aster

overview

It's a hard thing to always do right by everyone. Really, for Aster, she always screws it all up, because at the end of the day nobody likes her. She really is trying, sometimes, she can even trick people long enough that they give her things... attention, and care... become so loving to her. But it's just because she does what they want. When Aster does what she wants, it goes wrong, and everyone hates her. So nobody really likes Aster. But there's no reason anyone should like Aster. So she'll just do what she can... it doesn't even matter if people like her or not anyway. Even caring about it so much is so selfish. Sorry, let her refocus.

Aster... has worn several hats. She's been the Premier of Ordanz... saved the world... became a princess... it sounds so egotistical when she lines it up like that. Except for the moments where she got to stand by the side of some truly amazing people, though, and feel she was really helping someone who needed it, none of it really mattered. The history's dust and she lost them all anyway.

MMMMMMMMM, she's kind of completely insane! Should she mention that she's also been a god ever since her childhood rapist stuffed her through a meat grinder? That's right, the Godhead himself singled out Aster as such a blot on his creation that she couldn't even die in a good way. Woowee, if you had to experience what goes on in her head for two seconds, you'd be happier just burning to cinders. THAT'S WHY SHE DOESN'T TALK ABOUT IT. IT'S AWFUL, PEOPLE CAN'T TAKE IT. If she opens her mouth she becomes a big BURDEN who TAKES ADVANTAGE of people who PITY her. It's NOT RIGHT to tangle people with that and if she does they dump her ANYWAY. So, you know... she'll just fake it ♡

Her current plans? Well, things are kind of a shambles. In an old timeline her ex just dumped her. So, there's that to deal with... not that she'll ever really get over it... he's so strong... and so funny... and determined... it'd be nice to see him again...

In the meantime. Guess she'll be normal?

I've loved you. I've hated you. I've made everything in the world turn around you. But I am fickle. Now I think nothing of you.

story

Placeholder. Foil to Zachary. Just trust me on this one

- Born as an unremarkable Ordish warren rat, communal living, not sure who the father was. Mother was a beggar and ragpicker.

- As the Hunger Years ramped up, mother sold her off for desperately-needed meal $$$. Perhaps encouraged by the community as a whole? Aster was 6 at the time.

- Changed hands a few times, but ultimate buyer was a very disgusting and emotionally stunted man named Kristem van Barovstek. Getting it over with, the dude was a pedophile who severely groomed her. Huge complex about grown women being impure whores, massively insecure around them, intended Aster to be his life partner and instilled her with these rhetorics among others. Starved her to stunt her growth so she would maintain a childish appearance and to delay her period indefinitely. (Plus, like, it was the hunger years). Dude would flip on a dime between worshipping her and beating her senseless, also dumped all his emotional self-pity boo-hoo on her (and trust me there was a lot of it).

- Aster learned how to act and say the right things at the right times to keep him in a good mood, and this was pretty much her life, 24/7, except when he was sleeping or working. Never left the house, was chained to her bed, had no link outside, occupied her time with books and fantasy. Developed stockholm syndrome, hard, and looked forward to the day they’d get married with a white picket fence and etc etc etc. Had no point of reference for anything else.

- Except oops her period did happen and Kristem went ballistic, IE he fed her through a meat grinder. Secured her Archon pact with Camellia, which made her immortal by way of a Groundhog Day-type timeloop that returns her to the morning of the day Kristem killed her every time she dies.

- Stuff gets fuzzier from here but basically: so there were a few more messed up loops where she tried to negotiate with Kristem or “fix” what she’d “done wrong” but yeah that wasn’t happening. One of the loops diverts into her getting separated from Kristem, she falls in with ne'er-do-well prospectors who send her into a dangerous vault to retrieve treasure. The treasure is Renard and that’s how they meet. She enters a wielder pact with him.

- Hunger Years/Ren arc.

- Ren blocks her from doing anything stupid and tl;dr is she ends the Hunger Years. Hijacks the revolution, becomes the Ordish head of state (Poppy btfo?), outs herself as an Archon by the end of it. Tries/considers crawling back to Kristem multiple times, but through the span of this adventure starts realising hey this whole Kristem thing is super messed up, as well as forming healthier allegiances, friendships, and so on, with the constant presence of Ren as a fallback/guide.

- She finally gets the confidence to ditch Kristem and try living for her own interests/principles. What those are, exactly, remain somewhat fuzzy to her at the moment, but with the help of her friends and confidantes, she feels assured she can figure it out.

- At the very least she knows she wants to do something good for the world, and if her goals are a bit flimsy — she has multiple strong-willed people she looks up to, who she’d gladly support instead.

