Player: Armada
Contact: PM
Age: 30
Current Characters: n/a
Character Name: Dara (aka Yamatagi Madara)
Character Canon: Reiwa no Dara-san
Canon Point: ch16
Age: human part appears 26yo, actually hundreds of years old
Crime: The crime of existing! Update 7/2024: sororicide
Background: link to entry herePersonality:Dara is the product of a vengeful mountain god combined with a priestess who made her first and final curse before dying by the hands of her elder twin and the villagers she had protected. The mountain god, Yamatagi Madara, had been slain by the twin priestess', its head and body were sealed away in the east and west mountains. It was only years later that the youngest priestess was betrayed and combined with the body of the snake god. The priestess sold her soul to the god to murder everyone as revenge.
Dara sees herself as something separate from the two entities, albeit uncertain as to
what beyond her duty as a mountain guardian. She is extremely chill since the "wild and uncontrollable part of me was exorcised" 100 years ago, and she admits that holding onto the anger of her curse has been exhausting: "I don't really want to go out of my way to cause a scene here by killing a bunch of people. As far as I'm concerned, they're just a bunch of assholes on my turf. I'm just trying not to be killed by a curse-killing beam." The god has forgotten her human name, but she has moved on from the grudge. Dara wants to live a simple life on her mountain, fulfilling her duty as a bound spirit.
The priestess is important in understanding Dara's core personality. Her parents and elder twin were verbally abusive to her and isolated her from others. She would do all the dangerous tasks as ordered by her sister during exorcisms. After defeating Yamatagi Madara for the mountain villagers, the priestess was only allowed to live in a rundown shed on the eastern mountain while her family lived in a newly erected shrine in the west. She never asked for much nor expected attention from others. Still, she won the hearts of the eastern village because she was steadfast in her duties as a priestess and using medical knowledge for the villagers. She was always bewildered by their signs of appreciation since she never received any from her family. Her sister's betrayal is what caused her to become a vengeful spirit even though she had suffered for so long at her family's hands.
As part of the mountain god, she prides herself for her abilities and shows no remorse for killing humans who desecrate her shrine. Dara does not expect anyone to feel sorry for her: "My hands are stained with the blood of the past. Even now, I can clearly remember it. Taking the lives of my parents and sister, my blood relatives of my own accord." She understands that she has done evil things and will continue to kill humans in order to protect her shrine. Yet, Dara is much more lenient when it comes to cursing people in recent days. She cuts repair workers slack when they're building in the woods, and she has personal limits as to how much energy she wants to dedicate to trivial curses.
Living up to her curse god status lends to some adorable traits. To make amends for mistaking Kaoru's teacher as a pedophile, she writes a creepy looking apology on the windows of his house. "I've been intimidating you since we first met, right? Did you think nothing of my grotesque figure?" It may be a reflection of the priestess' low self-esteem about her appearance, but it's funny to hear the statement from a god that's bullied into pigtails and cute dresses by two kids. Dara is terrifying to the average person, but she's easily thrown off her menacing vibes by a lack of reaction, humor, or having modern technology thrust in her face. At least she knows enough about it that she gets offended when people are surprised: "How dumb do you think I am? The last time I scared the hell out of a guy, he dropped his cell phone as he ran. I just ignored the cost for data and used it anyway." Many things are new for Dara despite her knowledge about them. For instance, she's seen soda cans but has never tasted cola until meeting the kids. While she enjoys these experiences after being bullied, she makes antiquated comments such as "listen to your elders" or "honestly, kids these days want to take pictures of everything".
Dara's a pushover when it comes to the shrine caretakers' kids (Hinata & Kaoru Misogiya) and they take advantage of it: pressuring her to wear clothes, taking pictures of her in cosplay, having sleepovers in the spirit realm, and giving her half-eaten offerings that she is forced to accept. She feels that spending time with them is spoiling herself. She never felt lonely before meeting them, and the kids have wiggled their way into her heart. As next generation of caretakers, she teaches about the supernatural world and dealing with spirits. She's open when divulging information and is often contemplating how to tell them the real story of her origin. Except she readily lies and withholds information from the kids when it comes to her supernatural duties. For instance, Dara explains to Hinata that a corpse is a suicide victim rather than the body of a woman she killed and dragged into the spirit world. She also keeps the secret of Yamatagi Madara's living head and the location of its concealed shrine.
Abilities: there are so many, jfc. this is what I get for playing a priestess/god combo
-EXPERTISE in using katana & long bow
-SHINTO SPELLS: the priestess was able to create spells for exorcisms, binding & sealing spirits, creating shikigami, and writing physical buffs on her body to be able to be able to keep up with defeating a mountain god
-CURSE GOD ABILITIES:
*super strength and complete body regeneration
*can move in between physical & spiritual realm, can't be touched if not in physical realm unless by a psychic
---can "spirit away" people by moving their presence into the spiritual realm: "There are various kind of spiriting away, but mine...it's the kind that just sort of shifts you into the spirit world. It gets more dangerous the deeper you go, but it doesn't fully take you away from the regular world. A skilled psychic can get you out pretty quickly regardless of how deep you are. The deeper you go, the more miasma there is....the more you get taken by the spirit world...the more you become disconnected from the normal world"
*can make the snake part of her invisible or split it into multiple serpents that twist to form shapes, such as human-like legs (she can't move fast with them in this form)
*"far-sight" using her fingers to create a telescope/spyglass effect + scrying pool magic
*silly curse magic shenanigans; the minor stuff include things like scaring people through phone calls and spooky emails, leaving weird dolls in front of their house, deciding whether she shows up in photos or not
*Miasma (aka a spiritual sickness): "A person's will to live is a strong force. So in small doses, the miasma will only make you feel tired or lethargic. But in large doses, or when you're already weak, a "sickness" will set in and affect your physical body. And when that "sickness" exceeds what your body can handle, your soul mistakenly believes that your body has already passed on to the afterlife. The physical body ends up being considered a "foreign body" and is rejected by the soul, leading to death in the worst cases."
---Dara gives off a tiny bit of miasma but mainly has it under control
Inventory: The necklace of bells around her neck that act as a security alarm for her shrine. Several knives, swords, and farming hoes that are in her stomach. (They're the ones the villagers used to dismember the priestess.)
Samples: TDM starter &
TDM threadQuestions: Does the world have a spiritual realm that she can move in and out of?
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