Kuvira

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Joysweeper
Are you over 15? Indeed
Contact: Try Plurk
Current characters in the game: Julien/Yuuya, Nat/Tash


IC INFORMATION
Name: Kuvira, Gwyneth O'Reynne
Canon and Medium: Legend of Korra
Age: Kuvira’s around 23. Gwyneth’s thirty-seven.
Pre-Incarnation Species: Human
Pre-Incarnation Appearance: Here, Here
Any Differences: Gwyneth is white and blue eyed. She does have black hair and a facial mole.
Starting Location: NV, USA.
Pre-Incarnated History: Here.

In brief: Kuvira was abandoned by her parents as a child, and taken in by Suyin Beifong, ruler of a meritocratic city, Zaofu. Suyin was not her new mother but a mentor and teacher. Kuvira grew up striving to please her, becoming Captain of the city’s guard and a star dancer. She helped in an attempt to save people from a band of anarchist terrorists, during which the Avatar, most powerful being in the world, was critically injured.

The terrorists had killed the nation’s Queen and the country was messily tearing itself apart. Suyin was approached as someone who might help stabilize things. When she refused, Kuvira realized no one else was going to do anything. She saw herself in the people now at the mercy of unhampered bandits. Covertly she gathered supporters in the city; the best of the Guard, the wealthiest citizens, inventors, and people chafing at Suyin’s control. Leaving meant abandoning her hard-won life in Zaofu for good. She did it without looking back.

Over the course of three years Kuvira’s forces fought to bring stability back. Railroad systems were set up across the country, bandits were given the choice of being executed or joining her, the people were fed and protected and their towns were given more technology. Kuvira hardened as this went on, and had to take increasingly steep steps to maintain control. There were a lot of unsavory rumors about her mostly untrue or skewed and she did require labor, but a lot of people seemed to be going about their lives just fine and her armies loved her. Still she was the head of a kind of cult of personality - loved and feared, and always respected. It got to her head.

She and Suyin’s oldest son Baatar Junior got engaged, but her relationships with the other Beifongs were strained at the absolute best. Kuvira also recruited Bolin, one of the Avatar’s friends.

Once most of the Earth Kingdom had been united in what was now starting to be called the Earth Empire she was called to Republic City to relinquish control of it to a surviving royal, Prince Wu. He was useless. During the ceremony she unilaterally declared that he had no power and she was going to keep the country running herself, and no one dared contradict her. She was cheered, but knew the world was now unsure of her. Her top inventor, working on an energy source, accidentally found that the vines that grow from spirit energy could produce ridiculously destructive beams. Though he protested she forced him to keep working on them.

Zaofu and Republic City were the only parts of the country not under her control. When she moved on Zaofu it was in an attempt to take it peacefully. Then Suyin tried to assassinate her in the night; Kuvira anticipated that, captured her, and declared if Zaofu surrendered its citizens would not be held accountable. The Avatar, partially recovered, came out to stop them. To spare her soldiers Kuvira agreed to have a one-on-one duel for the city’s fate. Korra was off her game and suffered an attack of PTSD. Her allies attacked Kuvira to save the Avatar; declaring that the terms had been broken, Kuvira called on her armies to attack and drive them back, securing the city for them. She allowed most of the citizens to continue with their lives as part of her empire, but secured the Beifongs in a prison.

Bolin and her inventor defected and fled, though the inventor’s assistant continued to serve. Baatar continued working on the spirit weapon project with the assistant’s help but she was quietly sabotaging things. Finding this out during the first public demonstration, a furious Kuvira sent her to be killed by the firing of the weapon. She wasn’t, since Suyin had been released by a small team and came to fight her. It was difficult, but Kuvira gained the upper hand by the time the Beifongs fled, assistant in tow.

Stepping up her plans Kuvira had a mechatank of astonishing size built, invulnerable to almost anything, and took command of it to confront Republic City, quickly destroying parts of its navy and demoralizing its armies. She demanded surrender and sent Baatar to negotiate with the city’s President - however he was captured by the Avatar and her forces. He gladly agreed to their demands, telling her to abandon the city, that he refused to live without her. All that mattered was that they would get married and live together for the rest of their lives.

Kuvira fired on him. This looks heartless - it wasn’t. Her choices were to abandon him to the Avatar, try to double-cross the most powerful entity on the planet, or compromise her principles. Her goal was unbending. It was a moral imperative to keep going, to put no more stock in his life, or her own happiness, than in any other lives. It would have taken out all her enemies. She told Baatar he was right and that she loved him so that he would be happy in his last moments.

The Avatar’s forces survived and launched many attempts against her, failing due to the ridiculously good design of her giant mech. She leveled much of the city fighting them. Eventually they got inside and started to mess around with the internals. The Avatar herself fought Kuvira one-on-one in the cockpit, and this time Kuvira struggled much more. When the mech fell Korra tried to get her out. Kuvira launched a sneak attack and fled into a massive region of spirit vines. From there, she found where the mech’s spirit cannon had fallen and tried to use it to kill the Avatar.