- and then BOOM lisbet’s kenoma-fatigue hits and all those friends, support networks, memories, achievements, and so on, turn back to dust, in an instant.

- Save The World/Lisbet arc. Trivia arc?

- Aster is horrified to find herself back with Kristem.

- Frantically tries to repeat the final Hunger Years loop, make the same friends, same allegiances, etc, but knowing she’s retracing so much makes her behaviour extremely unnatural and puts a lot of her old allies off. She panics like a mofo. Still ends the Hunger Years, but not received with nearly as much adulation.

- At the same time, frantic to figure out what HAPPENED. Spends many loops on this. MANY loops on this. Once she does figure it out, becomes frantic about how does she DO anything about this?

- spends MANY MORE loops on that. The basic idea is to postpone Lisbet as much as possible, but that’s just a stopgap. She really needs to remove Lisbet or do something to repair Kenoma.

- She becomes more and more mercenary as hundreds, thousands, millions of loops go by trying to fight this. So many attempts to do ANYTHING to stop it that her already weak sense of self degrades even further — allies with anyone, does anything, starts embracing throwaway timelines. Trivia is a constant, but their relationship sours as Aster begins losing hope and becomes more erratic.

- literally like a million years pass and it just.

- doesn’t.

- STOPPPPPPPP

- she can’t even give up because there’s no point.

- she can’t bond with people anymore. She’s already done it all. They’re all dust.

- etc etc it’s quite a funk she’s in. She still manages to rekindle some spirit, though, when she finally does seem to make progress and pushes the timeline out a whole century from its typical end-point. Trivia probably helps her.

- aaaand that’s the timeline she meets zachary

- Goin’ Full Archon/Zachary arc.

- s u p e r tldr

- aster falls for zachary. Hard. They bond!

- he manages to get her out of her Megafunk. Determined to help her save the world n’ all that.

- hey lisbet can u hook us up with a soul link? No this isn’t ill-advised, trust us :^)

- bro,,,,,,,,,,, we saved the world

- bro,,,,,,,,,,, we’re stupid dysfunctional together and please stop telling me it’s ok to hit you bc i’ll take you up on it oh no OH NO OH NO OH NO

- featuring such sterling relationship goals as: “you remind me of a pedophile”, “how should I cut myself?”, and “you seemed sad so I changed the timeline”

- BRO I WANT OUT OF THIS SOUL LINK. YUP I’M DIVORCING YOU BYE-BYE. CAMILLEEEEEE

- aster forgot she can die again now lmao and gets merked by some random thing

- Current timeline
- And now we’re here.
- She’s not over it.

personality

appearance

A stunted troglodyte with discoloured skin and flaky hair, emaciated enough to be a Halloween decoration. Her body is a blueprint of abuse: conspicuous bruises, a scarred neck, missing teeth. Even when she conceals these injuries, the dissonance between her looks — those of a twelve-year-old child — and her demeanour — that of a worldweary oracle — kindles a deeply unsettling air that even the world’s best diplomats would struggle to ignore. Then beyond that air, what lingers is a sense of apology.

She generally wears modest outfits with heavy scarves, long cardigans, and long dresses, as if she got dressed in a Goodwill. When she’s in a more dismal mood, though, the patchwork ragamuffin look comes out.

personality

Ask for Aster’s personality, and you’ll have to answer: Which one?

Aster struggles to define herself as a whole, coherent person with consistent beliefs, desires, and interests. The opinions and preferences of others dominate her, as she unconsciously conforms to even the slightest suggestions of how she is or should be. Where others see imposition or enmeshment, Aster gratefully sees instruction and structure: without someone providing the script and expectations for her, she drifts in feelings of pointlessness, aimlessness, nonexistence, and ennui. Her core, she would tentatively posit, probably consists of sympathy for underdogs and an overbearing sense of responsibility, but otherwise her real identity is anyone’s guess.

She can be resolute, dynamic, and inspiring. Taking advantage of every opportunity, she devotes everything towards securing outcomes beneficial to her environment, her peers, her world, and herself. Though shades of neuroticism and doubt keep her modest, she accepts herself as a generally positive force that is trustworthy, reliable, determined, capable, moral, kind, and friendly, with the heroic results to match — and most importantly, in tune with equally reliable company whose varied abilities and opinions, she synthesises into good leadership and judgement. She calls this presentation of herself Cassandra.

