MY ONE-SHOTS
Summary: The backstory of an OC from Tyria's Real!? Her name is Vriré, and she is a Lightbringer of the Order of Whispers. She is an asuran warrior.
Chapter nine: Lightbringer Vriré
Author's Notes:
This is for anyone who has read my main GW2 story, Tyria's Real!? and wants to know more about Vriré, the Lightbringer who has shown an interest in Tiffany and Fiona.
Of course, if you haven't read TR, and simply are reading my one-shots, go right ahead. This is backstory, and assumes you know nothing about Vriré. Very basic information about her is in the summary.
At first, Koraw's name was Koraw Buntspecter, of the Burnt warband. But then I figured out that the Burnt warband led the Flame Legion back when the Flame Legion did all the bad stuff during the retaking of Ascalon, and the Burnt warband remains near the top of the chain of command even to this day. So I renamed Koraw Shadowspecter, of the Shadow warband.
Alright, here's the lore now:
Vriré, a female asura, has always been cheerful and outgoing, and makes friends quickly. She has a very active imagination, and is very creative.
She is, at least in her younger years, a typical asura, education-wise. She absorbs what her parents teach her, asking for more information, until her parents send her to study under Blipp around six years of age, in 1300, also the year that the first sylvari emerge from the Pale Tree.
Blipp teaches her and trains her well for six years. He never lets her give up - on anything.
"Your first try should never be your last," he tells her sternly, many times over the years. "Especially if it succeeded. You can always succeed bigger next time."
Vriré takes her own lessons from Blipp's words. 'Especially if it succeeded' is all very well and good, for inventing things. But what about the vast array of other things to do in the wide world of Tyria? What if there is no try again? What if it's a task that you can only do once? Or a task with several variants and a different approach to each one? 'Especially if it succeeded' is a very narrow-minded phrase. Any 'especially' is. In different situations, there is a different 'especially.' 'Especially if it succeeded' applies greatly to inventions. 'Especially if it failed' might work for clearing out the Inquest. 'Especially if they're sentient' applies to getting to know people who aren't you.
But she never voices these contradictions. She is rather secretive - not surprising for an asura - but not too secretive. She is still bright, outgoing, and makes friends easily.
Easily, yes, but easily gained easily gone. It is the long-time friends that she clings to. Many asura she gets to know temporarily, but when they leave she does not mind. While they are there they are awesome best friends, but they are not permanent.
On the other hand, Cirra and Drekk are her life-long, steadfast companions. She meets them even before Blipp, when her parents irritatedly send her out of the house so they can invent things without her getting in the way.
That is how she meets Cirra, who had the same problem, but she is a year older than Vriré. She introduces Vriré to Drekk, who likes thinking up ways to attack people, and what can be made into weapons. Cirra, who is always forced into a defending role in the war games, recruits Vriré, who plays the behind-the-scenes playing-both-sides mediator.
So the three bond over that, and Vriré finds two stout friends and allies. At around eleven years of age, they sneak out of Rata Sum to have an adventure. At one point, Vriré is stunned, pinned on the ground by a large beast - none of the trio had got a good look at it - and almost killed, when Drekk jumps on it's back, knocking it over.
They only have very rudimentary weapons with them - Cirra has a shortbow with a loose string and some arrows with dull tips, Vriré a rusty old sword, and Drekk an unweildy mace. And those had been lost when the beast attacked them. They get away safely, however. But Drekk still risks his life to save Vriré's, and she never forgets it.
Not too long later, Cirra and Vriré are working on a device, which Cirra sees is about to explode - lethally - which Vriré doesn't notice. Cirra lunges across the room to Vrire. She puts herself between Vriré and the blast, and only her momentum helping the blast to knock them over rather than killing them.
The room is a mess, but Vriré is unendingly grateful to Cirra for saving her - at risk to her own life.
These are friends she can trust.
Vriré saves her friends in many ways as well, though they never know it much. She had once rigged a listening device through their parent's study rooms, just for the fun of it, when her parents sent her to Blipp.
About a year after that, she had been listening to it, and heard their parents discussing separating the band of three - "they get up to too much trouble for us to deal with any longer!" - and taken steps to stop it. She'd informed her friends to stop making mischeif - at least that could be traced to them - and pretended to stop spending time together so much (although of course they were, in secret).
They took hints from their parents and conformed to their wishes, and became - at least to all appearances - model progeny.
