#red iris

[popinade]

You are challenged by Champion — !

[gossamerandshadow]

Ruby Grace Sinclair, aka Red Iris

Summary

Granted precognitive abilities as an involuntary subject of medical experimentation, Grace escaped her captors and fought back against the powers of her home world. In time, she will learn that her abilities are far greater than she yet knows.

Attributes - 40 Points

Psyche: 30 Strength: Superior (+10) Endurance: Superior (+10) Finesse: 15 Presence: 15

Powers - 54 Points

Warden of the Grand Stair - 0 points

Unfolding the Infinite Paths - 24 points

Danger Sense - 5 points

Prescience - 5 points

Perceive the Eidolon - 5 points

Mind Reading and Mind Probe - 5 points

Major Unconventional Ability - Precognition - 4 points

Traversing the Infinite Paths - 30 points

Enhanced Fortification - 10 points

Sanctification of the Eidolon - 5 points

Guiding and Editing Reality - 10 points

Forcing Conformity - 5 points

Grace can see the future. She can sense danger before it strikes, she can learn what might happen before it occurs, she can learn what people might say to her in any possible future, and how she might convince them to say it.

What's more, and what she is only just learning, it that she can also decide what path has already been taken. If she wishes that an object be whole, then it has always been so. It wouldn't make sense to ask if she can fix it, because it was never broken to begin with. She can choose that path through time, traversing alternate possibilities until she finds the one that suits. But what she wants is not an alternate possibility; it's what truly happened and it always has been.

Extras - 6 Points

Domain - Ichoris Nightclub (3 points)

Personal Domain (1 point)

Restricted Access (2 points)

Partisan Support - Red Iris (3 points)

Ichoris is the nightclub on the first floor of an old hotel on a small, densely populated tropical island called Sunyi, on Grace's homeworld. The world has about a modern level of technology.

Grace is the leader of a technically-criminal organization known as Red Iris which serves as the de facto government of Sunyi, operating out of the upper floors of the old hotel above Ichoris. She and her people have effectively absolute power across the island. While it is technically not great that Sunyi is so completely controlled by basically a gang, the island's actual government was so corrupt and the previous gang wars over territory so bloody that Red Iris' control has improved life across Sunyi dramatically.

Backstory

Grace doesn't remember much about her life before the lab. Her first memories are of pain and illness while she was used as a subject for various inhumane experiments. She also suffered a lot of pain and physical weakness even when she wasn't being subjected to experimentation. She doesn't know if that's why she was selected for the experiments, or if her physical maladies were a permanent effect of the experimentation she endured.

From what she has been able to learn since then, Grace believes that her captors were trying to turn her into something like a living computer. They intended to improve certain aspects of her neurological functioning and then use her brain in combination with more traditional electronics to create a more powerful and adaptable computer than anything that could have been created with just electronics alone.

To that end, they experimented on her with a series of drugs intended to dramatically increase neuron density and neuroplasticity. For the most part, all they actually managed to do was induce a whole bunch of seizures that nearly killed her.

At some point, her captors somehow managed to get their hands on a pair of substances, one infused with the power of Eidolon and the other with the power of Umbra. Grace knows for a fact that her captors had no idea what they were or how to use them. She knows this because they injected her with both at the same time and clearly didn't know why that was a bad idea.

Through luck or fate or possibly some latent talent with Eidolon, Grace somehow survived this. The clash between the two primal powers in her body ended with only Eidolon remaining, along with a great deal of internal bleeding. Once she recovered physically, her captors believed that they had caused catastrophic brain damage, as Grace was unable to speak and seemed largely unaware of her surroundings.

The primal substances had been injected into Grace's body along with the more expected cocktail of drugs, intended to improve neural density. The presence of Eidolon simply perfected the substances, making them actually function as intended. The resulting neurogenesis was rapid and entirely uncontrolled, causing the new neurons to have almost like a tumor. She nearly died before the Eidolon started perfecting her rather than just the drugs acting upon her, and saved her life.

