HOME | DD

Description

Basics:
Jokasta | 25 | Female | Nohr
6'01" | 155 lbs | Human | September 24

Class Stats:
● [Promoted] Wyvern Lord

● Axes: A Rank | Lances: E Rank

● Baldur | Male Wyvern
● Silver Axe | B

● Jokasta's Axe | B | Female only. Res +2; after battle, Str/Skl -2 (stats recover by 1 each turn)

● Baldur's Bravery | A | Unit can make two consecutive attacks when initiating combat regardless of Speed. Def and Res -4.

● Calyx: If Jokasta battles a male enemy unit, she gains +20 to her Critical Hit rate and deals +4 damage to her attacks. [Adapted from 'Unmask' skill, replacing vs female unites with vs male units.]

Base Stats:
LVL: 20 (Promoted)
HP: 40
STR: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁣🁣🁣🁣 (50) (46 with Baldur's Bravery penalty)
MAG: 🁣 (0)
SKL: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (40)
SPD: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (40)
LCK: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (40)
DEF: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁣🁣🁣🁣 (50) (46 with Baldur's Bravery penalty)
RES: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (30)
MOV: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (7)

(18 Stat Points Remainder)
Personal Info:
✔︎✔︎ Baldur | Music | Women | Flowers | Sleeping In | Heights | Hot Baths
✘✘ Men | Rainy Days | Archers | Hoshido | Nobility

Personality:
+ Protective | Motherly | Hard Working | Passionate
- Outwardly Cold | Mistrusting | Cynical | Vengeful

● Once a playful young woman, an eager storyteller, and a protective and loyal friend, Jokasta has lost too many things she's loved to wear her heart on her sleeve any longer. Pain has locked her smile away behind an icy facade, and she has a reputation among her fellow soldiers as an aloof and distant snob.H Her manners are impeccable, and she speaks and moves with the grace of a high-born lady. She is no-nonsense, and works hard and without distraction to get a job done, which leads many to assume that she prefers to work alone, or thinks she considers herself above others. In truth, Jokasta greatly admires the hard work and kind hearts of the people around her, but she no longer recognizes those traits within herself. In the moment, she is too consumed with loss and pain, and an unyielding desire to see that pain paid in kind — for now, she focuses her quiet rage on fighting Hoshido.

Behind the masks, both literal and metaphorical, behind the tiredness and the sadness, there's still a woman whose favorite activities are reading a good book, or taking a long, hot bath, or telling stories into a night with a friend as sleepless as she is. But those parts of her are buried so far inside of her that even she's not sure if she can ever coax them out again. As it is, only Baldur, her beloved wyvern and only companion, is the only one who sees parts of the girl she used to be in the woman she is now.
History:
Orphanage
Jokasta must have had a family, at some point. Children don't come from nothing, she knows that well enough; what she knows better still is that children often end up as nothing all the same. Whoever her parents might have been, it was clear to Jokasta that they hadn't cared to keep her—or cared enough about her to stay alive for her sake—and her first memories were of the gutters of Cyrkensia's bustling and lively streets, orphaned and alone.

Despite the harshness of her circumstances, Jokasta never developed the quick fingers and quicker instincts necessary for a child her age to survive on her own. When she looked to steal a piece of bread or a shining trinket, she was always easily caught and chased off, and she managed as long as she did solely through the kindness of strangers. On cold or rainy knights, she would sleep beneath the eaves of the Opera House, and let the music lull her to sleep. By the time she was eight she was lean, dirty, and desperate for anything else in life.

After too many years sleeping conspicuously either near or directly beneath the Opera House exterior, a concerned citizen must have contacted a local shelter for children — Jokasta never learned the specifics, but in either case, she was a little past eight when a woman with a kind face came to her one afternoon. Her smile was warm, but it was nothing compared to the hot meal she offered Jokasta if she agreed to come with her. Jokasta didn't hesitate for even a moment.

