Rie Katayama

Aife - Angel of Anger; She got this name from the Misian soldiers who found her n front of the statue of Aife after she had to run away from her home.

Main Character

19 winters
1 winter=1 year you've lived past a brutal northern winter

Female

She has sort hair just above her shoulders that includes two shorter strands of hair near the front of her face that look similar to bangs. She normally puts the hair to the side of her face pinned or braided back with the rest left down. She has coarse hair that's quite thin. Her hair is generally straight, but gets slightly more frizzy in humidity.

Black with a shadowy quality to it as opposed to shiny.

6 feet

163 pounds

Blood red 'war paint' that tapers from her eyelids to her ears in one solid streak. Though it looks like war paint, it's actually a type of brand passed down her bloodline. Though she isn't born with it, it is a permanent mark, like a tattoo, that's given to her when she comes of age, or when she's old enough to hold a sword. It distinguishes her as a warrior. Her eyes stand out from the rest of her face because of their distinctive color and almond shape. In short, she has thick eyebrows, almond eyes, thin lips, and broad jawline. Her cheekbones don't stand out much and her nose is flat with bigger nostrils.

Extremely muscular with long arms and fingers with big hands and feet. She has a triangular body shape.

Rie is so pale that you'd think she's dead

Although Rie was born in Tamaya she grew up with Setsunian culture mixed with her own family's traditions. According to blood, She's Setsunian and Tamayan with powerful blood from the maternal line. Her mother came from a bloodline that worshipped Marisha-ten Katayama, the Setsunian goddess of war. The bloodline slowly feel out of respect and out of memory in time.

Silver

She has strong, dark eyebrows that grow unruly when they aren't plucked.

Rie’s greatest flaw is her lack of empathy and her cold rage that launches her into bloody actions. She tends to feel like the things she faces don't really matter because of how much she's lost. The only thing she feels she can do is end anything she sees. When she finds something to care about, she will begin her character arc. Some of her smaller flaws are being stubborn and bottleing up her emotions. One of Rie's smaller habits is forgetting to clean her training equipment leaving them dirty and disgusting.
(Flaws further explained in notes.)

Smiling: little quirk of her lip.
Talking: decent at holding meaningful conversations. gives nods of confirmation. can be a somewhat diplomatic speaker. always actively engaged when having a conversation.
In thought: tap her left index finger or trail off mid-sentence.
Deception: When she's trying not to say something, she will put a fist over her mouth and stare intently into space. You can tell Rie is lying when she makes direct eye contact then immediately looks away, hiding behind her lashes.
Sitting: Her ankles are always crossed, but never her legs. arms are usually crossed. Anger: bare her teeth and snarl, giving up on words.
Fear: make whimpering noises while biting her lip.
Embarrassment: her face with her hood or hands and look away from you while trying not to smile.
Nervous: feet will tap constantly while she makes small impatient groaning noises.
(Animalistic mannerisms explained in notes)

Rie is motivated toward piecing together her bloodline and confronting her past. This a major obstacle she learns to overcome throughout the story. When she learns to connect back to her past and to herself, she begins to grow as a character. Her motivation to do this comes from a deep place of anger and longing to better know her mother through her past.
(Motivations further explained in notes)

Rie doesn't like to think of herself as a majorly prejudiced person, but when it comes to royalty, she can't stop the boiling in her blood. Rie hates the divide between the rich and the poor, and feels the need to obliterate the rich in order to close the gap. In this way, Rie is prejudiced against the rich.

Fighting and strategy are Rie's main talents. Since she was little, Rie has been trained to fight and she only improves after joining military. It was during her time in the military that she picked up some sense of logistics and military strategy. She's really good at cooking from when her sister Eunoia taught her, but she doesn't have time to do it very often, and doesn't really care to do it now that her sister is gone. Due to her skill of evaluation, she's in the habit of observing everything and picking out details. Playing violin is another one of Rie's talents, though it is emotionally draining for her because it reminds Rie of her mother. Playing violin is one of the few times that Rie expresses deeper emotions, so even though she enjoys it, she still can't do it very often. Rie's mother taught her to play violin from before Rie remembers. When Rie plays, she can almost feel her mother playing with her.

