Roxanne

Roxanne is a villain who appears occasionally in Nox and is sometimes mentioned outside her dimension. She knows Katt, having at one point kidnapped Katt's friend, Tennin, and attempted to kill his little sister, Neive. She is a very powerful adversary, much more powerful than Katt, but Katt somehow made it out of her grasp, not knowing how she did it--- Roxanne may have just let her go.

Roxanne is her own worst enemy. She is destined to destroy herself.
Her lineage is a mixture of ice/lightning, two opposing elements but both factions of air. She lives in a castle in the frigid and deserted sawtooth mountains, north of Amerante. There was once a clan of ice elementals who lived up there, but they all died, what's left of them now inhabit the liquid-ice lakes around Roxannes castle.

She practices a form of necromancy, where the victim is not dead but under her complete control and she uses it on young men. They are her puppets. When they are awake, they are completely loyal to her to the point of being irrational. When they are not being controlled they are kept in a state of timeless hibernation.

She stores the bodies in pillars of ice and reactivates them with little sparks of her lightning. With the bodies that she wants to keep on hand, they are kept outside the pillars but their bodies are ice cold and covered in frost. Time slows to a glacial pace for these victims, they are not hibernating but suspended in a state of extreme slow motion.

She has a collection of men that she keeps in her castle. She has a fixation with controlling them, most likely because men were her primary abusers growing up. She has no interest in capturing women, they can just die for all she cares- but in her own twisted mind this is possibly a form a compassion. She comes from a long line of nobility and she lives in the family mansion. She is the last living physical  ice tennin, although there is also Maru, who is from another extinct ice clan, but what is left of Maru is just disembodied energy/awareness.

Roxanne hates gore and ugliness. Her victims must be good looking, perfect in every way. She likes perfection. She hates making messes. Everything must be always clean and just right.

She wasn't born bad but was abused to the point where she is just a completely twisted and broken person.

Roxanne never had a chance to become a good person. She learned her behaviour and her magic through her family, who used it against her. Finally, she killed them, and stored their souls in the ice lakes.

She never knew her mother, or even heard about her. She probably isn't even aware that she has a mother, having been raised completely secluded from other people by abusive males. She knows next to nothing about children, she is both intrigued by them and unsure of them, and even a little horrified by them.

She is a young adult, the equivalent of Katt's age, although tennin live longer so she has probably been Katt's age for a long time.

She is a homicidal mess. Crazy, twisted, violent and manipulative.

Her original inspiration came from the Ice Maiden, coming across as an attractive character that you really know is up to no good but the characters can't see it themselves. But she sort of turned Snow Queen-ish along the way, with her kidnapping people and keeping them frozen in her castle, and all.

Cole

She is standing out in the rain without a coat, eyes closed, twirling, getting as cold and wet as she can possibly get.

There are a million thoughts that run through my head, but rising above them all was that she was going to catch a cold.

Bella, my stepmom, sat on the couch, green eyes fixed directly on me.

They have a hard edge, but no harder than normal. She is silently asking what I am doing.

"Coy's gonna catch a cold out there."

My dad turns from the stove. "I wouldnt worry about that, son."

Bella opens the window.

I walk over.

Coy looks ecstatic and full of grief at the same time.

She is shouting at the sky, dancing jerkily and then fluidly around the yard, never slipping.

"I have stood here before inside the pouring rain,

With the world turning circles running round my brain

I guess I'm always hoping that you'll end this reign,

But it's my destiny to be the Queen of Pain,

Queen of Pain, I'll always be

Queen of Pain,

I'll always be

Queen of Pain.."

I look over at Bella as Coy momentarily stops singing, If you can call screaming your grief and rage to the sky singing.

She has a deep look in her eyes.

She glances up at me, and her eyes soften.

"Come sit down, Cole."

I hesitate, then sit by her.

Plenty of times I had thought of how beautiful she was, but she was my stepmom, and years older than me. There was just something about her that no one could resist.

She smiles at me, tight and small amid her black lipstick.

"She just needs to shout at whoever's up there sometimes."

