The Country Of Katos- A Role-playing Group discussion
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[ EVELYNE LOWBER — "eve" ]
EVE is — well. It might be better to start with how he was. Impulsive and entirely too reckless for his own good, but he supposed that was part of the charm of being an East Katos native. A fine line of being victor and victim where the history of the country stood, really. He grew up on stories of how they likely wouldn't amount to much, pressed down by the weight of an unfair history with their less than kind neighbors to the west. And as such, Eve had only thought it best to live life as if it would end at any moment. While he might have been fortunate to live in a home with a stable enough income that he didn't often go without food, his reckless decisions did leave him homeless.
Perhaps no better than a street-walking drunk, Eve had all but abandoned his home in favor of living life on the edge. Causing trouble, wreaking havoc; all in a day's work. He riddled himself with tattoos and piercings, a tapestry of his life on his own skin. Endless mistakes that neither of his parents could find in themself to correct whenever he did manage to show up before them. Usually to ask for money, but it wasn't like they had much of that themself.
It was when his mother had drank herself into a grave that he thought of that running toward his own could wait. Nothing grand in his realization; she'd left him letters, explained what she had wanted to do with her life. How the war had changed things. How the war had robbed her of chances, but that he could always find a way. There was even half of a manuscript, something she had started in hopes to give to him one day. Prior to all his recklessness, when he was still too young to understand the hopelessness of their situation, she reminded him how much he'd loved books. How he'd used to tell her stories.
His father welcomed the change, a meek, terrified son hidden behind useless bravado. While he couldn't wash himself clean of everything he'd done, Eve turned his attentions to changing. First it was his friends, who were either supportive or didn't seem to care about what he did. Ties with the latter were cut off, not wanting to find himself back where he started. And while he took work in various places, he couldn't quite shake the sludge of the East off of him. He needed a change of place.
Getting smuggled over the border had been...difficult. Eve paid with most of his savings, and what was left went into making himself seem like an upstanding citizen of West Katos. He found ways to cover up his tattoos, took out the most notable piercings and hid them away from sight. He worked hard; fell back into the old routine of working as much as possible. It tends to leave him barely awake, but he makes it through somehow. Until he's overworked himself and has to call out sick. That only happens once in a blue moon, of course, too determined to get to the goal of finishing up the manuscript left to him.
Eve will never be sure if he's running in the right direction, but he can only look back and think that he's come too far to stop now.
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TRINE is a sniveling coward in a city full of 'em. Perhaps that's the thing keeping him alive: cowardice. A street rat that had no real prospects, crying in the middle of nowhere. He was two when someone found him wandering the trees, clutching at his shirt and barefoot as he walked aimlessly. He'd latched onto them and they'd become a reluctant guardian to a kid that couldn't do anything for himself. Catrine started the hard road of dependency on things and people early on. His survival required it, after all.
He wore the guise of a functioning person well. A child that grew like any other; wanted, cried, pissed, and slept. But there would always be this fear he couldn't avoid that someone else would leave him. When he turned ten he learned that those fears should be listened to; his guardian dropped him on the corner of a street and left him there. Trine doesn't know much of what became of them, the very image of their face blurred out in his mind as he sought out someone else to rely on. Street gangs of children were, while deep in the throes of struggling for power, a source of amusement for their elders. He managed to stay with a group, malnourished enough that he looked younger than he was.
The worst part of this experience, maybe, would have been the moment they slipped that heart-shaped pill into his hand. Euphoric were the effects, and for a short moment, at thirteen and a half — he wasn't afraid. It's a weird thing, to be freed from something that had kept you alive all this time. His fear had become a living thing, never leaving him. But as quickly as he'd been thrust in pleasure, he'd crashed into the oblivion of what he'd done. And even worse: he'd do it again. And again. And again; until he felt like he was never coming down.
It didn't take him long, then, to turn his fear into something else. Not hate, but certainly a distaste for what had made them all come to this point: West Katos. The grand castle to their flimsy hovel. The mere thought of it turns anything on his tongue bitter, and maybe that was why he'd sought tattooing as a distraction. He fears pain, but you can't always look away from it. You're forced to think about it. The way the needle presses ink into skin, or the parting of flesh for a modification.
An older woman had taken him in when he was seventeen. A scrawny rat of a thing, an addict knocking around in her trash cans for a scrap of something. Before, all his tattoos had been done a less than sanitary way. One on his arm, even, already infected. She fixed him up, watched the way his arms tremored. The way he shook like he would fall right over. The street gang had become a thing of the past, Trine selling the others out one after the other for a few more crinkled bills to be spent on something that had become a necessity.
Catrine couldn't tell you how long he's been clean. No, there are too many fluctuations to say that he's lost all his dependencies. Ownership of the tattoo parlor the old woman had run before was forced onto him. Keep him busy, keep him clean. And yet — the people that walk through the door are certainly no cleaner than him.
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MINATO has always come off as sort of...nonthreatening. He can't really say that he's ever really come across as scary at first meeting with anyone. Maybe it's the fact that his father had been the same way. An impressive man that Minato had looked up. Just as big, if not bigger, than the height he's managed to reach. In the prime of the Black Jackals, Minato's father had been a man that inspired fear even when he hadn't intended it. A man that could smile gently and somehow make someone's blood run cold. But he was a kind man, even if he had to do some unkind things. In a place like East Katos, kindness could be taken advantage of, and Minato learned that lesson from his father.