Before Blipp is done teaching her everything she knows, he trains her in the art of being a warrior. She specializes in swords and axes, and, when uninjured, is hard to hurt. When her enemy is weakened or injured, she easily weakens them. Her adrenaline rushes help her to ignore her pain. Upon being hit, she retaliates as quick as lightning. Her adrenaline climbs as she is injured, just helping her to ignore it better.
She learns to arrange the weight of her weapons in such a way that it helps her move faster. She learns how to speedily switch from one weapon to another without losing any time, and surprising her enemies by doing so. Her adrenaline runs high in the midst of a battle, and she can unleash it in a fury when she so chooses.
When she does, she is lost in fury for a moment, dealing critical hits and easily blocking their attempts to injure her. When her opponent is immobilized, her fury just climbs higher, as does her adrenaline. She keeps her swords sharpened in just such a way so as to increase bleeding, and learns to strike in such a way so as to prolong such bleeding, and where to hit to critically injure the enemy.
She and Blipp adventure out into the wilds, generally bringing along Cirra and/or Drekk as well, to practice her skills.
Meanwhile, she, Drekk, and Cirra continue to act as if they're not very good friends, just until they get just so much older that their parents don't have that level of control over them, before Drekk slaps it in their faces what they'd been doing and how they'd known about it.
They are suitably shocked, but having been under the tutelage of others this whole time - Drekk apprenticed to Bronk, Cirra to Zinga - they had lost influence over their progeny.
Many other threats Vriré identifies before they happen, and stops them on her own if she can. Some of those include discoving Inquest plans to raid their lab and ambushing them before they start.
So the three are a closely-knit group, and they often jokingly call themselves a krewe, even though there is no purpose to their companionship other than friendship.
After their advisors teach them all that they can, the three try to figure out which colleges to join.
The group decide to go with the College of Dynamics, where they do well. At least, for a time. Drekk excells in Dynamics, and decides to take up weaponsmithing. Cirra leaves for Statics and takes up armorsmithing. Vriré, having to choose between her two friends, looks at the college's stated purposes to choose, and eventually joins Cirra. But she had taken longer to decide, and so has a very odd range of knowledge between the two colleges.
Both of Vriré's friends do well in their chosen fields, and Drekk being in a different college does not hinder their friendship.
Vriré does not really have a passion, not the way Drekk takes to weaponsmithing like a hilt to a sword, or Cirra to armorsmithing in the same way. Vriré learns the basics of a wide range of things, and graduates in 1310 with her friends.
During her time in the College of Statics, she meets two asura, several years older than her, who live near the college. Their names are Trappu and Dloxxox, and they are married, and have been for a year or so.
Trappu is a mortician, but she is not the sort of person you would expect, for that. She doesn't really look at what she does. When at her job she will do her job, but she blocks off the emotional part of her mind until after. Dloxxox is a builder, a graduate of the College of Statics, and he is generally away building things.
As their jobs require, they are hardy asura, but they are not very tolerant of little tasks. The ones that will save time later but use time now are irritating to Trappu, as are questions about mundane things. although Dloxxox just does them. He is a patient soul.
Both Trappu and Dloxxox are extremely intelligent, even for asura, although, as Trappu tells Vriré, it had been late in showing.
Vriré - and, to a lesser degree, Cirra and Drekk - get to know these two asura rather well. The bond that Vriré has with Cirra and Drekk is not replicated in Trappu and Dloxxox, but she knows them rather well. If she was not Vriré, they would have been companions of the highest order. But it takes a lot more to become friends with Vriré like that.
In 1311, the year after her graduation, Vriré visits all the capitals of the nations - the Grove, Divinity's Reach, the Black Citadel, Hoelbrak, and Lion's Arch. She makes a couple temporary friends, and a one or two more long-term ones, like Pierre DeGlasse.
She meets Pierre DeGlasse while visiting Divinity's Reach. He is the Seraph who is in charge of training Seraph recruits, and runs the Seraph Training Academy. He tells her about the Order of Whispers, after getting to know her some. He doesn't know much about it himself, but he is planning on looking into it.
When Vriré returns to Rata Sum in early 1312, she spends some weeks catching up with her friends, and getting to know Trappu and Dloxxox better.
Later in the year, Pierre contacts her and tells her more about the Order of Whispers, including where their outpost in Divinity's Reach is.
Vriré decides to check it out, and heads to Divinity's Reach, to where DeGlasse had told her the Whispers outpost is.
