Let everything that's been planned come true.

Let them believe.

And let them have a laugh at their passions.

Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world.

And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing.

When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible.

When he dies, he is hard and insensitive.

When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions.

Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being.

Because what has hardened will never win. - Tarkovsky


The Guide.


35 years old. (4 years as a diver) (15 years as an exile)



Freya is a stocky woman, with a kind, soft face peppered with freckles, lightly tanned, and animated by a gentle smile, and eyes that take in the world with dazed pecularity.

Her hair is mangled and wild, a fiery red tied in a half-assed pony-tail or let free. Her left eye is milky white, the skin around it pink and hard, the burn scar twisting into lightening patterns.

Her hands are rough and calloused, experienced with hard work and climbs. Various faint scars paint her freckled body, the simple cuts and bruises of someone who wanders tight places far too often.

She wears sturdy and thick work clothing, strapped with pouches and bags full of tools, kits, rations, and anything useful, yet able to maneuver and climb with the load easily. Some of her patchwork outfit appears a strange hue of scaly purple or crimson, the hide and coloration of creatures of the abyss.


Collector



"Listen to the Zone, she is harsh but fair, and ultimately desires discovery.

Hear the song of Ash. That is not the painful scream of our ancestor's sins, but the birth cry of a new world.

Come and have your fill and I will light your way through the darkness.

So that you may share her bounty with the others.

And fear not a painful descent, but rejoice.

For there is no death in the Abyss."

SKILL: ZONE HABITANT

Having lived in the Zone for practically a decade, Freya has developed an in-depth knowledge of traversing it's dangerous network of pathways, and an intuition with it's magical elements.

SKILL: ZONE HUNTER

Having learned to thrive in the Zone, she posses an intimate knowledge of various Zone fauna and flora, their properties and behaviour, and treatments of any special toxins or attacks.

She can utilize some of the flora for unique effects... and sometimes simply for recreational purposes.

SKILL: FIELD MEDIC

Given she has dedicated her life to escorting Divers safely through the zone, she has extensively expanded her knowledge, through study and experience, of treating injuries and ailments.

MUTATION: WHISPERS OF THE ABYSS

Ever since the incident, her mind has been plagued with visual and auditory hallucinations that guide her through the Zone's depths, inspiring in her a religious devotion. While others may be mechanically attuned, unearthing the old world, she is sensitive to the new chaotic magic that is taking over the ruins of the past.

Those who stay in her presence begin to experience the same over a long term (aka after months).

MUTATION: ZONE STALKER

Touched by some strange magic that has altered her, and therefore banished her from civilization, Freya is able to traverse the Zone with her presence effectively "invisble" from it's inhabitants. Be it ancient machine or animal, she can hide her presence from their senses (not actually invisible), though only if they were un-aware already.

She can extend this magic to her companions, but only for a brief time. Extensive magic on others seems to cause extreme stress and agitation, nullifing the effect.




1) Old diver harness, jury-rigged and customised over time: Exo-rig, grappling lines, torch, modified Echo-box with greater range (a favor from a thankful Diver).

2) Simple repair tool box.

3) Gas mask and kit, repaired countless times.

4) Large first aid kit, carrying standard first aid gear and personally made antidotes and remedies to both common ailments and those specific to the Zone.

5) Camping equipment. Rolled up sleeping bag, tent shroud, cooking equipment and lantern, a small battery box holding a thumb sized Class A catalyst.

6) Skinning knife, fashioned from the claws of some beast.

7) Customized, old bolt action rifle (non-catalyst), modified to shoot darts instead of bullets, adorned with various feathers and carved images along the wooden handle. Comes with a scope.

• PRESTIDIGITATION LVL 1: Allows one to create a sensory illusion carrying a minor heat signature (if needed) at a location in line of sight, or apply a change in temperature over a small area.
• LEVITATION LVL 1: Gives a user or target brief flight, slows descent, very slow ascend. Similar to low gravity.
• SHIELD LVL 1: Creates a protective field, able to withstand moderate force.
• ENCHANCE LVL 1: Bolsters a user or target with greater stamina, strength, and speed for a short time.
• HEAL LVL 2: Heals moderate to heavy wounds, inducing rapid regeneration. Requires a cooldown of a day to a week depending on wound healed.

ZONE DISCIPLE

Freya holds a deep reverence for the zone, although not for the old technology itself. She believes the wild magic that has torn apart the world is the primal energy of the world renewing itself, and humanity must embrace pure magic once more or be swept away with the past.

She believes the "influence" of the Zone can be spread through sheer exposure. The more time people spend in the Zone, the more people there are in the Zone, the more the Zone's magic takes root in the Sprawling City. More mutations, more strange events. The Zone must be let in.

That is why it is vital that more relics and exposed Divers be safely brought back into the city.

ANARCHIST

Freya, even before her religious transformation, has held a deep resentment of the Sprawling City's authoritarian structure. First for it's enforced poverty of Divers and the Outer Ring, then for killing her mother. Before she wanted the people rise, now she wants every piece of it's walls to fall, and will gladly help all efforts of unrest, even acts of terrorism.

