Character: Vin Age: 23 OC Type: Pure. Point Taken: After getting away from a long journey into the desert, Vin has finally caught the scent of Hollendyr, and one of its Church’s top agents.
World Building: The parallel world Saval is a planet of untold magic and critical faith. While slightly more considerate and progressive by some means, the world is largely dominated by the Solenne faith, a religion that worships the stars as gods and the sun as the primary god. All life is considered born from the dust of stars and thus, all life is considered holy. Astronomy is a prized tool used for everything from research to divination and to go into the profession is the same as becoming a priest for the faith. While Solenne preaches that all life is equal, and that one must do good unto others for good to be done unto them, the church is domineering, militarized, and acts as a higher form of government for the entire world. Alternative faiths are discriminated against at best and wiped out at worst. Magic and supernatural abilities unrelated or unapproved of by the church are hunted relentlessly and stamped out. While the Solenne way is good to some, it is oppressive and cruel for others, and hard to get past. This doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to escape the all-seeing eye of the church, but punishments for disobeying can be extreme. While most of the world lives unaware of non-believers, some fight for their beliefs and practice in secret.
The planet has a strong variation of different lands, made up of 5 different continents and several countries. For the sake of simplicity, the main ones touched on are Hollendyr, the origin and lead country of the Solenne faith, Jökla, the snowy continent and Vin’s homeland, and Oaze, the mostly-desert country to the far south of Jökla and on the other side of the world from Hollendyr.
Jökla was relatively untouched by the Solenne faith for many centuries due to the difficult to traverse climate and terrain. Jökla was home to the Somnis people, a unique race of humans with the ability to walk through dreams during slumber. Somni had powers to influence someone during their dreams by planting subliminal thoughts and emotional cues that would surface when they woke up, a power that would aide them in manipulating their foes to keep them away. Jökla had been a snowy continent that spent nine of its twelve months in complete, unforgiving winter. There were only two seasons considered by the locals, winter and summer. Summer was spent aggressively foraging, cultivating, and hunting to prepare for the winter months and spending the harshest ones indoors for the duration of months on end. People would still go out and socialize, share information, and visit family— they would simply do so in their dreams. Each Somni is born with a unique full-body tattoo just beneath the skin that glows when their powers are used, in slumber.
Jökla’s culture was an indoor one that supported the survival of one another through the winter and persisted through the ages. Contrary to the Solenne faith, the Somni followed a more individual code and preached finding faith and beliefs as a personal matter. It was not specifically blasphemous, but it would later be painted as such when Hollendyr would start its invasion. However, said invasion would be put off for several years due to the unpredictable winter and the inability to fight and conquest for more than a few months before winter drove them out. Jökla was able to stay peaceful even with global pressure breathing down their neck to convert or suffer the consequences. Eventually, the leaders of the Somnis people thought to start sending several of their own to start negotiations, with the ulterior motive of ‘dreamwalking’ in their foes’ minds while they slept, in order to influence their decisions in the coming talks in the next few days and keep them mostly at bay.
It worked for quite a while, until the secret was found out through the use of spies. Deciding the supernatural power the Somni possessed was too dangerous and too influential to let continue to exist, the next summer Jökla was raided and massacred for its transgressions with great vengeance. The new law enacted proposed that no one with the dreamwalking power would be allowed to live ‘for the safety of the rest of the world’, and men, women, and children of all ages were killed. Jökla became an uninhabited, barren wasteland once the military moved out, and none were known to be left alive. It was said that bodies were left in their homes once the soldiers slaughtered everyone and moved on, and that all the cities and towns left are riddled with corpses. Due to the compromised ports and lack of a general military, there was no opposing army or ability to flee. The Somnis people hadn’t yet branched out into the world, nor had many open ports for trade, so when it’s mentioned that none were left alive, none truly were.
Hollendyr would continue to hunt down and demonize the Somni as a godless race who used their powers cruelly to trick and manipulate others, which is just about almost all the world knows about them. Nothing of their peaceful, isolated lifestyle would survive the erasure. They would be popularized as a source of nightmares while children would be reassured none were left to terrorize them.
Except for one.