After finding out about the Order from the civilians in the area - whom Vriré suspects are agents in disguise - she takes the tests and joins the Order in mid 1312.
Her assigned mentor is a demanding human named Cirino Lucente, but Vriré excells, even so, and by early 1313, she becomes a full-fledged Agent of the Order, and her assigned partner is a charr named Koraw Shadowspecter, a necromancer of the Ash Legion. She and him become fast friends, saving each others lives many times.
In mid-spring 1313, Vriré is assigned to a post in the Far Shiverpeaks with Koraw, cut off from most contact due to distance and the nature of her assignment. This results in the close friendship she shares with Koraw to be multiplied many times over, as she cannot contact her other friends. They are a good team, and function smoothly. They are very much one person, and the with slightest hand gestures or eye contact (and ear twitchings) they communicate with each other. The friendship she shares with Koraw is much higher up the scale than even with Cirra and Drekk.
A year later, in 1314, Vriré and Koraw are assigned to Lion's Arch, where Drekk contacts Vriré and informs her of Trappu and Dloxxox's mysterious deaths not long after she had left for the Far Shiverpeaks, in late spring, or perhaps early summer. Drekk had been in Hoelbrak during that time, and Cirra in the Black Citadel, and nobody knows what happened.
She learns about Koraw's warband, before he joined the Order. The Shadow warband, of the Ash Legion. He keeps in touch and friends with them, and so, although Vriré never meets them, and they never meet her, the Shadow warband and Vriré know of each other.
After a while, in 1315, Vriré is promoted to the rank of Creator. She argues that she's never been very good with inventing things, even though she is asura, and prefers what she has been doing. But she is told that all asura are tested for Creator potential, however much aptitude they had shown in Rata Sum.
Vriré is trained as a Creator for all of half a year before being pronounced not Creator material.
But her superiors think she deserves a promotion, so they give her the rank of Keeper. Keepers lead dangerous missions, and Vriré's group - which includes Koraw, of course - is sent to Divinity's Reach in 1316.
As a Whispers detail, they remain inconspicious, and nobody knows why there are there, or that they are Whispers Agents. Their purpose is to defend a human named Jennah from any attack on the coronation where she is to be made queen. Nothing out of place happens, but the mission lasts for a week, anonymously and quietly stopping two assassination attempts.
When the Shining Blade are organized and Countess Anise takes up a permanent place by Queen Jennah's side, Vriré, as leader of the group, declares the mission over, after consulting with Koraw.
Then, in later 1316, Vriré is promoted to the rank of Keeper Slayer. Vriré knows about Keepers, of course, and had heard of Slayers, who take care of dangerous threats to the Order, but never Keeper Slayers. However, she concludes they must be people who lead dangerous missions to take care of dangerous threats to the Order. She is informed that any rank including Slayer is temporary, as the threat only lasts until the threat is nullified, and then where is the rank?
After clearing out a large cave network far north of Rata Sum and southwest of Kryta, stopping the Inquest operation that is threatening to overwhelm a critical Whispers base in the area, she is made a Lightbringer, along with her partner, Koraw. It is early 1317.
For three years the partners work together, on missions assigned them by the higher-ups. Occasionally, between missions, there are more threats that require a Slayer's expertise, or a large operation that requires a Keeper to handle it, or (which happens rarely) a Keeper Slayer.
In all things, she and Koraw work together, until they almost don't need to speak to each other for how well each knows the other. As a result, of course, Koraw gets to know Cirra and Drekk, who also become Koraw's friends. The necromancer is happy to become a part of the asuran krewe, all of whom are very good friends, and each knows that he/she can go to another of the group with his/her problems without being laughed at or embarrassed.
In 1320, Vriré and Koraw are leading a mission in eastern Ascalon, when, far above them, a gigantic, crystalline...
"Dragon!" shrieks the asuran ranger on the team, Kapp.
Koraw looks north and sees the land being... changed. "Elder Dragon!" he hollers to the team.
"Alright, time to get undercover!" Vriré decides. "Now!"
But Kapp, the asuran ranger, who had been further out on scout duty, is staring at the dragon passing overhead.
"Kapp!" Koraw hollers. "Come now! Undercover, Kapp, come here!"
"Agent Kapp, come here! Kapp! Kapp!" Vriré hollers desperately. The group had been on this mission for the last couple months, Kapp is her friend. "Kapp, snap out of it! Kapp, please! Come here! Get undercover!"
