Konoe Saya

近衞の沙耶

"In the end, I want to be master of my own fate. Not to let traditions or a foreign power tell me what I can or cannot do, where I can or cannot go.
"I want absolute freedom - to build what I want, to see my visions to reality, to progress what is known into the beyond. And to have that freedom means I must have power."

• About
• Skills and Talents
• Relations
• Media
• OOC

Saya Konoe of Balmung and all related characters were created by me, desertpeachcatte@tumblr, or related friends.
Images of other characters or others' arts all used with permission.
Please do not blatantly take any character concepts, art, or story from this character for your own.
Raen Au Ra and Final Fantasy XIV belong to Square-Enix.

About

Pale blue of skin and green of hair, Saya's middle-class upbringing shows in her access to fine clothing and various pleasantly-scented soaps and shampoos, suggesting she takes good care of her hair, skin, and scales. Her swept-back, curved horns and her spiked tail are also well-kept. A smattering of light scales frame her face, wrap around and trail down her neck, hug her ribs below noticeably ampler-than-average bosoms, and map over her thighs, shins, and tops of her feet and hands. Her face is often clouded by a persistent RBF (resting bitch-face), and heightened by mismatched eyes of ice-blue and hazel that appear white thanks to her bright limbal rings. Her eyes are also framed by verdant rune-like markings. Her hair is usually worn simply and functionally, whether long or short, and sports pale gold highlights.Of note, despite access to well-made clothing, Saya has noticeable trouble making form and function work well together in her styling, where frumpy comfort tries to shake hands with modestly cute. Leaning mostly conservative in her choices, there are times she seems unaware of when some parts of herself show or don't show. Her clumsiness also makes presentation in more fashion-conscious styles fall flat - literally, with granny-panty flashes.

Awkward and largely quiet in groups, Saya is not, however, a pushover. When she has a goal in mind, she assertively acts and gets others moving to ensure it gets met. Neither the most empathetic nor sensitive of people, her lack of social awareness is one of her greater hurdles in her quest for power. Nevertheless, she is hardly halted by this setback and instead attempts to learn and evolve herself and her knowledge in ways that allow her to be as self-sufficient as possible. She is fiercely independent and resents Eastern tradition that dictates that she should 'settle down with a nice Raen boy and start a family.' Furthermore, she sees tradition to be a stifling influence on progress and evolution overall.Harboring a great admiration for Eorzea - specifically, the great ancient civilization of Mhach for its brazen fearlessness in harnessing the unknown - Saya had shored up her Eorzean and made her way to the Western lands as soon as she was able, to advance research on magicks and on Voidsent in particular. Progress has been frustratingly slow due to the language barriers, but her determination to find lost knowledge and to expand what is currently known keeps her motivated.

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Background

The only daughter to parents of a humble silkworm farm in Yanxia, Saya knew a fairly unremarkable existence for the first decade of her life. Her father was a quiet, gentle man who took direction from her fussy mother - a woman who had a head for numbers and attention to detail. Saya herself knew as all Domans did: to honor the kami, and to take pride in and rise to the expectations of her family and community.Yet even as a child, Saya knew of other things existing behind the placid familiarity of expectations, and her thirst for knowledge was recognized early by her parents. Friends did not come easy to the young Raen, as she preferred to explore and experiment into the bounds of the uncomfortable, so after scraping together enough money, her parents hired a tutor for her in an attempt to quench her curiosities with a formal education.The strategy worked for a while - Saya had a guide through which her questions would be answered, and her curiosities about this or that tradition or piece of historical architecture would be assuaged. But then she began to perceive odd whispers, underground movements that she could only suspect were their people's shinobi, and before long, Garlemald invaded.Saya thankfully escaped thanks to her parents' foresight and care. Yanked from her sleep in the middle of the night, the family fled Doma before it fell, keeping one step ahead of the Garleans and eventually making it to Kugane. Penniless and armed only with their wits, Saya's mother and father worked tirelessly, banking on their combined knowledge of silk farming, finances, and keen networking to eventually build a healthy silk trade. In the 25 cycles Doma suffered under the yoke of Garlemald, the Konoes emerged wealthier than they ever had been, and Saya was successfully put through a complete education.During her schooling, Saya once again found herself outcast. She was awkward and closed off, preferring to find holes in others' ideas and needle with questions rather than smooth herself into social growth by making friends. Most comfortable with looking purely after herself, Saya found such a tactic to be advantageous as, while she developed physically through puberty, her peers spread discrediting rumors of her marks being earned through 'womanly wiles.'

