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Mar. 19th, 2015 04:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crueldragonsthesisPLAYER INFORMATION
NAME: Hedge
ARE YOU 18 OR OLDER?: Yep
CONTACT: taoofcrime on plurk or AIM
CURRENT CHARACTERS: -
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Jane Alderberry
CANON: The Iron Dragon's Daughter
CANON POINT: Second to last chapter, when Melancthon disintegrates
CHARACTER AGE: 19, more or less (exact age not completely clear; spent a lot of time in a magical shopping mall where time doesn't pass outside)
HISTORY: CONTENT WARNING FOR THIS SECTION: child abuse, rape, suicide
This is a difficult canon to sum up because of the often disjointed narrative, time jumps, surreal, unexplained elements and lack of infodumps.
Here's the short version:
Jane is a human changeling, stolen at some point in early childhood from the human world and brought to the fae-ruled world most of the book takes place in. She starts the book as a child laborer in a dragon factory. Following a failed attempt by her fellow workers to kill their boss, she steals the grimoire for a magitech iron dragon who's been discarded in the factory junkyard. She steals the dragon and flees to the suburbs.
The narrative jumps to her high school years. She's an outcast, living inside her dragon (he has stealth capabilities to protect him). She experiences various troubles typical of teenagers in the Unseelie Court and acquires her first boyfriend and a best friend. The best friend's the harvest sacrifice though, and dies in a wicker man. She and the boyfriend move in together but, guilt-stricken, he hangs himself. However she manages to navigate the social currents and gets a university scholarship. At the same time, she becomes estranged from the dragon.
The narrative jumps again to her sophomore year, where she's studying applied alchemy. Jane finds out that her best friend as a kid and her old boyfriend were both reincarnations of the same person and her female best friend is a reincarnation of her high school best friend (you can reincarnate in the past here) and confirms that the guy she has UST with is also a reincarnation. She fears losing her scholarship. She tries to steal from a handsome elf lord she knows, but is caught. Amused, he makes her an offer of employment instead. However the Teind arrives, killing both UST guy and Best Friend, as well as several other people she knows in the ensuing rioting (she participates too but flees when the elf riot police start bashing heads).
She goes to work for said elf lord and meets her dragon again, who informs her that they share the same fate whether bonded or not. He presents her with the plan to destroy Spiral Castle, the lynchpin of their universe. He needs fuel for that though, which she goes about acquiring in an...unusual way. Oh and the dragon pilot she meets and eventually sleeps with and his half sister are the latest in the line of reincarnations. Neat trick, huh? Anyway, when the authorities are on to the both of them, Jane and her dragon go blasting off, trying to destroy their universe. They fail and reincarnation guy dies. Again. That's the canon point i'll be taking her from.
Here's the long version:
Jane is a human changeling, stolen at some point in early childhood from the human world and brought to the fae-ruled world most of the book takes place in. Politically, she seems to be inside the Unseelie Court, which is apparently at war with the Seelie Court, though its effects on the characters are all indirect and mostly economic. However this version of fairyland more closely mimics the NE USA during the 70s and 80s than the feudal land of high elf lords and ladies found in most fae literature. Although ultimately ruled by the elf monarchy, the economy of the Unseelie Court is consumer capitalist (this is due to a modernization program the elf lords and ladies instituted some unspecified time in the last century). The various types of fair folk form a rough class hierarchy with humans at the very bottom (all changelings being legally government property), dwarves forming a lumpen proletariat, trolls as industrial workers, soldiers and other more traditional working class jobs, goblins as low merchants, rusalkas, nyxies and other miscellaneous fae as the middle class and the old elven families as the elite of society. Most human women, as adults, are forced by the state to breed half-elf dragon pilots, as fae are deathly allergic to the iron they're made of (full blooded humans, however, being too rebellious to make reliable pilots).
Jane starts her story as an indentured child worker in a factory that produces these dragons, working under Dickensian conditions. There she becomes involved in a plot to kill her foreman and in the process, steals a grimoire (book of technical specifications) for one of the dragons. Though the plot ultimately fails and costs the life of her best friend, Rooster (whose true name is Tetistigus), she's bumped up from drudge to courier (a slightly less terrible drudgery). Running an errand past the junkyard, she stumbles across the ruined dragon #7332, true name Melancthon. The wrecked dragon, his circuits barely alive, recognizes Jane as his only hope for escape and revenge and the two agree to work together. In the course of her work over the next several months, she studies the grimoire and steals the necessary components to restore him to functionality (the final one coming from the house of an old elf lord and representing her first exposure to the elf monarchy).