Strategic board games, training, and playing violin are Rie's main hobbies.
(Hobbies further explained in notes.)

Introvert at heart, Rie prefers her own company. Her opinions are strong, and she can be a stubborn person when it comes to changing preset beliefs. She's very poor at manipulating people so she prefers to fight them on her own terms. She has a turbulent mind with a calm outer shell that can be tough to crack. Her dry humor and sarcasm are basically the only indicator of her mood. She is a true neutral who does what she feels is best at the time without having a strict moral compass. She can sometimes surprise people when she makes quick decisions. She may seem impulsive because of this, but she really is a thorough thinker. Surprise and anxiety are some of the emotions she feels deeper even when she puts on a calm façade. Rie is a very emotional person, but she has learned to put a damper on her emotions because she was raised to be a focused warrior. In short, Rie is an island of ice with a volcano at the center.

Rie's favorite animal is the wolf because of how expressive they are. She finds part of herself in the wolf spirit. This is symbolic of how she goes from being a lone wolf to traveling in a pack and having people to rely on. This changes her from being inexpressive to more emotionally complex.

Rie personally loves the color black or silver, but when she meets Aurelia she starts to find gold attractive.

Her only occupation was in the military. She occasionally made ends meet through bounty hunting or arena fighting. She uses all of these methods to deal with her emotions.

Rie believes in strong defense, equal rights, and less of a gap between the rich and the poor. She doesn't like the current monarchy because there's too much of a chance for a despotic ruler, but she has no power to change this.

Rie has adopted her own unique style of worship commonly referred to as folk religion. She doesn't have a regular routine of praying/ceremony, but she does believe that everything has a spiritual essence. She is polytheistic, though she is mainly in the Marisha-ten sect. This type of worship stems from her traditional Setsunian upbringing. Since she doesn't have a regular routine of prayer meditation and training, her style of worship is different than traditional Setsunian worship. She does try to pray as much as she can, but meditation is lost to her. While she was growing up she did all of these things, but she gave up trying to fit them into her chaotic life.

The bastard sword is Rie's favorite weapon because of how quick and lethal it is. It's also the blade she took from her mother and ran off with.

Rie's favorite possession is any violin she can get her hands on. She plays her soul into that instrument. It's very personal for her because of how it connected her to her mother. Even though she left her first violin in the mountains, she uses her little money to buy another one. She then steals one from Tamaya's orchestra so she could play it.

Rie loves meat. She rarely had any when she was in the mountains, but after trying it at the training camps she fell in love with it.

Rie lives in a universe called Tenebrae Locus where there are three realms stacked on top of each other. There's the land of the gods, Regia Superi, on top, Nefastus, the mortal plane where Rie lives, in the middle, and Cystallos, a frozen plane of death, on the bottom.

She grew up in the cold mountains of northern Tamaya with her sister, Eunoia, and her mother, Celeana. Her mother trained her in basic martial arts and swordplay from before Rie can remember. Her mother was distant with a fiery temper, quick to correct any of Rie's mistakes. Rie only remembers her mother's brutal love and Eunoia's soft encouragement throughout her childhood. From the beginning Rie was trained to remain neutral, hiding her emotions. The only time Rie would connect with her mother was when they would both play the violin. Rie had the ways of a warrior drilled into her. As a result, Rie never learned how to trust or love, except for when she opened up to Eunoia. When she opened up to her twin sister, Rie revealed all of her emotions. Without Eunoia, Rie lost her outlet and became very cold again. Rie started to express all of her emotions through fighting.

When Rie turned thirteen and soldiers showed up to her house, she didn't realize it was an execution. What Rie didn't know was that the soldiers were sent on orders to kill her mother and take the children away. Her mother had an affair with the Tamayan king and was exiled to have her babies. When the soldiers came, Eunoia was ripped away from Rie by smirking soldiers and shackled in place. It was the only time Rie would ever see her mother cry. After her mother was chained down on her knees, a man in a cloak stepped out of the waiting carriage. After giving Rie a dagger, he explained the stakes to Rie. Either Rie would kill her mother with the dagger or he would kill Eunoia. Shaking, Rie stepped up to her mother and made her first kill. Eunoia screamed, but was quickly gagged and carried onto the carriage.