The rest of the team is already in the underground shelter they'd constructed. Wind is tearing across the landscape, and the wave of changing landscape is sweeping closer. Vriré is standing near the mouth of the cave.
Koraw charges into the dusty wind, shouting. "Kapp!" Vriré moves to go with him, but at a signal from Koraw, she stays and keeps the way clear.
Kapp seems mesmerized by the dragon. He is staring at the dragon, ears erect. His companion, a stalker named Swift, is staring at Kapp with pleading eyes. A mental exchange is going on, though no one but the bonded pair knows it. Swift is trying to convince her companion to move.
"Kapp, come here! It's not safe out here, come on!" Koraw hollers over the wind as he reaches the hill that Kapp is standing on.
"Kralkatorrik," Kapp whispers. "The Elder Crystal Dragon."
"Yes, we know. Elder Dragon!" Koraw hollers in Kapp's ear. "Elder Dragon is going to try and kill us!"
"I'm not stupid, I know it's an Elder Dragon!" Kapp retorts. But he continues gazing at the dragon.
"Come with me!" Koraw shouts desperately. Ahead of them the rippling wave of change is almost upon them. Desperately, he picks Kapp up and turns to run to the underground shelter where Vriré is still shouting over the wind, holding the door open for them.
Kapp shrieks in surprise at being picked up in that manner, but Koraw is already running for Vriré. Swift bounds along ahead of the pair.
The wind flings sand into Koraw's face, but he keeps going until he trips over a crate the team had left in their haste to get undercover. Kapp lands next to him, hitting his head on a rock. Swift is by Kapp's side in a moment, poking her, and looking at Koraw desperately. Swift glances back at the dragon's corruption racing towards them.
Koraw scrambles to his feet, tugging Kapp after him. But she is out cold, and therefore heavier to pick up. Kapp's head is bleeding.
Grunting, Koraw heaves Kapp up and over his shoulder, before charging through the wind. The ground changed under his feet, becoming smooth and shining. Then it contorts, twisting into impossible formations. Koraw stumbles, and Kapp gets hit in the head again. The blood trickling from Kapp's head has a faint purplish tint. Swift is down as well, but still conscious, struggling to keep her footing, and howling in fear. Koraw does not see the purple tint to Kapp's blood.
The uneven footing, the still-moving ground, almost prevents Koraw from climbing to his feet.
Vriré pushes through the dusty wind - it must be a sandstorm - in Koraw's direction. The twisted ground takes on a crystalline hue, and rocks violently, as if in a last, desperate attempt to shake the dragon's corruption. Vriré is thrown to the ground, as is Koraw. Kapp's eyelids bounce open, revealing glowing purple eyes for a brief moment. Swift is howling in terror and agony.
Koraw forces himself to his feet, carefully picking up Kapp. He hadn't seen her eyes. He moves slowly forward, checking his footing. But the ground has stopped moving. Koraw lunges toward the cave. Kapp stirrs in his arms.
Only a few feet separate Koraw from Vriré, and the wind has fallen deathly silent. Kapp's eyes flutter open, revealing her purple eyes again. Vriré is stunned. Corruption?
Koraw feels it the moment before it happens. A still wind, carrying corruption on it's wings, swoops down on him.
Koraw is frozen in fear, tail twitching madly.
The crystal tint to the wind gets under his fur, penetrates his skin. It coats his body in crystalline armor, and crystal shards pierce his brain, infecting his mind.
Vriré's eyes widen in shock as her best friend sprouts purple crystals from beneath his fur, his eyes take on a maddened, glaring gaze, and he ceases to be Koraw. Kapp drops from his arms, and he too is Branded. Swift howls in the deepest agony as her companion turns savage, charging at Vriré.
Vrire's dodges sideways. The wind springs up around her, carrying a sandstorm. Kapp cannot find her, and she stays low. Kapp turns to Swift, eyes glinting in madness.
Swift is howling madly. The empathic bond did not die, and Swift is feeling Kapp's mind raging in Branded servitude to Kralkatorrik.
Koraw finds her. No. Not Koraw. Branded. With a shrill cry, Vriré calls for her friend. "Koraw!" her voice takes on a desperate pleading note. Koraw does not listen, advancing on her with his dagger. "Koraw. Koraw. Please. Koraw. Come back. Come back to me. This isn't you. Koraw."
Koraw turns and runs away, but not before flinging the knife in her direction. He is running. But not from her. He is running after Kralkatorrik. Kapp goes after him. Other Branded are running along the purple scar.
Vriré lets out an agonized scream, mirrored by Swift's whimpers. "Koraaww!"
"Vriré!" calls the sylvari mesmer on the team, Coira. "Vriré! Get under cover!"
Vriré turns and stumbles back into the shelter, Swift by her side. "Koraw... Koraw..."
Amru, the aloof human, understands. "I know how you're feeling, Vriré." he places a hand on her shoulder, giving her comfort.
"Koraw was a loyal soldier, a good friend," Rgair, another charr, mourns.
Swift howls, standing near the door.
"Swift has it harder than any of us," Coira admonishes the group. "Her companion was just corrupted by an Elder Dragon."
Swift howls again, a devastating, grief-filled cry. She curls in on herself, whimpering.
Vriré discovers that Koraw's thrown dagger had cut her hand. Remembering Kapp's purple-tinted blood, she examines the wound carefully, but the knife was not Branded.
Night falls, and Vriré sits outside the underground shelter, looking at the evil-seeming scar that had seared the landscape, forever sealing life below the surface where it crystallized, forever a testament to the power of the Elder Dragons.
"It happened so fast," Vriré whispers. "Too fast."
The team and Swift sit and watch the scar Kralkatorrik had left, now deathly still and silent. Their camp, but for the shelter in the ground, is in ruins from the small earthquake.
Later, Vriré discovers a scar where Koraw's knife had cut her. On the back of her right hand, the cut stetches from the base of her smallest finger to the left side of her wrist.
After Koraw's death, for a time, Vriré mourns Koraw. She holds her remaining friends close, but becomes a stone to anyone else. Vriré becomes a cold, hard warrior. She vows to see the Elder Dragons - in particular Kralkatorrik - dead, or die trying. The scar on her hand serves as a continual reminder of what she fights for.
Her skills, invaluable to the Order before, only get better as Vriré's resolve firms. Her friends - Drekk and Cirra - are pulled close, and become her family, outside of Whispers missions. She goes to Pierre DeGlasse and asks him how she can be better, and Pierre offers to train her. The year following Kralkatorrik's awakening was hectic for a lot of people, but for the Seraph it actually slowed somewhat, with families having second thoughts on going to join the Seraph. So Pierre has the time to train her one-on-one.
Vriré leaps at the chance, and Pierre trains her. It is brutal, but Vriré comes out of it stronger than ever, and with new friendship ties as well.
Over the next five years, she gains a reputation in the Order of Whispers for being quick, efficient, and brutal. She sharply keeps others reminded of their place in the hierarchy. When her friends ask why, she reponds that maybe if she had ordered Kapp to come back rather than asking and pleading, and if Kapp had known that she wasn't one to fool around with, she would have come sooner and Koraw wouldn't have died.
She advances so in the hierarchy of the Order by reputation, that she is one of those who take care of testing the new recruits.
In 1325, five years after Koraw's Branding, two sly humans enter the Chantry of Secrets, looking to become members.
They are promising. They work together fluidly, and show all the signs of becoming as ferocious a pair as she and Koraw had been. They are cunning and smart, although they do need some practice and training, Vriré knows they will do good in the Order.
She decides that she will be the one to mentor the pair, and although the final decision - if there is more than one trying to mentor them - falls to Tiffany and Fiona Tassof, she finds a way to get into their companionship. It requires her to shake her stern exterior for a brief time, but she is certain her endeavors will bring fruit.
Author's Notes:
If you want to know more about the mentorship between Vriré and Tiffany and Fiona, read Tyria's Real!?... even though I haven't got there yet.
If you have any more questions about Vriré, feel free to ask!
When I explained the details of Vriré's warrior training, I was trying to work her build into how it would work. If you're confused, or just don't feel like looking it up as much, here's her build:
Specialization: Defense
Thick Skin - Cull the Weak - Adrenal Health - Armored Attack - Spiked Armor - Cleansing Ire
Specialization: Discipline
Versatile Rage - Warrior's Sprint - Fast Hands - Brawler's Recovery - Versatile Power - Burst Mastery (which isn't a Mastery, it's just the name of the trait)
Specialization: Arms
Furious Busrt - Opportunist - Deep Strikes - Blademaster - Burst Precision