During a visit by an important company official, she activates Melancthon, whose attack kills her boss, gaining revenge for Rooster. They fly away and the story jumps forward several years.
Jane is now in high school and life sucks only marginally less. An outcast among her peers, she gains a measure of respect only from her only apparent talent: stealing. Melancthon, in disguise, has set himself up as her house, and she frequently demands to know what the fuck he wants from her. He's always silent to her, save when he has to defend her from hunters (she's still company property and has hidden her identity). The Powers That Be offer her various ways to get a leg up in the world by snitching on her friends and she stalls for time.
She meets and befriends Gwen, the school's Harvest Queen, destined to become a sacrifice at the end of the school year, and her boyfriend, Peter. She attends many of Gwen's parties and though she achieves some temporary escape, she never feels like she really belongs there (a feeling heightened by a classmate trying to sexually assault her at one). In the course of this, she finds out Peter is being used as Gwen's sin eater.
Full of disgust, pity and empathy, she sleeps with him and they move in together. She finds out, curiously, that his true name is also Tetistigus and Gwen's is Kynousora (dog tail). Melancthon tells her that their contract is broken, since it depended on her virginity, and implies that he'd manipulated her into this in the first place. He seemingly no longer needs her, having dragooned the local meryons (antlike fey) into becoming his new maintainers. He vanishes from her life. The next day, Gwen is burned in the wicker man. Stricken with guilt, Peter hangs himself.
There's another time jump. Jane's gotten a scholarship and now attends an unnamed college in the capitol (revealed to be called Babel in the concurrent book The Dragons Of Babel). Things are going to get seriously weird in places here. If this sounds disjointed at times, I assure you that this is because the narrative is too.
Jane's struggling with issues in applied thaumaturgical chemistry. Even her only real friend, Sirin, won't tell her what the secret she's missing to it is. The narrative slows down a bit here, focusing on her academic struggles and social life.
She meets a fellow poor student named Puck and knows instantly that he's a reincarnation of Rooster/Peter and that if she becomes too close to him he'll die (having heard earlier in a lecture that one can be reborn in the past as well as the future, she's not concerned about the apparent temporal incongruity of this). She rejects his overtures despite her attraction to him.
Looming over it all is the threat of the teind, which in her version of Fairy takes an unspecified but signifigant number of the students every year.
She's informed that her scholarship's been cut. Combined with her poor performance in thaumaturgy, this marks her for the Teind. She and Sirin meet the charismatic elf playboy Galiagante and go to a high elf lord club which is exactly as terrifying as it sounds. Galiagante propositions Sirin in a way that terrifies her and Jane gets them both out (after robbing another club patron and Sirin herself blind). Grateful, Sirin tells her the secret: applied alchemy is best shortcut by visualizing the results of the experiment during sex. I am not making this part up. Anyway without going into further detail her experiments become more succesful. Ratsnickle (the classmate who tried to rape her) is back too and grossly sexually propositions Jane several times, while also dating Jane's roommate. He also demands she steal a pair of faun-skin gloves for him, threatening to reveal her changeling nature if she doesn't.
There's also a sequence where she seems to dream-travel to the lower (human) world, where her body's apparently in a mental hospital. She steals a spoon from there and brings it back as proof.
One night she decides to steal from Galiagante, with the help of a hand of glory. She sucessfully breaks into his penthouse apartment and is about to get away with many of his jewels when she tries to snag a pair of silver candlesticks which cry out for their master and grip her hand. Galiagante seems amused and makes her an offer to come work for him.
Then the Teind night happens and Jane finds herself caught up in a general riot/looting spree. Puck saves her from the greencoats (elf SWAT teams) while they're opening the jail cells. She never gets a chance to thank him though, as the next day, she sees his name on the list of people killed on Teind night. Also on that list are Billy Bugaboo (her ex lover), Sirin, Ratsnickle, and her roommate. Sirin, it seems, was also the reincarnation of Gwen (her true name being Kynosoura, 'dog tail'). This causes her great grief and also contributes to her growing cynicism and nihilism. The only silver lining is that now her scholarship is restored due to the decreased number of students.
