Difference between revisions of "Eien Seida"

Eien was born on Port Island in February of 1992. Her parents, Akira and Kasumi, had high hopes for their daughter, as from an early age she demonstrated a remarkable and active inquisitiveness about the world around her.

At eight years of age she went on a camping trip with several other families. Sitting around the campfire one night, the adults told kaidan -- traditional ghost stories, many of which date back to the Edo period -- and Eien was so terrified by them that her parents were forced to leave the trip early and bring her home...though her nightmares didn't stop. In an effort to give her a way to deal with her nightmares, her father told her that he would take her to the library to take out books about kaidan, because the most frightening thing about the unknown is that it IS unknown, and the more familiar one becomes with something, the less scary it will be.

He would regret his approach. Her interests, previously roaming and all-encompassing, suddenly narrowed to supernatural subjects almost exclusively, broadening gradually to include the occult: magic and all manner of esoteric, hidden knowledge. As she buried her nose in strange books and babbled excitedly, incomprehensibly, about astrological significances and pagan holidays, all her parents could do was look at one another uneasily and hope that it was only a passing phase.

It wasn't. In 2007, at the age of 16, Eien discovered a piece of paper tucked into a book about occult rituals, on which were written instructions for a specific ritual that would summon a powerful spirit to come to her aid. Of course, she couldn't resist; two weeks later, staying at a friend's house near a plot of undeveloped land, the girls went into the woods at three in the morning and performed the ritual according to the page: it had required three days of fasting to prepare, and she was already light-headed when they tromped into the woods.

At the culmination of the chant, Eien collapsed...and met Philemon.

It wasn't more than a month later that she woke up in the middle of the night in the Dark Hour to go to the kitchen and get herself a glass of water, and realized that the world she could see through her kitchen window was...wrong, somehow. Baffled, she went outside -- and was almost immediately attacked by Shadows.

That is when Hekate manifested for the first time. In the middle of fighting the Shadows, Mitsuru Kirijo, Ran Itoh, and Akihiko Sanada, patrolling the dark hour, heard the scuffle and helped to defend Eien. In other circumstances, they might have tried to recruit her after the battle was over...but SEES was still reeling from the loss of Shinjiro Aragaki, and the group wasn't any longer readily taking on new members. It was Mitsuru Kirijo who gave her a quick explanation as to what had just happened to her -- about the Dark Hour, and about her persona. She never had deep involvement with SEES in the years that followed, but she did occasionally see Mitsuru and Ran, always with the impression that they were checking up on her, to see if she was still alright.

She always was.

Gaining a persona did nothing to deter Eien's interest in the supernatural, of course, though by this time her parents had succeeded in encouraging her to devote herself to a mundane and practical course of education. By day she studied the sciences at Gekkoukan High, particularly biology, chemistry, and criminology, and worked part-time as a clerk and barista in a small bookshop and cafe; by night she read ever-and-increasingly more esoteric volumes, some of which her parents would likely have disowned her even for looking at.

To say nothing of what they would have done to her if they'd known that, at eighteen, she summoned a demon, and made a deal with it.

In addition to her ability to scan the targets and environments around herself, she's also telepathic; she can speak directly into someone else's thoughts. She can only transmit words; she CANNOT read the thoughts of others -- it's just a one-way line. In addition, to use this ability she must be in a supernatural location.

Psychometry is essentially the ability to receive impressions left behind by others on objects or in places, provided she has the ability to touch those places or objects. These impressions can come in many forms, like vague ticklings of intuition, visions of events or individuals, sensory impressions, or strong emotions.

Her success rate is affected by a number of things, such as the item or place's importance to the person who held it/walked through it, their emotional state at the time, how many other people have held or interacted with it since then, and how long it has been since the person was there/last held the object, etcetera.

For example: Holding someone's prized locket might reveal a wealth of intense impressions, while picking up a take-out carton they only used once might only give fleeting, vague impressions. Following someone's trail down a rarely used alleyway would be extremely easy, but tracking them through the subway would be extremely difficult, and would be downright impossible during peak hours. In general, it's easier for her to get a sense of emotions and events if they were intense; weaker feelings are more difficult to read.

Items or places impacted by supernaturally-influenced people, objects, and events are easier for her to read than those only touched by mundane of the same, and of course it's much simpler for her to get impressions about people she knows than it is for her to read things about total strangers, since she already has context to make sense of things -- a 'feel' for them.

Using this ability, she can even track someone's location within the city, provided they're within several miles of where she is, and they're within the normal, mundane world -- i.e., not in Mikage-Cho, for instance, or a TV dungeon.

*PLEASE NOTE: I'm putting this on the wiki because it's a neat resource for adding depth to scenes, so I'm trusting people not to use that information IC without actual IC knowledge.

**PLEASE REALLY REALLY NOTE: I am all about upholding consent, and don't intend to force this on anyone's character unless doing so is the result of ICC. I will always ask before posing anything related to this, and I'm probably willing to come up with reasons to foil it in certain situations, if asked (as long as the situation doesn't involve aforementioned ICC). ICly, Eien chooses to respect the privacy of others, as a general rule, so she would only ever snoop if given cause to!

NOTE: With a few exceptions for grouping like materials together, these logs run in roughly chronological order. (This section will be under heavy edit for the duration of the plot. If you're involved and you write a cutscene related to the events, please let me know so that I can be sure to include it here!)

• Player Short Story Submissions

• Illuminated Stories *two pending

• Cutscene: The Illuminated Volume of Joseph Weiss

• Log: Once Upon a A Time - 02-03-13 - In which the adventures begin, and people get more than they bargained for.

• Log: Between the Lines - 02-10-2013 - In which Eien gets an unwanted visitor.

• Log: Night Terrors - 02-11-13 - In which Seiichi Miyamoto has a strange experience.

• Log: Outside Interest - 02-11-13 - In which Masahiko Irie searches for answers.

• Log: Kyo Kills Ran - 02-18-13 - In which Kyo Enda grills Ran Itoh.

• Log: Enigma - 02-19-13 - In which Miwa Saitou laments a run of bad luck.

• Log: Sitrep - 02-21-13 - In which Jason R. Butler has a few questions for his young intern.

• Log: Katsuya Is A Meanie - 02-24-13 - In which Jason R. Butler and Katsuya Suou get an unwanted visitor.

• The Nature of a Curse - 02-28-13 - In which Miwa Saitou and Jason Butler talk about stories, magic, and have a really awkward moment.

• Log: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature - 03-8-13 - In which Jason R. Butler gets holy spam.