u/Optical-occultist

I look down upon this fresh prescript, I’ve checked it again and again, but the finely printed words never change. It is with a shaking hand that I deal out my final tarot reading, yet as I gaze down at the final card my vision wavers. Why must I do this, again and again the will of the city has been bent upon my own self harm, and again and again I cast myself from the highest towers, down towards her embrace.

“You’ve let yourself be a puppet, pulled back and forth by strings you put on yourself. Don’t you want to take them off, and see what it’s like to walk again.”

I met a maestro once, a melting artist who went on and on about his “muse”. I never understood why he praised the monster who made him what he was, but now I understand.

“The world the prescripts showed you was hardly the true reality of things. You’ve always had that thought in your head haven’t you? Deep within your heart of hearts you believed that the will of the city was nothing more than a shadow cast on the walls, shadows that the index mistook for reality.”

Her voice was warm, so very warm..

“Don’t you want to go outside and see the light casting those shadows?”

I did, I’d always wanted to. I never realized how dark the cell that our prescripts had made for us. Perhaps this was their last mercy, to unlock the shackles and lead me out of this cave with shadow puppets dancing along the walls.

I see it now.. I look down at last at the card the city had given me, its farewell gift. I can’t help but laugh as I stare into the source of your shadows, and laugh as you call a shadow puppets theater reality.

After all, now I’ve seen The Sun.

“It took me all my life to rise to the rank of Sottocapo, always chasing the shadow of my sister Valencina. She was always the favored star of Famiglia Bognatelli, she was gifted our family blade and its Palermitan sword work, along side the eye of precognition itself, the fabled eye of Odin. All this love was showered upon her, and yet it only took her three days to fail us all. She was cast out of the Famiglia, excommunicated by the Thumb as a whole, and yet she was allowed to live, and take with her the gifts that she never truly deserved. Not only that, but her exile brought down shame and distain upon the whole of Famiglia Bognatelli, and and mere hours after my own accent to Sottocapo I was demoted to the seat of a mere soldato so that my Famiglia would remember its place, and ensure we did not produce another disappointment. My rise back up the ladder has been paved in the blood of those who stood against us, as I gave myself to the Thumb as it’s personal hunting hound, one that will put to the sword all who betray the Thumb. “

Name: Casandar
District of origin: district 10 (J Corp)

Oracle device: fortuna in continua evoluzione
A set of magnetic tarot cards and a shuffling device. When a prescript is delivered a number of random cards will be expelled, it is through this system that the god of the city Fortuna guides her proxy. Fortuna is a god that like Hermes exists in formless signals, these wavelengths acting as random number generators that deliver fate via the rolling of dice and the turning of cards.
In combat, the magnetically charged deck silently fly through the air as 78 individual razor sharp implements of death. As the user barely moves a muscle while the cards sever and slit their way through a foe it’s hard to tell at times if he is indeed controlling them, or of the winds of the city are fluttering about these butchers fortunes.

Whatever past Casandar has long been cast aside, like a feather blown away by the winds of fortune. What matters to Casandar now is the commands of the prescripts, the thread that pulls him through the maze of life ensuring he is never lost again. The will of the city’s chance and luck is a path few hold faith in, even amongst the loyal flock of the index the prophecies writ in the cards is taken with some grain of salt. But to Casandar the random strings of numbers that command each shuffle of his deck are undeniably omniscient, the future the foretell once cast out onto the table is set in stone.
(OOC a large part of Casandar’s Tarot prescripts being seen as somewhat unreliable comes from the main inspiration for him, the Trojan oracle Casandra who was cursed to see the future and have no one believe her)

(OOC: this is the first time I’ve done one of these, will probably rework it in the future)

Reshaping distorted souls is proving to be a rather difficult practice. Once they start listening to our lovely muse they tend to form in such unpredictable ways. But, I’m improving slowly yet surely, and bringing them into the sunshine is proving easier by the day.
So, I present to you this day the theater of cruelty, the marionette who sings and dances, thinking he sees the world whilst ignorant to the fact he only inhabits a stage. Will we ignore is cries and yelps as the strings pull him here and there, for his tears and bloody soles are certainly part of the act.
Once, before I heard my muses voice I saw a carnival of the most beautiful things, the ringmaster of this circus understood the beauty that lay beyond sanity, if only a visionary such as him had entered surrealism instead of following the foolish blue reverberation into that loathsome library

Distortion: the melting artist

When I was young, I believed art was a thing of sharp lines and solid colors. Misguided as I was by the maestros I sought only to draw what others had pioneered before me. Putting my faith wholly in the in the structure of the human corpus and the bold colors of wild beasts. Yet, with each presentation my work received less and less attention, slowly fading into the background of mediocrity. It was in this darkness a light began to shine upon me, the warmth of the sun that began to melt down the strict bounds I had placed upon myself. To be formless, to be free, to find inspiration in madness, this is surrealism. While other artists may limit themselves “what can be”, we among the school of surrealism unveil “what can not be.”

(OOC) I feel the Dimo (Devil) star fits my character idea the best, being a sort of “deal with the devil” esc character