She meets Melancthon again, who's hiding in the college's basement. He explains that, like it or not, they're both connected and that he was the one to actually cause the death of Ratsnickle and her roommate. He outlines his plan to her: leave the fae realm and destroy Spiral Castle, the giant hovering seashell (yes, really) that is the lynchpin of their universe, which makes reincarnation and even the existence of that universe possible, and in which The Goddess is said to reside.
However to do that he will need fuel, and with every other source of dragon fuel monitored, the only alternative is to liquidate people, via their true names. Jane begins seducing, persuading her lovers to give her their true names, which gives her power enough over them to turn them into dragon fuel/ammo (again, i'm not making any part of this book up). Working for
Galiagante now, her financial worries are over. He begins to initiate her into elven high society. She continues her 'work' for Melancthon.
During one of Galiagante's soirees, she meets a dragon pilot named Rocket and she knows immediately that he's the next in the Rooster-Peter-Puck line. She does her best to drive him away and for a while their dislike is mutual (his career as a dragon pilot having involved the capture of changelings helps). However on that same night out they seem to share a moment of bonding over their mutual disgust at the high elves' cruel, fickle tastes. She has another surreal experience that wakes her up in the mental institution again, briefly, before returning to Spiral Castle. Later she finds that he's the half brother of the capricious Fata (Lady) Incolore, next in the Kunosoura line. It seems she's fated to befriend a woman named Kynosoura too...
Soon afterwards, they have enough fuel to put Melancthon's plan into action. He takes off and they destroy the factory the story started in together. Next Melancthon opens a gate to the 'outside' of the universe and they find themselves over a quantum chaotic sea, above which is suspended Spiral Castle. Dragons pursue them, one of them being piloted by Rocket. As the rest are forced to turn back, Jane and Rocket both beg each other to stop. Finally, Jane gives up and gives Melancthon Rocket's true name, which destroys him. As Jane and Melancthon loose rocket after rocket at the Spiral Castle itself though, he begins to disentigrate...
This is the point in the novel i'll be taking her from.
PERSONALITY: The keyword of Jane's personality is resentment. Jane came into awareness as a virtual slave and has never been allowed to forget her status as a second class citizen at best. She found Melancthon and tried to carve out a semi-normal life for herself after her escape. However as she escaped one track, she found herself continually in another, like nested Russian dolls. She hasn't just been tyrannized, abused and hunted by the powers that be, she's been denied even the satisfaction of an enemy who presents himself in a single guise and is unlikeably evil to invite solidarity against (IE some evil overlord that can be slain to make the world right again). Her enemy is the entire structure of her society, which considers her struggle to keep her head above water to be entirely her fault, a matter of laziness, lack of guile, (both of which are untrue) and possibly the inherent inferiority of humans (which is only partially true). Given these circumstances it's surprising she isn't more bitter, less human and compassionate.
This treatment has effected her personality in several important ways.
It's made her distrustful immediately of just about everyone. She's always had the threat of her true origin being found out hanging over her head and has thus always had to calculate if any new person she meets is fishing for proof that would allow them to turn her in.
It's given her a get-mine-first attitude. She calculates what she can possibly gain from everyone she meets, as well as what potential danger they might present to her. Although she's not so warped that she can't see others for their intrinsic value, this is often the first thing she notices about them. This is especially true of sexual partners, most of whom she coldly rebuffs attempts to become emotionally intimate from. However she isn't a slave to this. She's capable of acts of generosity and recognizes that too much of this attitude will make her no better than the elf lords.
Under all those layers of cynical, self preserving armor, Jane still has good in her. She's a loyal sort, usually manifesting in the secretive loyalty of those who live under oppression. She keeps secrets well and expects the same of others. She still has feelings of solidarity for the rest of society, a wish to improve the world in some way. Even at the end, where she's resolved to blow the universe up, she does it believing that its fundamental laws are so cruel that the only good, honest thing left to do is to destroy those laws. She'd yearn for a better world if she had any indication that such a thing was remotely possible. Under different circumstances she could have been a reformer or revolutionary. She's an omnicidal maniac now because she believes those two roads are closed to her, not because destruction is her first impulse. She also has some empathy for other rebels and outcasts. In other words, she's an extremist, but not a sociopath.
