The Hell Within

Roleplaying Notes

Beliefs

First and foremost, Kaj'sha is not warring against Gaia.  He is fighting for Gaia, warring against the Weaver who has choked the Wyrm and thrown the balance of the world off.  When he has destroyed the Weaver as the Wyrm bids him to do, then the Wyld will generate a new Weaver, and the Triat will come into balance again.  Mother Gaia will be saved.  The ones who choose to war against the Wyrm, the victim and not the perpetrator of this crime, are deluded and deserve to be destroyed.

He is also beginning to be swayed by rumors.  Though he tries to keep a clear head, he is beginning to wonder.  What if he is the Chosen One of the Wyrm?  What if he is not merely a fallen Silver Fang, but the fallen Silver Fang?  And what if he will not only channel the triumph of the Wyrm over the Weaver into this world, but be rewarded with the one gift he wants even more than he wanted the gift of sight - the gift of fatherhood?  The Wyrm has granted one wish; is it not possible that, if he fulfills his end of the bargain made in the Spiral, the Wyrm will gift him with the ability to sire children?  Though he does not remember what that bargain is - a fact that bothers him greatly - he is increasingly sure it has something to do with his destiny.  Something having to do with his role as the Fallen One, the Chosen One.  And if he could but decipher his visions and do what the Wyrm requires of him...

It's a maddeningly tantalizing thought.  And it's slowly driving him into his true derangement - not obsessive-compulsive cleanliness after all, but the siren song of Mahsstrac.  Power.  Megalomania.

Views

Very simply put, if you are not with Kaj'sha, then you are either useless, and therefore must be destroyed, or still useful, and therefore must be used until your usefulness is finished.  If you are with Kaj'sha, then you are the faithful, and you will be used as befits your faithfulness, or martyred when your usefulness is finished.

Personality

Kaj'sha is assiduously neat in every way.  He is well-groomed, clean-cut, and does not leave loose ends lying about.  As such, he can be seen as a perfect follower of the Dark Litany - particularly the Fifth Law, that of the Veil.

Unlike most Black Spiral Dancers, Kaj'sha does not revel in filth.  He might live in the gut of a giant Thunderwyrm, but he keeps himself carefully groomed - clean almost to a fault.  While he is not afraid to stain his hands with the blood of the unworthy, he prefers to plan and manipulate.  After all, if they are unworthy, then why should he dirty himself with their death? Leave it to those less perfect than he.

He likes to project a clean, charismatic image.  Startlingly handsome, particularly for a Black Spiral Dancer, he carries himself with a certain arrogance his Silver Fang ancestors would have recognized well.  He speaks quietly but authoritatively, and the orders he gives, however terrible, are short, to-the-point, and utterly heartless in the casual delivery.  They are also quickly obeyed.  While he does not fritter time away on trivial chatter, he is an eloquent speaker and can easily pass himself off as a gentleman.  And, most of the time, he does.

It's an act, of course, but it's also a sort of test of self-control, an assertion of his difference, his uniqueness.  Let the others grovel and slaver.  He is better than that; he is destined for better things.  His will is unshakeable, and he rarely frenzies.  When he does, though, it's uncontrollable - his fury at his frenzy feeds the frenzy, which feeds his fury, and so on and so forth in an endless dance of destruction that only ends with there is nothing left to kill.

Kaj'sha does not believe in acts of contrition and punishment.  Those who have sinned cannot atone for their sins with words and deeds which, no matter how great, amount simply to a "sorry" that cannot undo the past.  Therefore, Rites of Accord are useless.  Those who have sinned will not unlearn their sinful ways through punishment either, making those Rites likewise useless.  The neatest and only cure for a mistake, in Kaj'sha's book, is death.  Painful, if possible.

Finally, despite all these hardline policies, Kaj'sha is careful with his pack.  Because he knows he is physically no match for many, and because he knows his sole assets - right now, at least - are his strength of personality and his mind, he treats his pack well.  He treats them with respect, knowing he has not the strength to fend off a mutiny, and lets them do what they want as long as they don't violate his unspoken laws: carry yourself with pride, for you are the Army of the Apocalypse; let no insult go unpunished, but do not lose yourself in vengeance; and leave no loose ends. 

Presence

Homid

No matter the form, Kaj'sha never looks his age.  Indeed, no one knows how old he is.  In Homid, which is his preferred form, he is a slim, tall young man with an abstract sort of beauty that seems almost to transcend gender.  Graceful, eloquent and elegant besides, he could probably still pass for Silver Fang nobility, if not for his taint.  Unusual for his people, he bears no scars, no tattoos.

He has an air of innocence about him that he has learned to actively project into a near-holy aura.  It makes the atrocities he commits all the more shocking, which is, of course, why he does it.  His hair is blonde, lightly curled, and short.  He has a fine bone structure, high cheekbones and a defined jaw, and his lower lip is lush, his eyes dark and engaging, and there is something distant about him, angelic.  Or perhaps simply inhuman.

After all, there's something about his gaze that seems strange.  It's something about the darkness of his eyes, and the way they never seem to be looking at something so much as they seem to be looking through them...or rather, into them.  As though he could see things other people couldn't.  And, of course, he can.

Other Forms

Even in Glabro he retains some of his slimness and most of his beauty.  In Crinos, however, he swells to a massive beast, nearly ten feet in height, with silvery fur that echoes his abandoned heritage coating a body knotted in muscle and sinew.  Though still not as strong as many, he is nothing to be trifled with.  This is his war-form.

His dire wolf form is terrifying, braced on wide paws, nearly as massive as the Crinos but faster, and with deadlier jaws.  One step further down and he is beautiful again: a lean wolf, noble in carriage and gait, long-jawed, long-legged, silver-white.  The purest of Silver Fangs, and the most tainted.

Miscellaneous

Kaj'sha is not fully cured of his blindness.  While he was in the Spiral, the Father grafted radiation banes into his eye sockets, effectively turning his inoperative eyes into living fetishes.  Those banes "see" for him now, but the images they project into his mind are filtered through their understanding, which leaves him with a view of the world that is similar to an x-ray image.  On the plus side, he can see in perfect darkness, and can see through some barriers: cloth, thin walls...flesh.  On the negative side, however, he cannot see colors, cannot read, and cannot recognize anyone by their face - since he sees right through their faces.  He recognizes those he knows by other cues such as their bone structure, their height, their scent, and their voices.

However, the vast majority of people do not know this.  Kaj'sha himself, in fact, does not know.  Since he has never seen the world through normal eyes, he could not possibly know his vision is flawed.