my friends say I should act my age

HMD

2019-12-28T22:31:46Z

How's my birding? Bran can be an ass, but if there's a problem, I would rather work it out!

Comments are screened.

comments

Voidtrecker Permissions Post

2019-12-28T22:28:44Z

CHARACTER NAME: Bran Corbie
CHARACTER SERIES: Werewolf: the Apocalypse

[OOC]

Backtagging: Yep
Threadhopping: Ask first please!
Fourthwalling: Probably not unless you're also a World of Darkness character...
Offensive subjects (elaborate): nothing comes to mind?

[IC]

Hugging this character: Sure!
Kissing this character: Probably not, he'd be like "whoa wait".
Flirting with this character: Sure, he won't get it. That wasn't high on his bucket list.
Fighting with this character: He's not a fighter: expect him to try to get the hell outta Dodge.
Injuring this character (include limits and severity): Definitely possible, but he bounces back, especially if he can shift out of human form.
Killing this character: please no kthx
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Definitely possible. Mind control? That's a bit more difficult, but not impossible.

Warnings: He's a shapeshifter; I don't and usually won't get too graphic when it comes down to it, but mileage may vary? If it's too much for you, please hit me up here or on my HMD and I'll tone it down more!

Get your own copy of the IC/OOC Permissions meme!

comments

Corax Gifts and other miscellania

2019-12-21T23:31:30Z

Most Gifts have to be activated. In the actual game, there's systems for it, but I'll do my best to actually have Bran play out doing something to use any Gifts he has.

Level 1 Gifts

Voice of the Mimic

This Gift allows the Corax to imitate any sound or voice he has heard; voices, accents, inflection, music, crashes, thunderbolts--anything. This Gift is taught by a Mynah-Spirit.

Truth of Gaia

Corax have heard a lot of stories. They've also told a lot of them. It's given the breed a finely honed sense of bullshit, but having this Gift hasn't hurt. It gives the user the ability to sense whether others have spoken truth or falsehood. A Falcon-spirit teaches this Gift.

Mindspeak

By invoking the power of waking dreams, the Corax can place any chosen characters into silent communication. A Chimerling teaches this Gift.

Enemy Ways

This is a danger sense. Taught by one of Grandfather Thunder's Stormcrows, Enemy Ways is more than just a heightened (and reasonably accurate) sense of paranoia. Instead, it provides solid information on what kind of danger a Corax faces.

Level Two Gifts

Razor Feathers

One of the few combat-oriented Corax gifts, Razor Feathers operates only when the Corax is in Rara Avis form. Most predators aware of the Corax think, incorrectly, that the wereravens are easy prey. If a Corax has been taught this Gift, the odds creep a whole lot closer to even.
The primary effect of Razor Feathers is to make the feathers along the edge of the raven's wing hard and sharp as steel. The hardened feathers are strong enough to parry knives or claws, and are sharp enough to slice easily through unprotected flesh--or even stronger materials. Razor Feathers is taught by a Steel-spirit.

Sky's Shadow

There's little that is more frustrating than a creeping sensation that you're being watched. This Gift allows a Corax to bestow that feeling on the target of his choice without necessitating that the Corax himself tail his victim. Sometimes the Gift creates the shadow of a large bird that follows the target everywhere; other times, it just imbues a sense of pure paranoia. At first glance, Sky's Shadow might not seem like a terribly effective Gift, but nervous men make mistakes--and this Gift can make even the strongest-willed man nervous. Any bird spirit can teach this gift.

Swallow's Return

Corax usually know where they're going. That's more or less part of the package that comes with the spirit egg, after all. However, there are times when a Corax is too tired or too badly injured to navigate himself back home. That's when he turns to this Gift. Swallow's Return is nothing less than an autopilot, bringing the Corax safely back home even while the wereraven sleeps or heals. A Swallow-spirit teaches this Gift.

Taking the Forgotten

A Corax with this Gift can steal something from a target, and his victim will forget that she ever possessed the stolen item. A mouse-spirit teaches this Gift.

Level 3 Gifts

Dead Talk

There are secrets you just can't get from a dead man's eyeball. There are times when you need more than a stiff's last sight. At those difficult times, being able to hold a conversation with, or at least get a few straight answers out of, the spirit of the deceased increases the Corax's information-gathering possibilities exponentially. A Vulture-spirit teaches this Gift, though supposedly some Wraiths can teach it as well.

Yoshitsune's Sword

The rumors of the Tengu's expertise at teaching the art of swordplay are fairly well-founded. In fact, with the use of this Gift, a raven-shifter can increase a companion's sword skill to levels that the Tengu himself may well be thoroughly incapable of reaching. This Gift is taught by an Ancestor-spirit.