I nod. I feel the same way sometimes, but I don't have the nerve to go stand in the middle of a storm and scream at the clouds.

Bella readjusts her cloak. It slides over my arm, smooth and warm.

Coy steps inside.

She looks triumphant, and hollow.

My dad hands her a cup of tea. She grins at him, and walks to where Bella and I are sitting.

She sits down, getting the couch wet, but Bella merely reaches over and moves a soaked strand of hair off of Coy's face.

Coy closes her eyes, and leans her head on Bella's shoulder.

Bella strokes her hair slowly, closing her own eyes in turn.

I watch as Bella's hand moves pale and thin along Coy's dark gold hair, wet from rain.

The smell of cooking lobster meets my nose, and boiling water warms my ears.

I hear my dad cooking in the kitchen.

Oh yes, sometimes I understand Coy quite well.

We're very similar, her and I.

This is my family.

It's not normal, and times like these are few.

But who would really want a normal family?

I close my eyes, breathing in a slight tang of wet dog, Bella's dark flowery scent, and the lobster cooking.

This is my family, and I love them.

The Tennins

Beings that populate the cosmos. They have the powers of the universe; aether, light, dark, water, air, fire and earth. They have existed forever and continue to exist forever. In SHADE, all humankind is descended from a colony of Tennins, although, after thousands of years, their powers are either very diluted or nonexistent.

Notable Tennins:

Katarael: the soul of a water tennin. She doesn't have a body, but piggy-backs with Katt. Without some kind of physical anchor she will eventually fade away. She is intuitive and warns Katt by sending her impressions- when something bad is happening or about to happen.

She is harbored inside the charm that Katt carries around with her, but is able to leave the charm if needs be. She is a peaceful and benevolent spirit, and has been with Katt's family for generations. Katarael does not like fighting, and tries to protect Katt, and steer her away from danger or confrontation as much as possible.

Katt can control the element of water because of Katarael's presence. Although Katt is independent of Katarael, and visa versa, they are also so closely knit that Katt will sometimes be referred to as Katarael. People subconsciously recognize Katarael's presence in Katt and, without realizing they're doing so, will sometimes refer to Katt as Katarael. (* See: Katarael; Nature of)

It is unknown as to why Katarael does not have a body of her own. Either she was never born, or was killed, or lost her body under strange circumstances.

Katarael lay on her back, holding the crystal up to the starlight. She gazed at the stars in the dark sky through the rocks' translucence. 

She had to come to terms with the fact that this might be the very last time she ever saw the stars. Letting out a resigned laugh, she wrapped the rock in her fist and held it to her chest as water trickled down her cheeks and she evaporated into nothing. 

Katarael's death

Katt has very little awareness of Katarael. She doesn't understand what Katarael is or how she exists. She knows that without her charm she has no control over water, and she has a vague suspicion that her charm has some kind of sentient energy. She also knows that when she received the charm from her grandmother, her name was changed to Katarael, and she has been called that ever since.

Katarael and Katt are so similar that it is a possibility that they may be the same person. Katarael could be Katt from a parallel dimension, with more accrued power than Katt has, thus making Katarael a ghost of Katt's own potential.

Katt's powers change and morph as she gets older. At one point, Katt's charm bursts in an attempt to spontaneously warp an entire boat full of people to a different dimension. When Katt awakens, she is separated from her friends, fatally dehydrated, and her powers are seemingly gone forever. But as Katt ages, her powers start to manifest in different ways such as when it starts coming out in her synesthesia.

She could tell everything about you by just watching you breathe. She can read the moisture in your eyes, or on the palms of your hands. She could tell everything about you at just a glance, by the vapor you expel, that floats around you, that sits on your skin with a rainbowy quality, like oil on top of a puddle. Human beings are very wet creatures, and can you can learn a lot from the colors of water. 



Envariel: The soul of a fire Tennin (Shiner).  Envariel resides inside Coy. Envariel and Coy are like minded in personality, which is why Envariel chose Coy to piggy-back with. Envariel and Katarael know each other and can recognize the other, which would explain why Katt and Coy were drawn to one another and became friends.

