"What? You want to know more about me? Okay, don't say I didn't warn you ♥ !"

There's something about her. Flirty, confident, and always around at the worst times, Saori stands out by virtue of her own existence. Driven more by her id than anything else, she desires "true freedom" - freedom from the chains of societal convention, from her tenuous existence in the city she calls home, and from even the weaknesses of her own flesh - but so far, that's all just remained a dream.It's not that she lacks empathy - in fact, she'd be much worse at what she does if she did. It's that she can recognize it in herself and immediately turn that impulse into a tool into feeding her desires that makes her so dangerous. She has a talent for finding emotional hooks and using them to reel what she wants out of people.All of this makes her an exhausting presence to be around. She shoves herself into any conversation that interests her, and gods forbid if she takes interest in you personally. No matter if she's just watching or inserting herself, she is always working an angle, always scheming, and always looking for her next hit of serotonin.Thankfully for everyone else, she's grown something of a conscience as of late, having found a bit more of a purpose than she used to have. But don't be fooled - the world still only exists for her, and her alone.

"By our contract, Nemain."

A mirror from another shard, and Saori’s contracted Avatar. A being of combat and war, whose memories of who she was before she became a monster are fragmented, mixed in a slurry with the selves of other voidsent she’s consumed. In most of her manifestations, she wears the anonymizing cloak and claws of most reaper Avatars, but in rare cases, her true shape takes form.Her relationship with Saori is fundamentally uneven — Saori has little respect for Nemain and keeps her on a short leash. Nemain suffers this arrangement because she feels, somewhere deep down, that the completion she seeks is within Saori. The two feed on each other like an ouroboros, Saori pulling more power from her Avatar than needed, and Nemain taking her toll in return — acts that have had ramifications on Saori’s physical self.Someday, one will devour the other. What comes out on the other side is yet to be seen.

"You're curious about my past? I don't think there's much point in that. That woman is dead, you know?"

Few know the details of Saori's life before she washed up on Hingashi's shores, and that's how she likes it. Get her in the right mood, and she might tell you something resembling the truth - that she lived in a Yanxian village prior to the Garlean occupation; that she lost her family as a result of the Empire's campaign; that she escaped to Kugane as a refugee to then take up a life in a city that ultimately became her home. This is where she leaves it for most - few need to know the horrid details of how and why her life took the directions it did.

(Then come the parts that she keeps to herself. That her family was killed by a Garlean legionnaire wielding a scythe. That she had to be smuggled into Kugane by the yakuza. That she was ultimately picked up by that same group to be reforged into one of their tools after her only living family died.)

For much of her life, Saori dedicated her life to the Ashura-kai - a criminal organization that specializes in circumventing the bakufu's wall of isolation. With the only official gateway into Hingashi's cloistered seaways being Kugane's ports, and the bakufu maintaining a policy of neutrality in the world's conflicts, the Ashura-kai naturally emerged to ease contraband (whether that was goods or people) into the country, while selling information on the movements of local Garlean diplomats to Othardian resistance groups on the side.First adopted as a ward by the Obinata family (a subdivision specializing in espionage), upon adulthood, Saori found herself working as one of their informants. She learned how to be unobtrusive and sneaky, yet naturally communicative, all so that she could squeeze information out of her targets on the Ashura-kai's behalf.At times, she worked as a hostess in one of the family's izakayas; at others, she was a maid in the Garlean Embassy. At all times, she played the role of a perfect doll for the visiting Garleans, always waiting for them to slip up and give away just a little too much.

(Ask her now, and she will tell you that she will never be that perfect doll ever again. Her life is her own, even if it kills her.)

Years passed. She worked. She waited. She wore a perfect smile and was a perfect host and never complained even if the soldiers got a little handsy, even as a little more of her wore down more and more.Until the day that man walked in.

It should have been simple. She was to attend on a visiting official from the Garlean military - a pilus prior on shore leave, there to visit the izakaya. She was to do as she always did - attend to his needs, and ease information out of him in the process.Unfortunately, she would never get the chance to do so. Because Saori instead chose to kill him.

(She recognized him the moment he walked in. She would never forget the blade of that scythe.)

In the ensuing melee, Saori was grievously wounded. As she lay dying, only wishing that she had more time, the soulstone that had tumbled out of the dead man's pocket beckoned to her. She took it in handand was thrust into the dark.