Bloody Feather

The Tengu with this trick in his arsenal is dangerous indeed. Using this Gift, he may pluck one of his own feathers and hurl it like a dart or bo shuriken. When hardened with the gift Razor Feathers, these projectiles are unquestionably deadly. This Gift is taught by a Dragonfly- or Hummingbird-spirit.

Level Four Gifts

Helios' Child

Occasionally, the Sun deigns to lend a bit of himself to a Corax in need. This present takes the form of a ball of lambent flame that materializes in the Corax's hand. This fire does not burn the Corax, but will ignite anything that it touches (effective temperature 1000 degrees Fahrenheit; doing damage akin to that of a chemical fire.). One of Helios' spirit-servants teaches this Gift.

Bloody Feather Storm

The last-ditch tactic of many Tengu, this power rains down a veritable blizzard of razored feathers. Anyone in the target area beneath the Tengu, friend or foe alike, will likely be punctured by a deadly hail of knife-edged pinions. This Gift is taught, appropriately enough, by a Monsoon- or Hurricane-spirit.

----------------------

Corax Powers and Traits

Renegeration when not in breed form. For Bran, this is human form, so if he's in corvid/raven or man bird/Rara Avis, he can regenerate damage when he takes it.

In human form, Bran's senses are normal, if slightly keen-eyed for a human (the glasses are a sham, who doesn't expect a computer nerd to wear glasses?), but in corvid or Rara Avis he has much sharper vision. The downside to this (maybe not so much a downside, when you think of what ravens eat) is that his sense of smell is exponentially worse.

Most Fera are creatures of Luna and are thusly vulnerable to silver. Corax and Mokole (werelizards) are creatures of Helios, and therefore their vulnerability is to gold. (Corax, at the very least, love to wear silver to throw were-hunters off, and also to squick the shifters who are vulnerable to silver...)

Corax in Rara Avis and Corvid form can, obviously, fly. As a result in corvid form they have hollow bones, and even in Rara Avis and Homid (human) form, they aren't as heavy as your average human. The downside to this is they can get beaten up easily in a fistfight (or taking any other sort of bludgeoning damage--2x4, club, etc.), so usually their first idea is to shift to flight mode and get the heck out of Dodge.

comments

app for voidtreckers

2019-12-20T02:19:38Z

Player Information

Name: Elly
Age: 45
Contact details: Discord: A Duck#0728, nightlocke
Other characters: Sarai Thunderstorm, Renee Corbin/Afterburner

Character Information

Name: Brandon Daiki Corbie (Just Bran Corbie is fine)
Canon: Werewolf: the Apocalypse (Old World of Darkness)
Canon Point: After he's named godfather to a werewolf cub.
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OC
Age: 26

World Information: Werewolf: the Apocalypse world info

Corax--wereravens!

Eastern relatives of the Corax--Tengu (By rights, since he was born in Japan, Bran IS a Tengu, but it's more upbringing and worldview than any actual physical differences...)

Hengeyokai-changing phantoms of the East

tl;dr A lot of the information for the World of Darkness in general states that it is very much like our modern-day world, just...a little darker. And, of course, you add in a bunch of supernatural critters like werewolves, wereravens, magic-users of various flavors, vampires...you get the idea.

Personal History: Bran was born in Kodaira, Japan. His parents were not married, his father a wandering Irish-American singer, while his Japanese-American mother was in the United States Air Force. The elder Corbie wandered in and out of her life for a while, finally disappearing for good when Bran was about a year old. Which isn't to say his mother didn't care for him--she did! Not to mention he had a kindly old uncle-type figure in a local shopkeep. The man insisted Bran call him Uncle Hiroto, and that name stuck.

Little did Bran know at first that old man Hiroto was a Corvid-born Tengu, and the creator of his own spirit egg--like another father. Wereravens do not breed true; creating another takes a mystic ritual called the Rite of the Spirit Egg. Bran was just lucky enough to be chosen, and to this day, he still isn't sure why--old man Hiroto never told him, just said he'd have to find out himself. Although Bran is good at what he's chosen to do...

Bran was always something of a hyperactive child; however, instead of just doping him up on Ritalin or its like, both his mother and Uncle Hiroto tried to get him focused into activities that interested him, and luckily, some of it actually stuck. Bran enjoyed learning to play guitar, and certain after-school activities like chess club, code club, mathematics club, and dabbling in track in high school.

At least, he dabbled in track until his First Change happened when he was 14. Terrifying to wake up and find yourself, Kafka-esque, transformed into a half-bird person. Luckily, Bran had Uncle Hiroto nearby to literally take him under the elder Corax's wing. His mother never knew about that particular secret, and Bran took pains to keep it that way.