Weary of the gendered politics of academia, such shenanigans further reinforced to Saya of the sheer stupidity of people and their whims. Keeping to herself, she made social overtures only to appease her parents' expectations (to find her a nice Raen boy to settle with), or to attempt to make academic strides. A light in the bleariness came when she met an Eorzean arcanist who arrived in Kugane and found delight in Saya's thirst to uncover the unknown. Together, they helped accelerate the Raen's growth with arcanima and dove into the theories of thaumaturgy. It would be several cycles later that Saya would learn that her beloved arcanima sensei was in fact exiled by the Arcanist's Guild in Limsa Lominsa for delving too deeply in the magicks of Mhach, and she would find her dead in her secret study, slain by Voidsent.Perhaps far too used to not stopping for others, Saya may not have known how to mourn for the loss of someone so close - the Raen handled her loss by rationalizing that she knew intimately the inevitability of her sensei's death and it did not dampen the ambitious woman's thirst for freedom. Saya had been charmed by the myth of Mhach since hearing of it and, adoring her sensei and aught she brought from the foreign lands of Eorzea, made the decision to travel there. Eager to leave behind the tiresome trappings of Far Eastern custom, politics, and expectation, Saya convinced her parents to let her fly free and had been searching voraciously since for more about Voidsent and aught that might allow her to find and attain ultimate freedom.

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Skills and Talents

COMBAT

Saya is quite potent in combat given she is not knocked out of casting. Her natural defenses and her physical prowess are weak, but she has come into possession of a Dark Knight soulstone that has given her a considerable boost to being able to shield herself via aether so that she may summon forth other, more powerful spells via advanced arcanima. Recent adventures have given her access to insights on aether and magicks beyond what traditional study had previously allowed her to practice, and the Raen is actively working to ensure all that aetheric power and knowledge are firmly under her command.When working in a group, Saya has the wherewithal to try and cooperate with her teammates, but her preference for being self-reliant is evident. She has a hard time identifying others' strengths and weaknesses and capitalizing her synergy with them. Nevertheless, one can't say she won't try.

OTHER ATTRIBUTES

Outside of combat, Saya's passions are in research, aetheric practice, and all things Mhach-related. She dabbles in technology and alchemy to supplement her studies and interest in increasing her personal efficiency to achieve her goals. Given her hyperfocus on her interests, however, she has left other skills by the wayside, such as some common, practical skills (social, cooking). Her background as a middle-class city-dweller also shows in her preference for civilized comforts.

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Relations

Tetsuya Konoe, FatherA quiet, contemplative, and hard-working man, Tetsuya's demeanor is not uncommon for a Doman. However, perhaps quite unlike a typical Doman, he is less beholden to traditions than most, pragmatic, and able to look to the future and change with it: Despite being from humble roots as a silk farmer, he happily supported his daughter's education and is less concerned about those with whom Saya fraternizes than his wife, so long as she is doing well.

Michiru Konoe, MotherIn almost severe contrast to the serene Tetsuya, Michiru is a force of nature. Coming from a relatively highly-regarded Doman lineage, she actually married down when she urged her parents to allow her the freedom to wed Tetsuya - it helped having an elder brother. But partly due to her background and exposure to the great tempest of what it involved, especially in regards to Doman resistance to the takeover by Garlemald, Michiru is a strong proponent for future and security - something she will bulldoze anything down to ensure for her family and only child.

Zarek Earthshaker, Best FriendA man of few words, Zarek has proven to possess many qualities Saya appreciates: calm, a gift for cutting through bluster to the core of what matters, knowledge and experience in her areas of interest, and, unspoken, a genuine warmth that brings Saya a soothing comfort much like his persistent spiced smokes. The two could sit together for bells in quiet, awkward sharing of each other's company and be absolutely fine with it. In their silent understanding of one another, Zarek is perhaps the only person with whom Saya feels she can be most honest - and in that connection, she has also become protective of him. (Not that he needs her protection.)

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Media

MUSIC AND OTHER MEDIA

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OOC

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