When Rie collected her wits she grabbed the sword from her mothers waist and ran into the freezing cold. She was later found by a search party from the neighboring kingdom, freezing and half dead, with blood covering her. She was forced to join their military as a new recruit and managed to climb in rank. The reason she was put into the military so early was because Misa desperately needed soldiers in the war against Tamaya. In the military she was respected for her physical talent and valued for her strategic gifts. She commanded and trained a squad of soldiers. Most of the soldiers were natives of Misa, and didn't respect her because of her Tamayan/Setsunian origins. Still, she was never openly opposed. In total, she spent six winters in the army and got captured when she was nineteen and sent to Tamaya as a prisoner of war.This happened when she lead her squad of soldiers into battle and saw them killed. She was taken as a prisoner.

Before her execution, she manages to coordinate an escape between her and other prisoners of war that are from a rebel group. She joins them and escapes. On the rebel group's orders, she infiltrates the Tamayan military. When she sees the king again, she sees the man in the cloak that first handed her the dagger she used to kill her mother. She's left to figure out the puzzle of her heritage while trying to gain freedom from the man she hates. During her stay at the castle, she meets Aurelia locked up in a noble's room and becomes determined to release her. She becomes attracted to Aurelia's kindness and strength, making them great friends.

Rie was taught little by her mother, but she did learn to read basic words with some struggle. She was never patient enough to teach herself to write. She learned arithmetic during her stay in the military, working her way up to an advanced level of math. Her language arts is only at a rudimentary level. She has a quick wit and plenty of street smarts but her book smarts are generally low. She continues to work hard at math, trying to understand numbers so she can excel at soldier positioning on the battlefield.

Nepa 15, 502
Nepa is the segement of the yaer Rie was born in, it is t segment of the scorpion and the constellation in the sky during this time.

Rie becomes attatched to a wolf while running from the mountains. The search party from a neighboring kingdom had to fight through a pack of them to get to her. One of them, however, Virago protected by clinging tightly to it's back. They became inseparable.

Hobbies explained
For the most part, Rie's hobbies mirror her talents. She plays strategic board games against anyone she can find because she loves it that much and is one of the few things that make her happy. Training is what Rie uses to separate herself from the world, though this has turned her into a skilled warrior. Playing violin is much more personal to Rie, since it was the only thing that connected her to her mother. She continues to play, but only softly and late at night. This is one of the only times she cries because of it's the only time she allows herself to remember her lost mother. Even though it's emotionally draining, Rie still chooses to do it, and enjoys doing it.
Motivations explained
By not knowing who she is, she questions herself and holds herself back, but only keeps going for the hope of maybe one day finding out. At the same time however, she's hesitant to look into her past for fear she'll see a monster she's unable to defeat. She finally confronts who she is when she starts to connect with other people, and build loyalty toward her inner circle. From there she builds a sense of self and becomes more caring, if only to certain people.
Flaws Explained
Rie avoids her memories by drowning herself in competition and living in the moment. This is part of the reason she’s able to take up a job in the military where she's constantly training. The only time she has the hot, boiling over, type of anger is when she's alone playing the violin and crying over lost memories of her childhood. She’s not very trusting, but she tends to work decently well with people, even if she'd rather work alone. By opening up and letting herself trust again, Rie will find a will to live for something other than mere survival.
Mannerisms explained
The reason for Rie's animalistic nature has to do with her upbringing. For starters, she was raised in a secluded location making her not used to outside contact. Another thing to consider is that she faced the harsh cold of the mountains and was trained to thing like an animal when it came to survival. These things sometimes bleed into her mannerisms and habits.
Inventory explained
Marisha's legacy is a robe that is believed to have originally belonged to Marisha, the goddess of war. It is said to have been passed down her bloodline and now Rie has it. Valdis is Marisha's original blade and was bestowed to her first child and passed down the bloodline. Rie took it when her mother died.