Somnia Application

[hongtian]

PLAYER INFO

Name: Anna
Preferred Contact: aerolith or jinlian @ discord
Age: (Must be 18+) 33
Invite Link: direct link to invite

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Ruhong Cloudwalker (Yun Ruhong)
Canon: D&D 5E OC
Age: 24
If Under 16, why is this character a good thematic fit for Somnia?: N/A
Canon Point: After her party's defeat and massacre at the hands of Lord Soth
Wiki Link(s): about page

SOMNIA-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

1. Dreams are how Sleep chooses you. What might draw your character into Somnia— a wound, a wish, a weakness? Would they follow the dream, or run from it?

Canonically, kalashtar do not dream. They can't dream: sleeping mortals walk the Plane of Dreams at night, but the dream-spirits with which kalashtar bound their souls generations ago are exiled from that plane and thus do not dream. This is not, however, an issue for the premise, and is in fact a large part of what would draw Ruhong to it.

Hundreds of years have passed since the first kalashtar fled from the Dreaming Dark, agents of the nightmarish entity that reigns in the Plane of Dreams determined to hunt them down for daring to believe in the Light. From birth, Ruhong has been raised to fight the agents of the Dreaming Dark in hopes of shifting the balance of the Plane of Dreams from darkness and evil to goodness and light. A dream, for Ruhong, would be both an anomaly and a sign, and it would be a sign she could not ignore.

Ruhong's current canon point is a moment in which she is at her lowest. She was brought from her home world and told that in this world, she would face—and defeat—an agent of the Dreaming Dark, and in doing so prevent the darkness from the Plane of Dreams from spreading into the mortal plane. Instead, Ruhong witnessed hundreds of soldiers die, her companions slaughtered, and relationships she was finally learning to trust torn away from her. She begged outside deities for help and received nothing; when a shadow of another lifetime showed her how to access memories of other selves for information, Ruhong experienced only additional death and loss.

It's desperation that draws Ruhong to the dream. She can't accept defeat: if she does, her purpose, and her very people's purpose, in life will be moot. If the black darkness is left alone to spread and consume, then the Light is extinguished forever. When it comes to her, Ruhong sees her next step: one last chance to stand against the spreading nightmares, to take back the balance of light and dark, and to free the world from the encroaching power of the Dreaming Dark. Perhaps she'll learn something about Sleep and about dreams along the way that she can take back to Krynn...

2. Somnia is a slow unraveling—of worlds, and of selves. How does your character respond to fear, transformation, and losing control? Do they fight, adapt, collapse?

The immediate response, before anything, is denial.

Ruhong is proud, and her pride is her downfall. She does not like to admit to fear, and when she feels it, the instinct is to fight. The logic is that if she kills the source of it quickly enough, she will not have time to dwell on the reasons for fear or wait for it to kill her first. When the archfey Puck cut off her connection to her inner core and the source of her power, Ruhong—perhaps stupidly—took out her fear as rage and was fueled to seek him out and destroy him. When she faced an agent of the Dreaming Dark with her party members, and one of them died before her while she herself nearly did as well, Ruhong pushed herself past logic or tactics and bulled stupidly forward, nearly killing herself in the process. But fear is not only a matter of battle: it is also deeply personal. It is the little things. Ruhong is scared of intimacy, of loss, of failure, and as a result, she draws herself away from the situations in which she might have to face those things, isolating herself until she is forced to confront the human condition of connection and grief.

As for transformation and loss of control, both are frightening in and of themselves. Ruhong has teetered on the brink of control before. She has succumbed to violent urges, intrusive thoughts, and flashes of decisions that aren't quite hers but actions that would be. This is both frightening and shameful; she doesn't want to cause harm but finds herself enjoying it sometimes, anyway. Ruhong tries to control when she loses control, for all that is paradoxical: for example, if she kills brutally on a battlefield, it's better than fighting back the urge to choke an innocent man who has done nothing wrong. When she cannot control it, she meditates as she has been taught, fighting to calm her mind and her thoughts and to focus. This helps, for a time, and it's both fighting and adapting in its own way.

Ultimately, it helps that Ruhong has a faith and feels that she has a spiritual purpose. The teachings of the Path of Light have prepared her to struggle with hardship, fear, control, and change; but at her core she's human, even if there is a part of her that isn't quite. Ruhong still feels human emotions, and while faith helps control them, it doesn't make her infallible. Ruhong can break, and she has broken: her grief comes in anger, and for a little while hopelessness and collaps and loss of purpose, but it does not have to last. In the end, as long as she sees a reason to keep fighting, Ruhong will do so.

3. Connection is the only constant. What kind of bonds does your character form— fast and burning, slow and wary, deep and desperate? How might that shape their time in this world?

Ruhong forms bonds slowly, carefully, and sometimes fearfully.