In fact her complete dedication to this goal of destruction is also a manifestation of one of her other admirable traits: persistence. Jane works harder than just about anyone else, and while she likes to have fun bullshitting with her people, she never lets that come before a goal she's set for herself. This is shown most thoroughly by how, despite the narrative jumps and near decade that elapses from start to end of book, she never forgets that she swore she'd do anything to be totally free when in the dragon factory, at age twelve, even during the period of her life when many people her age have time for nothing but collegiate hedonism.
She tends to react to new situations with caution, analyzing thoroughly before jumping in. This is somewhat a learned reaction. Still, she's a systematic thinker at heart, and seeking patterns is natural to her. This caution should not be confused for cowardice or indecisiveness. When she's sure it's the right thing to do, she acts immediately (as shown in the second to last chapter when she takes the half-fueled Melancthon up for the attack rather than abandoning him to the GreenCoats, the more cowardly choice).
On those rare occasions she gets to act her age, she takes to it. Although she's reserved a bit, she's capable of getting her party on, even enjoying it. She take a particular joy in the cutting remark, especially directed at overly persistent suitors. Also she seems to enjoy seducing people.
Being around so many of her own kind for the first time, she'll react with guarded awe at first. She'll ask questions about the human world. She'll be disappointed to find out the parralels between human and fae society.
ABILITIES: Jane is an ordinary human herself. She possesses no inherent supernatural abilities. She can also work some nasty magic on anyone who gives her their True Name, assuming they have one (she doesn't). She can also make a Hand Of Glory and presumably knows at least some other simple spells, as this is a part of common knowledge in her version of the Unseelie Court. Her real talent is in magitech engineering though, learned from her childhood in the dragon factory, the stolen grimoire, and her freshman study in applied alchemy. This is especially powerful when she can visualize the results of her experiments at orgasm (again, yes, really).
She's a capable thief (fooling magitech security systems are her specialty) and all in all a survivor, adapting quickly to new situations.
She'll be coming in with Melancthon's grimoire. Although normally constructed with iron, there's nothing in the canon to indicate that military dragons can't be built with other metals (though soft metals would probably pose structural problems), though in all probability such a dragon would be weaker than its iron counterparts. If completed, said dragon is one of the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of her universe's version of the Unseelie Court, and of necessity loyal to its pilot, who knows its true name. Knowing the dragon's true name allows you to destroy it.
To create one such dragon from scratch, unassisted, would take most of a lifetime, not including the time needed to acquire fuel and ammunition. In an emergency, fuel and ammunition can be created through refining fae whose true names have been stolen.
SINS & VIRTUES: Jane's primary sin: Wrath. She's resentful, nursing a long, slow burning wish for revenge. Finding herself in a new kind of servitude isn't going to help her.
Her secondary sin: Lust. She likes sex, but even more likes the thrill of the chase. Only her heterosexuality prevents it from being her primary sin.
As for her virtues, they are Diligence and and Patience. She works harder and longer than almost anyone, for a promise she made herself when she was small, one that most would consider no longer binding.
SAMPLES
Sample 1:
Jane hadn't thought she'd still be wearing the damn cat suit after all this time. It had started as a joke, Galiagante using her old profession as a little dig against her. Maybe he liked watching her strut around in it too. Certainly people on the street did. Eyes followed her through the market as she ran her hand faux-idly over fruits in stalls, picked tchochkes up and examined them, seeming to find them wanting. She didn't have a body built to stun but she knew presentation, how to play a role with her body. She had been stamped by him at the time (though he never stamped her thoughts; she knew how to dissemble too) and now she was stamped again, this time by the sadism of her mistress, who had enjoyed the story and the way it embarrassed her. At least as far as possessions go she was a prized one, she told herself. It was a comfortable enough resting spot on her journey elsewhere.
She stopped to buy a bottle of liquor, supposedly from a city-state that had Eros under embargo. The seller didn't even haggle with her, actually dropped money off the listed price. Eve's servants were good for future business. She held it up, turned it over, watching flakes of something bright fall through amber. She favored him with a smile, the first she'd given to anyone all day.
She idly wondered about poisoning it. Too bold? Probably. And knowing Them, it probably wouldn't work anyway. Well it would at least provide some release, if only temporary.