The shelter was a friendly place run by good people, and for the first time in her life, Jokasta felt fortunate. Despite the rumors of stirring war to the north, Cyrkensia remained blissfully neutral, free to spend its money and time on songstresses and luxury instead of armies and weaponry. Thanks to the patronage of both Nohrian and Hoshidan nobility, the city's public services were generally well-funded, and the Charity Orphanage for Girls that Jokasta now called home was clean and warm and uncrowded. Here was a place she could make friends instead of rivals and enemies, a place where adult hands were extended in comfort instead of anger.

Under the care of the orphanage, Jokasta bloomed. Her hair, so matted and tangled it had to be shorn off when she first arrived, grew out soft and clean; her scrawny, bony body plumped to a healthy weight, her sicknesses were attended to, her belly was full. Most of all, she loved the other girls, who were her friends and her sisters and her family. As one of the older charges of the shelter, at the strapping age of ten, Jokasta took it upon herself to personally care for all of the younger and newer girls, showing them love she had never known at their age.

But as much as she loved the others, not a one of them compared to Ianthe. She was a small, slender girl, a year or two younger than Jokasta. She had been at the shelter before Jokasta had even come to it, and it was she who truly made the house a home. When Jokasta first told her that she used to sleep on the docks near the Opera House, Ianthe brightened with a shining inner light, an innocent enthusiasm Jokasta had never seen before. She would ask all about the singers and dancers who went into the House’s grand halls, and were they very beautiful, and did Jokasta remember any of their songs? For Ianthe, Jokasta stretched her memory beyond the misery of her existence to try and pick out those brief glimpses of beauty to share. They would fall asleep facing each other in the same bed, making stories out of their hard lives.

When Jokasta was twelve, the caretaker of the Charity gathered all the girls, and gave them some very exciting news. It was not uncommon for a girl to be adopted here or there, usually by some visiting Hoshidan or Nohrian noble family. Over the years, Jokasta understood the reality that a friend might be here today and gone the next week, only to be replaced by a new face fresh off the streets a month later. It was more of a happy occasion than sad, knowing (or hoping) that the girls were going to families all their own.

But this was more. In an unprecedented show of generosity, a Nohrian noble family with an estate in the city of Cyrkensia was looking to take in not one or two but five orphaned girls. The girls would be raised in society, learning what it meant to be true Nohrian nobility. The family left it in the hands of the caretaker to select the five girls, who assured them she would not choose anyone who vehemently wished against it. Among them, she said, Jokasta was her first pick. With some begging on Jokasta’s part, Ianthe was her second. Soon enough, the two girls, accompanied by three others, were sent off to their new family, leaving the shelter behind.

House Klein
House Klein was a family of some middling rank among the Nohrian nobility. Given their extended residence in Cyrkensia, and given the impending war and subsequent rise in fanatic Nohrian patriotism, their loyalty to the Nohrian crown had recently come into question. If they were truly loyal, the rumors spread, why not return to Nohr and resume their residence in the capital, rather than waste away in a neutral foreign country, surrounded by Hoshidans? In order to repair their reputation at no real cost to their lifestyle, it was the Klein matriarch’s grand idea to foster five young Cyrkensian girls — what better show of loyalty could there be than to turn five foreign brats into upstanding, loyal, and proud Nohrian citizens? All without even having to leave their glorious estate near the water, and without risking their only son to the war effort. It was the perfect plan.

Perfect for everyone except those five girls, it turned out. It became readily apparent within even the first week that this was not to be the comfortable, loving home the girls had always dreamed of. They were plied with fine dresses and two grand bedrooms to share between them, that was true, but they were given a meal time separate from the lord and lady and their only child, a boy of fifteen. Their tutoring sessions seemed endless, art and etiquette and history and everything that was deemed necessary for any Nohrian lady of good standing to know. And every day, constant reminders from the entire household, from the servants to the teachers to the noble family themselves, of the gratitude they should feel towards the Kleins and to Nohr for being in such a generous situation.

