ro (heartlander)
age: immortal, appearance variable (usually looks to be around late 20s)
origins: the very beginning of time
appearance: one of her eyes is missing and the empty eyesocket is constantly leaking some sort of odd black ooze, but apart from making a mess everywhere, it doesn’t appear to discomfort ro. the eye itself is variable. her appearance in general is variable (aside from the missing eye), and though she’s settled on a general sort of appearance she tends to change things like eye color with every blink.
background:
ro was born near the end of the beginning of time, in some sort of enormous, half-sentient, continents-spanning magical forest that eventually came under her complete control. whether any trace of this forest remains is unknown, but it is almost certain that whatever massive power she possessed back then is no longer in her hands. she doesn’t talk about this much, for various reasons that (as time goes to infinity) all approach apathy.
she was given the role of “the beginning” (heartlander) shortly after time and reality were stabilized, and she is symbolic of one half of the constant cycle of creation and destruction. the other half remained chaotic and uncontrolled under the universe found her counterpart wayfarer.
later she and the wayfarer got into a bitter decades-long war with one another. it ended in a draw, when she effectively disabled the wayfarer’s magical abilities and the wayfarer confined her to the Non for an indefinite period of time. he also took her eye, which accounts for her current physical state.
personality:
ro is easy enough to chat with and befriend: she is usually inclined to like everyone, especially if D doesn’t, and D likes very few people. she is fairly aggressive and bossy and nosy, and in certain crowds appears highly contemptuous and disdainful of those around her, but a lot of that is bluster and bluff. simply part of the persona that she projects.
in truth, ro has long since lost the ability to care deeply about anything other than her duties as heartlander, and possibly (though she’d never admit it) D. otherwise, she is distant in all her emotions and actions. her affection for people is never entirely feigned but it is shallow and vague, simply because she does not see any point in trying to achieve any deeper emotional connection. she is also callous, unreliable, hypocritical, and perhaps the slightest bit manipulative.
all these three things combined can lead to her making decisions and taking actions that may be construed as heartless and cruel. however, she is never purposefully hateful, simply because she likewise sees no point in that either. unless the context involves D.
relationships:
D is her counterpart, the wayfarer. they often refer to each other as if they were siblings. she knows and understands him best and vice-versa. as a result, they do not get along entirely well. while in important matters they are always on the same side and work together and in each other’s (and the universe’s) best interests, in all other matters they disagree terribly, mostly for the sake of disagreement. they maintain a strained, mistrustful, slightly hostile relationship with one another and are constantly pushing at the other’s limits to see how much they can get away with. they like to disrupt one another’s lives and purposefully cause strife for no good reason. in some cases, this can lead to highly disastrous results for innocent bystanders.
wraith is one of D’s friends whom ro also befriended, initially to upset D, but eventually for wraith’s own merits. eventually wraith came to trust her far more than he trusted D, and ro came to genuinely care about wraith. enough that at one point she nearly starts a war between herself and D for wraith’s sake and, later, actually does go through with that war.
soothe somehow became romantically involved with ro later in the modern era. in order to avoid complications, ro did not inform soothe of her actual identity, and passed herself off as another ‘normal’ immortal instead. they got along very well with one another and were living together and had many plans for the future when satero e ankhar dropped by and murdered soothe. ro mourned and mourns her but, given ro’s background, has not been crippled by this, and feels only a little more dislike for satero than she did before.
bariyan e kodhi is on good terms with ro despite the fact that he is also on very good terms with D. he thinks that D and ro’s permanent feud is silly, he doesn’t see why it even exists, and he thinks that “because it always has” is a hell of a stupid reason. but he likes ro and he trusts her and she is one of the few people whom bariyan feels like he can open up to completely, mostly because she is eons older than him and, he hopes, at least a little bit wiser.
mukhari sharak is someone ro mostly underestimates and is dismissive of, though she likes him just as much as she likes everyone else. it’s just that she also thinks he is dumb and helpless and useless unless someone is there to watch and guide him at all times. she sort of treats him like she’s his controlling and unimpressed aunt.