Sample 2:
http://montauk-1-allende-18.dreamwidth.org/12566.html#comments
Sample 3:
http://demeleier.dreamwidth.org/224734.html#comments
NAME: Hedge
ARE YOU 18 OR OLDER?: Yep
CONTACT: taoofcrime on plurk or AIM
CURRENT CHARACTERS: -
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Jane Alderberry
CANON: The Iron Dragon's Daughter
CANON POINT: Second to last chapter, when Melancthon disintegrates
CHARACTER AGE: 19, more or less (exact age not completely clear; spent a lot of time in a magical shopping mall where time doesn't pass outside)
HISTORY: CONTENT WARNING FOR THIS SECTION: child abuse, rape, suicide
This is a difficult canon to sum up because of the often disjointed narrative, time jumps, surreal, unexplained elements and lack of infodumps.
Here's the short version:
Jane is a human changeling, stolen at some point in early childhood from the human world and brought to the fae-ruled world most of the book takes place in. She starts the book as a child laborer in a dragon factory. Following a failed attempt by her fellow workers to kill their boss, she steals the grimoire for a magitech iron dragon who's been discarded in the factory junkyard. She steals the dragon and flees to the suburbs.
The narrative jumps to her high school years. She's an outcast, living inside her dragon (he has stealth capabilities to protect him). She experiences various troubles typical of teenagers in the Unseelie Court and acquires her first boyfriend and a best friend. The best friend's the harvest sacrifice though, and dies in a wicker man. She and the boyfriend move in together but, guilt-stricken, he hangs himself. However she manages to navigate the social currents and gets a university scholarship. At the same time, she becomes estranged from the dragon.
The narrative jumps again to her sophomore year, where she's studying applied alchemy. Jane finds out that her best friend as a kid and her old boyfriend were both reincarnations of the same person and her female best friend is a reincarnation of her high school best friend (you can reincarnate in the past here) and confirms that the guy she has UST with is also a reincarnation. She fears losing her scholarship. She tries to steal from a handsome elf lord she knows, but is caught. Amused, he makes her an offer of employment instead. However the Teind arrives, killing both UST guy and Best Friend, as well as several other people she knows in the ensuing rioting (she participates too but flees when the elf riot police start bashing heads).
She goes to work for said elf lord and meets her dragon again, who informs her that they share the same fate whether bonded or not. He presents her with the plan to destroy Spiral Castle, the lynchpin of their universe. He needs fuel for that though, which she goes about acquiring in an...unusual way. Oh and the dragon pilot she meets and eventually sleeps with and his half sister are the latest in the line of reincarnations. Neat trick, huh? Anyway, when the authorities are on to the both of them, Jane and her dragon go blasting off, trying to destroy their universe. They fail and reincarnation guy dies. Again. That's the canon point i'll be taking her from.
Here's the long version:
Jane is a human changeling, stolen at some point in early childhood from the human world and brought to the fae-ruled world most of the book takes place in. Politically, she seems to be inside the Unseelie Court, which is apparently at war with the Seelie Court, though its effects on the characters are all indirect and mostly economic. However this version of fairyland more closely mimics the NE USA during the 70s and 80s than the feudal land of high elf lords and ladies found in most fae literature. Although ultimately ruled by the elf monarchy, the economy of the Unseelie Court is consumer capitalist (this is due to a modernization program the elf lords and ladies instituted some unspecified time in the last century). The various types of fair folk form a rough class hierarchy with humans at the very bottom (all changelings being legally government property), dwarves forming a lumpen proletariat, trolls as industrial workers, soldiers and other more traditional working class jobs, goblins as low merchants, rusalkas, nyxies and other miscellaneous fae as the middle class and the old elven families as the elite of society. Most human women, as adults, are forced by the state to breed half-elf dragon pilots, as fae are deathly allergic to the iron they're made of (full blooded humans, however, being too rebellious to make reliable pilots).
Jane starts her story as an indentured child worker in a factory that produces these dragons, working under Dickensian conditions. There she becomes involved in a plot to kill her foreman and in the process, steals a grimoire (book of technical specifications) for one of the dragons. Though the plot ultimately fails and costs the life of her best friend, Rooster (whose true name is Tetistigus), she's bumped up from drudge to courier (a slightly less terrible drudgery). Running an errand past the junkyard, she stumbles across the ruined dragon #7332, true name Melancthon. The wrecked dragon, his circuits barely alive, recognizes Jane as his only hope for escape and revenge and the two agree to work together. In the course of her work over the next several months, she studies the grimoire and steals the necessary components to restore him to functionality (the final one coming from the house of an old elf lord and representing her first exposure to the elf monarchy).