The Meese

When we made the Meese, I was thinking of the Keres from Greek mythology. (female death-spirits, also called Tenebrae, or the Darknesses,with a thirst for human blood. Hung around battlefields picking off wounded men. )  Coy was thinking of these drippy, slimy, scary ladies from Galaxy Express. This is what came of that combination. 

Personification of nightmares and creatures of darkness, as old as time. All but one take the form of women. They frequently appear in a creepy bus. All can change shape at will.  They are carnivorous and prefer humans, particularly males.  They frequently resemble dripping black shadows or have a dark aura. 

The Meese, first abstractly mentioned in the camping trip, appear in bus schedule. They are black mass-like creatures, appearing with red eyes and claws. They travel in a bus called the Hell-T-D, which has been called by it's full name, Hell-To-Dream, only a select few times.
They work by picking up males, driving through streets or finding lost passerby and seducing them, instructing them to lie down, tilt their heads back and close their eyes, upon which the vampiric meese attack en masse. (2008)

The Meese do not let women on their bus. If they like someone, they give him his fantasy, along with an audience doing whatever it is that he wishes. If they do not, they devour him. Face-sucking sounds, slurps and crunches have emanated from the bus as it rocks back and forth, within the Meese are feeding.  (2008)

Identified Meese:

Their names are literal meanings, translated from some kind of ancient proto-meese-langauge. They may not even have the words in English to describe their real names.

Moonchild: Leader of the Meese. A strong leader who interacts frequently with humans. She has a big appetite, but is unable to feed when she cannot lure humans in. She uses her mischievousness and seductiveness to trap and feed off them, but the people of the DHQ are wise to her tricks. Because of this she chooses to help them rather than eat them. 


RedEyes: The Meese's only brother. Does not, or cannot talk. His sisters are able to communicate with him silently. 

Three Meese have been named: Red-Eyes, who stares out of the bus window and uses only a blink method of talking... (2008)

Nightmare: Screeches and prevents males from escaping.

Petal: The Meese's younger sister.  Rather than being dark and shadowy, she has a bright, rainbowey aura. She wears a cheerful, easygoing personality. The other Meese seem to tolerate her, but frequently get annoyed by her presence. She also seems to only tolerate the other Meese. She doesn't particularly like them but does claim to love them because they are family. She also claims to be a vegetarian. She too, can change her appearance at will, and often changes her hair, eye and skin color to try to fit in with the humans.

• Moonchild, the bus driver. Moonchild appears to be the only Meese able to leave the bus and all other forms of hiding behind. She calls the others her sisters, although she stated that Red-Eyes was male... 
• Moonchild often leaves the bus to convince men to come aboard. She is a humanoid semi-intangible shadowy form, dripping darkness. She has an obiously female body, long hair and slanted red eyes.
• When she cannot make a male come into the bus, she deigns it 'Not a Big Loss', and moves onto the next target. No one watching feels any will towards stopping the interaction.
• Moonchild does not appear outwardly harmful, but her evil/good morality is very vague.
• She acts caring towards the men she locks onto.
• She explains things rather vaguely, and has a habit of repeating certain words twice, like friend. 

(2008)

Blush: Moonchild's daughter of unknown paternity. Was found on Katt's doorstep one morning. Katt, a young teenager at the time, panicked and dropped her off at Coy's house to be raised. Moonchild shows no maternal instinct towards Blush and rarely interacts with her. There may be a reason for this, but as of now that reason is unknown.

Pale: Moonchild's infant son, also of unknown paternity. He could have been created from magic or is a changeling. He is used as a lure, where she claims certain men are responsible for his existence and tries to make them feel accountable and bound to her. 