All of it might have been bearable as long as they had each other. It was not ideal, but Jokasta stuck with these girls who were now as close as sisters to her, and to Ianthe most of all. They shared a room, shared all of their secrets, all of their frustrations with the lord and lady and their snotty son. They took their meals all together, they played together, and sometimes it seemed as if just the five of them were the whole world. The might walk and talk like Nohrian’s now, read Nohrian books and memorize Nohrian history and pledge themselves to a Nohrian king they’d never know, but deep down they’d always be Cyrkensian street rats together.

When the Jokasta was sixteen, Lissie, one of her sisters, came to her with a confession. The lord’s son, Albert, had been harassing her, following her, cornering her, and it had been going on for weeks. She was coming to her wits end, knowing if she complained or spoke against him, she would be called ungrateful, or a liar, or worse. Lissie was only a little older than Jokasta, but the only option she saw before her was begging Lady Klein to marry her off. It didn’t matter to who, anyone would do as long as it got her out of this house and away from Albert. And within a year, it was done, Jokasta could only watch, heart breaking and powerless, as Lissie was married to an Nohrian lord, and moved away to his estate in Windmire. The other four girls never saw her again.

Things only became worse from there. Deprived of his primary victim, Albert turned his attentions to the other four girls collectively, harassing them whenever one of them happened to be away from the others. Ianthe, shiest and youngest of their group, received the worst of it, until Jokasta vowed to never leave her side, lest her precious Ianthe fall victim to his vile, entitled, spoiled attentions. Some days her palms bled from clutching her fists so tightly together, trying to keep herself from attacking him. On nights like those, Ianthe would clean the cuts, and thank Jokasta for always being there for her. On nights like those, Jokasta was acutely aware that Ianthe was only here because Jokasta had begged for her to be among the five, all those years ago.

Baldur
Jokasta was almost eighteen when she first laid eyes on Baldur, and everything changed.

The situation with Albert was becoming increasingly ugly. It was all Jokasta could do to keep Ianthe, and herself, out of his way, and their options for defending themselves were growing slim. Worse than that, now that the girls were of age, the lord and lady were looking to marry them all off, as they had done with Lissie years before. Most days, Jokasta felt as if she were choking on her heart in her throat, watching her future set out before her on a path she had no power to choose.

The first day they brought the wyvern to the estate, its angry roars echoed off of every hallway. It was chained and caged, fresh caught from the valley of wyverns and completely untamed. The war had caught up with Albert, and his mother and father could no longer protect him from the Nohrian army, which demanded all able-bodied fighters. If there was no avoiding it, then at the very least their son would ride into battle on a mighty wyvern, the ultimate symbol of Nohrian power and honor. The nobles back in Windmire would eat their words, questioning their house’s loyalty.

The pesky matter of Albert never having so much as seen a wyvern or held an axe before didn’t seem to overly concern the lord and lady.

Jokasta was in a fiery, foul mood that day, seething with an unchecked rage. Lady Klein had blithely announced that morning that a suitable husband had been found for Ianthe, that the engagement was already agreed upon by the two families and the wedding was fast approaching, all without ever having informed Ianthe of this beforehand. That left only Jokasta left unaccounted for, their other two sisters having been sent off to their new husbands’ estates earlier in the year. Ianthe had cried and cried in Jokasta’s arms as soon as they were alone after breakfast, and Jokasta could find no words to console her that weren’t lies.

She and Ianthe hadn’t been invited to come see the great unveiling of the wyvern in the estate’s courtyard, but neither had they been forbidden from it. In between their chores, the girls sneaked out to wait with the other servants while the wyvern was dragged out before a waiting Albert.

The young lord puffed himself up with pride as he watched the wyvern snap and thrash at its restraints, snorting hot air from its nostrils hot enough to burn the weeds peeking through the dirt. The mercenary who captured the beast claimed that its color was rare and valuable, and they weren’t likely to find a more robust wyvern in all of Nohr. He spun his sale’s pitch to the lord and lady while Albert circled the creature, acting very brave and important for someone who was staring down a chained animal.

