Song App

[najaran]

This will be an app for Song! There will be spoilers up to volume 5 of the manga; not that I expect anyone to have ever heard of it before seeing this journal.

There will be angst. Given she is CRAU there will be a lot of angst actually. She used to be so cheerful... Drama. Warnings for combat mentions. And for... well... a lot of her life can be seen as disturbing. I don't think there is much there that would be triggery though other than combat mentions, death mentions, and possible body horror when discussing her Master.

Anyhow, you've been warned. Now entering the angst zone...

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[najaran]

CRAU history is more easily summarized.

VT was a game set on a sentient Train that brought the characters to worlds that needed their help every month (game time, every other month IRL). Najaran's very first mission they were helping evacuate people from one part of their world to another. Then nearly without warning the Train used their SCAs (safety devices all the characters wore that tethered them to the Train) to summon them all back into the Train and then the Train FLED as dark shapes spread over the world they had just been on and destroyed it. Utterly. All lives lost.

Something broke inside of Najaran at that. This also cemented her friendship with Duo (one of her strongest CRAU ties) when they sobbed themselves to sleep together. Najaran never ever forgave herself for the fact that she ran away from people who needed her, though everyone pointed out she hadn't made the choice to run. The Train had. So she stopped wearing her SCA so it would never happen again. Which nearly got her killed on several missions, and led to huge arguments with most of her friends.

For a while that was the worst drama. Arguments nearly every mission about her not wearing an SCA. Eva tried to ban her from going on missions at all. Duo yelled at her a lot. A few people just... talked to her about it, though. Curufin, Esteban, and Mina didn't yell. Nell started out not yelling but wound up arguing bitterly with her. Leia had the best luck, because Leia came at if from a "mom" angle rather than a friend angle and met her with calm reason. I mean, it is general Ogana. She's good. She couldn't get Najaran to wear her SCA, but she got her to think through consequences more and to make smarter choices in other areas. She also taught Najaran a lot of other things like about germs. There was one event where they all got temporary false past lives/memories and Leia actually was her mother and she had two sisters... but Najaran remembers very very little about it. Just that it was the first time she understood what a mother actually was. Della had tried to explain it to her previously but... she never understood till then.

She made a lot of good friends on the Train, and tried to befriend the Train itself. She did a lot of chores on the Train to fight against her guilt and to make up for the fact that she wasn't training. She met other Elves, though she doesn't realize she met someone who was part Dragon. She did meet someone who could TURN into a Dragon, but it was an asian dragon so she didn't quite recognize him as a Dragon Dragon.

Then...

They found another world in danger from the World Eaters. They were trying to evacuate as many people from the world as they could. But some people refused to leave, choosing to stand and fight for their world. Najaran, not wearing her SCA, stood with them. The World Eaters ate the world and Najaran died.

But being a DW game, the Train brought her back to life - it actually turned out they weren't there in their real bodies; their bodies were unconscious back home they found out - in the luggage car. A lot of people were very hurt that she did something so reckless. And Leia gave her disappointed mom lectures. Esteban mostly hugged her. Then tried to distract her. She felt... so guilty. And this time she couldn't easily shove it aside, though she tried. Guilty she hurt her friends. But more guilty that she had failed to save the world, and all those people. That she survived when they didn't.

And knowing she died but came back, she became far more reckless on missions. She could accept the pain of dying if she did it to save or protect someone. This did not go over well with her friends.

Duo had been gone a while at that point then one day he returned. But it wasn't him. Another Duo. She befriended that one too, but thought it was her Duo just having forgotten her; which hurt. Until her Duo returned. Then she had two Duo friends. A duo of Duos. She even told one of them that they were like twins - a concept she learned in that false memory event - they grew up the same and looked the same, but they were different people and her friends in different ways.

The Train stopped taking them to missions, and instead they went every month to the station were a number of the refugees were to study the World Eaters and try to find a plan to stop them. Najaran tried so hard to be involved but she couldn't handle being there. Being surrounded by people who lost friends, family, their homes, their world... because she wasn't good enough. Every time they went there, she broke a little more until near the end she refused to even get off the Train there.