It didn’t work and started going haywire. Korra called for her to shut it down. “I can’t!” When it would have killed her Korra stepped in and in a spectacular display of compassion and power stepped between Kuvira and a beam that punches holes in mountains, and used it to create a new portal into the realm of spirits. There she spoke gently to Kuvira, with understanding, and helped her to realize how far she’d gone from her goal. Kuvira came back to the real world with her, told her armies to stand down, surrendered, and apologized.

Reincarnated History: Gwyneth’s story isn’t nearly that dramatic. She was born to wealth and privilege, youngest child of three. Her siblings were both of them ambitious and driven and liked few people, though one did fall in love and get married. Gwyneth acquired a position partially through nepotism, but she’s not bad managing some of the branch which helps the disenfranchised. She’s just not driven or spectacular.

She’s often had the sense that her family is disappointed in her because her heart is not in business matters, but in fencing and dance. Gwyn’s really good at both, and has had enough privilege to develop her skills there, though she gets a certain amount of flack for her “hobbies”.

Although she’s had an engagement in the past it has since broken. Her Baatar-equivalent was much more invested in the relationship than she was and is bitter.

First Echo: Encounter with a Vermini-possessed feral dog. This gets her an early level of Earthbending - sensing it and being able to strike stone and have it yield, the basic parts of early Earthbending training.

Pre-Incarnation Personality: As a child Kuvira was abandoned by her parents “like I meant nothing to them”, which affected her profoundly. From Suyin she could expect pride in her accomplishments, not unconditional love. An apt pupil, she feels the need to work to be “good enough”, is hungry for validation and praise, and struggles to handle some criticism well. Some of Suyin’s views, like that hereditary rulers are a bad idea, that it’s good to give people second chances and guidance, and that betrayal is unforgivable, have been taken to heart. Like Suyin, she takes authority easily.

A private person, she tends towards precision in her speech and stoicism in her manner, though she enjoys the adrenaline of dancing and having the upper hand in a fight and can be overconfident. Sometimes she’ll taunt opponents into making mistakes.

In the looting and chaos following the murder of the Earth Queen Kuvira felt that the people were helpless and abandoned just as she had been. Doing something about it, spreading the prosperity and opportunities she had enjoyed in Zaofu, seemed a moral imperative. Refusing was unthinkable and personal. Her name means “courageous woman”, and it fits well! Kuvira is stubborn, all but fearless, and determined to succeed.

Kuvira must be looked at before and after the three-year timeskip in which she leaves Zaofu and conquers the Earth Kingdom. As Guard-Captain in Zaofu she’s dutiful and typically soft spoken, firm but respectful. She goes to great effort to save an ally and tends him with concern. While she is stoic and not terribly expressive or emotional, she’s not entirely controlled and is easily kind. She is deferential trying to convince Suyin to change her mind and help with the situation in the Earth Kingdom, but met with a flat refusal she quickly decides to gather allies and abandons the city.

During the three year-timeskip it seems there was no one to advise or direct Kuvira, and she had to make compromises. She needed to deal out an enormous amount of violence, and she hardened.

After the three-year timeskip, Kuvira speaks far more firmly and with more authority as the head of a cult of personality. She is widely beloved and seems slightly hurt whenever someone tells her she is not working with the peoples’ best interests in mind - she genuinely sees what she’s doing as right. Generally she treats her troops well, refusing to order them to do anything she would not do herself. They fear and adore her and will carry out operations for her on their own initiative. She’s come to internalize this view of herself.

Bandits are rapidly neutralized and given the choice of death or swearing loyalty to her and working for her. Similarly governors must swear to her to keep their authority when under her protection. Kuvira seems to have a general policy of neither helping nor hindering people who don’t attack her or agree to join. While she will kill people she always seeks to cause the lowest casualties possible, and prefers to take what she sees as the high road in all cases. She cannot stand betrayal, it’s one of the few things that drives her to rage.

What she believes to be right is more important than her own happiness. She can’t count the life of someone she loves as more important than what is right, either. When her fiancee is kidnapped he tells her to give in to the ransom demands and abandon her crusade because he refuses to live without her. Rather than reject the terms and leave him to them, or go against her principles, she tells him she loves him and tries to kill him, and her most powerful enemies along with him. This is difficult for her, but she swallows it down so she can keep going.

Any differences?: In a sense she’s in Guard-Captain Kuvira’s position, answering to some people and going with their whims. She’s never really been in a position without willing leaders, so she’s never stepped up. Dancing and fencing is looked at askance by some of her family, but she’s able to balance her dreams with business tolerably well, so she’s had no need to split from them.