Backstory:Vin grew up far away from the villages and cities that dominated Jökla in a large, two story cabin with a mother, father, and two older sisters. They were a solitary but unified bunch, working together to make it through the winter and growing fast crops during the summer. As the baby of the family, Vin was used to both being teased and doted on, but didn’t grow up without love. His sisters had exceptional prowess with their gifts, being able to travel miles upon miles in their sleep and visit other kids during their slumber. Vin’s powers were still there, but he didn’t grow up learning the ins and outs of them. What few lessons he does carry from his youth are basic, and discovery with his powers are always a new thing. Vin’s young childhood was spent learning the folklore of his people, old stories, things a child was able to understand. He was a creative but shy child, who took quickly to what was given to him. Had he lived a long life on Jökla, he probably would have been an influential upstart. Like a lot of things in his life, however, it just wasn’t meant to be.
Naturally, living isolated, his family did not experience the bloodshed the way the rest of the Somni did, but word did travel to them in their dreams of the slaughter. Vin, whose powers had only just began to awaken, would listen to the screams and tears of the terrified, the ones in hiding, and the dying. He could not understand what was going on then, but it had occurred to his family that they needed to get out of the country as soon as possible. Packing up what they could, they traveled according to the instructions of the brave few who had dared to contact them. There was likely to be one port still left unused, and one family left with a boat there. If they could make it there in time, the two families could leave together and escape to Oaze, which was something of a melting pot of culture. It would be easy to blend in and vanish after a while.
Just before the boat had cast off, soldiers had made it to the small port. Only Vin and the captain of the boat, Nella, were onboard while the families made last minute preparations. Forced to make a drastic decision and one Vin would wrestle with for the rest of his life, Nella pulled the ship out of the docks while Vin’s father and her son fended off as many soldiers as they could while the rest of the family scattered back into the forest. Knowing no one could last long when compared to the might of an army, the two said goodbye to their former lives in tears as the boat sailed into the Camille ocean, heading southward.
It would be the start of a long journey. Vin was only four years old.
It was hard to manage one boat with a distressed toddler underfoot, but Nella was made of tougher grit than most. Rationing their reserves of water and food, carefully managing the ship day and night, it was by the grace of the stars that Nella managed to navigate the boat southwards. Vin had drawn into himself for the majority of the trip, having never seen the ocean before and fearful of going above deck. It wouldn’t be for several days that Vin would make one last contact with his family across the dreamscape. His mother had survived but lived in fear of pursuit, but spent her last hours asleep, chasing him out over the ocean and comforting him. This would be the first lesson of Vin’s young life. Before her attackers caught up to her, she would insist deeply that Vin could never give up. That he was a part of something bigger than himself, and everyone who died back there did so knowing there would still be hope for all of them if he survived. The most important thing was to live.
Disappearing on the horizon, that was the last Vin saw of his mother. In the few, spacious hours that Nella would sleep, she would give news to the small boy and start telling him more about what he saw in his dreams. In the dreamscape, all the lights on the clear, crystal horizon were other Somni. Like the sun setting, they had all begun to fade until only a scarce few were left. You could follow someone’s light on the horizon in order to catch up with them, and very accomplished Somni could tell them apart. With hope, others would escape and the lights on the horizon would continue to last, but the Hollendyrians were thorough, and each passing day weathered the old woman with bad news. It was a long while before they reached Oaze’s shores, half starved and weak.
Though soldiers were looking for them, no one had a definitive visual on what they looked like, so there wasn’t anything to go off of. Nella had quickly sold the boat on arrival and used the money to buy shelter and food for the two of them. No matter what, she was determined to look after Vin while coping with her own grief, something Vin wouldn’t understand for the rest of his life. She worked in a popular restaurant’s kitchen day and night, while Vin spent time learning all that he could without being put into a local school. He was still a fearful child, and was slow to make friends. He’d wait eagerly in the evenings for Nella to come home and help him with his learnings while she relaxed from a rough day.
It would be this way for a long time, until Vin turned eight. By then, he’d grown a bit more social and had become a bit more worldly, but still relied on the older woman for support quite a bit. As most things in his turbulent life, nothing was destined to stay the same way forever, and when Jöklan documents were found aboard the ship Nella had sold four years ago, the purchasers turned the information over to the Hollendyrian army. They weren’t without blessings, though. A neighbor warned them beforehand that the foreign officials was coming, even if they didn’t understand why. Nella thanked them and hid Vin in a chest quickly before answering the door. When they interrogated her, they demanded to know if she was the only one left. She insisted she was, and when they were unable to find traces of anyone else, they took her away.
