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[h2]◄◅◆◇◈ —  [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6hir8XM6ko]HAIALARK ILRIMCAW[/url]  — ◈◇◆▻►[/h2][/center]

[b]Alias(es):[/b] the Featherblade, Broken Songbird, Crazy Caw, Xx_haia-the-ill701_xX (EO handle)
[b]Gender:[/b] Female, although the birdfolk are a sexually cryptic species
[b]Hair:[/b] Variegated grayish black, blue and purple plumage
[b]Eyes:[/b] Sunken and radioluminescent purple
[b]Skin:[/b] Pale bluish gray, scaled
[b]Height:[/b] 165cm
[b]Distinctive Features:[/b] Well, depending on where you're at, crossing paths with a schizophrenic avian ronin can be a once in a life time encounter, or it can be just another day in the 'verse. Haialark is one of Neo Babylon's stranger selections for its heroes.
[b]Likes:[/b] Astrology and occultism, new technology, occasionally cutting (everything), rodent and lupine creatures, various unfortunately ubiquitous illegal substances, MMORPGs
[b]Dislikes:[/b] Fools that proclaim her prophecies madness, ill omens, trolls and trash mobs  

[b]Appearance:[/b]

Haialark is a squat, wattled, ugly creature from a typical mammalian perspective, and though once beautiful among the birdfolk, nowadays her grimy feathers reek of cancerstick smoke and her talons and beak go untrimmed, their ritual etchings faded. Odd baubles and shiny trinkets hang like ornaments from her feathers and robes, a corvid collection for the nest she doesn't have. 

Here or there chrome pokes out between quill and plume, bodymods expanding her senses to hear a wider variety of frequencies and jack directly into any cybernet interface to see if she can log into her Empyrea Online account and grind out her dailies, violet predatory eyes always keen for prophetic signs and rare loot. She wears the ruins of her ceremonial robes, occasionally over a tactical vest depending on situational demands. 3D-printed [url=https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Netsuke]netsuke[/url] dangle from her sash, mostly tiny sculptures of her EO avatars.

There is one possession Haialark rigorously maintains, her most eminent feature and the subject of her obsessive devotion: her sword the Featherblade, kept honed to a molecular edge to cut her enemy's tether to reality and reset their respawn timer on the cycle of samsara.

[b]Personality:[/b]

Raving mad but at times disturbingly prophetic, Haialark does not appear to distinguish entirely between Empyrea Online and reality and refers to events in both interchangeably at times. At once considered a paragon among songbird monks and a warrior of prodigious talent and virtue, during Haialark's lifetime her species was prepped for conquest and enslavement by a regional interstellar imperial power and in the process technologically uplifted. 

Abrupt access to the local cybernet servers also implied an open portal to the terrifying multiverse of online gaming, completing a perfect and frictionless dopamine loop that fried Haialark's mind beyond conceivable repair when she discovered that as well as a prodigious martial artist she had been born an elite gamer.

Armed with secrets that might be occult birdfolk knowledge or could just be incredibly obscure references to half-remembered EO loredumps, Haialark frequently gives the impression that she believes she has been isekai'd into the gameworld and granted a chance at redeeming herself for a legendary raid she fucked up for her guild long, long ago.

[b]Powers, Skills, and Abilities:[/b]

[i]Skua Ree Cawta[/i] - the martial art Haialark calls the Way of Beak and Claw, also encompassing her swordsmanship. An alien scholar's account of interstellar forms of combat records it as an incredibly strange fighting style. Lightweight and fragile for their hollow bones, the birdfolk are somehow able to tap into a form of sacred mana. Described in the holy manual of their art, the Scriptures of the Talon, it is depicted as the divine yolk that suffuses all life. Its manipulation allows the songbird monks to display otherworldly agility and deliver pointblank strikes with impossible impact given the lack of force physics demands they posssess. 

With her scrawny fists Haialark is capable of shattering walls and raidbosses, of reacting to gunfire or spam popup attacks from rival guild hackers. The divine yolk also allows her to blunt damage and defend herself from fists, magic spells and cybernet phishing attempts despite her diminutive stature; likewise, with her cherished blade she cuts along impossible arcs and insane trajectories, performing feats of mythical swordsmanship... when the vibe is right.

[i]Shapeshifting[/i] - Haialark is capable of shapeshifting along a limited spectrum, from avian humanoid to [url=https://imgur.com/FpuB1lu]unpleasantly large raptor[/url], with a somewhat cloudy intermediate shape in which her limbs can be somewhere between arm and wing, allowing flight or greater dexterity as required. This process appears to be physically uncomfortable for Haialark and she tends to avoid it, as it seems to have some effect on her already tenuous grasp on a personal identity and small details of her appearance change as she shifts between these forms, as if she lacks a solid hold on her own morphology.

[i]Psychoglossia[/i] - at times Haialark babbles on about strange omens and auguries she sees in the stars, nature, the past and future and probably subliminal propaganda constantly piped directly into her retinas via adware. It is unclear if these prophetic visions are real or just scrapped Empyrea Online content and unimplemented questlines.

[b]Equipment:[/b] 

Haialark is kitted out with typical cyberaugs to improve her senses and allow her to interface with technology as required, especially cybernet terminals running an instance of Empyrea Online. An OLED nanomesh conforming to the surface of Haialark's eyes allows her to see along wavelengths deep into the infrared and ultraviolet and feeds visual display information directly into bio-optic filaments to project a cybernet terminal directly onto her retinas, typically to keep an eye on her favorite sources for Empyrea Online patches and realtime metagame analysis. 

Aural winglets protrude between iridescent feathers on either side of her head, chrome caps adhering tightly to the contours of Haialark's skull, equipped with directional microphones adjustable via neural interface feedback that allow her to focus on sounds throughout 3D space around her as well as sonic transducers amplifying input from frequencies beyond hearing and rendering it at comfortable volume. She also has a few endocrine mods installed for a quick pre-combat buff when the need arises.

Beyond being fully alien technology difficult to hack into, there are several failsafes and protections protecting Haialark from malware which she is pretty sure are top of the line antiviral mods. Or maybe this whole Empyrea Online as reality delusion is the consequence of downloading one too many cute mouse memes from shady underground holoboard sites. Her weapon and eponym is her pennaceous sword, the Featherblade that Haialark maintains with quasi religious fervor.

She usually wears any of a few different sets of filthy ceremonial songbird monk robes, nanofiber weave somehow keeping them alive despite the insane abuse Haialark puts them through. She also wears a surprisingly competent suit of tactical armor well-designed for her anatomy, what she calls busting out the legendary gear for the really critical raids on enemy guilds.

[b]Your Last Memory:[/b]

Haialark was plugged into a sensory deprivation pod, slotted to be totally dead to the waking world for approximately seventy-nine hours, which was the calculated time for her party to reach the heart of the new megadungeon from the brand new Empyrea Online expansion patch. Brain drowning in dopamine from stimulant abuse and vitals sustained by intrusive nutrient pumps and REM sleep simulation drugs, Haialark thought she couldn't be more prepared for a marathon sesh of epic gaming, but she had no idea that the EO devs could be crunching [i]this[/i] hard for the new DLC.

[b]Additional Plot Hooks:[/b]

Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in the Empyrea Online lore that Haialark has been mainlining since the early beta, or some other mystical logic in her rants about the "cawmic" cycle. The Way of Beak and Claw is also sought after by many factions of rival martial artists for its secrets, and Haialark is often targeted by enemy guilds and forced to pubstomp some casuals and show why she's considered one of EO's elite PKers.