Claw

Claw

Killer
Cleaver of Flesh from Flesh and Man from Life
Sirrug's Broken Toy Soldier
Herald of Kālasūtra
Discord	Sleevey
Reddit	Iamwalrustastic
Wiki User	WikiUserName
Metatype	Human (Metavariant)
Street Cred	0
Notoriety	0
Public Awareness	0
CDP	4
Folder	[1]
Priority	Metatype - E Attributes - B Magic/Resonance - A Skills - B Resources - E
#Max IGs/Ascension	1
# Optional Drake powers available	Major Powers:0 or Minor Powers:0

Character Information

Summary

A drake of Sirrug the Destroyer. A killer and a weapon from birth. Despite prodigal magical might, she has been nothing but a failure. The speed and prowess of an adept and the ability to bind spirits are meaningless before draconic strength. Ragged and scarred, Claw carries on.

Goals

Cleave through the survivors of her brood

Grow strong enough to cast off the shackles of her draconic fate. Perfect the killing art. Climb by cutting.

Turn the great wheel. Kalachakra. By any means necessary.

Background

The sniveling little thing that would one day become known as Claw had no past and has no future. Both were taken from her by fate. By her very nature.

While some of those drakes that inherit the sleeping power of their ancestors are able to live many long years, undetected and unknown to their masters, the thing that would be known as Claw was not so lucky. Her ancestor was Sirrug the Destroyer and he intended to go to war.

Claw does not recall a proper upbringing, does not recall loving parents or a warm home. She does recall, in the blurry shelves of her memory, the jungle and the cave.

It was there that the children of her brood were raised. Wiped clean and made empty so that they might become vessels for death. Filled with the killing arts. No longer people. Weapons to be used. Blades to pierce the Aztlan throat.

And Claw was adequate.

She was never more than adequate. Despite her skill with a blade and her natural magical potency, her peers greatly outclassed her. Many of them were quick to accept their draconic heritage, mastering their killing tools across two forms. Claw never did.

It was customary for such tools to face their creator before accepting their nature. On one occasion and one occasion alone did Claw meet with her creator. The two clashed in the wild (The dragon in human form, of course) and Claw was effortlessly defeated, again and again. Her broodlings had cracked here, rage from their defeat and desire for greater strength pushed them to embrace power. It was here that many of them first grew scales and many of them swore themselves to his cause, embracing amidst their blood and scabs.

Claw was not one of them. For whatever reason, the teachings had worked too well. She was truly empty, truly void of substance. There was no great rage within her to reach for, no ambition towards strength or accolade. No scales or wings or fire for her, the only claw she bore was her sword, something the dragon easily took from her, again and again.

Sirrug declared her a work in progress and left with the more draconic members of her brood.

He did not return.

After a few years, even the most dogged of the caretakers felt that their scaled savior had been slain or sequestered or worse. The great dragon's crusade had been lost and his weapons would be abandoned.

Weapons like Claw.

Left to rot in the toolshed, Claw did not know what to do with herself. Eventually, she simply walked away.

For some time, she worked as a mercenary between the borders of the two nations recovering from conflict. Bandits and profiteers licking the wounds of the war were a plenty and her blade was rarely dry. That was, until she came upon that small village in the Tamaulipas.

Despite her entering with blade drawn, the Bhikkhu and other villagers accepted her with open arms. It had been some time since they had encountered a travel, especially one so lost. They were not foes to her. And so it was that Claw forget her nature for a time. She learned of the truths of the world, the great Dharmachakra and the cycle of karmic rebirth. She was told of the folly of violence, that to struggle in one life meant to be set back in the next. The people of the village were pacifists and Claw, in her newfound want to become like them, gave up her sword. Her hands, once used to end life, were instead used to haul water from the well. To set shingles in place. To carry injured goats. She was a killer no longer.

For a time.

And then the soldiers descended, led by one that Claw recognized.

She does not recall what banners they flew, whether they belonged to militia or mercenary company or corporation or nation. Some of the priests fought but they were elderly and outnumbered. They fell quickly. As Claw returned to the scene, she began to look for her blade, as was her nature. The one that she had forgotten. Instead, she found an old monk, dying. He urged her not to draw her blade upon the intruders. They had fallen, the battle was lost. Her soul was not worth being blackened by such violence. He began to recall her with a story of the buddha's visit to Naraka. She sat, cross-legged next to him and listened earnestly to the story she had heard many a time before.