Noticing Jokaste and Ianthe watching, he sauntered over to brag about his future as a Wyvern Knight in the king’s personal retinue. Jokasta didn’t have to know anything about the Nohrian army to know he was lying through his teeth. As he slung an arm over Ianthe’s shoulder, leaning in close, singing his own praises and his empty consolations for her impending marriage, because the house just wouldn’t be the same without her shy objections to his attention, Jokasta felt just as furious as the snarling wyvern half a courtyard away.

Maybe the beast’s raw, primal anger inspired her in some way; perhaps the sight of such unfiltered indignation reminded her that she had not always kept her heart trapped in her throat, that she had been happy once, and was happy no longer. Because in that moment, when Albert leaned in towards Ianthe’s flinching, frightened face, Jokasta did something she had never done before — she didn’t hold herself back.

Her fist slammed into his face. He stumbled, tripping over a startled Ianthe, and the three of them landed in a bramble of limbs and on the cobblestones. Albert was screeching something incredulous, and Jokasta was already scrambling to her feet, feeling alive. The wyvern was screaming, the lord and lady were screaming, and between the angry shouts, the how dare you, Jokasta?!s and the you’ll pay for thats, something snapped.

Something literally snapped.

All heads turned as one a the sound of chains tearing from their hold. Everyone from the servants, the mercenary beast tamer, the lord and lady, Albert, looked on in horror as the wyvern raised its head free, shaking itself from the last of its restraints. Then all it once, its eyes, red like embers, fixed on the young bastard of a lord who had been poking and prodding it and bragging about taming it, as if such a sniveling coward could. Just as Albert raised to his feet, hands clamped around Ianthe’s arms and dragging her up with him, the wyvern drew back its head, and Jokasta knew without knowing that it was ready to roast its tormenter alive. That would have been all well and good with her, if only Ianthe weren’t in his grasp.

With a speed she didn’t know she had, Jokasta threw herself at the miniature dragon, scrambling onto the remnants of its metal collar to pull its head away, to throw off the course of its flame, anything to spare Ianthe. She slapped its snout, scolding it, berating it for letting itself get trapped in an awful place like this, for letting itself become enraged by people like his who weren’t worth its time. By the time she finished screaming, she wasn’t sure anymore if she was talking to the wyvern or to herself.

By the time she finished screaming, she wasn’t on the ground anymore.

As the vertigo hit her, she realized she was a dozen feet in the air, clinging for dear life to the neck and chains that were still attached to the wyvern. When she looked aside, its bright, coal-red eye was staring straight into her own, and he was flapping his mighty wings, keeping them both aloft above the courtyard.

Dimly, Jokasta was aware of Ianthe’s voice screaming up at her. Between her heartbeat thundering in her ears and the sound of wingbeats thundering around the rest of her, it took a moment before Jokasta understood what Ianthe was saying:

Go! Get away from here! Take her away from here! I’ll be fine!

The wyvern didn’t need to be told twice. Jokasta could only watch as the estate, and the only person left who she loved faded away from view beneath her.

The Army
It took Jokasta weeks to forgive the wyvern for taking her away from Ianthe. When they landed finally, hours outside of the city of Cyrkensia, Jokasta wanted to scream, to kick the beast, to get back to Ianthe by any means possible. But over time, in the days to come, she understood the opportunity that had been given to her, and was forced to accept that their paths had no diverged.

Jokasta called the wyvern Baldur, and their relationship took some careful coaxing. At first she was too angry to even look at him, and he too interested in his regained freedom to pay her much mind. But they had seen something of themselves in each other in that moment in the courtyard, and neither of them strayed far from the other in the days, and then weeks, and then months to come.

