soothe
age: ~20 when she turns immortal
origins: kharta circa ~800 years before the present day
otherworlder: the solitude
background:
orphaned early in life and lived on the streets until she attached herself to corosa nyem and company. she was closest to corosa, satero, bariyan, and mukhari, though she did get along well with everyone except blackened.
later circumstances separated her from the rest of the cast, and took her far away from kharta. she snuck herself under the wing of several people until she was old enough to fend for herself, at which point she made an immortality contract and set out to try and track down her old friends and see what had become of them. she found most of them, was displeased by their choices in life, and changed course to try and rescue corosa instead.
along the way, she met ro of the non and may or may not have begun a relationship with her!! soothe was always sort of embarrassed around ro and didn’t like to talk about the status of their relationship much. she had more important things on her mind.
personality:
soothe turned out to be highly judgmental, and easily disappointed, mostly because she always had high hopes of everyone and thus was always let down. she found everything depressing and maddening and futile, but learned to internalize all her frustration in as non-destructive a way as possible.
she was obsessed with righting wrongs and trying to undo any damage she came across, though eventually she became so disillusioned with the state of the world that she stopped trying to fight the bigger issues and settled for working on an individual basis instead. she did what she could but the rest hung heavy over her head.
she was very kind, very distant, and very alone. at least, until ro came tromping along.
relationships:
satero e ankhar was one of several people whom soothe substituted in as a father figure, but satero is simply rather good with kids, and finds them entertaining. she, on the other hand, thought the whole world of him. but following their long separation and the subsequent reunion, soothe discovered that her childhood naivete had masked out all of satero’s many horrifying flaws, and he was nothing like the man she remembered. these days the very mention of satero’s name makes her bitterly disappointed.
corosa e ankhar also acted the part of father to soothe, though he may have also been viewing her as the replacement for his own, deceased daughter. as a result, he had what almost seemed like bipolar behavior where she was concerned. on the one hand, he could be fiercely, overly protective of her at times — but sometimes he seemed to go out of his way to avoid her, or brush her off, mostly due to overpowering guilt over having failed his own daughter and having transferred his affections over to soothe instead.
mukhari sharak fell somewhere in between the role of father and brother. he, like satero, was naturally good with children, but actually was terribly fond of soothe and very distraught when they could not find any trace of her after the fall of kharta. when she turned up again he was overjoyed to know that she was still alive, but she found his attitude and life choices straight-up appalling and let him know as much. eventually her fury calmed itself and she tried to see it from mukhari’s point-of-view, which was a fairly sad and pathetic point-of-view, and made her feel equal parts disgust and pity for him. mostly pity by the end.
blackened hated soothe right from the start and soothe learned this pretty quickly. he had no real reason to, other than the fact that he hated women and he hated kids and that he was, in general, awful. he possibly made several attempts on her life because she was annoying him though no solid proof was ever put forth. soothe was horrified to learn that he too had achieved immortality, and avoided him like the plague. in fact, blackened probably terrified her far more than satero ever did.
bariyan e kodhi also played the part of father to soothe, probably better than anyone else. like corosa, there was the distinct possibility that he was using her as a stand-in for his own deceased son, but unlike corosa, bariyan never let that get in the way of their relationship. he was also probably the only one of soothe’s friends whom didn’t turn into a enormous letdown later. probably because soothe never saw him again after the fall of kharta.
aethra farfire was a mage who later took soothe under her wing as an apprentice, though she soon came to treat soothe on more equal footing. soothe grew very fond of aethra and held a great deal of admiration for her, and when aethra started to exhibit signs of breakdown and madness soothe fought against it with a militant fervor. when it became obvious that all of her efforts were futile, she and aethra made a pact in one of aethra’s increasingly rare bouts of lucidity. and when the next wave of insanity came on, soothe upheld her end of the pact and put an end to aethra’s life.
ro of the non was either soothe’s best friend or straight-up girlfriend. soothe didn’t talk about it, though ro claimed that the case here was romance. regardless, they were obviously very close and ro was about the only person in the world whom soothe trusted fully. unfortunately, ro had fabricated parts of her past and soothe never knew that ro was far more than she appeared to be.