Where the loans had been well-intentioned, the forgiveness of some of them turned sour. People would think they could walk all over them, as if they'd forgotten that they were a gang with an iron grip over their portion of the city. He could remember his father making tough decisions over a cup of tea with an expression that didn't match the gruesome orders. He learned the importance of holding things at a certain length from his own emotions early on.
Conflicts in the streets are solved in predictable ways. Early memories of fists flying and tears falling as other children and himself bawled while kicking the snot out of each other. Childish fights that didn't compare to the conflict resolution skills he would acquire in the future. His mother, an equally kind woman but so heinously naive, had thought that she could change the direction her son and husband were headed in. In the end, it left her sickly with stress and bedridden. An ever diligent son, he visited her often, and maybe did put some of things she tried to teach him to use.
Talking someone with a gun down is never an easy feat, but at fifteen — Minato found himself doing just that. A routine run meant to have him home in only a couple hours after doing the final round of fee collection. His protection detail was sparse (because he had to learn that while all those who worked for his family were loyal, there was always a chance) and some idiots on the street took that as an invitation. Blood would call for blood, which would only call for more blood, and the last thing Minato thought his father needed was to stomp a potential threat into the ground. So he handled it. When he told his parents, they seemed only partly shocked. Shocked that he hadn't been quick to put those men down like dogs in the road.
The only place he could go from there — was up. When his father stepped down as commander of the Jackals, the mantle was passed to him. His mother gifted him a brand new suit, claiming that a leader had to look their best. It wasn't what gave him the idea to start on branding the Jackals as upstanding citizens (no, the founder of this powerful gang had wanted it this way from the beginning), but it did get a plan going. Wheels spinning in his head.
They could make a difference. In the fetid corpse of East Katos, they had enough power to make a difference, and they would do just that with Minato at the helm.
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VAL doesn't need handouts. Doesn't need to be seen as a charity case. When her family managed to cross the border, they weren't looking to scrounge off the hardworking people that already lived there. The intention had always been to join them. Her parents had stuck themselves promptly into the workforce upon their arrival. Not even a place to sleep or food in their bellies, and they had marched into a factory and asked for jobs. The gumption of it had earned them work, but they remained on the streets. Used public facilities to keep themself clean, for the most part.
Val and her siblings were sent to school. Nothing extravagant by the standards of West Katos, but it was far better than the East. The otherness of her and her brothers stuck out. But it wasn't like they would fall apart. They were resilient, unbreakable. Val found herself in a crowd that played at being like East Katos. Kids going through rebellious phases and claiming they would be the greatest thing across the border. She could play that role easy, be like them.
Her parents would scrape together enough money to stick them in a small home, but they would need to move. They would need to — assimilate. Being surrounded by boys (two older and one younger), Val found that it wasn't so easy to hold onto the girlish typical fascinations that those in her age group had. By the time she was thirteen, she'd given it up. Came off as a punk kid rocking an East Katos grunge that drew people in. She didn't share her stories of the time she'd lived there, but the general affect had been enough.
She was drawn to music through a program in school, and it was like it had always been set in stone. Her musical aspirations were encouraged, but funds had always been sorely lacking. And there was the matter of her style and what had been desired at the time. But she held fast. Like a fist around a throat. But this made her the subject of ridicule in some instances, and Valentina Valdez was not someone that took that sort of thing lightly.
Being driven might not have mattered so much in East Katos, but it mattered in the West. Val would end up finding herself in a band by the time she was twenty, performing in clubs and scattered bars. People liked them and their sound. They had a way of attracting people, and they will use that to attract a label deal.
For now, she works as a bartender to help with the family bills and studio fees.
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YULE does not seem to give many people the confidence that he has very many thoughts in his head. From an early age, this was how it always been. A young boy with no filter living in a less than friendly neighborhood. There's no surprise that he would have run into his fair share of trouble. What did, and sometimes still does, was how easily he could handle himself. His parents had been hunters, every last one of them. Content at one point to live out in the woods for a time before game became scarce and they decided that a change in scenery might be nice.
He was ten when they moved into the city. The dangers he had to be wary of had changed dramatically, but that hadn't changed him. Stubborn in the worst ways, he was never far from finding himself in one fight or another. But, well, the perks of living in the woods meant that he had done plenty in the way of heavy-lifting chores. More muscle mass and fighting off cousins and siblings just meant for being able to handle himself.
By the time he was fifteen, he'd earned himself a reputation. A general wariness from others that would give him a certain berth. Even if he was a pretty face with no filter, he could back up what he said. And to make it all worse: he played by the rules. A blind faith in the law and rules handed down to him. He didn't, doesn't need to resort to dirty tricks to get the result he desires, which is typically pummeling someone into the dirt with brute strength. And yet, somehow, there are still people that test him. Those who probably don't know any better.
At first, he had only taken the odd job of deliveries to the bar, messing around in the back with employees he did know and frightening those he didn't with too-loud laughter. He was only eighteen, after all, it wasn't like he could actively be serving alcohol. But the bar owner had seen some potential in him. Namely: the fact that he forgot most of what was told to him by drunk patrons in passing.
Yule isn't entirely stupid, but he's not exactly someone that has information actively sticking in his brain. It's mostly all muscle memory; a sort of coasting through life with routine interactions and predictable dialogue. There isn't much variation and when someone decides to spill their guts to him when he first works the bar, he blinked and promptly forgot by the next time he saw them. It got around that there was one bartender you could tell your worries to, and suddenly he was a lot more popular than he intended.
But he's not above kicking minors out of the bar. That's against the rules, after all.
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