She knew she couldn’t go to Hoshido, despite her ire for Nohr. Anyone in the company of a wyvern was likely to be shot on sight, no questions asked, should they be seen anywhere within miles of the Hoshidan front lines. That meant that Nohr was her only option, much as she disliked it. If there was anything to be grateful for, it was the anonymity that the army provided. A lone girl wandering through the country with a wyvern was impossible to miss, and she had no way of knowing if the Kleins were looking for her; in the army, a wyvern-mounted soldier was much less conspicuous.

So Jokasta enlisted, and she and Baldur began training with the other recruits. The wyvern units were less uniform than the infantry units, with recruits of wildly varying backgrounds. Despite their complete inexperience, they worked hard, and they worked well together.

For the first two years, Jokasta kept to herself, and kept her head low. No matter how much better off she felt, every night she tossed and turned in her bunk, consumed with nightmares and guilt at having left Ianthe behind. Jokasta had to trust that she’d be okay, but still . . .

It wasn’t long before she earned herself a reputation as an ice queen. Rumors flew around her unit that she thought she was better than everyone else, because she rarely talked to others, and interacted almost solely with her wyvern, and because she had the impeccable manners of a Nohrian lady. For her part, Jokasta was happy to let the reputation stand — she was no longer interested in forming relationships with others. Men she had come to disdain, seeing in them only Albert’s pomp and cruelty, and women . . . women she had difficulty speaking with, without being reminded of Ianthe, and all the family who were no longer with her. Baldur was her only friend now, her only family.

None of that stopped Lusinia from trying.

Lusinia was a fellow wyvern rider in Jokasta’s unit, a talented and friendly soldier. It took time, and unending patience on Lusinia’s part, but eventually, she came to crack the surface of Jokasta’s icy facade. Slowly, Jokasta felt something inside of herself warm again.

Jokasta was twenty, and she had fallen in love.

Even during her time in the army, Jokasta had not come to love Nohr as a nation. It had produced pompous, greedy, cruel nobility like the family that had raised her, she she cared nothing for its king or its war. But she was part of its army, and it didn’t matter whether she cared or not — she fought their battles all the same. With Baldur underneath her, her wyvern unit around her, and Lusinia at her side, it was alright with her.

And then even that came to an end all too soon. It was a routine scouting mission, but routine didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. Flying by the dark of night, on their wyverns, Jokasta and her unit were almost invisible. It was by sheer fate alone that a sharp-eyed Hoshidan archer caught a glimpse of them, and alerted his camp to the approaching Nohrians. Knowing that they had lost the element of surprise, Jokasta’s unit began to turn back, flying high to stay out of reach of the Hoshidan archers.

Maybe it was a lucky shot, or maybe it was the work of a prodigy, Jokasta would never know. An arrow shot through the dark, and caught Lusinia’s wyvern in the neck. It shuddered beneath her, its wings going still, and began to free fall out of the sky, speeding, speeding to the ground. Jokasta stared in horror as Lusinia fell with it, shouting at her wyvern to wake up, to hold on, to fly and save them both.

Baldur flew into a dead dive, pulling his wings against his back as he and Jokasta raced to try and make it to Lusinia in time, to grab her even if her wyvern was lost. He pushed himself faster than he had ever gone, even without Jokasta urging him on, because her mind was too numb with fear to give him any commands. But they were too late. Lusinia’s wyvern thudded to the ground with a sickening crunch, and Lusinia did not rise up from where she landed.

Jokasta had learned well the futility of loving things by now. Anything you care for, any part of yourself that you place within other people, is destined only to be ripped away from you. She believed once that pain like that could be healed by the careful, patient touch of another, but she knows now that even that small hope is fleeting. She makes sure not to make the same mistake anymore. Any work Lusinia did to thaw Jokasta’s frigid exterior was erased; Jokasta is every bit the distant, icy queen she was when she first came to the army. The only thing that’s changed is her newfound hatred for Hoshido; Nohr might have separated her from someone she loved once, but Hoshido outright killed the other, and she’s willing to side with the lesser of two evils.