It was there that her broodmate found them. She was the one leading that expedition, although Claw does not know what her motives were that day. She does not particularly care. Her broodmate slit the old man's throat and turned her blade upon Claw, urging her to fight back. And yet Claw refused, she had been taken by the words of the monk. She may die that day but death merely stood as one leg of the journey, one spoke of the wheel. Her soul would carry on. She did not need to raise a blade.

Her broodmate found this absolutely hilarious. She began to cut away at Claw, who still did not intervene, slicing away at muscle and tendon and skin and face. Still, she did not intervene and her broodmate laughed all the more.

"Look at thus forgotten spawn, look how the ideas of the nation he worked to destroy have turned her from warrior into rooster, fit only for slaughter."

She did not do the courtesy of killing her. That one had always been more interested in the result of a cut rather than the cut itself. Claw lay there in a pool of her own blood as the village around her burned. It was in those dying moments that she had a revelation. It was there that she saw Hell.

It was very easy to see Hell because she had been looking at her entire life. The entirety of the world was Hell. It always had been. Upon the great wheel was man, metahumanity, being broken upon it. It was Yama that came to her and told her of her true nature, that she was Narakiya, born to silence the screaming that had clogged the great wheel. Things were not right. They were not as they should be. She finally understood, for it had been in her nature to kill. It was in her nature to be wielded.

And it was in her nature to wet the wheel in warrior's blood. It was her nature to cut along the black thread.

Claw crawled out of the wreckage, guided by Yama. Her memory is blurry but she vagually recalls climbing into a coffin and the sound of waves.

Eventually, she awoke in a crypt, tended to by a gravekeeper. He told her that she was steeped in death, mired in it to her very bones. Perhaps her mentor spirit had some kind of arrangement with the old ghost, perhaps he simply took a liking to her, but he nursed her back to health. Tended her wounds. Watched her closely. She never fully recovered from those injuries but she grew to a point where she could move without injury and that was enough. It was time to hone her blade, to rekindle that nature she had long forgotten.

To the streets of Seattle, slick as they were with blood.

Narrative Significant Qualities

Positive

Broken Prodigy (Exceptional Attribute: Magic, Focused Concentation): Claw is overflowing with magical strength. Her power is a hurricane with winds fast enough to cut. However, she falls behind initiated mages and the truly exceptional because of this In having talent, she lacked technique. It is only after she was burned and cut and broken, after losing her sword arm, that she became humble enough to learn.

Hell Scream (Mentor Spirit, Mentor's Mask): Claw's totem is great Yama of Naraka and more specifically, the realm of Kālasūtra, 'hell of black thread'. She sees these black lines drawn across all living beings that cross her path, for we are all sinners and Yama misses nothing. When her mentor's mask takes form, these black lines become visible to others too, originating from within Claw's shadow. They feel the sensation of being cut along these lines, of a blade passing through skin and muscle and bone ... as well as notice a terrible, killing intent from Claw herself. Blood wets the wheel.

Sword Law (Shoot First Don't Ask): "Existence and the act of combat are absolutely no different, and the essence of both, the purity of both, is a singular action, which is Cutting Down Your Opponent. You must resolve to train this action. You must become this action. Truly, there is very little else that will serve you as well in this entire cursed world." - Meti

Broken Toy (Latent Drake: Western): Claw is a drake of the mighty destroyer, Sirrug. Her training was too effective, in some ways, as she became deadened to violence and cruelty and emotional outburst. Things that would cause an ordinary drake to come into their true power and awaken were ordinary to her. Mundane. Trite. Breaking did not make her stronger ater all.

Negative

An Imperfect Vessel (Impassive, Poor Self Control: Combat Monster) Claw has been forged in death. She has been steeped in it. It sticks between her teeth and underneath her fingernails. She knows little else. She is little else.

Beggar Blade (Hobo With A Shotgun) Claw is a mendicant, a beggar monk of the sword ways. She owns little and sleeps roughly. Gives away what little currency is not required for basic necessities, food and sanitation. The pursuit of wealth and stability and comfort are alien to her. Decayed by everpresent entropy. She spurns them.