Vin, afraid to come out, had fallen asleep in the chest after hours and hours. He’d seen her light go out on the horizon after chasing after it, and realized he was finally alone. Knowing that it wouldn’t be safe to stay when the Hollendyrians could come back and ransack the place, Vin took what little money Nella had saved beneath her mattress and fled the small apartment they lived in. It was either by oversight or mercy that the other residents didn’t think to turn him in right after, but Vin hid on the back of a caravan that was moving out of town that night, and it began his first year of being alone.
Survival was ingrained in him, and nothing would ever drag it out— Instead of turning to an orphanage, he learned to scrub floors and find safe places during the night. He saved his money meticulously and whenever there was a chance he could be found out, he would catch the fastest moving thing out of town. He met plenty of friends, co-workers, and people who would take advantage of him. He learned the value of protection, and would stick around people who may not have been kind, but would look after their own. He became something of an insomniac in those few years, reluctant to let anyone see him sleep. He’d grow out his teenage years working on a farm and sleeping in their attic. He’d spend his time reading and learning as many languages as possible, so he could pass himself off as a local if he ever had to skip town again. People would call him wiry and constantly nervous, easily scared and intimidated. But he’d live.
Living, as it turns out, was more important to Vin than being happy. Most other people wouldn’t have it that way, but it was important to him. He had belonged to local organized crime groups before, pledging his loyalty as long as he got to stay alive. Very few people learned his secret, and some prized him when they did. Sometimes, running for safety from the Church would have him betray these people, and in turn, they would turn over all the information they had of him to the authorities. His trail never went cold, because while he was a mighty survivor, Vin wasn’t brilliant. The farm he worked for would eventually find out his little secret and feel betrayed that a Somni was hiding beneath their roof all along. He’d flee to the next town, and eventually to other countries. While his memories from his youth were broken apart by the haze of time, he still remembered bits of it vividly, and as he traveled, the more he would remember, the less he’d feel like he’d understand of himself.
By the time he turned 23, Vin would be traveling on camel back again through the desert, to the remote oasis town of Deluna. He’d be tired by then, wanting nothing more than to finally rest after years of running. The middle of the desert felt like a fair compromise, but not even long after arriving, he’d be met by an agent of the Church who wasn’t even looking for him— one who merely saw his suspicious behavior and chased him down.
That’s where Vin comes from now. A life spent mostly on the run.
no subject
Character: Vin
Age: 23
OC Type: Pure.
Point Taken: After getting away from a long journey into the desert, Vin has finally caught the scent of Hollendyr, and one of its Church’s top agents.
World Building: The parallel world Saval is a planet of untold magic and critical faith. While slightly more considerate and progressive by some means, the world is largely dominated by the Solenne faith, a religion that worships the stars as gods and the sun as the primary god. All life is considered born from the dust of stars and thus, all life is considered holy. Astronomy is a prized tool used for everything from research to divination and to go into the profession is the same as becoming a priest for the faith. While Solenne preaches that all life is equal, and that one must do good unto others for good to be done unto them, the church is domineering, militarized, and acts as a higher form of government for the entire world. Alternative faiths are discriminated against at best and wiped out at worst. Magic and supernatural abilities unrelated or unapproved of by the church are hunted relentlessly and stamped out. While the Solenne way is good to some, it is oppressive and cruel for others, and hard to get past. This doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to escape the all-seeing eye of the church, but punishments for disobeying can be extreme. While most of the world lives unaware of non-believers, some fight for their beliefs and practice in secret.
The planet has a strong variation of different lands, made up of 5 different continents and several countries. For the sake of simplicity, the main ones touched on are Hollendyr, the origin and lead country of the Solenne faith, Jökla, the snowy continent and Vin’s homeland, and Oaze, the mostly-desert country to the far south of Jökla and on the other side of the world from Hollendyr.
Jökla was relatively untouched by the Solenne faith for many centuries due to the difficult to traverse climate and terrain. Jökla was home to the Somnis people, a unique race of humans with the ability to walk through dreams during slumber. Somni had powers to influence someone during their dreams by planting subliminal thoughts and emotional cues that would surface when they woke up, a power that would aide them in manipulating their foes to keep them away. Jökla had been a snowy continent that spent nine of its twelve months in complete, unforgiving winter. There were only two seasons considered by the locals, winter and summer. Summer was spent aggressively foraging, cultivating, and hunting to prepare for the winter months and spending the harshest ones indoors for the duration of months on end. People would still go out and socialize, share information, and visit family— they would simply do so in their dreams. Each Somni is born with a unique full-body tattoo just beneath the skin that glows when their powers are used, in slumber.
