“Chaos and Order."
"Harmony and Discord."
"Stasis and Flow."
"Balance; Counterbalance."
"The Right and the Left Hand Paths."
"It is the choice of the individual—Destruction or Creation.”
"Harmony and Discord."
"Stasis and Flow."
"Balance; Counterbalance."
"The Right and the Left Hand Paths."
"It is the choice of the individual—Destruction or Creation.”
Layer 01:::
[[[P R O J E C T ::: M E S M E R]]]
[[[F R A N C I S C A X O C H I C A L L I]]]
Patient Profile:::
“It is the choice of the individual—Destruction or Creation.”
Name: Francisca Xochicalli — “Chica”
Gender: Female
Age: 23
Classification: Human
Physical Description:
Chica moves through the world like a serpent slithering to strike with every step. Each gesture she makes is rife with graceful animation, as though she’s attuned to the subtleties of her minute movements. While she is no athlete, Chica has seen her fair share of hardships and her sturdy but gaunt form reflects that. Brown hair falls around her crown down to her neck and she seems to spend more time dusting it out of her eyes than she does leaving it be. Her dark eyes seem to wander her environment regularly, but there’s never any absence in her gaze. She appears always pointed and focused on whatever may captivate her attention. Chica is almost always wearing a tatterdemalion hooded sweater woven with a red fabric that has maintained its color through the weather and is covered in Aztec art patterns.
Psychological Profile:::
Creative | Magnanimous | Sage | Cerebral | Whimsical | Elusive | Decadent | Erratic
Patient Observations:::
All clinicians and staff of C-Class clearance and below seem to unanimously observe that Chica is ‘afflicted by delusions’. Her disdain for the House and its staff is unparalleled and multiple psychological experts have listed Chica’s desire to destroy the House and its creators “in a grand spectacle of fire” in reports. Known for her outbursts, Chica always seems to be planning cunning schemes to get her way. If it were not for her short periods of lucidity between ‘extreme hallucinatory episodes’, she would be listed as a CRITICAL PATIENT.
Despite her harmful outbursts, Chica’s condition—through the House’s unique therapeutic techniques—seems to be improving. While she is more lucid regularly, her desire to panic has been replaced with a constant scheming. She is so captivated by her own thoughts that she hardly thinks of leaving the House any longer, and is satisfied so long as she can entertain herself within it.
Deepest Desire::: Ometeotl
In her ever turbulent life, Chica has found only one craving in her weakest moments: balance. She knows in her heart the power of duality and what its exertion upon the world can accomplish and strives to achieve a perfect balance with the universe around her. While it may be esoteric and abstract, Chica feels her desire is quite sound and believes she knows what steps she should take to achieve it. She aims to harness both chaotic and harmonious forces as a sword, for with ultimate knowledge of life’s constants, it can finally be she who tips the scales of fate.
Quest:::
Above all else, Chica is intent on seeing the destruction of High John’s House of Saints. As her prior life fades into distant fog beyond any memory bank, she takes solace even in the House’s desolation, for in her mind, its end would bring an end to the misery of its occupants. To defeat the hierarchy of the House’s researchers and clinicians, and to topple the House’s very foundations until it is leveled to rubble remains forever in the back of Chica’s mind. The dual nature of her grand quest may be the reason Chica may never see it to fruition, for a part of her cannot yet follow through on her ultimate purpose. She finds that the reliance of its patients, who have become the only group that Chica can still identify with in any capacity, prevent the destruction of the House until the time is right.
Virtue::: Executor
Chica above all else sees herself as an agent, the means to an end, and the executor of her own fate. Using her intellect and street smarts, she has become a student of the tactical applications of all things. When a problem is presented to her, an outside-of-the-box solution will follow shortly. Since Chica has grown up relying on very few others, the execution of her own will is based entirely in herself. She doesn’t fear acting herself even in messy situations. Thus, once she sets her mind to a task, any opposition certainly has something to fear.
Vice::: Rite of Ruin
Chica has been called a force of nature more than she likes, but she herself is only one piece of the force—like tsunami waves and earthquakes—that ensures her actions are exacted upon the world. Hidden within her head, between knowledge of sacred rites and pantheons of dead gods, is a great reverence to the act of destruction. It exists even in her blood, in the blood she’s spilled, and she can’t escape it. Following Chica down whatever path she treads is a wake of Ruin that affects everything she touches—a Midas of Fire and Nails.