Grace seemed like she was unaware of her surroundings because she couldn't tell which of her perceptions were of the current moment and which ones hadn't yet happened. It took her a long time to learn how to parse the sudden new ability to perceive things that hadn't happened yet. Once she did, and once her captors were able to understand exactly what had happened, they removed her from the lab entirely and began to investigate how to make use of her new abilities.

The organization keeping her captive had long mastered the art of brainwashing and put Grace through their standard process of psychological programming and direct neurological manipulation. They were unaware that all changes were quickly and neatly reversed by the presence of the Eidolon power. Grace took advantage of this and pretended that the brainwashing process had been a perfect success. As far as any of her captors were aware, she was by far the most stable and obedient example of brainwashing they had yet produced.

Initially, her abilities and skills weren't sufficient to allow her to escape, even with her precognition. It was too limited and she had too little mastery over it. She was forced to remain and pretend to serve her captors for quite some time. Over this period, her captors attempted to find ways to extend her immediate precognition over longer periods of time. No matter what they did, she was never able to clearly see anything more than an hour or two in advance, and it took a great deal of effort and time for her to see that far - short of entering a concentrated trance, she can't normally see clearly more than a few minutes into the future.

Once it became clear to her captors that she would never be capable of the long-term precognition they had hoped to use to inform their strategies as an organization, they began to train her as an operative who could be sent into situations too high-risk for typical agents. Between this training and her own growing mastery over her precognitive abilities, she was eventually able to find an opportunity to escape her captors and flee, taking all the data she could steal with her.

Once she escaped, Grace came to learn that her captors worked for a shadowy cabal of powerful political and financial elites known as the Auctoritas. Most people considered it a conspiracy theory, but this was a small group of powerful men and women who effectively controlled most of the world through their political connections and wealth.

Alone in the world, Grace ended up on Sunyi because the lack of government authority made it a place of weaker influence for the Auctoritas. There, she met the bartender named Sari at a bar called Club Phantom who helped her find her footing. In return, Grace used her abilities to make money by card-sharking at various gambling dens across Sunyi, and eventually earned enough money to buy the building that housed Club Phantom from the landlord trying to extort Sari. Grace gifted the building to Sari and they rebranded the club as Ichoris, turning it into their base of operations for first establishing a base of power in Sunyi, and then to go after the Auctoritas.

Using the data she stole from Auctoritas, she was able to establish herself very quickly as a powerful information broker, trading secrets for money and power, and leaking secrets to damage the politicians and CEOs controlled by Auctoritas. Grace became known as Red Iris, for the large tattoo of three blood-red irises on her chest. As more people joined her and Ichoris became the centre of a true organization rather than just a front for Grace and a few friends, the organization soon adopted the name Red Iris as well.

Over time, Red Iris was able to chip away at the Auctoritas across the world until they were left as a shadow of the power they used to be. With her once-captors no longer a threat and with Sunyi firmly under her control, Grace has turned her attention to learning more about some of the strange new ways the paths of the future seem to be changing in front of her, and to the strange door recently discovered in the basement of Ichoris that she just knows isn't normal...

[inkedinserendipity]

just finished re-reading all systems red and the way martha wells' narration directly tracks murderbot's thoughts is, like, diabolical in retrospect.

because on my first read-through, i'll be honest. i did not remember the presaux crew at all. pin-lee and gurathin show up in exit strategy and i, remembering nothing about those two except ":D! presaux friends!" expected them to be like "omg hey murderbot!" because i figured the presaux crew would be excited to see their secunit again. i did not remember pin-lee's temper or gurathin's skepticism. because the presaux crew kinda blurred together for me in the first book. because that's how murderbot saw them too!

