Sanma'a Kaatapoh

Crystal DC | Balmung | Keeper of the Moon | PST

name: Sanma'a Kaatapoh
age: early twenties
gender: male
race: keeper of the moon miqo'te
nameday: 30th sun of the 5th umbral moon
orientation: bi-ish, hasn't really thought about it
alignment: true neutral
occupation: librarian, aether researcher
residence: a little room in the back of a bookshop in the shroud
skills: recordkeeping, his family's style of sigil magic, helping people find a good book
appearance: Sanma'a is short for a miqo'te. He looks a bit ghostly; pale complexion, messy platinum-blond hair, violet eyes, and near-constant dark circles under his eyes. He is waifish, and has a poor constitution. He has several small burns and scars on his hands from aetherial research mishaps.

Notes: Sanma'a was born with an autoimmune disease that primarily affects the lungs and muscles (think "lupus-adjacent"). While he is...mitigating it, this means he gets fatigued very quickly, falls ill often, and as such tries to refrain from strenuous activity unless absolutely necessary (want him to fight? expect him to keel over immediately afterward).

He's usually found in the Shroud. He tends to steer clear of large cities.

Sanma'a is, more like than not, friendly to the average person. This doesn't mean that the average person doesn't make him all hells of anxious; he's not exactly an extrovert. He's nervous, and easily flustered when people tease him. Despite interacting with strangers on a semi-regular basis for work, he does have a hard time opening up to people and will often deflect questions about himself (though he's always willing to talk business).

He won't talk about it to people he doesn't trust for obvious reasons, but Sanma'a has somewhat of an insatiable curiosity when it comes to ancient and usually forbidden forms of magic: a curiosity that often supersedes his own sense of self-preservation. Knowledge is power, and power can sting.

Sanma'a was born to a small branch of the Kaatapoh clan in the West Shroud. He was a sickly boy and while it quickly became apparent becoming a clan hunter wasn't in the cards for him, he took to studying the family's magic and history like a fish to water.

He spent most of his childhood whittling away the hours learning the sigils his mother and sisters used, practicing and modifying them himself, and recording the results. With time, he had a mind to become the Kaatapoh's own Ink-Keeper. This helped him focus, while his illness increased in severity.

Unfortunately, the advent of the Seventh Umbral Calamity saw fit to change Sanma'a's plans whether he liked it or not. The West Shroud was completely obliterated, and his home with it. Later he would learn most of his family managed to escape. Sanma'a himself ended up separated from them, however—having only survived through a terrible, terrible miracle.

Currently, he lives quietly as a librarian for a friendly little bookshop in the Shroud, continuing his personal research on the side.

|Clan Kaatapoh of Lichenweed|

WIP! More to come.

|RP Hooks|

  • Need a good book? Sanma'a works at a bookshop! Specifically, the Garden of Words. He's often found around the shop and is happy to give reading recommendations. For more info, see the FC's tumblr.

  • To help facilitate his research, and just because it's convenient, Sanma'a is usually carrying various aspected aether crystals on his person. This can come in handy if you need a quick and dirty power source.

  • Sanma'a is relatively skilled in sigil magic—essentially, a traditional form of arcanamia—and has practiced magical geometries for years. His specialty is dowsing—that is, spells to locate objects.

  • He's often in need of materials, and can't always go out to gather them himself. He'd pay for someone to lend a hand from time to time.

  • Hail from the West Shroud? Maybe you've seen him or his family around! Or if nothing else, you can commiserate about your childhood home being a bunch of dust and crystals.

Red | 27 | ♀ | PST

  • I live in the Pacific timezone and life is Weird right now. I'm usually available during afternoons and evenings!

  • I'm over 18 and would strongly prefer RPing with others who are 18+ as well. Adult content with players/characters who are underage is a hard no.

  • I tend to prefer in-game rp, but I'm down for discord rp as well! You can contact me either in-game, on tumblr, or through discord at Red#4298. (note: i'm not the most experienced writer in the world, and can be a bit slow—apologies!)

  • Given the sort of character Sanma'a is, I expect he might get into trouble; I'm pretty open to injuries, kidnapping, etc, but please discuss it with me OOCly first!