Courtesy of his 'uncle', he also fell into a group of other shapeshifters--less common for one of the raven-folk, but there was a degree of safety in numbers. Even if the other four shifters you are hanging around with are Kitsune...

That took over as his 'activity' instead of track--sometimes all he and his Kitsune friends did was study, as they were all relatively young and still in pre-university. Other times, they were given actual tasks by the court they were attached to. Mostly these were stealth missions, quiet things like information gathering or simple spying, but there was an extraction or two as well--though that sort of thing was better left to a sentai with more physical power, as neither Corax nor Kitsune are particularly powerful in the physical sense. While the five of them (a proper sentai, even if it was classified as something tenuous instead of lasting) did their best to treat their cover--the Civilian Air Patrol--as something more serious than a mere cover, it didn't always work. There was another shifter tied to the Emerald Court to make their way smooth, though the five boys never did find out who it was--while it was a delicious mystery, there were other more important secrets to ferret out.

That lasted for three good, solid years--until Bran's mother got transferred back to the United States, and he had to go with her as he was still a minor. There were some thoughts of running away on his part, but he decided that it was the wiser course to stay with his mom. Despite the danger that that entailed for her. He did manage to keep in touch with Uncle Hiroto by conventional (and less conventional) means, finished out his last year of high school in Maryland, and went to the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to continue his education.

Bran sort of fell into meeting a pack of Sunset People. These Garou were interesting in that they were a full and functioning pack, but they were lacking in a reconnaissance type, and that they had a Kinfolk among them, one who was related to a shifter, but had not the power themselves. Bran never formally tossed his lot in with them, but he and Malik Fire-Eyes, the Uktena Kinfolk, took a few classes together and thus if Malik's pack could use Bran's services, he gave them freely whenever he was asked. He always had taken to heart the Emerald Court's adage to aid his fellow shifters when they needed, and even the Western Corax told their fledglings to aid the Garou when they could.

Especially due to taking some classes together, Malik and Bran were fairly close friends for a while. Bran was even one of the ones encouraging him to get a girlfriend in one Sings-to-Gaia, one of the pack members Bran was not so close to. But no one was more pleased than Bran was when the ploy actually succeeded! He even got asked to stand up to the wedding, when that happened, though it took Bran and Malik both graduating before Sings said yes to the latter's proposal.

Thanks to another one of the pack members, Bran took a position in security programming at Knight Industries when it was offered to him. The money was good, Andrew Knight was lenient when it came to style (as Bran still liked to moonlight playing guitar sometimes in a local band and had his own peculiar way of dress). That and he didn't have to worry about answering too many awkward questions if a certain investigation of his had him coming in late--so long as the work got done, things were fine.

And then, something he never thought might happen, did happen. Oh, Bran fully expected his friends to have kids someday, after they got married--that was the logical thing! But Malik and Sings named him the godfather of their first child, a son named Tek. While he was very flabbergasted, Bran resolved to do his very best. But what did he know about raising kids?

Personality: At first glance, Bran might come off as an overexcited chatterbox. Likely because he is a chatterbox at the very least. Most of the time Bran is laid back and easygoing, ready with a joke or a witty comment. But that's mostly if he has nothing going on--if something has caught his interest, he can be singularly focused, doing research, keeping the candle burning at both ends. His default mode is fairly polite; being raised in Japan is probably one of the biggest reasons that he was sent along with the Mirror of his sentai--diplomacy was something he learned, and learned well, though he doesn't always care to practice it (and that's a Corax for you).

He's curious about his father, but not enough to actively try to hunt him down. Rumors say that the elder Corbie is also a Corax and out in the world somewhere, but there's anger and resentment there that makes Bran not terribly interested in finding him. (Mostly because there are Rules against attacking others of your own kind, much less attacking other Fera. And he's still pretty mad at his dad for ditching him.)

Bran is smart and clever and well aware of the fact, so he can definitely come off as 'better than you because he's smarter than you'. He's rather proud of his intelligence; he came by it naturally, true, but he's worked hard to cultivate it and not just sit on his laurels.

He's also stubborn and headstrong. Tell him not to do something, even with damn good reasons to not do a thing? He's not terribly likely to back down. He's the type to have to get burnt a few times before he learns his lesson--mostly it's the fact that he generally has had others to watch his back that he hasn't ended up a pile of feathers, so far.