all systems red has the most en media res of all en media res beginnings. not just because it starts in the middle of an action sequence, but because it also starts in the middle of an emotional sequence. the survey has been happening, for, what - a couple of weeks? - by the time asr starts. murderbot has already met the crew. they have already formed impressions of it. but, crucially, it has formed almost no opinions of them*.

it's been watching media and half-assing its job. and at this point in murderbot's journey, and therefore its internal narration that forms the text, a human is a human is a human. it is not invested in their work, so we don't hear about the start of their survey. it literally starts paying attention to them when they are in danger and when they start to realize that it is a person, because that is when murderbot has to start paying attention.

and this is why i remembered almost nothing distinct about the presaux crew. there are a lot of crew members, but murderbot spends very little time thinking about them as individuals. so the narration tends to skim over their distinct personalities, because murderbot doesn't really consider them* at all!

and then of course we come to exit strategy and network effect, and the contrast could not be more clear. now it's got opinions about everyone, and because it has a better grasp on their personalities, the narrative does too. oh yes that's arada, wibbly bulwark, the human murderbot trusts to not be overconfident and ignore its advice. that's gurathin. it doesn't like gurathin. that's pin-lee, the combatunit of lawyers, well-dressed and sharp-tongued. and of course, that's ratthi (tag: bestie!!), who stays in the car because he will get himself killed by something.

and of course, there's dr mensah. but she was always an exception.

*dr mensah is, as she always is when it comes to murderbot, an exception to this generalization. that's tag: intrepid explorer like blorbo from my shows! that you're talking about. even when murderbot mostly tried to avoid humans at all costs, even murderbot paid attention to her. from asr to now, that has been and remains perfectly true.

[goryhorroor]

horror sub-genres: giallo

[jetslay]

DC Families hanging out.

[monarchisms]

ace attorney + 3ds home menu banner animations (w/ bonus translated version of dgs 1)

made to match my professor layton gifset

[heartistii]

oh how hard it must have been for iris... loving a man while he thinks she's someone else...

[flovoid]

“cut from the same willow” ⋆˚꩜｡ WOOD FAM

[certainstarfishsandwich]

No but I understand Ais being CEO of Consent cuz imagine having an eldritch creature in your mind that constantly compiles the minds of those who drink the Mysterious Blood Soup. Like that has to be invasive as hell.

[trava1505]

He didn't wanted to talk, but HE came anyway

Anti and Chase (my version)

[persimminwrites]

O Falon'Din

Lethanavir--Friend to the Dead

Guide my feet, calm my soul,

Lead me to my rest. (x)

my second stab at an evanuris redesign doodle page. this time featuring everyone's least favorite guy falon'din ! decided to lean into the owl symbolism and just make him... a giant owl but its different bc he has a second set of arms :)

other evanuris: elgar'nan | dirthamen | sylaise | andruil | mythal | june | ghilan'nain

[pangur-and-grim]

we call her ol' blood eyes

[incorrectpokechampionquotes]

Can they sing? Champions Edition

Blue: No, has no sense of pitch.

Red: No, because he does not speak.

Lance: Surprisingly, yes, but he won't admit it.

Steven: Sort of; he's not always on key. Can sing a few songs well.

Wallace: Yes, he has a beautiful voice.

Cynthia: No, tone-deaf.

Alder: Yes, and he can play guitar!

Iris: Not really, but that might change when she gets older.

N: Not really, but he would be very good with formal training.

Diantha: Yes, has had formal voice lessons.

Hau: Yes, but not super well.

Kukui: Yes, also plays guitar.

Leon: Yes, he's shockingly good, but can't read music.

Mustard: No.

Geeta: No, and she doesn't like to try either.

Nemona: Yes, can sing a select few songs well.

[oceandiagonale]

they had a good time!! and honestly, it's well-needed 🥺

(at the end of the night, red and blue saw everyone off)

[ilrococo]

Art dump!

[soni-dragon]

ive seen a couple pokemon character color wheels around so i tried one with some of my favorites!