CALM OF THE AESTHETIC ASCETIC

Even in childhood Freya was a peculiar child, holding a deep fascination for the texture of the world. Where other children wanted games or drama, she wanted to simply sit and stare at some interesting object, or even person. She didn't speak for so long they thought her dumb. She never cared for personal gain, and loved to listen to others tell their troubles or cares, but barely talked herself.

Her father taught her to work carfully and with respect for whatever she did, slow quality over quick results. Her mother taught her endurance and tenacity.

After the incident, she lost her fear of death.

All this has led to a calm, stoic disposition, giving her the appearence of intense thought and discipline, even in traumatic or dangerous situations, when merely she is detached, but not disconnected.

POLITICAL EMPATHY

Freya appears to have a deep kindness for others, showing a level of concern, trust, and loyalty for Divers under her guide that can be called either childishly naive or creepy. Most would say she's too friendly, actively greeting all Divers with uncomfortable displays of excessive affection. Even those Divers who hurt or abandoned her out of greed or survival found themselves still treated like dear friends if they ever met her again.

Although she does genuinly hold intimate emotions for others, all this is in service of the greater good of her faith. The livelihood of all Divers is central to her vision of the future.



“A spirit cries, entangled by the weeds.

They grew from seeds nourished by blackness.

Their poison stuns. They bind in shackles, like horrors sealed in the pyramids.

But neither fire-born marble nor granite can make a frame immune to the power of the flows of ageless primal lava that flows through our veins and fills us with might.

The tomb of suns, the urn of dead world's ash... The corpse of moon and Saturn's lifeless flesh is set in mind and taken by the heart.

In dying stars, life is born anew...but spirit's force is granted to a few, who hold life's transcendent pains apart." - Voloshin's Corona Australi

In a metallic shanty slum beneath layers of urban sprawl in District 26, there was a quant small shack nestled against the thick District wall. Unassuming, there lay beneath its plain floorboards a two story underground apartment furnished with luxuries and appliances more expected of an upper class home.

There lived Freya's parents. Her mother was an illegal diver, prolific in her achievments and passionate about the Zone. Her father was a weapon mechanic, servicing the tools of her mother's crew. She inherited her mother's love of the fantastic and her will, and her father's simple tastes and calm nature.

When her mother died, shot while caught in a raid on an illegal passage into the city, Freya handled her grief like many adolescents: with rage and mischief.

Her father managed to hide them deeper in the District, but Freya had begun to join political gangs. It was somewhat fashionable for the youth of Outer Ring districts to go through a phase of faux rebellion against the authorities, mostly in the form of bitching masqarading as exploration of dangerous political ideas and thrilling vandalism, before falling in line in fear of both the Magistratum and the outside world.

Freya took it further though, joining illegal protests, acts of hit and run aggrivation and sabotage on Magistratum forces patrolling less secure areas, culminating in a public bombing. Her father, fearing for her capture, had her immediatly taken on as an illegal diver on her mother's old crew as a favor, getting her out of thr city as soon as possible.

In the Zone, her grief and rage transformed into her mother's old passion, and diving became not just an act of adventure, but a way of getting closure.

Initially she followed instructions to the letter, but as the years went by she became more and more reckless, infatuated by the Zone's mysteries and morbid beauty, straying from the group more and more often.

One fateful day, her father joined them in a dive, tasked to operate a complex drill to break into a vault. As she came to often do, she went ahead of the group in it's careful operation. Her father chased after her, and the two were ambushed in a jagged corridor by a strange beast with many appendages, like a mammalian centipede.

Chasing them, they fell through a broken floor into a wide chasm, where stood a large, luminiescent biomechanical tree with leaves of silver, it's limbs breaking into the walls around. Her foot caught on a branch and she lay there hanging upside down, watching the bleeding, unconscious form of her father below.

Shd screamed her throat bloody for help. For hours, none answered. Stained with tears and losing consciousness, etheriel tendrils wrapped around her form.



Visions of the world and the Abyss and the far spiral assaulted her, and a soft, eldritch voice with a proposition.

Saving her father's life, for her devotion.

She agreed.

Awakening after unknown time, her father was gone. She was still in the tree, but on a bed of branches far closer to the ground. Climbing off, she began her life as a hermit of the Zone, guided by it's texture and whispers, her religious quest forming after some time. She never did find that tree again. Or her father.

As the years went by, she became something of a local legend among certain crews that travelled her area. In exchange for her aid, which included fixing and supplying diver checkpoints and supply drops in addition to her guidance, they supplied her with gear, repair, books, but often she asked for nothing in return.

Only that everyone returned from the Zone.



Once in a while over the years, if an intimate spark forms between her and a male Diver, she will use the connection to get pregnant. Once her child is born, she travels to a nearby illegal checkpoint and gives them the child to take to an orphanage in the city.

She does this because her offspring are born with mutations.

She discovered this initially when she had a child by accident and sought to raise her in the Zone, discovering her magical affinity after some 8 years. The implications struck her and she had her taken an orphanage through illegal divers soon after.

She had 2 more offspring in the years since.

Hearing of the recent witch phenomena and the chaos of District 26, she hopes her efforts had played a part.