Trivia:
● Jokasta claims that Baldur is the only male she likes; she distrusts all other men.
● Jokasta is a lesbian.
● Every night, Jokasta brushes out and then re-braids her hair, to keep it from getting everywhere. The memory of having to shave it all off, too matted and ragged to unknot, when she was young prevents her from cutting it off.
● On her off-time in the army, Jokasta and Baldur go flying off alone. She likes the time to herself, and it makes it easier to avoid the other soldiers in the army. She tells all of her secrets and fears to Baldur.
● Despite her love of flying and her companionship with Baldur, Jokasta is not fond of horses or horseback riding.
● Jokasta's favorite color is actually pink, not blue. Her favorite flower is lily-of-the-valley.
● There are slits in her visor for her to see out of — her vision is totally fine underneath the mask. Her eyes are yellow-gold.
● After coming to the army, Jokasta found that she was very sturdy, and has a lot of strength. However, she has absolutely no talent for casting or defending against magic.
● She's not actually sure when her real birthday is; the birthday she celebrates is the birthday the orphanage gave her.

RP: I RP lit most comfortably, ranging from a few to several paragraphs, depending on what I think the post requires. I never expect anyone to "match" a post — RPing is supposed to be fun, and feel natural! There's no sense in trying to force it to be longer or shorter than it has to be, or it becomes stressful. These days, I generally RP on Discord. If you're in the group, feel free to ask for my Discord info!

I'm also happy to headcanon, or whatever the kids call "squeeing about our OCs" these days.

Points: 22,250 (updated 11/26)

Misc. Inventory: Princess Crown | Golden Clip | Princess Bow | Tonic x1 | Oni Mask | Level Up x1 (used 7/4) | Prince Crown

Additional Character | C-Rank Weapon | Second Seal | Princess Bow | Legendary Weapon | B-Rank Weapon | Friendship Seal

Description

Basics:
Jokasta | 25 | Female | Nohr
6'01" | 155 lbs | Human | September 24

Class Stats:
● [Promoted] Wyvern Lord

● Axes: A Rank | Lances: E Rank

● Baldur | Male Wyvern
● Silver Axe | B

● Jokasta's Axe | B | Female only. Res +2; after battle, Str/Skl -2 (stats recover by 1 each turn)

● Baldur's Bravery | A | Unit can make two consecutive attacks when initiating combat regardless of Speed. Def and Res -4.

● Calyx: If Jokasta battles a male enemy unit, she gains +20 to her Critical Hit rate and deals +4 damage to her attacks. [Adapted from 'Unmask' skill, replacing vs female unites with vs male units.]

Base Stats:
LVL: 20 (Promoted)
HP: 40
STR: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁣🁣🁣🁣 (50) (46 with Baldur's Bravery penalty)
MAG: 🁣 (0)
SKL: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (40)
SPD: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (40)
LCK: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (40)
DEF: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁣🁣🁣🁣 (50) (46 with Baldur's Bravery penalty)
RES: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (30)
MOV: 🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢🁢 (7)

(18 Stat Points Remainder)
Personal Info:
✔︎✔︎ Baldur | Music | Women | Flowers | Sleeping In | Heights | Hot Baths
✘✘ Men | Rainy Days | Archers | Hoshido | Nobility

Personality:
+ Protective | Motherly | Hard Working | Passionate
- Outwardly Cold | Mistrusting | Cynical | Vengeful

● Once a playful young woman, an eager storyteller, and a protective and loyal friend, Jokasta has lost too many things she's loved to wear her heart on her sleeve any longer. Pain has locked her smile away behind an icy facade, and she has a reputation among her fellow soldiers as an aloof and distant snob.H Her manners are impeccable, and she speaks and moves with the grace of a high-born lady. She is no-nonsense, and works hard and without distraction to get a job done, which leads many to assume that she prefers to work alone, or thinks she considers herself above others. In truth, Jokasta greatly admires the hard work and kind hearts of the people around her, but she no longer recognizes those traits within herself. In the moment, she is too consumed with loss and pain, and an unyielding desire to see that pain paid in kind — for now, she focuses her quiet rage on fighting Hoshido.