During a visit by an important company official, she activates Melancthon, whose attack kills her boss, gaining revenge for Rooster. They fly away and the story jumps forward several years.
Jane is now in high school and life sucks only marginally less. An outcast among her peers, she gains a measure of respect only from her only apparent talent: stealing. Melancthon, in disguise, has set himself up as her house, and she frequently demands to know what the fuck he wants from her. He's always silent to her, save when he has to defend her from hunters (she's still company property and has hidden her identity). The Powers That Be offer her various ways to get a leg up in the world by snitching on her friends and she stalls for time.
She meets and befriends Gwen, the school's Harvest Queen, destined to become a sacrifice at the end of the school year, and her boyfriend, Peter. She attends many of Gwen's parties and though she achieves some temporary escape, she never feels like she really belongs there (a feeling heightened by a classmate trying to sexually assault her at one). In the course of this, she finds out Peter is being used as Gwen's sin eater.
Full of disgust, pity and empathy, she sleeps with him and they move in together. She finds out, curiously, that his true name is also Tetistigus and Gwen's is Kynousora (dog tail). Melancthon tells her that their contract is broken, since it depended on her virginity, and implies that he'd manipulated her into this in the first place. He seemingly no longer needs her, having dragooned the local meryons (antlike fey) into becoming his new maintainers. He vanishes from her life. The next day, Gwen is burned in the wicker man. Stricken with guilt, Peter hangs himself.
There's another time jump. Jane's gotten a scholarship and now attends an unnamed college in the capitol (revealed to be called Babel in the concurrent book The Dragons Of Babel). Things are going to get seriously weird in places here. If this sounds disjointed at times, I assure you that this is because the narrative is too.
Jane's struggling with issues in applied thaumaturgical chemistry. Even her only real friend, Sirin, won't tell her what the secret she's missing to it is. The narrative slows down a bit here, focusing on her academic struggles and social life.
She meets a fellow poor student named Puck and knows instantly that he's a reincarnation of Rooster/Peter and that if she becomes too close to him he'll die (having heard earlier in a lecture that one can be reborn in the past as well as the future, she's not concerned about the apparent temporal incongruity of this). She rejects his overtures despite her attraction to him.
Looming over it all is the threat of the teind, which in her version of Fairy takes an unspecified but signifigant number of the students every year.
She's informed that her scholarship's been cut. Combined with her poor performance in thaumaturgy, this marks her for the Teind. She and Sirin meet the charismatic elf playboy Galiagante and go to a high elf lord club which is exactly as terrifying as it sounds. Galiagante propositions Sirin in a way that terrifies her and Jane gets them both out (after robbing another club patron and Sirin herself blind). Grateful, Sirin tells her the secret: applied alchemy is best shortcut by visualizing the results of the experiment during sex. I am not making this part up. Anyway without going into further detail her experiments become more succesful. Ratsnickle (the classmate who tried to rape her) is back too and grossly sexually propositions Jane several times, while also dating Jane's roommate. He also demands she steal a pair of faun-skin gloves for him, threatening to reveal her changeling nature if she doesn't.
There's also a sequence where she seems to dream-travel to the lower (human) world, where her body's apparently in a mental hospital. She steals a spoon from there and brings it back as proof.
One night she decides to steal from Galiagante, with the help of a hand of glory. She sucessfully breaks into his penthouse apartment and is about to get away with many of his jewels when she tries to snag a pair of silver candlesticks which cry out for their master and grip her hand. Galiagante seems amused and makes her an offer to come work for him.
Then the Teind night happens and Jane finds herself caught up in a general riot/looting spree. Puck saves her from the greencoats (elf SWAT teams) while they're opening the jail cells. She never gets a chance to thank him though, as the next day, she sees his name on the list of people killed on Teind night. Also on that list are Billy Bugaboo (her ex lover), Sirin, Ratsnickle, and her roommate. Sirin, it seems, was also the reincarnation of Gwen (her true name being Kynosoura, 'dog tail'). This causes her great grief and also contributes to her growing cynicism and nihilism. The only silver lining is that now her scholarship is restored due to the decreased number of students.