Jökla’s culture was an indoor one that supported the survival of one another through the winter and persisted through the ages. Contrary to the Solenne faith, the Somni followed a more individual code and preached finding faith and beliefs as a personal matter. It was not specifically blasphemous, but it would later be painted as such when Hollendyr would start its invasion. However, said invasion would be put off for several years due to the unpredictable winter and the inability to fight and conquest for more than a few months before winter drove them out. Jökla was able to stay peaceful even with global pressure breathing down their neck to convert or suffer the consequences. Eventually, the leaders of the Somnis people thought to start sending several of their own to start negotiations, with the ulterior motive of ‘dreamwalking’ in their foes’ minds while they slept, in order to influence their decisions in the coming talks in the next few days and keep them mostly at bay.
It worked for quite a while, until the secret was found out through the use of spies. Deciding the supernatural power the Somni possessed was too dangerous and too influential to let continue to exist, the next summer Jökla was raided and massacred for its transgressions with great vengeance. The new law enacted proposed that no one with the dreamwalking power would be allowed to live ‘for the safety of the rest of the world’, and men, women, and children of all ages were killed. Jökla became an uninhabited, barren wasteland once the military moved out, and none were known to be left alive. It was said that bodies were left in their homes once the soldiers slaughtered everyone and moved on, and that all the cities and towns left are riddled with corpses. Due to the compromised ports and lack of a general military, there was no opposing army or ability to flee. The Somnis people hadn’t yet branched out into the world, nor had many open ports for trade, so when it’s mentioned that none were left alive, none truly were.
Hollendyr would continue to hunt down and demonize the Somni as a godless race who used their powers cruelly to trick and manipulate others, which is just about almost all the world knows about them. Nothing of their peaceful, isolated lifestyle would survive the erasure. They would be popularized as a source of nightmares while children would be reassured none were left to terrorize them.
Except for one.
Backstory:Vin grew up far away from the villages and cities that dominated Jökla in a large, two story cabin with a mother, father, and two older sisters. They were a solitary but unified bunch, working together to make it through the winter and growing fast crops during the summer. As the baby of the family, Vin was used to both being teased and doted on, but didn’t grow up without love. His sisters had exceptional prowess with their gifts, being able to travel miles upon miles in their sleep and visit other kids during their slumber. Vin’s powers were still there, but he didn’t grow up learning the ins and outs of them. What few lessons he does carry from his youth are basic, and discovery with his powers are always a new thing. Vin’s young childhood was spent learning the folklore of his people, old stories, things a child was able to understand. He was a creative but shy child, who took quickly to what was given to him. Had he lived a long life on Jökla, he probably would have been an influential upstart. Like a lot of things in his life, however, it just wasn’t meant to be.
Naturally, living isolated, his family did not experience the bloodshed the way the rest of the Somni did, but word did travel to them in their dreams of the slaughter. Vin, whose powers had only just began to awaken, would listen to the screams and tears of the terrified, the ones in hiding, and the dying. He could not understand what was going on then, but it had occurred to his family that they needed to get out of the country as soon as possible. Packing up what they could, they traveled according to the instructions of the brave few who had dared to contact them. There was likely to be one port still left unused, and one family left with a boat there. If they could make it there in time, the two families could leave together and escape to Oaze, which was something of a melting pot of culture. It would be easy to blend in and vanish after a while.
Just before the boat had cast off, soldiers had made it to the small port. Only Vin and the captain of the boat, Nella, were onboard while the families made last minute preparations. Forced to make a drastic decision and one Vin would wrestle with for the rest of his life, Nella pulled the ship out of the docks while Vin’s father and her son fended off as many soldiers as they could while the rest of the family scattered back into the forest. Knowing no one could last long when compared to the might of an army, the two said goodbye to their former lives in tears as the boat sailed into the Camille ocean, heading southward.
It would be the start of a long journey. Vin was only four years old.
It was hard to manage one boat with a distressed toddler underfoot, but Nella was made of tougher grit than most. Rationing their reserves of water and food, carefully managing the ship day and night, it was by the grace of the stars that Nella managed to navigate the boat southwards. Vin had drawn into himself for the majority of the trip, having never seen the ocean before and fearful of going above deck. It wouldn’t be for several days that Vin would make one last contact with his family across the dreamscape. His mother had survived but lived in fear of pursuit, but spent her last hours asleep, chasing him out over the ocean and comforting him. This would be the first lesson of Vin’s young life. Before her attackers caught up to her, she would insist deeply that Vin could never give up. That he was a part of something bigger than himself, and everyone who died back there did so knowing there would still be hope for all of them if he survived. The most important thing was to live.