Then it was time to face the World Eaters again. They had negotiated with the chaos entity that had created the false memories and it agreed to help. It ate the World Eaters, and they even managed to save some people from the past - a distant past before Najaran was ever on the Train - that had gotten lost in time trying to escape the World Eaters.

There was a big celebration after. But Najaran couldn't see all the people they saved. All she could see... was all the people who should have been there. Everyone she had failed. For all there was rarely anything that could get between Najaran and food - she still eats like she's a half starved homeless child - she couldn't handle the feast and ran away.

Then it was time for the Train to send them all home or to other Void Trains. Mina promised that she could find Najaran again and would help her gather all their friends so they could always be together. That actually broke through Najran's guilt and sorrow enough that she happily ran to let all her friends know. She said what she hoped were short time goodbyes and then left for them to break her tether so she could return to her body and wake up.

She... "woke up" here instead. Whoops?



Personality:

Before the World Eaters Najaran was generally a very cheerful young lady with more bravery than smarts. Oh she can be clever, and she's brilliant in combat when she puts her mind to it, but in day to day life? She's not the brightest bulb in the crayon box. She's also naive. Or had been. And while she couldn't be called uneducated, her education was so specific to her world and to being a Cepter that very little of it has any practical application in a jamjar. So she comes across as an uneducated country bumpkin with no people skills. Everyone is a friend after all. Try to kill her multiple times, but then have one moment of grace? You're now her friend forever! Like it or not. Kigi - tried to kill her several times, but they had a *moment* at the end and Kigi and she decided they were friends. Karin kidnapped her, tried to get her killed, almost killed her, mislead her, insulted her friends, insulted her Master. But Najaran declared her a friend. Joaquin used her as a test subject for his concoctions and was generally rude to her and harsh (he doesn't know how to people. At all.) But he also taught her lots and in the end they fought on the same side, so... friend. She's also alarmed people in VT when she's told them about Zeneth, then they found her thinking about how maybe all he needs is a friend... (In this case she's actually probably right, but it still sounds alarming given how many people he's nearly killed trying to kill her....)

Before Kigi died, Najaran was also fairly lazy. She'd do almost anything to avoid chores and training. She used her Creatures to do her chores and whined at her Master when he wanted her to train. After Kigi died, while she was with Grubel, chores were a good way to not think. It's why she didn't notice she couldn't summon. She had Goligan to talk to and chores to do, so she did her own chores for once. Then after that... she was too busy to need to do chores to keep her mind off Kigi. Until she wound up on the Train, then she found a balance. She did chores... but had her creatures help. She still avoided Training, but that was at least partially practical... there were no other Cepters there and she is under STRICT orders not to use her spells without her Master present. (She has power but no control.)

Najaran also grew up with her father's strict moral code. Never use Cards against a non-Cepter (On the Train she expanded that to allowing herself to use them against a creature more powerful than a human that was trying to kill her or someone she was protecting). When dueling for ante, only take a single Card, never be a bully who tries to claim a whole Book from a fallen foe. He also taught her that because of the ante Card a Cepter's book is made up of the hopes and dreams of other Cepters, that a Book is part of the heart of those Cepters and should always be protected and treated with respect. He taught her "If you take pride in the fight you're fighting, then your Cards will surely come to your aid". By example, he showed her how to look at bad situations as positive ones. Until she looked back a decade later (while incarcerated in that village near Bisteam) she actually bought it that he dad had decided that the snow was too pretty to waste sleeping inside. As a kid she never realized they were homeless in the way she understood it when she was older.

After the World Eaters... she's trying desperately to hold onto who she used to be but guilt attacks her whenever she lets herself think about it. She can distract herself for a time, but it always comes back. Especially being without Goligan is going to hit her very hard. She is used to leaning on him - and not just because he's an actual walking stick.

She's also far more reckless now. On the Train knowing death wasn't permanent she lost a lot of her fear for herself. And then here, being told she's dreaming again... she may presume it is the same way.

Really right now guilt is in the driver's seat, and I look forward to see what changes as she meets new people in this game and has new experiences.