She can be hesitant, secretive, and solemn. Wary of unsettling others or rocking their worldview with unreasonable revelations, she conceals many truths about herself and her knowledge. Though not distrustful, she expects others to rationally distrust her, and accepts herself as an odd, shifty stranger. While her instructions are too often correct to ignore, the distance she maintains between herself and others chills potential friendships into uncomfortably professional arrangements. She heavily denies her own relevance, and though ultimately working to universally beneficial aims, knows the vastness of her plans alienates her to ordinary people. The thought of getting close, and losing it again, scares her, so she has learned to find joy as an observer. Deep pain and yearning underpin her, but she privately celebrates every success, and maintains a helpful albeit reserved attitude. She calls this presentation of herself Moira.

She can be chaotic, clingy, and cruel. A channel for her self-loathing, she purposefully disturbs, unnerves, and provokes others into attacking, insulting, or rejecting her. Though the chaos is mostly a persona, the sycophantic attachment and ass-patting she gives anyone who expresses the slightest hurt isn’t, even if she herself hurt them. She blames herself for every wrong, sees her every action as bad, obsesses over people like gods, pampers their worst traits, and regards everyone in a simultaneously idealistic and cynical manner, claiming to love people the same no matter their darkness. She seeks to prove this claim and indulge herself with punishment in the process. She calls this presentation of herself Aster.

She can be hopeless, nihilistic, and numb. Her default state when left without guidance, she coasts on an airy, empty feeling. She regards all her actions as pointless, sees nothing as permanent, sees no consequences to anything, and thus no purpose to anything. A passive, “might as well do it, might as well not” mentality. She is empty and people are dust. If they’re not dust, they’re objects she vaguely examines, then discards, boredly satisfied she’s learned everything to know. She calls this presentation of herself Future-Never-Comes, and considers it her ‘Archon’ self.

Her social attitudes differ depending on what state she’s in, though they can shift and combine abruptly. Some have relatively consistent triggers: she often flips to Cassandra in combat, Moira in general conversation, Aster when feeling bad about something she wasn’t suitably punished for (or in romantic situations), and FNC after resetting timelines too much in too short a timespan. Overall, as a rule, she puts herself second, is very modest, tries not to upset people, and is grateful to receive even scraps.

Note that these aren’t alters with separate memories or agency, just one person with an extremely unstable personality trying to outline and understand the more defined aspects of herself. This is mostly an internal thing she doesn’t let others know about, because it’s crazy.

powers

ARCHON IMMORTALITY: TIME LOOP

Whenever Aster dies, the world resets to the morning of the day she received her Archon pact. Anything that chronologically came after that morning is erased, with nobody but Aster remembering it, as if it never happened.

ARCHON POWER: UNIVERSAL SAVE-STATES

Exactly like save states in a video game emulator, Aster can ‘save’ the present moment of time and ‘load’ such saved moments whenever she wishes. She can save an unlimited number of states, can’t remove or overwrite states, and can load her states an unlimited number of times.

To visualise what ‘the present moment of time’ is: envision the universe as a massive animation, where each frame only comes to existence while it is passing, and is deleted once it has passed. The present moment is that one extant frame. So what Aster does is tell the world to reset to a specific state of the universe and continue normally from there. There is no time delay between Aster loading a state and events proceeding within it.

While this power lets her travel back in time to a previously saved point, it also lets her hop back and forth between ‘timelines’. Imagine she encounters a crossroads and saves. She proceeds on the left path, goes on a huge adventure, becomes the Queen of France, saves. That’s timeline A. She loads herself back at the crossroads, before that entire adventure happened, and proceeds on the right path this time. A band of terrorists hires her and she burns France to the ground, saves. That’s timeline B. She can freely hop between those two timelines by loading the save-states she’s already made in each. Note these disparate timelines only exist because Aster reset in the first place; and as long as Aster’s in one timeline, nothing progresses in the other unless she returns to it (as it doesn’t exist).

Subtle universal variance can arise from Aster loading her states, so events aren’t guaranteed to proceed in the exact same way every time, though generally they’re 99.99999% identical and differences only show themselves decades down the line. This point only really matters for butterfly effects, universal RNG manipulation, and frame-perfect manoeuvres, but it’s there.

Whenever Aster dies, all her save states are wiped, and she is returned to the morning of the day she received her Archon pact.

ORDISH HERITAGE

Aster is ethnically Ordish. As such, she has some traits common to all Ordish people.

• She has a perfect sense of direction. She intuitively senses the absolute and relative positions of objects, always knows her cardinal directions, and accurately visualises abstract distances. She can’t get lost or become spatially disoriented.
• She has abnormally high stamina. Her body can endure much more physical abuse than expected before it begins shutting down.

relations

zachary

the ex

Zach! Zach. Zach… zachy-wack.