The events of that day were an embarrassment for the Ashura-kai. The pilus prior's death was hastily covered up, with his body found floating in the bay some days later. Rumors percolated throughout the Hingan underground of what had actually happened, however - and the blemish was not so easily removed. Worse yet was that, following her contract with her voidsent, Saori had found herself with little patience for her prior role, and refused to slip back into it. Neither party could rid themselves of the other so easily, however - especially as, without the Ashura-kai, Saori would quickly find herself without any support and with many enemies.No one's quite sure what brought on Saori's change in attitude after these events. Maybe it was just that this was what she'd always been like, and she was just good at keeping it hidden under a shroud of politeness. Maybe it was her own form of rebellion at having had to live as a tool. Maybe it was something darker - maybe the youthfulness she had taken on had something more to do with the dark spirit chasing her shadow.

(She keeps it to herself, but the consequences of her actions are clear to those who can see them. The darkness coils through her like a rot, hollowing her from the inside out. Beneath her glamours lie the signs of flesh tilting ever closer to complete corruption - horns, claws, fangs, and a hungry chill that chases her every footstep. Even her face is too young for her apparent age - but what else was to be expected, when she asked for "more time?" And what, then, happens when that time runs out?)

These days, she's seen in Eorzea more often than she is back home. As part of the Ashura-kai's activities, she operates a smuggling operation in and out of Sharlayan using her status as a member of the Gleaners' Guildship as cover. Occasionally, they call upon her other talents, too - after all, she's quite good with a blade these days, and her Avatar always needs to be fed.Still, there are other reasons to suspect she took up this assignment. Those in the know believe she might be looking for something in Eorzea... something she couldn't get back in Othard. Maybe it has something to do with her changing physical state - the horns and fangs she's grown, the shifting of her internal aether, and the strange state of her left arm - or, maybe she's just chasing power and thought she had better chances of finding it across the salt.Regardless of her reasons, it's managed to put her outside of recent power struggles within the Ashura-kai, which has undergone significant restructurings in her absence. With her own family on the outs with the new oyabun, Saori's status within the yakuza has become newly dangerous compared to before...Good thing she has friends, at least. Not her fault that the Ashura-kai was too busy being dicks to realize that they were driving her into becoming a double agent~

"Oh! You want to see a list of my favorite toys?"

Chains, bound by Fate

Threads, tied by Chance

Threads, tied by Chance

Threads, tied by Chance

Threads, tied by Chance

Hooks

■ On the Surface

■ Delve Deeper

■ Deepest Depths

OOC

On suspension of disbelief:

Saori is a character whose traits lie on varying levels of suspension of disbelief depending on how much you want to engage with her. It's important to me when playing her not to lead with her more potentially scene-breaking aspects — i.e: she's not going to jump into a scene using her reaper traits or her yakuza history as an in unless there is a hook I can play off of with your character involving those. For the grand majority of people who engage with her, she's a sketchy botanist who is a little too good with a scythe.Consequentially, her RP tends to lean more toward the lower-power side of things, with a particular focus on the subjects above. While I do not restrict people from roleplaying with her using higher-power or less genre compliant concepts (such as archmages, fae, voidsent, etc.), Saori as a character is someone who is very set in her ideas of how the world works and happens to suffer from a massive inferiority complex.This is all to say that when confronted with a character with great magical or physical power, it is highly likely that this reveal will have a fairly negative response from Saori. It's probably for the best if you ask before leading with these aspects for your character.Note that this does not mean I am against fantastical elements — things like mammets, magitek, ghosts, etc. are normal in Eorzea, and Saori's engagement with the void means that RP around that subject is likewise natural to come up. I just ask that people be cognizant of the gulf between their own character's scale of influence versus her own, because Saori's response might be to close that gap with a bullet.

Reference Sheets

Screencaps

Art

■ Who came before.

Once, there was a woman who lived her life in service of the ones who saved her, in chains to bonds stronger than family, covenant eclipsing the waters of the womb. For them she lingered, and learned, and trained, so that in her inobtrusive nature, she could slink as a snake might and, with her fangs, tear the threads of conspiracy from the throats of her prey.Make no mistake of it. That woman was dead even when she still walked the earth.

■ The First

A pixie of Lydha Lhan, and a notorious leafman enthusiast. They have maybe transformed more hapless mortals than any other pixie in Il Mheg. Their zeal for horticulture is only matched by their love of pranks. Those who end up on the wrong side of the latter will soon become familiar with the former.

■ The Ninth

An Arcadion fighter who uses the soul of a great monstrous fox, Tamamo-Gozen, for combat. While she's easy to get along with outside of the ring, when she enters it, she takes on a bloodthirsty persona that teeters on the line between elegance and monstrosity. Challengers should watch themselves, lest they end up devoured in turn...

■ The Thirteenth

A fragmented past, an identity that rises above all others. A name - Nemain; a past - of war, slaughter, a court she once served; a queen - bound by mages from another realm for their wars.Now, she serves as an Avatar. Degraded, enchained, and starved of her rightful prize every day. But she can wait. After all, she has already waited a very, very long time.