimes, I think, but I guess I will find out as we go (presuming it is okay for me to make this my first RPG go!)
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You have 500 words to tell me anything else you want me and the other players to know about your character. Do it here.
In our time and world, Yehan would be called autistic. Her own people viewed her as just a special kind of person (their cultural understanding of such people), the majority ethnic group viewed people like her as a burden; within the hexarchate at large, she’s able to blend in for the most part as just a slightly awkward and nerdy person. Though I’d be curious to know more about how the hexarchate might treat autistic people and other people with disabilities!

In addition to just being a linguist, she’s also something of a polyglot. It’s an occupational hazard, even if it is a stereotype. She speaks three languages natively (her own, her country’s majority language, and the high language) and while she’s not able to speak fluently in all the languages she knows, she does have an uncanny ability to mimic a native accent even in those she’s not fluent in.

Physically, she’s brown-skinned with black hair and eyes, in her late twenties (see icon [of Julia Jones] for inspiration). She doesn’t care too much about her appearance, though. In terms of personality, she’s quick to develop opinions of everything and slow to change them. She enjoys people who can make her think deeply about something. She also has great appreciation of sensual pleasures like textures and sounds.

Additional note: I literally just finished the books like yesterday so please forgive and help me out if I screw up any of the worldbuilding details!

Feel free to say no, but . . . What if the ethnic groups on Yehan's home planet were related to the ethnic groups on Sasha's home planet?

When I wrote Sasha's profile, I was thinking about colonialist histories, specifically the Russians in Kazakhstan (where all her icons come from) and the British in China (my own family history). Sasha is of mixed ethnicity and very mixed allegiance: she was raised as one of the colonizers, identifies more with her family's servants (the colonized), and would probably be rejected by both groups.

Would it make sense for the minority on Yehan's planet to be the colonized majority on Sasha's? That would give the two women a language and some history in common. (The planets could conceivably be the same, as Sasha's birth time is very early in the Heptarchate's expansion. That would imply either that the mountains had a different ethnic/political setup from the rest of the planet, or that sometime in between Sasha's time and Yehan's there were a series of non-hexarchate-related ugly wars.)

I love this idea! To hash out some details--when you the colonized majority, do you mean colonized by the heptarchate or by another group on the planet (or both)? I like the idea of it being the same planet from two different time periods, and I'm not too particular on the details, so let me know what you're imagining. It could be that in the mountains/the region where Sasha was born, their group is the majority, but in Yehan's area a minority, with something akin to our world's transatlantic slave trade or Indian removal (I'm Native so that's my frame of reference) having happened. The idea that there was a war is good too...hmmm, I'm sorry I'm so indecisive!

Also, we should probably name their ethnic group! In my head I was planning to use the word Kirr/Kirrish, but I'm open to suggestions :)

Yes, I meant colonized by another group on the planet (Sasha's mother is fully whatever-ethnic-group-this-is; her dad is mixed).

Probably the war was first and the organized slave trade second? Perhaps a war is happening now, in Sasha's timeline, and she doesn't realize how bad it is because she's not talking to her family much.

I like Kirr/Kirrish! Sasha probably uses a variant, like Kirtoi or Kiryevit or Kiryet. Her mother's ethnic group's name should probably sound a little bit Russian?

All sounds good to me! I'll leave it up to you to name Sasha's mother's ethnic group, since it will affect your character more directly. If you have any other thoughts on the colonizers' culture and history, let me know, as I haven't thought too deeply about that yet. Or anything you want to include in the colonized group too!

Let's say Naxorian, singular Naxar!

Also, were you envisioning the Naxorians (or Senna) as looking any particular way? I think Sasha's mother was fair-skinned and tall compared to her father, but that's not very specific. Here are some "maybe" images:

I didn't have anything particular in mind, so any of that is good with me!

Fair enough!

I'm thinking Naxorians (all? in some genders?) did traditionally cover their hair in public, and Sasha's hat is an uneasy compromise with that tradition. I'll let you decide whether the hexarchate liberators considered this a tool of oppression, or just didn't care.

[Actually Sasha's mother is 3/4 Naxorian and 1/4 Kirrish, just to get the bookkeeping straight.]

Hello! This looks good--welcome to the game! As for how the hexarchate treats people who are on the autism spectrum, you can define that to be whatever you'd like to explore in-game. My guess is that the Shuos, out of pragmatism, would probably avoid assigning socially awkward people to jobs where that's a crucial skill, but there are certainly plenty of other jobs where that won't be an issue.

Disability in general varies--there are treatments and/or accommodations for some common things. Hexarch Mikodez is walking around with some kind of attention deficit problem for which he's medicated. I haven't talked about it much because it's not a focus of the books.

(Also, just to be clear, the background you and

zuhrovet have worked out looks fine--whatever you two are both comfortable with.)

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