What a can of worms. But isn’t it breathtaking? That she found such a dysfunctional, illiterate, stuttering, brain-damaged, mentally-delayed screw-up as Zachary, Zachary of Nine Columbines, Zachary from the loony bin, and still managed to be such an evil whore, he couldn’t stay around her? That he benefits by having absolutely nothing to do with her? You’d think anyone else in his position would kill for her support. Well that’s why he’s Zachary. Puts little skanks like her in their place… he’s so strong. So, so strong.

Having that strength… ‘having’, as if she owns him… is intoxicating. Passion, conviction, determination, perseverance, optimism, oh mercy, she could cry. He’s adorable when he messes up, too. Then seeing him get right back to it, no matter what happens. It’s so hard not to believe in him.

He’s a wonderful person.

renard

mentor

Ren… she owes him so much, but never repaid him. Not that she could, now. The opportunity for it came and went eons ago. Anything she could try — admiration for wisdom she’s already heard, learning the lessons she’s already mastered, retracing journeys already completed — would ring hollow. She’d have to be faking the whole time… since she’s far past being the confused child that Ren pitied, adopted, trained, and ever brought to glory. She’s a monster now.

Though Ren’s a faker too, so maybe he wouldn’t mind… if she really tried, maybe he wouldn’t even notice. Ugh, these horrible, selfish ideas. If she really cared about him, she wouldn’t need to insert herself front and centre in his life to bring about something meaningful. But what else is she meant to do…?

Renard Cox, Knight of Lacren. She’s blessed to have met him. And to have used him.

trivia

witness

Trivia. She’s difficult.

There’s no need to be reserved around her — she’s seen everything. …So whatever she thinks of Aster can’t be very positive, but it’s hard to tell. They’ve worked together, they’ve fought each other, they’ve stayed indifferent, but where they currently stand is a mystery. Trivia Venn, she moves like the wind. Aster’s long given up thinking she can grasp her.

Aster’s a stunted, clueless girl, while Trivia’s a properly cunning woman. Having faced her guile in person, Aster sympathises deeply with poor Swift Kappel.

Lisbet

enemy

…

She’s a nice person, really… it’s just unfortunate what she does to the world. Though… she also wants to end the world anyway, too? Aster’s not very interested in that either. With something that drastic, though, maybe Aster’s missing something. It’s not as though she talks to Lisbet much…

Maybe Aster should be more grateful that Lisbet’s given her something to do? It’s not Lisbet’s fault that Aster’s so bad at dealing with it.

Camille

scary

Mm. Camille, huh.

Pretty up himself, isn’t he? Telling everyone to wait and he’ll make it better. Zachary’s making it better. Camille is just a dumb tree.

But he’s a dumb tree that knows how to say the right things, so it’s tempting to believe all his prattle. Beyond tempting, it’s near irresistible. Little succubus.

Yep-yep-yepperooni, that’s Trivia’s son. Fo’ sho.

trivia

public perception

Unknown as an Archon, and after countless time loops where acknowledgement of her Archonhood became a hassle, prefers to hide it. She drops a lot of careless hints, though, since she loses track of timelines a lot or can’t be bothered pretending she doesn’t know what happens next.

Presently not seen as anyone of particular note.

in fights

If you’ve ever beaten a difficult video game by abusing save states, it’s that.

Has several million years’ worth of experience, knows tactics to win basically everything (if she doesn’t know she’ll learn before long) and is skilled at executing ‘frame-perfect’ tricks. Limited by her frail body, but her raw knowledge compensates a billion times over. Best fighter in the setting. No joke.

Functionally incapable of losing unless she gives up, basically. Can be incapacitated but it has to be like, permanent.

romance

Gravitates to troubled people and those who plainly want something from her, then spends herself appeasing their goals or desires. Constantly ends up in bad relationships because of it.

Uncomfortable receiving genuine concern or affection, rejects and ruins most healthy relationships of her own accord. Currently fixated on Zachary, half-seething, half-bereaved, half-apologetic.

hobbies

Stitching, knitting, sewing — uses these to manipulate universal RNG. Also likes history and mythology, and archaeology to a lesser extent.

Enjoys mending or re-purposing trash and broken objects. Dumpster-diver, thrift store aficionado.

misc. trivia

Full name is just Cassandra.
Likes keeping her technology, fashion, furniture, and so on at least one generation out of date and favours used goods to new ones. Feels bad about old things being forgotten and undeserving of cutting-edge stuff.
Has a great sense of time. Can estimate to the second when something will happen or how long a span of time has been. Never needs alarms or timers.
Struggles to identify her favourite things, being heavily influenced by input of those around her. Her favourite colour is probably green, though.