  • I'm down for most kinds of RP, but I'm not really here for ERP with no prior build-up or reason behind it.

  • I am not my character; please be able to maintain a healthy separation of IC and OOC.

  • All this probably makes me seem kinda uptight but I'm pretty chill, promise! If you're not sure, just ask!

|Hey, Is Your Catboy Haunted or Something?|

Quick Note: This information is strictly OOC. This is not something Sanma'a talks about, and if he can help it, it's not something he even lets on. (Because it's, you know, ten kinds of illegal and mentioning it can/will get him killed.) This is some long-game stuff, or something you'd need to know what to look for to sniff out. That said, feel free to discuss with me if you think your character would jive (or not! conflict is fun) with this!

|Encounter on the Lake|

Being a precocious teenager with far, far too much time on his hands, Sanma'a often took to wandering the backwoods with pen and paper in hand when he had the energy to do so. One day while trying to dowse on the lakeshore he witnessed a strange sliver of a rift hidden in the water—something dark and unnatural. It drew him to it, and he could hear a soft humming from within. He would soon learn that this rift was, in fact, a very small window into the void; and instead of doing what any sensible young man would do and calling someone to get rid of it, he threw himself into studying it.

Over the next couple of years, that rift became an obsession. He strove to learn all he could of it and the entity lurking within, and over time grew to have limited conversations with it. Eventually, he learned it was a she, and to his utter glee she gave her name: Lorelei.

|So Who the Hell is Lorelei?|

Simply put: Lorelei is a voidsent. That awful thing that lurks in the lake. Of a lesser sort and not very powerful (despite what she might protest), she spent years talking to some fool miqo'te through a window carved open by chance. Unable to get through herself, she tried time and again to convince Sanma'a to tear the rift wide and let her through—though to her chagrin, he continued to refuse under the excuse that he hadn't the power to do so; he was foolish, but not born yesterday. Still, his curiosity persisted, and he continued to pay her visits. One could even say he got attached.

Personality-wise, the voidsent is, well, a voidsent. She's aether-hungry first and foremost, and willing to lie and manipulate to sate her hunger. She's taken something resembling a liking to Sanma'a, being the one mortal idiot willing to try to talk to her instead of killing her outright. She tends to take the appearance of a green-skinned monster of a woman, and can manifest herself briefly in reflective surfaces. She can't interact with anything else when she does this, however.

|What Happened That Night|

During the Calamity, Sanma'a got separated from the rest of his clan in the chaos of Bahamut's terror. Stumbling through the burning forest and choking on gouts of smoke, he made his way to the one place he knew to be still reachable: the lake with the rift, now ripped wide as a result of a massive aether influx. As he lie there on the shore, collapsed and gasping for air as the world tore itself apart around him, he reached out to Lorelei.

For her part, being a voidsent, Lorelei saw an opportunity and refused to respond. Instead, she waited until the boy's seizing stopped—thinking him dead, she jumped to possess his corpse. Unfortunately for her, Sanma'a still clung to life and, having never meant to work on the living, the possession flubbed hard.

As a result, Sanma'a lives—albeit with an extra passenger. Lorelei has found herself stuck in Sanma'a's body, and neither of them are terribly pleased about the situation.

|What This Means for Sanma'a|

Life when you're bodysharing with something nasty ain't easy. On the plus side, Sanma'a's illness—previously degenerative—seems to have plateaued. He still suffers from flare-ups, but his fits aren't as severe as they used to be. His wild guess is this is because the makeup of his aether has changed significantly. Apart from some changes in his offensive magic, his strength has not increased.

On the other hand, he's sharing a meatsuit with a voidsent. This means he needs to carry aether crystals around him constantly, else he acts like an aether siphon and runs the risk of being noticed. It also means a state of unconsciousness can result in Lorelei taking the reins, as he's learned the hard way. There is a reason he locks his door thrice-over at night. You know Koh Rabntah? It's kind of like that, but malevolent.

To his knowledge, trying to separate the two of them by force will only result in the deaths of them both. He is currently looking for another solution, while continuing to hide his situation.