Arncine

Name: Arncine
Gender: Female (She/Her/Hers)
Species: Hybrid Etherbeast/Hellbeast

Appearance: Arncine stands at a height of four and a half feet at her shoulder. Most of her body is covered in short and velvety cervine fur, but cottony fluff grows softly from her head down along her back to her tail. Sprouting through the downy fluff along her spine are sharp, ossified growths of bone. The color of Arncine’s fur and her fluff is that of Hell’s moon, a particular shade of frozen white that any who have seen Hell’s stellar body would recognize in an instant. The hybrid’s entire frame is eerily lithe; her legs appear too thin to hold her up, and her face is drawn and angular, which all match her Etherbeast blood more than her Hellbeast blood. Her eyes, which one might expect to be orb-like and dark for a deer-like creature, are instead pulled into ice-white almond-shaped ovals that seem to leak down her face. Her dual pairs of wings are each the drab gray of the craters on Hell’s lonely moon, with veins of muted blue and gray. At the end of each leg are draconic talons; each just a little too long-fingered to appear normal by any standard. Despite her lank appearance, Arncine possesses a poise and grace, and is capable of a hellbeast-inspired stillness that betrays the etherbeastbeast desire to be free and mobile.

Personality: Arncine inherited the wild heart of a etherbeast, but that untamed and tempestuous spirit is tightly chained in the bindings of a hellbeast’s blood. Her upbringing was one torn between two terribly different parents and Realms, and she is a cautious optimist and an independent creature as a result. Arncine rejects desires to be cruel and vicious, but tries not to indulge in the pursuit or spread of happiness either. Above all, Arncine is focused on her service to the Spirit King of the Ether Realm, and wishes to perform her duties honorably.

Abilities: This hybrid is still young, but shows great promise as a manipulator of spiritual energy, as befits a half-etherbeast. Her thin frame can absorb spiritual energy with a shocking kind of hunger which likely stems from the hellside of her biology. She is a ruthless hunter, though nowhere near as swift and cruel as a fullblooded hellbeast. Arncine is capable of breathing Hellfire, but hesitates to do so because she knows the everburning torturous effects of its flames. If she were to armor herself in Hellfire, her hybrid nature means that she can only coat herself in it for mere moments before it would burn her as it would burn any other victim.

History:
Arncine is the product of a union between her etherbeast father and her hellbeast mother. The two spiritbeasts, serving the Spirit King of their respective native Realms, each felt their own form of love for the other. The father’s love was borne out of pity for the violent hellbeast that inflamed his passions, and he felt a desire to try to save her from a life dispensing cruelty and torment. The mother’s love arose from illusions that happiness was possible, and that perhaps she too could feel the carefree freedom that the father enjoyed as a etherbeast. Their relationship was chaotic and rife with highs and lows, and as it reached a disastrous end, their mutual desperation led them to try conceiving a child. Arncine’s father believed that a child might be the motivation the mother needed to pull away from her service to the King of Hell, Kairn. Arncine’s mother wondered if a child was what she needed to finally feel something beyond bloody and passionate desires. Both were utterly wrong.

The fledgeling Arncine, who was envisioned as a magical solution to the problems of both her parents, was a failure in that regard. Born on Hell, Arncine spent most of her formative years there in Hell’s deserts, with only occasional visits to her father’s native Ether Realm. The girl struggled with both of these two vastly different experiences. In Hell, her mother brought her on hunts of errant souls, sprinting ahead of her and demanding that she keep up on grueling chases and participate in brutal takedowns of prey. In the Ether Realm, her father kept her away from the other etherbeasts and the Spirit King there, ashamed of her appearance and his own choice to have Arncine in the first place. In Hell, Arncine hunted too passively and ran too slowly on too-thin legs; in the Ether Realm, the other young etherbeasts found her disturbing to behold, and were frightened by how aggressively she pursued the rare faded souls there. The arguments between her parents on how to raise her, and what to do with her, were terrible, and only further deepened the rift between both of the spiritbeasts. Her father called on her to visit less and less, and on several occasions failed to come and retrieve her when she did arrived on the Ether Realm, leaving her to have to track him down. In Hell, Kairn’s secret plotting to rebel led to even darker hearts among his servants, and in the Felnovan year 13005, Arncine’s mother finally demanded that her child make a choice. Would Arncine live fully in Hell, or in the Ether Realm, for soon, her mother would break with her father and seal herself off from him and the foolish joy and short-sighted hope he represented. To her mother’s disgust, Arncine chose the Ether Realm.

Initially, Arncine’s father was overjoyed at Arncine’s choice, but the hybrid had chosen the Realm, not the parent. Hell was desolate and ever-burning, but the Ether Realm was filled with the remembered landscapes of its inhabitants, and a grand fortress at the center of its wheel, and incredible rivers and mountains and valleys. Though her visits to the Realm had been tainted by the presence of her father, she had come to love the place itself, and she admired the beings to maintained it and the Spirit King who kept it safe. Arncine began to nurture her own ideas about how she might better serve the Spirit King of the Ether Realm than her more flighty and carefree etherbeast fellows. Though still only a late adolescent, Arncine chose to live and hunt on her own in the Ether Realm, dwelling apart from the etherbeasts and her father and exploring the everchanging place she adored. She lived in this way for fifteen years until, as she grew into young adulthood, the Felnovan year 13020 came to pass...

OOC - Arncine’s Assignment: Arncine is to become a spiritbeast in the service of the Spirit King of the Ether Realm (currently the character of Zarnai, played by vvalkk). At the time of this writing, there is a Historical RP meant to play out her background, and how she enters Zarnai’s service.

OOC Opportunities: Arncine, as of the Felnovan year 13020 and the beginning of Kairn’s Rebellion, serves the Spirit King of the Ether Realm, Zarnai. She might take on any mission which would protect the Ether Realm from harm or disruption, and these missions could feasibly take her to any known Realm. Her Hellish nature might mean she is particularly likely to be sent on a task in that Realm, or that involves denizens of Hell or servants of its Spirit King.