She meets Melancthon again, who's hiding in the college's basement. He explains that, like it or not, they're both connected and that he was the one to actually cause the death of Ratsnickle and her roommate. He outlines his plan to her: leave the fae realm and destroy Spiral Castle, the giant hovering seashell (yes, really) that is the lynchpin of their universe, which makes reincarnation and even the existence of that universe possible, and in which The Goddess is said to reside.
However to do that he will need fuel, and with every other source of dragon fuel monitored, the only alternative is to liquidate people, via their true names. Jane begins seducing, persuading her lovers to give her their true names, which gives her power enough over them to turn them into dragon fuel/ammo (again, i'm not making any part of this book up). Working for
Galiagante now, her financial worries are over. He begins to initiate her into elven high society. She continues her 'work' for Melancthon.
During one of Galiagante's soirees, she meets a dragon pilot named Rocket and she knows immediately that he's the next in the Rooster-Peter-Puck line. She does her best to drive him away and for a while their dislike is mutual (his career as a dragon pilot having involved the capture of changelings helps). However on that same night out they seem to share a moment of bonding over their mutual disgust at the high elves' cruel, fickle tastes. She has another surreal experience that wakes her up in the mental institution again, briefly, before returning to Spiral Castle. Later she finds that he's the half brother of the capricious Fata (Lady) Incolore, next in the Kunosoura line. It seems she's fated to befriend a woman named Kynosoura too...
Soon afterwards, they have enough fuel to put Melancthon's plan into action. He takes off and they destroy the factory the story started in together. Next Melancthon opens a gate to the 'outside' of the universe and they find themselves over a quantum chaotic sea, above which is suspended Spiral Castle. Dragons pursue them, one of them being piloted by Rocket. As the rest are forced to turn back, Jane and Rocket both beg each other to stop. Finally, Jane gives up and gives Melancthon Rocket's true name, which destroys him. As Jane and Melancthon loose rocket after rocket at the Spiral Castle itself though, he begins to disentigrate...
This is the point in the novel i'll be taking her from.
PERSONALITY: The keyword of Jane's personality is resentment. Jane came into awareness as a virtual slave and has never been allowed to forget her status as a second class citizen at best. She found Melancthon and tried to carve out a semi-normal life for herself after her escape. However as she escaped one track, she found herself continually in another, like nested Russian dolls. She hasn't just been tyrannized, abused and hunted by the powers that be, she's been denied even the satisfaction of an enemy who presents himself in a single guise and is unlikeably evil to invite solidarity against (IE some evil overlord that can be slain to make the world right again). Her enemy is the entire structure of her society, which considers her struggle to keep her head above water to be entirely her fault, a matter of laziness, lack of guile, (both of which are untrue) and possibly the inherent inferiority of humans (which is only partially true). Given these circumstances it's surprising she isn't more bitter, less human and compassionate.
This treatment has effected her personality in several important ways.
It's made her distrustful immediately of just about everyone. She's always had the threat of her true origin being found out hanging over her head and has thus always had to calculate if any new person she meets is fishing for proof that would allow them to turn her in.
It's given her a get-mine-first attitude. She calculates what she can possibly gain from everyone she meets, as well as what potential danger they might present to her. Although she's not so warped that she can't see others for their intrinsic value, this is often the first thing she notices about them. This is especially true of sexual partners, most of whom she coldly rebuffs attempts to become emotionally intimate from. However she isn't a slave to this. She's capable of acts of generosity and recognizes that too much of this attitude will make her no better than the elf lords.
Under all those layers of cynical, self preserving armor, Jane still has good in her. She's a loyal sort, usually manifesting in the secretive loyalty of those who live under oppression. She keeps secrets well and expects the same of others. She still has feelings of solidarity for the rest of society, a wish to improve the world in some way. Even at the end, where she's resolved to blow the universe up, she does it believing that its fundamental laws are so cruel that the only good, honest thing left to do is to destroy those laws. She'd yearn for a better world if she had any indication that such a thing was remotely possible. Under different circumstances she could have been a reformer or revolutionary. She's an omnicidal maniac now because she believes those two roads are closed to her, not because destruction is her first impulse. She also has some empathy for other rebels and outcasts. In other words, she's an extremist, but not a sociopath.