Behind the masks, both literal and metaphorical, behind the tiredness and the sadness, there's still a woman whose favorite activities are reading a good book, or taking a long, hot bath, or telling stories into a night with a friend as sleepless as she is. But those parts of her are buried so far inside of her that even she's not sure if she can ever coax them out again. As it is, only Baldur, her beloved wyvern and only companion, is the only one who sees parts of the girl she used to be in the woman she is now.
History:
Orphanage
Jokasta must have had a family, at some point. Children don't come from nothing, she knows that well enough; what she knows better still is that children often end up as nothing all the same. Whoever her parents might have been, it was clear to Jokasta that they hadn't cared to keep her—or cared enough about her to stay alive for her sake—and her first memories were of the gutters of Cyrkensia's bustling and lively streets, orphaned and alone.

Despite the harshness of her circumstances, Jokasta never developed the quick fingers and quicker instincts necessary for a child her age to survive on her own. When she looked to steal a piece of bread or a shining trinket, she was always easily caught and chased off, and she managed as long as she did solely through the kindness of strangers. On cold or rainy knights, she would sleep beneath the eaves of the Opera House, and let the music lull her to sleep. By the time she was eight she was lean, dirty, and desperate for anything else in life.

After too many years sleeping conspicuously either near or directly beneath the Opera House exterior, a concerned citizen must have contacted a local shelter for children — Jokasta never learned the specifics, but in either case, she was a little past eight when a woman with a kind face came to her one afternoon. Her smile was warm, but it was nothing compared to the hot meal she offered Jokasta if she agreed to come with her. Jokasta didn't hesitate for even a moment.

The shelter was a friendly place run by good people, and for the first time in her life, Jokasta felt fortunate. Despite the rumors of stirring war to the north, Cyrkensia remained blissfully neutral, free to spend its money and time on songstresses and luxury instead of armies and weaponry. Thanks to the patronage of both Nohrian and Hoshidan nobility, the city's public services were generally well-funded, and the Charity Orphanage for Girls that Jokasta now called home was clean and warm and uncrowded. Here was a place she could make friends instead of rivals and enemies, a place where adult hands were extended in comfort instead of anger.

Under the care of the orphanage, Jokasta bloomed. Her hair, so matted and tangled it had to be shorn off when she first arrived, grew out soft and clean; her scrawny, bony body plumped to a healthy weight, her sicknesses were attended to, her belly was full. Most of all, she loved the other girls, who were her friends and her sisters and her family. As one of the older charges of the shelter, at the strapping age of ten, Jokasta took it upon herself to personally care for all of the younger and newer girls, showing them love she had never known at their age.

But as much as she loved the others, not a one of them compared to Ianthe. She was a small, slender girl, a year or two younger than Jokasta. She had been at the shelter before Jokasta had even come to it, and it was she who truly made the house a home. When Jokasta first told her that she used to sleep on the docks near the Opera House, Ianthe brightened with a shining inner light, an innocent enthusiasm Jokasta had never seen before. She would ask all about the singers and dancers who went into the House’s grand halls, and were they very beautiful, and did Jokasta remember any of their songs? For Ianthe, Jokasta stretched her memory beyond the misery of her existence to try and pick out those brief glimpses of beauty to share. They would fall asleep facing each other in the same bed, making stories out of their hard lives.

When Jokasta was twelve, the caretaker of the Charity gathered all the girls, and gave them some very exciting news. It was not uncommon for a girl to be adopted here or there, usually by some visiting Hoshidan or Nohrian noble family. Over the years, Jokasta understood the reality that a friend might be here today and gone the next week, only to be replaced by a new face fresh off the streets a month later. It was more of a happy occasion than sad, knowing (or hoping) that the girls were going to families all their own.