Disappearing on the horizon, that was the last Vin saw of his mother. In the few, spacious hours that Nella would sleep, she would give news to the small boy and start telling him more about what he saw in his dreams. In the dreamscape, all the lights on the clear, crystal horizon were other Somni. Like the sun setting, they had all begun to fade until only a scarce few were left. You could follow someone’s light on the horizon in order to catch up with them, and very accomplished Somni could tell them apart. With hope, others would escape and the lights on the horizon would continue to last, but the Hollendyrians were thorough, and each passing day weathered the old woman with bad news. It was a long while before they reached Oaze’s shores, half starved and weak.
Though soldiers were looking for them, no one had a definitive visual on what they looked like, so there wasn’t anything to go off of. Nella had quickly sold the boat on arrival and used the money to buy shelter and food for the two of them. No matter what, she was determined to look after Vin while coping with her own grief, something Vin wouldn’t understand for the rest of his life. She worked in a popular restaurant’s kitchen day and night, while Vin spent time learning all that he could without being put into a local school. He was still a fearful child, and was slow to make friends. He’d wait eagerly in the evenings for Nella to come home and help him with his learnings while she relaxed from a rough day.
It would be this way for a long time, until Vin turned eight. By then, he’d grown a bit more social and had become a bit more worldly, but still relied on the older woman for support quite a bit. As most things in his turbulent life, nothing was destined to stay the same way forever, and when Jöklan documents were found aboard the ship Nella had sold four years ago, the purchasers turned the information over to the Hollendyrian army. They weren’t without blessings, though. A neighbor warned them beforehand that the foreign officials was coming, even if they didn’t understand why. Nella thanked them and hid Vin in a chest quickly before answering the door. When they interrogated her, they demanded to know if she was the only one left. She insisted she was, and when they were unable to find traces of anyone else, they took her away.
Vin, afraid to come out, had fallen asleep in the chest after hours and hours. He’d seen her light go out on the horizon after chasing after it, and realized he was finally alone. Knowing that it wouldn’t be safe to stay when the Hollendyrians could come back and ransack the place, Vin took what little money Nella had saved beneath her mattress and fled the small apartment they lived in. It was either by oversight or mercy that the other residents didn’t think to turn him in right after, but Vin hid on the back of a caravan that was moving out of town that night, and it began his first year of being alone.
Survival was ingrained in him, and nothing would ever drag it out— Instead of turning to an orphanage, he learned to scrub floors and find safe places during the night. He saved his money meticulously and whenever there was a chance he could be found out, he would catch the fastest moving thing out of town. He met plenty of friends, co-workers, and people who would take advantage of him. He learned the value of protection, and would stick around people who may not have been kind, but would look after their own. He became something of an insomniac in those few years, reluctant to let anyone see him sleep. He’d grow out his teenage years working on a farm and sleeping in their attic. He’d spend his time reading and learning as many languages as possible, so he could pass himself off as a local if he ever had to skip town again. People would call him wiry and constantly nervous, easily scared and intimidated. But he’d live.
Living, as it turns out, was more important to Vin than being happy. Most other people wouldn’t have it that way, but it was important to him. He had belonged to local organized crime groups before, pledging his loyalty as long as he got to stay alive. Very few people learned his secret, and some prized him when they did. Sometimes, running for safety from the Church would have him betray these people, and in turn, they would turn over all the information they had of him to the authorities. His trail never went cold, because while he was a mighty survivor, Vin wasn’t brilliant. The farm he worked for would eventually find out his little secret and feel betrayed that a Somni was hiding beneath their roof all along. He’d flee to the next town, and eventually to other countries. While his memories from his youth were broken apart by the haze of time, he still remembered bits of it vividly, and as he traveled, the more he would remember, the less he’d feel like he’d understand of himself.
By the time he turned 23, Vin would be traveling on camel back again through the desert, to the remote oasis town of Deluna. He’d be tired by then, wanting nothing more than to finally rest after years of running. The middle of the desert felt like a fair compromise, but not even long after arriving, he’d be met by an agent of the Church who wasn’t even looking for him— one who merely saw his suspicious behavior and chased him down.
That’s where Vin comes from now. A life spent mostly on the run.