Lieutenant Hugs Rides To War

[foreignsoul]

Hello! I decided Tai Feng was not enough doom for you.

Sarai Elahn is a frontliner spellsword former-alt of a young lady named Sarah Allen. The sharp may notice that Sarah is not an especially creative person as Sarai's name is just a slight perversion of her own.

Sarai was a minimally-roleplayed level-capped alt - sort of half-jokingly RP'd when her friends started gabbing IC, more or less - who was used mainly for raiding. She woke up during the unusual and unfortunate circumstance of being Dead in the game's coded parlance. This unfortunately appears to mean actually-dead to the awakened. Like most resurrectees, she lost something in the Dark, but unlike most she has very little context of herself before her death and therefore it is hard to say what she lost.

She's much happier with herself than when Sarah played her, whatever it was. Sarai and Sarah got in touch with each other during the process of the merges and hit it off famously. At that time, Sarai was actually an extreme support build, but she became much more aggressive after awakening, and growing into her own person left her ill-suited to the mindset. So Sarah logged her in and marched her down to the respec contact, and respecced her into the heavy-combat DPS build she has now, which Sarai found very impressive. The two are pretty much fast friends and talking to Sarai about players almost inevitably gets her to sigh dreamily about how cool they are. Or at least hers is. Sarai's deeply enamored with Earth things and has become something of a technophile. She has so many gadgets it's a little bananas. She has a leather spellbook mount on her belt which she keeps her tablet in.

Alas, Sarah is trapped in Ireland thanks to the final Merge. She will probably undertake the Odyssey to reach Zenderael at some point. Sarai rejoined the Ambergaze during the War, where she has served faithfully if with somewhat greater-than-necessary zeal in the beating up monsters department. She is highly aggressive in battle, using a sword-and-sheath style mixed with heavy Spellsword elemental offense. She likes fire. ...a lot.

Comments

[firecracker_hopping]

Like we discussed, Lera and Sarai will have CR!

I imagine Lera met her when she rejoined for the war, being the new Mazda and all. Some oath swearing was probably involved. Since then, they've probably sparred sometimes, since Lera tries to get out and spar with other Ambereyes. She might have joked around with her a little, at least within the bounds that your boss can.

I could also see Chisaki running into Sarai when she's out fighting monsters. I'm not sure where this goes, exactly, but I think it could be interesting?

Acher fighting her seems like a thing to pencil in if possible some day.

[foreignsoul]

Sarai has behaved herself as much as she is capable of for the new Mazda, yes. Oaths are no problem although occasionally someone needs to remind her of the less obvious points of protocol. Nothing punishable or problematic, just, you know. Not one of those detail-oriented people.

Acher and Sarai fighting sounds excellent, and probably less comically one-sided than him punting TF clear across Enghelab!

Monster fighting bonding has some promise. Sarai probably is more oriented in that direction even within the Ambereyes, since she's still kind of an aggressive monster-hunter at heart and somehow that doesn't always work out very well on city patrols.

[firecracker_hopping]

This makes sense! Lera is patient, there, though she is the sort who takes those oaths and rules very seriously and the like. So more like she'll tolerate learning them, she wouldn't tolerate flaunting 'em.

And yes yes. Chisaki can have already met her or not? I'm easy.

[andlivefreely]

It's possible Mal knows of Sarai having done lots of raiding with both alt!Mal and Val (mostly alt!Mal, he would use Val when they needed a more support role or extra healing). While most of their raiding was guild-raids they did do raid events that invited non-guildies to go with, and I'm sure there were times when someone couldn't make it or they lost someone mid-raid and needed a replacement. :x

Which would mean Sarai and Val might know each other minorly.

(alt!Mal also but he's NPC'd and I'm not paying much attention to him atm)

Also possible to have run into Irena during the occasional raid - Alison mostly used her assassin in raids, but in cases where they'd need someone to disenchant or for major area damage she'd have brought Irena in instead.

That's about it I think?

[foreignsoul]

That'd do! Sarai had a particularly rough patch during her awakening period that was most obvious to raiders, but I'm not sure any ex-alts would really remember it because it was also pretty early. Players might, though the way I wrote her history the actual day her brain switched on and she had a huge panic attack mid-raid, she was with her own league.

[suddenly_science]

HELLO SARAI!

I'm bad at figuring out how characters can meet, but she could conceivably meet Harriet through Lera or in an official spellsword capacity. If you prefer for this to have already happened so they can have existing CR, I'm cool with that!

I'm pretty sure Random Chance is the best way for her to potentially meet Nova. For reasons unknown even to him he has been sort of collecting gossip(?) knowledge(?) of unique relationships between players and their creations with what seems to be the aim of finding the most harmonious and ideal. So if he learns she is of the opinion that HER PLAYER IS THE BESTEST PLAYER EVER he'd INTRIGUED although idk what he'd do with the information. Jealousy? Ask for advice for how to dig out of the hole he's in with his?

[suddenly_science]

Actually come to think of it, he might argue with her even though he's "cool" with players now just because her gratitude to hers for using the game to help her makes him look bad for being ungrateful/homicidal toward his, when she also helped him by item farming.

[foreignsoul]

Yeah, Sarai is absolutely designed to drive the people with especially troubled relationships with their players mental. Or just with 'players', really. Nova and Ravi are high on my to-do list.

Harriet I'm OK with saying they may only know each other in the most strictly professional sense, they can meet properly through Lera or something?? That sounds good.

[suddenly_science]

O7! Yes, sounds good!

[pulledunder]

I feel like there's something fun to be done with Sarai and Victor concerning player feelings. He's been pretty much on "their side", but I think how open she is would be a step too far even for him. Let's just be in denial about how close we are/want to be with our player as an individual yes okay.

There are probably things to do with others and I will give that more thought!

[foreignsoul]

Yes! I am excited to bump Sarai up especially against the alts who seem particularly troubled by Player Feelings, because I think her creepy obsession close friendship with her player is sort of an interesting unusual point on that spectrum for people to cope with.