CRAU developments: N/A

Key themes: Bran likes to uncover secrets: especially things that are Mad, Bad, and Dangerous for Him to Know. He's a textbook case of high Intelligence, low Wisdom. He's so obsessed with finding out secrets because he can, he doesn't stop to think about whether or not he should.

Main Motivation: "The urge to know is everything. All the rest is commentary."

Skills:

Corax Gifts and Traits (horrific infodump here)

Gift meaning from the White Wolf Wiki

He has some (reluctantly undertaken!!) leadership training courtesy of being in the Civilian Air Patrol, also knows how to fly a light aircraft. And gliders.

He has some talent with the guitar but he hasn't got that much in the way of formal instruction, as it was one of the things that went by the wayside when he Changed.

Eidetic memory--something he wishes he didn't have, thanks!!

He can speak Japanese, English, the Corax/Tengu language, and also knows sign language.

He has a dual bachelor's degree in computer science and computer programming with specialization in cryptography and data analysis.

Item: "Counterfeit"; a clay tablet impressed with Raven's sigil and painted white. Most Counterfeits are an inch across and three inches long, although there are no hard and fast rules. Basically, this tablet has been enchanted to morph itself into any single small object to which it is touched. Ideally, the object in question is one the Corax has stolen and needs to replace immediately. The Counterfeit does not duplicate any of the functions of the object it replaces, merely mimicking the appearance. What this usually means is that the victim of the theft will attempt to use their cell phone, or gun, or whatever and get absolutely no response. At this point, the Counterfeit reverts to its true shape, much to the chagrin of its new owner.

Clever Corax keep an eye on those whom they've slipped Counterfeits, because more than a few victims have thrown the fetishes away in anger at being tricked. The wise Corax makes sure he's in a position to retrieve the abandoned Counterfeit, which hopefully is undamaged and ready to be used again.

Sample: with a firestarter and a Prisoner
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!
en route to mayhem

Notes: Due to his nature, Bran has a bad tendency to be a kleptomaniac with anything shiny. HOWEVER! If it's something very important to your character (or even just of sentimental value), you can harass him about it and he's very likely to return it to you. It's just a thing he literally cannot help. (Corvid Tengu/Corax are much worse. Most of the time Bran does it without thinking about it. Corvid breed do this as well, but they have a deeper tendency to keep what they steal because the precious...)

Also, Bran has an eidetic memory, but I don't. I'll try to keep notes, but I am forgetful.

comments

character barf blurb

2015-06-13T23:43:48Z

Name: Brandon Corbie. ("Just Bran. Dad had a sense of humor. He didn't even get it right, either. Do you know how embarrassing that is?")
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Species: Corax (Tengu, specifically)

Appearance: Bran is tall, but on the wrong side of muscular to be called "gangly". He's actually pretty happy about that, if you must know. He's still kind of a long drink of water (6'3), but he looks as if he can hold his own in a fight. His ears are gauged, and underneath all the dark clothing, he has a nice set of sleeve tattoos, as well. He keeps his black hair short, because if he doesn't, it tends to grow into a long, curly mess--another thing he grudgingly thanks his father for. Bran is clearly of mixed ethnic origin--his mother is Japanese, and his long-gone father was Irish. This might explain the dark eyes, the honey-colored skin, and the cheekbones that can cut glass. The fact that his father was gone through most of his childhood and that he was half-gaijin might explain the chip on his shoulder.

As a Tengu, he has a talent for shapeshifting--his species has three major forms. Homid, which is normal human, and the form Bran was born in. Rara Avis, which is a half-man, half-bird form. While to his Corax cousins, it's REALLY FREAKIN' EMBARRASSING to be caught in, he likes freaking the locals with it. Finally, there's Corvid, which is raven form, and pretty sizeable for a bird. Unlike their cousins the Garou (werewolves), most wereravens aren't built for fighting--they're spies first and foremost, and Gaia's secret-keepers second. They watch, they learn shit, and then they fly away, and Bran is a very typical Tengu in this regard.

Personality: It seems as if Bran was born angry. It might not be too much of a stretch, either. Oh, when the First Change happened and he got the full information--that he wasn't quite human, but a wereraven, things got a little better. Not to mention he learned how to hold his own in a fight better, but he still wasn't exactly happy about it. Being one of Helios' chosen didn't make life any easier for him, after all. But he was good at what the Tengu were supposed to do, at least--being a sneaky shit, listening to things he shouldn't, and reporting them back to the folks who could do something about it.

He's mellowed a bit in what he considers his 'old age' (he's about 27, Bran plz), but that doesn't mean much. He still comes off as a cocky asshole, a strutting raven with a loud mouth, the ability to offend others, and to get in fights like nobody's business. At least these days, he can hold his own, too.

comments