In fact her complete dedication to this goal of destruction is also a manifestation of one of her other admirable traits: persistence. Jane works harder than just about anyone else, and while she likes to have fun bullshitting with her people, she never lets that come before a goal she's set for herself. This is shown most thoroughly by how, despite the narrative jumps and near decade that elapses from start to end of book, she never forgets that she swore she'd do anything to be totally free when in the dragon factory, at age twelve, even during the period of her life when many people her age have time for nothing but collegiate hedonism.
She tends to react to new situations with caution, analyzing thoroughly before jumping in. This is somewhat a learned reaction. Still, she's a systematic thinker at heart, and seeking patterns is natural to her. This caution should not be confused for cowardice or indecisiveness. When she's sure it's the right thing to do, she acts immediately (as shown in the second to last chapter when she takes the half-fueled Melancthon up for the attack rather than abandoning him to the GreenCoats, the more cowardly choice).
On those rare occasions she gets to act her age, she takes to it. Although she's reserved a bit, she's capable of getting her party on, even enjoying it. She take a particular joy in the cutting remark, especially directed at overly persistent suitors. Also she seems to enjoy seducing people.
Being around so many of her own kind for the first time, she'll react with guarded awe at first. She'll ask questions about the human world. She'll be disappointed to find out the parralels between human and fae society.
ABILITIES: Jane is an ordinary human herself. She possesses no inherent supernatural abilities. She can also work some nasty magic on anyone who gives her their True Name, assuming they have one (she doesn't). She can also make a Hand Of Glory and presumably knows at least some other simple spells, as this is a part of common knowledge in her version of the Unseelie Court. Her real talent is in magitech engineering though, learned from her childhood in the dragon factory, the stolen grimoire, and her freshman study in applied alchemy. This is especially powerful when she can visualize the results of her experiments at orgasm (again, yes, really).
She's a capable thief (fooling magitech security systems are her specialty) and all in all a survivor, adapting quickly to new situations.
She'll be coming in with Melancthon's grimoire. Although normally constructed with iron, there's nothing in the canon to indicate that military dragons can't be built with other metals (though soft metals would probably pose structural problems), though in all probability such a dragon would be weaker than its iron counterparts. If completed, said dragon is one of the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of her universe's version of the Unseelie Court, and of necessity loyal to its pilot, who knows its true name. Knowing the dragon's true name allows you to destroy it.
To create one such dragon from scratch, unassisted, would take most of a lifetime, not including the time needed to acquire fuel and ammunition. In an emergency, fuel and ammunition can be created through refining fae whose true names have been stolen.
SINS & VIRTUES: Jane's primary sin: Wrath. She's resentful, nursing a long, slow burning wish for revenge. Finding herself in a new kind of servitude isn't going to help her.
Her secondary sin: Lust. She likes sex, but even more likes the thrill of the chase. Only her heterosexuality prevents it from being her primary sin.
As for her virtues, they are Diligence and and Patience. She works harder and longer than almost anyone, for a promise she made herself when she was small, one that most would consider no longer binding.
SAMPLES
Sample 1:
Jane hadn't thought she'd still be wearing the damn cat suit after all this time. It had started as a joke, Galiagante using her old profession as a little dig against her. Maybe he liked watching her strut around in it too. Certainly people on the street did. Eyes followed her through the market as she ran her hand faux-idly over fruits in stalls, picked tchochkes up and examined them, seeming to find them wanting. She didn't have a body built to stun but she knew presentation, how to play a role with her body. She had been stamped by him at the time (though he never stamped her thoughts; she knew how to dissemble too) and now she was stamped again, this time by the sadism of her mistress, who had enjoyed the story and the way it embarrassed her. At least as far as possessions go she was a prized one, she told herself. It was a comfortable enough resting spot on her journey elsewhere.
She stopped to buy a bottle of liquor, supposedly from a city-state that had Eros under embargo. The seller didn't even haggle with her, actually dropped money off the listed price. Eve's servants were good for future business. She held it up, turned it over, watching flakes of something bright fall through amber. She favored him with a smile, the first she'd given to anyone all day.
She idly wondered about poisoning it. Too bold? Probably. And knowing Them, it probably wouldn't work anyway. Well it would at least provide some release, if only temporary.
Sample 2:
http://montauk-1-allende-18.dreamwidth.org/12566.html#comments
Sample 3:
http://demeleier.dreamwidth.org/224734.html#comments