Likes:::
►Magic
►Chocolate
►Accepting Bribes
►Reading Old Texts
►The Upper Hand
Dislikes:::
►Nonbelievers
►Being Confined
►Obedience
►Not Getting Extra Cereal
Oddities:::
Chica has a habit of hoarding collecting treasures and hiding storing them around the House. It is not uncommon for her to dash over to one of her old books to pull out a concealed document, or try and reach into the walls looking for the broken piece of an old cafeteria tray. Everything, from trash to treasure has its place, and Chica is ready to find the use of it all.
Background Information:::
“Here lies another recording,
Telling tales of lost civilization, lost days, and lost stories,
That maybe one day another lost soul will find worth reporting.”
Telling tales of lost civilization, lost days, and lost stories,
That maybe one day another lost soul will find worth reporting.”
Wisps of Memory:::
Chica was born to an indigenous family in Central Mexico. Living closely connected to their historical land, she was raised very close to nature and took quite eagerly to the mysticism and philosophy of her progenitors. It seemed that Chica had the make of a scholar or religious leader in her community. Unfortunately, Chica’s stay in her homeland was not long, for it was not their home alone. Cartels contested the territory and danger grew quite rampant into her young adulthood. Chica’s father eventually fell victim to the violence and she was forced to flee north with her sister, moving alongside an assortment of merchant and migrant caravans.
Upon reaching the more arid lands of Northern Mexico and the United States border, Chica and her sister were drastically slowed down. While she had no desire to continue and escape her homeland, she couldn’t abandon her family, and the hearsay regarding the knowledge available in the United States couldn’t be passed up. Most of the caravan did not reach their desired goal, but Chica wasn’t one to so easily give up on a goal.
What lied in wait on the other side was what truly made the determined turn back. With little means for survival, no modern skills, and a sister to look out for, Chica soon learned that there was no salvation on the other side—only a different gamble. She turned to the only group she could find that would accept her—a southern California gang made up of a small collection of other Nahua and indigenous Mexicans. Chica’s personality was all she needed to get others to take a liking to her. The esoteric language of her father’s neoshamanism made her quite the center of attention at times, but she became part of the gang all the quicker.
It took Chica a long time to ever cross paths with lawmen. It took a long time and many grave misdeeds, but indeed, she eventually was bested by law enforcement—or rather, she awoke from one of her ‘visions’ surrounded by patrol cars and covered in swathes of red. After a series of strange interviews, chains of custody, and military transport vans, Chica was a resident of High John’s House of Saints without really knowing why. The notion of going back has become more of a distant dreamy idea rather than a goal.
In the House of High John:::
Known by her peers as the oldest patient at High John’s House of Saints, Chica has certainly adapted her lifestyle to her new circumstances. While she’s never quite content to be trapped at the House, she delights in finding ways to exert her own influence on the otherwise ubiquitous organization that keeps the patients at the House. Her cooperation, after all, is conditional on her ability to bend the rules, ferry information to other patients, and entertain herself despite restriction. At times, Chica will wholeheartedly undergo the foggy testing processes without complaint. She claims to be pulling great knowledge from the tests regarding her own visions. While she isn’t interested in the scientific acumen of the House’s project, she believes that what she comes away with in her amnesiac state is akin to her old ‘visions’, and any attempt to clear that sight is worth it.
Because of her strange demeanor, Chica has a bit of an aloof reputation in the House, even among its patients. In between her sessions, she occupies herself by reading old codices she acquires from the staff and trying to decipher them. These are the only possessions the House staff allows her to have. As such, when she’s not reading, it’s not uncommon to find Chica stalking the House and planning some sort of chaos that others often find it’s best to avoid. It is rumored that Chica has seriously injured a staff member before in an escape attempt, but all desire to flee seems to have been squeezed from her. Chica now prefers to sow her own bubbles of chaos and complacency in between her visions to subtly influence and manufacture the constants of the House.
Fragments and Connections:::
When Chica left behind her family at the United States borderline and became an inpatient at the House, she abandoned with them her hope that she’d see them again. Chica, already plagued by her visions, seems to have little left in the material world that she is connected to or striving for. Her life began to revolve solely around the goings-on of the House—what she could get away with, what she’d learn, what she could uncover about the established facilities.
Those are the only driving factors that keep her anchored these days. While it seems like a momentous goal, Chica desires only to topple the forces that spawned the House and return herself to a free and natural state. She’s never quite focused on that goal, though. It’s always in the background of her mind, but distractions abound. In recent weeks, Chica has grown rather understanding and sympathetic of the other patients at the House, though she may not show it. At the heart of her vendetta against the House lies a desire to see them all freed and stable as well.