Interesting Facts (2008)

• The Meese seem to be very good gamblers, despite saying several times they have no need or want of money. Strangely, they would rather play for money than souls or wills. This may be because of their lethargic ability on the wills of most anyway.
• Moonchild's favorite game is Russian Roulette. So far no one has played it with her.The Meese exist in their own time/space reality, merely moving into another. 
• It is always night in the bus, shafted through the shadows by beams of moonlight. The inside of the bus has doors with sizeable rooms as well as seats, and anything needed at the time.
• Shade identified the Meese as demons, but Moonchild cried out that she had no idea they were. It is not known whether she was telling the truth or not.
• Moonchild seems very little aware of her own safety while outside of the bus.
• Meese seem to have a latent psychic hold over most people, sapping their will to do anything unless instructed.
• Meese also know their victim's loves and hates, using it greatly to their advantage in catching prey.
• Moonchild knows the names of those she adresses, but still calls them by descriptive titles most of the time, such as silver darling and small child.
• Men who seem to be attached to another person are harder to get into the bus, and Moonchild usually gives up on them quite easily.
• Moonchild allows a representative to pass unharmed into the bus to ask the victims who were accepted if they would like to come back their own house, however she seems aware of tricks and demands that they wait for the victim's answer. She also argues for the ulterior, reminding the victim of their annoyance that led them into the bus in the first place while the representative is attempting to get them to go back.
• Moonchild is passive about letting the victims leave if they want though, and it is unknown how much Meese actually need to eat.
• Carnivorous, but not exactly cannibalistic, there are child meese as well as adults. How many are actually related and how many merely called part of the family is unknown.
• Upon the wall of the bus by the driver's seat is taped a message in scrawly handwriting:

1. Meese are always convenient

2. Meese always love the one they're with

• Moonchild seems to be focused on something beyond her catch and devour game, staring loftily off most of the time. When asked what happens to the meese who do not obey the rules on the wall, she responded, "There are no Meese like that.". Further comment was unavailable on the subject.

Katarael; nature of

"Katherine" was not something Katt had not been called in many, many years.

Katt was not born with the element of water. To be honest she felt rather detached to it.  Katt was born as an aether elementalist, something that ran in her extended family- though she doubted any of them realized it. Aether is a generic element. Her great great grandfather could move things with his mind, and many of her relatives would have mild telepathic experiences every once in a while. Aetherians sometimes had a tendency to lean towards a certain element, and ever since Kat was a baby she loved air. One time she jumped off the porch and hung there, in the wind. It made her heart dance and her stomach flip, and up to that point it was the single most amazing experience of her life. Nobody except her best friend Leraco had seen. Afterwards they both took turns jumping off the porch and ended up extremely bruised, sore, and disappointed. But that’s a different story. 

Katt was born with the name of “Katherine.” But nobody knew that. Not even her parents. Not anymore.

One day her grandparents came to visit. They visited once every couple of years from the desert town where they lived, hundreds of miles away. Her grandma always brought her granddaughter gifts when she came. Katt was ten years old at the time. Her grandma cherished genealogy, and at this age, she decided, Katt could be trusted with a family heirloom.  Her grandma sat her down and told her a story about her father, and how he could always find water, even in the driest of places. It seemed to her, her grandmother had said, that he could call it out of the ground. Her father had a necklace, she told Katt, with a cold jewel, as sparkling blue as the deepest, oldest depths of the sea. And when she would look into it she could see things in the prisms, and hear things, almost like when you put your ear to sea shell, only more real.  Her father passed it onto her, and in turn she was passing it onto Katt.

Katt was thrilled to find out that when she wore the necklace she could move water. She could twist it and bend it, and make it /do/ things.

Except it wasn’t her controlling the water.

Sometimes she could hear the crystal too.

It called her Katarael. It called itself Katarael.

It was around this time that she met Dengo. He showed her the DHQ and taught her about the elements.  Katt learned that all the water elementalists were gone. She was the only one.

She decided to make water her primary element. And the more she practiced it the less she found that she could use her old abilities. 

Katherine was gone.  Gone with the aether and the air. But still, she would always be Katherine.

But she would always be Katarael too. Katarael was a shield. A shield that protected her family, her childhood, and her heart. And her parents forgot.

Nobody called her Katherine. Not even her parents.

Sometimes she regretted ever putting on that necklace. Just as one regrets growing old or moving on.