Sightless Idiot (Reduced Sense: Sight) Her broodmate carved out one of her eyes. She was passive them, enduring her torture silently. Time will tell if she is silent the second time around.

The Killer's Code

This is not a true Code of Honor and is not mechanically enforced in any way, it is more a set of principles to guide Claw's behavior. Nevertheless, she attempts to cleave to them as tightly as she can.

The Killer's Claw: Never unsheathe your blade without the express intention to kill your foe. Exceptions are made for hand to hand combat and using improvised bladed weapons (although she frequently uses those in lethal fashion).

The Killer's Word: Never lie or haggle. Such things are the mark of weakness.

The Killer's Asceticism: Do not hoard wealth. Live plainly and simply.

The Killer's Prudence: Never go without a weapon. Never turn your back on a foe, even a defeated one.

The Injury

While also not mechanically enforced by way of qualities, Claw has lost fine use of her left hand after the torture inflicted upon her by her broodmate. While she can roughly and jerkily move the arm around, the tends have been cut and cut again. As a result, she cannot do anything that requires fine dexterity nor can she close or grip with that hand. Occasionally, it is used as a point of leverage upon a sword hilt but otherwise, she can do little with it.

Run History

Name	GM	Metaplot	Threat	Date of Run
Where There's Smoke...	Sarcarian		High	24 August 2086
PLUSHY BURNY!	Tidanshock		High	12 August 2086

Affiliations

Contacts

Contact	Connection	Loyalty	Archetype	Profession	Aspects	Chips
Father Midnight	5	2	Fixer(G,N,K,A)	Gravekeeper	Underworld, Undead, Undertaker, Underground, Reaper's Harvest, Forensics	Even

In Character Information

Matrix Search Table

Threshold	Result
1	Background information for clawed animals. Most lizards have well-developed claws at the ends of their fingers.
3	Some activity making note of a mercenary calling herself "Claw", active around the Az-Am border a few years. Not much, though.
6	A short video of a scarred woman cutting down three men with a pair of plastic chopsticks. Her shadow seems to lengthen, black threads seem to wrap around them. She simply lightly taps at the threads and the men are sliced, clean along that line. Tap. Tap. Tap. Three corpses. No emotion on her face, as she does it. Her one eye is dull. Dead.

Shadow Community Table

Threshold	Result
1
3
5

Assensing Table

Threshold	Result
1
2
3
4
5

Appearance

General

Claw is a small, scarred woman with short black hair and one eye. They're not the most emotive, quietly intense and there's a sense of killing intent from her when she performs magic. She isn't particularly physically impressive, standing about 5'5" and without much bulk. Her once-muscled limbs are scarred over, as if burned and flayed and stabbed. Her left arm, in particular, has a number of deliberately placed cuts where the primary tendons are. Someone took the use of that arm from her.

Clothing

Claw wears nice clothing, all things considered. Executive Suite slacks, a turtleneck and a half-cloak. All in black. Her left arm is perpetually wrapped in bandages which, under closer inspection, are not bandages at all. They're made of faded paper and are covered in sanskrit mantras and then rubbed with grave ash. Aside from that, she wears a pair of glasses to aid her depth perception and carries a battered old scabbard for a broken sword.

Matrix Persona

The default matrix persona for the MCT-3500

Character Plot Hooks

Here are characteristics of the character that GMs may take advantage of to add complications to runs, or to otherwise use when in use. If you want to use them in unrelated to runs, please ask first.

Aspect	Information	Related Run(s)
Aspect 1	Narakiya	Claw doesn't believe she is a person who will reincarnate, instead viewing herself as a servant of Yama, a being that serves to maintain Naraka. Currently, Something Is Wrong with the world. The great wheel is still. She knows there has to be death for it to move and the death of warriors specifically but currently, she is aimlessly gaining strength. Perhaps she needs more direction.
Aspect 2	Revenger	The members of Claw's brood, Sirrug drakes all, are out there. Claw must kill them. She must.
Aspect 3	Weakness	Claw, despite knowing she is a drake her entire life, has not yet draked out. What could possibly cause her to crack? Is she not broken already?
Aspect 4	The Killing Art	She must gain strength. She must find how to cut the soul. The mind cut. The world cut.
Aspect 5