Layer 02:::
Description of a Doomsayer in the Interim:::
[[[DOOMSAYER:::THE MESMER]]]
Title:::
MESMER, the Deceiver
Description:::
The Mesmer appears very human upon first glance, but what hides beneath the assortment of masks that conceal the Mesmer’s identity is entirely a mystery. While the masks change based on the encounter, the Mesmer’s visage is often shrouded by the skeletal depictions of great primordial serpents. The Mesmer wears an eye-catching assortment of modern streetwear clothes intermixed with shamanistic flair. Most commonly, she has appeared in a designer bomber jacket with white strips of leather crossing along her lower abdomen as though the depiction of skeletal bones. She seems to appear and disappear throughout the Land of the Dead with no grand goal in mind, but destructive acts follow her path, and a brutal weapon carried in her right hand is never a welcome sight.
Doomsayer Paragon::: Metempsychosis
The Mesmer is known to the dead as a shifter, a deceiver, a master of masks. In the Land of the Dead, where all souls that enter exist only in flux, purgatory, and pandaemonium, the Mesmer opts to break the mold. The entropic void that threatens to eat the Land of the Dead does not consume her like it does the Dead. She’s become too adept at her own metamorphosis, adapting to the Land’s flux and flow, order and chaos, as necessary. To place the Mesmer’s motivations is a difficult game. It seems to the watching entities that she only grows closer to a vessel of emptiness, ready to relinquish her soul and adopt a new one with each passing challenge. She is rebirth. She is resurrection, alternating between states of stasis and flow as necessary and adapting to any new nemesis.
Doomsayer Prophecy:::
When the Mesmer caught glimpses of the End, she was at its center. A masked Mesmer not quite trapped, but stood atop a mighty ancient ziggurat could only watch the pyramid bisect itself and let the depths swell up from its insides. As the Doomsayer stood surveying the Land of the Dead, it was painted by plumes of rising magma emerging from the very temple on which she stood. Whether a purification of the tainted place or an evisceration of nature not quite dead yet, the Mesmer only stood complacent—like a spectre. With time more ziggurats did rise and spew their lava into the sky until the Land of the Dead was bathed in ash and any sort of light was Masked.
A Legend:::
The Mesmer, damned deceptive master of masks is mentioned in orally-passed stories as more than a force to be reckoned with. She is an embodiment of vengeance. Whether Devil, Demon, or Dead, it’s said the Mesmer is a collector of the final seconds of entities in the Land of the Dead working for the Big Man Downstairs. While her motives are uncertain,one must be careful where they tread lest they be the Mesmer’s next opposition. Some of the more esoteric legends mention that the Mesmer was born of the vestiges, emerging from lava plumes hidden in crumbling ziggurats left still standing but ready to collapse. Perhaps, then, she is a prophet of the End, trying to bring the rest of the Land of the Dead into a harmony with the state of her dead civilization. Or perhaps its just the chaos and danger that guides the Mesmer’s mind.
A Sighting:::
She had just walked boldly into one of their bureaucracy hives, they say. The Mesmer was always like that—shows up in town like her own omen of the End. The Dead started talking as soon as she was sighted, but lookouts were too slow. She had entered one of those damned Devil Hives of bureaucracy before any of the city’s inhabitants could react. The next thing the city had known, one of the Devils was thrown through the doors and got his head bashed in with a bat. That particular gang of beasts never forgave the Mesmer after that. Hit squads and assassins did their best to follow her tracks, and they eventually did find the ephemeral Doomsayer—cornered her on a peninsula with nothing at her back except for the void’s blackness.
The nearby Dead gathered to watch any ensuing madness, and they were not disappointed. The Outsiders dared to slowly push the Mesmer closer and closer to the edge at the tip of flaming spears. In the heat of their battle fervor and heinous chants, however, they missed the sound of stone grinding against stone. It grew louder and louder until the Doomsayer herself disappeared and gave birth to a serpent of earth that lashed and dove and devoured Devils. Hardly a soul could see through the blaze and clouds of dust, but as the sediment settled, Dead watchers claim to have seen the serpent thrust itself skyward in a coil, devour its tail, and collapse into rubble. There, amongst the crumbling stones, the Mesmer emerged and disappeared back into the Land of the Dead without words.
𝒜 𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓉𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉 𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽:::
𝓕𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓲𝓼𝓬𝓪 𝓧𝓸𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓵𝓵𝓲
𝓣𝓗𝓔 𝓜𝓔𝓢𝓜𝓔𝓡
𝓣𝓗𝓔 𝓜𝓔𝓢𝓜𝓔𝓡
| Character name | Relationship |
|---|---|
| [Name of other character] | [Write out your character's opinion and relationship with the character in question.] |