She has a little resentment over her family’s general belief that you need to be doing something productive, with the idea that if she doesn’t she is worth less. It shouldn’t be like that, she thinks. Gwyneth has compassion in her, and her defenses over it are less thorny and impenetrable than over her siblings’, but she’s never known great hardship herself, so much of it is a bit detached.

Her sense of humor is largely dry and understated, except in her element. Dancing and simulated combat get her blood flowing. She moves lightly and laughs easily at such times, despite also being intently focused. Outside of those situations she tends to be cool, formal, and is easily taken to be disinterested.

Abilities: Kuvira's non-special talents are her physical flexibility, balance, agility, and speed, all quite notable. In a fight she is fast, evasive, and hits with pinpoint accuracy, but can’t hold up against much punishment herself. She had a star role in Suyin's dance troupe, where practice involved cabling up to a high ceiling, dropping to the floor, and being flung up again. She's also very charismatic and intelligent.

Kuvira is an Earthbender. She can move earth and stone at will, in broad or subtle ways, and she is good at it. When another bender forces many bender’s protective walls to come down and the earth shifts and makes a lot of people fall over, Suyin looks at her, plainly believing she was responsible.

However, her primary focus is metalbending, moving and shaping most metals with gestures. She can do this without touching them. While she can’t lift herself up, she can pick up others if they’re wearing much metal. You do not want to oppose her while armored or carrying any metal at all.

With a spool of metal cable at each hip she was able to scale a steep cliff, catch herself when falling, and rescue a falling man at least twice her weight. For a time the cables were her main offensive weaponry, able to strike or tangle and impede foes. Three years later she wore armor composed of many layered thin strips and could freely bend them. Kuvira could fling them off at high speed to cuff and incapacitate foes, move them around, hold them suspended in midair. She could also sharpen them into daggers, or form a sword attached to her arm, or shape that into a thick cable that picks up and throws an opponent.

What she can bend she can also sense - she has a feeling for where the ground is and its shape, same with metal platforms, and she feels it if people have dirt, stone, coal or metal on their persons. There are some metals she cannot bend.

Items: Hip-mounted metal cables, solid Guard armor

Great Uniter armor, composed of many thin strips.

Green banners with her face, her Earth Empire emblem, and things like “May She Live Ten Thousand Years!” in Mandarin written on them.

Oh, why not. An airship, kind of a small ultra-maneuverable fast blimp. If it’s armed it’s only armed with large cables that can be launched to grab things.

Railways, trains. A big spirit cannon on a rail-mounted gun. The spirit cannon is powered by large, heavy samples of prepared spirit vine, which are expended with use. The short-lived beam can melt a hole through a mountain.

Her giant mech. No one calls it the Colossus in-universe, but I might as well use the out of universe name. It’s over two hundred feet tall and bears a spirit cannon on its right arm. The plating is unbendable platinum, letting it stand against most elemental impacts, lava, and even a falling building. It can be cut through but this is difficult, and the mech is flexible enough that she can swat at any part of it that something has clung to. It has a generator and runs on spirit vine energy, and the spirit cannon has a magazine of prepared vines. It can run out of either.

What kind of involvement would you like your character to have in Save the Earth? Basically I’m just here to set up for the end fight. Is this a bad idea? Oh, probably, but I love Kuvira, I have to try!

I asked Mark if I could use Liam’s aunt. He said yes!

ROLEPLAY SAMPLES

- Third Person: Kuvira stalked the catwalk, looking down on her weapon and her people working on it. They felt her eyes on them, but this shift did an admirable job of balancing speed and precision. Some of her people were nervous under the Great Uniter’s eye and worked frantically. Try that while welding platinum, and disaster tends to result.

Could she trust them? Once she would have been sure the answer was ‘yes’. Given recent events and the departure of everyone but Baatar from her inner circle, it was harder to tell now. They knew the consequences if they were caught in the act of sabotage. That, and Baatar’s supervision, would have to be enough. Clamp down on people and they didn’t always act rationally.

She watched him going over a man’s work. This was tiring for him, she knew it. If she could spare time from planning troop movements and supply trains she would go over all of this herself. With her Metalbending she wouldn’t take as long as a visual inspection. But she’d spent long enough on this already.

Baatar looked up and saw her. In her mind she descended from the catwalk and called on him, and they slipped out of sight, and she leaned against his strong frame and let herself revel in the thought of what’s to come. In reality, she gave him a nod. There was work to do.

- Network: [Gwyneth knows what the number means. What will happen when she leaves a message at it?]

An odd thing happened today. I was approached by a hairless dog which tried to go for my throat. When it died a cloudy black mass emerged from its body and fled, and it looked like the average stray. Now I find myself aware that the world is different, though it’s hard to say how.

That was a numbered episode, I believe. I take it these aren’t unusual occurrences.

ANYTHING ELSE? Am I in time? O: