the snowflake project

Short Character Summary (Step 3 of TSM)

Name: Aryenne sa’Tabine

1-Sentence Summary: The daughter of a noble house harbors a secret love for an enslaved gladiator (Kos), but suffers the affection of a power-hungry officer (Achi).

Motivation (abstract desire): Aryenne, as a noble’s daughter, is set on a very predictable path – she wants nothing more than to get away from that path, whatever the cost to her or her family.

Goal (concrete desire): Aryenne knows there is something strange behind the empire’s rapid conquest of the known Eastern World, and she wants to uncover it.

Conflict (barrier to goal): Aryenne meets a lot of resistance – the empire’s secrets are buried very deep.

Epiphany (lesson/change): Aryenne comes to the realization that her status as nobility is too useful to give up for her own personal freedom.

1-Paragraph Summary: Touched by Kos’s refusal to attack his opponent in the arena, Aryenne conspires to meet him. Hearing Kos’s story, she begins to fall in love with him, and new ideas and suspicions are opened up to her about the faceless empire her family serves. Kos and Aryenne’s budding romance is noticed by Achi, who wants Aryenne for himself. Just as the conflict between the three comes to a head, Aryenne assists in a mass gladiator escape, but chooses to stay behind rather than follow her heart and run away with Kos – although it breaks her heart, her position in the nobility is too valuable. She vows to learn all she can about the empire and find a way to share her knowledge with Kos. Aryenne uses Achi’s infatuation with her to ride his ascent to the upper echelon of the imperial nobility. She travels to the imperial capital and discovers the true identity of the empire’s leadership. Sending the information to Kos, she uses her influence to expose the empire to the public. When Achi flees, she is free to be with Kos, but Kos has taken up a mantle of responsibility too great to allow for love.

Plot POV

Aryenne sa’Tabine was a noble – the heiress of a high house in the city state of Saaltiva. Her father, a high lord of Saaltiva, had been on the council that surrendered to the empire before Aryenne was born, and was maintained in his role as part of the city’s government. As Aryenne grew up, and her father hosted many imperial officials as guests in their mansion, she took to eavesdropping on the conversations that her father and his guests had after she was supposed to have gone to bed. The more she listened, the more she found the empire’s policies to be suspicious, and she began to suspect that even the topmost tiers of power answered to someone besides the emperor himself.

As Aryenne matured, she became sickened by the brutality of the empire’s ways, and she dreamed of a peace that seemed forever out of reach. She heard a story of a gladiator who fought in the Blood Pits – a prisoner who had been court-martialed from the imperial army for refusing to kill the enemy in battle. Apparently, this gladiator’s refusal to kill extended even into the Blood Pits themselves. He was becoming famous for subduing his opponents without killing them, or even seriously wounding them.

Aryenne visited the Blood Pits one afternoon with her father to watch Kos, the peaceful gladiator, and see if the stories she’d heard were true. Aryenne suffered through several matches that ended with a maiming or death until finally Kos took to the arena. She watched as Kos’s opponent attacked him brutally, every strike a blow that would kill if it connected. But Kos flowed across the pit floor like water, evading every attack, turning many back on his opponent. Finally Kos found an opportunity to strike and took it, his hands darting out in a series of light jabs, hitting points on his attacker’s body seemingly at random. The last strike dropped the gladiator to the ground, and immediately Kos began to walk back to the holding cells, not looking up at the crowd once, despite their cheers.

Aryenne was transfixed by Kos’s complete rejection of the gladiatorial lifestyle. She arranged for a private meeting with him by calling in a few of her father’s favors (without his knowledge, of course). Aryenne listened to Kos’s story and arranged for another secret meeting, in which she discussed her own suspicions about the empire. She quickly found that she was falling in love with Kos, a dangerous activity given that his destiny was to die in the Blood Pits.

With Kos, she discussed her desire to expose whatever secret the empire had at its core, and found him in full support of her. She began to work towards Kos’s release, defending him and his way in the Pits whenever the subject of the gladiator who would not kill came up. Meanwhile, Aryenne’s father was playing matchmaker, and arranged for her to spend quite a lot of time with a young officer in the imperial army named Achi. Aryenne played the part of a lady quite well, and Achi was attracted to her instantly. Achi began to court Aryenne, but all the while she was secretly visiting Kos. Finally she pleaded with Achi to intervene with the imperial army and ask for Kos’s freedom. A dark look passed over Achi’s face, and he told her he would consider her wishes and act accordingly.

Not long after she pleaded for Kos’s release, Aryenne watched as Achi arranged for Kos to fight several bloodthirsty killers – trained imperial assassins, she suspected. When Kos defeated them all, and Achi called for their heads by Kos’s hand, her heart sank. Kos refused to kill the men who’d tried so hard to kill him, and Achi, from a paper-and-paste platform of military law, sentenced Kos to be executed.

Immediately Aryenne began to work towards freeing Kos. Achi had set the date of his execution at one week from his refusal to kill as ordered. She pored over the annals of the empire, finding that a man could not be given two death sentences. She argued with local lords, including her father, that life in the Blood Pits amounted to a death sentence, and therefore this latest execution order was illegal. At the same time, she secretly organized a mass jailbreak with the gladiators, a thief named Torik was her chief co-conspirator. She also learned that Achi and Kos were once friends. Achi continued in his courtship of her, and she swallowed her growing hatred for him and used that fact, and their erstwhile friendship, to try to convince him to rescind Kos’s sentence.

Unfortunately, the two legal avenues to Kos’s life being saved availed no success. But on the eve of his execution, Aryenne lay awake, tense and afraid, waiting for news in the morning. When the news came, it was joyous to her. Every gladiator escaped, and none were killed or captured. She was left to deal with Achi’s reaction to the news. Of course, he was furious. A few days later he left without a word and without any of his men.

Some time after that, Aryenne’s father received a letter, stamped and sealed by the office of the emperor, informing him that Achi was to be transferred to duties in the capital, and that it was the desire of the empire that Aryenne join him there. Aryenne’s fate was sealed, and for a while, she lamented her decision to stay at home rather than leave with the gladiators. But she regained her sense quickly, and saw the opportunity to learn more about the empire’s secrets by attaching herself to the empire’s rising star, Achi, and moving to the capital with him.

She moved to the city with a retinue of servants, and set up in her new apartments. Achi arrived in the city not long after, and she saw right away that he was a changed man – but not for the better. He looked hunted and afraid, and hungry and vicious, all at once. He seemed to switch rapidly between two versions of himself, one more confident, brutal and self-assured than he had been before, and another a jumpy, whimpering whelp, who looked as if he’d been beaten into a perpetually fearful state.

Aryenne became a spy, using Achi’s weaknesses for her to learn what he knew of the empire’s plans and structure. He complained that it was difficult to get the emperor to see sense, that the empire should continue its expansion until every village was under its rule. She learned through other various gossip networks that the emperor was obsessed with the idea that an alien threat from the west was nearly upon them. Most of the court thought him mad, entertaining fantasy. During a party, she found an opportunity to steal away in the emperor’s palace. She found an ancient text that confirmed the emperor’s fears, an old prophecy of the Dragon.

The next day Aryenne hired a messenger and sent him to find Kos – however long it took him. The messenger carried word of the prophecy and that factions within the empire seemed to be preventing readiness for the coming conflict by spreading the defenses too thin. Aryenne then set to work attempting to influence the decision makers to listen to the emperor’s wishes and make ready for a conflict – she did this in secret, of course, unable to publicly set herself against Achi.

Weeks passed, then months, until finally, Aryenne heard rumors of a man with godlike power leading an army of misfits and farmers. They killed no-one, only traveled through the land from the west, collecting followers as they came. As reports solidified, it became known that the leader was Kos, the escaped gladiator, and that many of the other gladiators who escaped with him were among his followers. When Kos and his army were approaching the imperial capital, Achi took his own men and marched out to meet them. That was the last Aryenne saw of him.

She heard the rumors that Kos had defeated Achi in single combat, and that Achi had fled. Next she knew, the emperor sent out a retinue to bring Kos into the capital and parlay. From the back of the court, Aryenne listened to the emperor and Kos discussing the threat. Kos’s words seemed designed to penetrate the emperor’s defences and before long it was apparent that the emperor was unable to make a unilateral decision. In horror, Aryenne watched as Kos demanded to speak to those who held real power over the empire. The emperor was furious, and had Kos locked in a cell.

Aryenne, acting on a suspicion having to do with the ever present imperial golems, discovered the existence of the Dwarves. She convinced one to visit Kos with her and explain that the empire was a puppet institution, designed to unite humankind against the Griind, and that it was failing. Aryenne worked with the Dwarves to influence the emperor to free Kos.

After meeting with the Dwarven Council of Kings, Kos was grim. He came back to Aryenne and announced that he must lead his people against the Griind. He left the next day.

Aryenne forced her way into to the secret Dwarven quarter and convinced the Council of Kings to send what forces they could to help Kos. She then spent her days in the Dwarven library, laboriously going over the prophesies of the Dragon, trying to find any clue as to the success or failure of the war against the Griind. She discovered some cryptic passages that had to do with the Eldest, and their lost home.