There are two reasons for this. First is the belief that agents of the Dreaming Dark, the Inspired, are experts at infiltration and spying and could be present anywhere on the mortal plane, waiting to intercept the kalashtar's plans to defeat the Dreaming Dark and trigger the Turning of the Ages in favor of the Light. Ruhong's suspicion and paranoia leads her to trust slowly and reluctantly, but her adventures have taught her that she has to learn to do it. Lack of trust in her companions has led to death and betrayal. It's been a hard lesson learned, but it has been learned: Ruhong cannot survive on her own forever, and she needs trusted companions to help her. Even more than that, she has to let them in if she truly wishes to help them.

Additionally, cultivation principles teach that attachment to material things holds back one's ability to reach full potential and increase their lifespan through gathering of life energy in the body. This includes attachment to people. Ruhong was taught that if she becomes too attached to things or to individual people, she'll be distracted from her Path, and it will be that much harder to focus on hunting and destroying the agents of the dark. Because of this, she's reluctant to get too attached, and it has held her back in forming relationships both friendly and romantic. Ruhong guards her heart—but, again, she has been learning to let the human part of herself shine through.

Despite Ruhong's fear of close connections, she's already learned the lessons that it is often necessary. While this may cause her to choose her trusted ones carefully, it does not mean she will not trust: quite the opposite, even. Ruhong will quickly understand that she needs allies, and to have allies, she needs trust. She will then dedicate herself fiercely to her chosen companions, protecting those bonds with all that she has. She's lost before and does not wish to do so again.

4. What are two major forces in your character’s personality that are often in conflict? (Ex: logic vs emotion, power vs guilt, obedience vs rage, etc.)

Control versus desire.

Ruhong desires many things: beauty, power, material possessions, food, to name but a few. She's both human and something a little more bestial, which means that she wants things that are very normal for a person to want—but she perhaps wants them a little more than is normal. Ruhong relishes in the power of violence in battle, the taste of blood, the feeling of fine silk or rich food. There's nothing wrong with wanting. It's normal to want. It's normal to hunger. But sometimes it's a little incompatible with other goals.

Kalashtar society is ascetic. Their lives are not solely meant for the material plane, so they should learn to live with simplicity and mindfulness. The ability to stay calm, kind, and generous is necessary to spread the warmth of the Light into the world, and so personal desire should come second. Ruhong's own tenets of faith ask that she think before she act, that she hold back on the more powerful urges that would bring darkness and selfishness into the world.

There is an inherent conflict here of nature vs. nurture. Ruhong is a proud person, often at her own detriment, and resentful of family and clan members for whom control is easy. She wrestles with it, outbursts and hunger and desire, and hates that there is any part of herself that she has to hold back. Ruhong does not wish to dislike any part of herself. She wants to feel very content with who she is, which means that she wants to let herself want. But, as mentioned, violence and selfishness (which she very much does feel!) are at odds with a belief in goodness and in change through action.

Ruhong is not a cruel person even if she enjoys feeling powerful. She is not a selfish person even if she enjoys fine things. The line between the zeal of her teachings (asceticism, minimalism, constant meditation and control) and her desires (comfort, pride, power to protect her belief and her loved ones) is a difficult one for her to find, and she is constantly searching for the proper balance. How much is too much of either end?

VESSEL SELECTION
Which Vessel Type are you choosing: Token or Offering? Token
Choose one OR list three subclass options within your chosen Vessel type that you think would suit them: Pyromancer
Why does this Vessel type feel appropriate for your character?

Ruhong's body is, in essence, already a conduit for magic. Her ancestors offered theirs as hosts for ancient dream-spirits, so the very concept of being a Vessel is not new to her. The willingness of the first kalashtar bound their souls with the magic of the quori, thus changing them and their descendants permanently. They offered up their bodies to the magic of change and for it gained the psychic connection that bound the spirits together.

Mechanically, the paladin class of divine magic as well as the thematic influence of cultivation drawing and cultivating power within her body. Through exercise, breathing, and meditation, kalashtar believe they can quell the conflict within themselves of the two merged souls of human and quori; through the same methods, also called qigong, cultivators believe that they create a "golden core" of power inside their bodies through which they can cultivate life energy and build their magical and martial power—even extend their lifespans. A Token Vessel fits this lore generally.

Pyromancer specifically fits Ruhong for myriad reasons. First is her emotional struggle and inherent volatility. While the tenets of Ruhong's oath demand she think and act intentionally rather than on emotion, she has long struggled with urges of hunger, violence, and power. Like a flame, Ruhong can sputter and flare into destruction: the loss of her temper can ruin a delicate situation or something right in front of her. However, fire in the right context—controlled, in the right environment, and in smaller amounts—can be warm and gentle, even essential to life. It can burn out disease, cauterize wounds, sterilize objects. Fire does not have to be destructive.

This is emblematic of Ruhong's internal journey with nature and faith. The divine paladin magic she wields can be used for violence or for healing: she simply has to work to control it and to make those choices. It's also emblematic of her faith in itself, as fire brings light and warmth with the capability to burn too bright, symbolizing Ruhong's sometimes zealous pursuit of her Path.