But this was more. In an unprecedented show of generosity, a Nohrian noble family with an estate in the city of Cyrkensia was looking to take in not one or two but five orphaned girls. The girls would be raised in society, learning what it meant to be true Nohrian nobility. The family left it in the hands of the caretaker to select the five girls, who assured them she would not choose anyone who vehemently wished against it. Among them, she said, Jokasta was her first pick. With some begging on Jokasta’s part, Ianthe was her second. Soon enough, the two girls, accompanied by three others, were sent off to their new family, leaving the shelter behind.

House Klein
House Klein was a family of some middling rank among the Nohrian nobility. Given their extended residence in Cyrkensia, and given the impending war and subsequent rise in fanatic Nohrian patriotism, their loyalty to the Nohrian crown had recently come into question. If they were truly loyal, the rumors spread, why not return to Nohr and resume their residence in the capital, rather than waste away in a neutral foreign country, surrounded by Hoshidans? In order to repair their reputation at no real cost to their lifestyle, it was the Klein matriarch’s grand idea to foster five young Cyrkensian girls — what better show of loyalty could there be than to turn five foreign brats into upstanding, loyal, and proud Nohrian citizens? All without even having to leave their glorious estate near the water, and without risking their only son to the war effort. It was the perfect plan.

Perfect for everyone except those five girls, it turned out. It became readily apparent within even the first week that this was not to be the comfortable, loving home the girls had always dreamed of. They were plied with fine dresses and two grand bedrooms to share between them, that was true, but they were given a meal time separate from the lord and lady and their only child, a boy of fifteen. Their tutoring sessions seemed endless, art and etiquette and history and everything that was deemed necessary for any Nohrian lady of good standing to know. And every day, constant reminders from the entire household, from the servants to the teachers to the noble family themselves, of the gratitude they should feel towards the Kleins and to Nohr for being in such a generous situation.

All of it might have been bearable as long as they had each other. It was not ideal, but Jokasta stuck with these girls who were now as close as sisters to her, and to Ianthe most of all. They shared a room, shared all of their secrets, all of their frustrations with the lord and lady and their snotty son. They took their meals all together, they played together, and sometimes it seemed as if just the five of them were the whole world. The might walk and talk like Nohrian’s now, read Nohrian books and memorize Nohrian history and pledge themselves to a Nohrian king they’d never know, but deep down they’d always be Cyrkensian street rats together.

When the Jokasta was sixteen, Lissie, one of her sisters, came to her with a confession. The lord’s son, Albert, had been harassing her, following her, cornering her, and it had been going on for weeks. She was coming to her wits end, knowing if she complained or spoke against him, she would be called ungrateful, or a liar, or worse. Lissie was only a little older than Jokasta, but the only option she saw before her was begging Lady Klein to marry her off. It didn’t matter to who, anyone would do as long as it got her out of this house and away from Albert. And within a year, it was done, Jokasta could only watch, heart breaking and powerless, as Lissie was married to an Nohrian lord, and moved away to his estate in Windmire. The other four girls never saw her again.

Things only became worse from there. Deprived of his primary victim, Albert turned his attentions to the other four girls collectively, harassing them whenever one of them happened to be away from the others. Ianthe, shiest and youngest of their group, received the worst of it, until Jokasta vowed to never leave her side, lest her precious Ianthe fall victim to his vile, entitled, spoiled attentions. Some days her palms bled from clutching her fists so tightly together, trying to keep herself from attacking him. On nights like those, Ianthe would clean the cuts, and thank Jokasta for always being there for her. On nights like those, Jokasta was acutely aware that Ianthe was only here because Jokasta had begged for her to be among the five, all those years ago.

Baldur
Jokasta was almost eighteen when she first laid eyes on Baldur, and everything changed.

The situation with Albert was becoming increasingly ugly. It was all Jokasta could do to keep Ianthe, and herself, out of his way, and their options for defending themselves were growing slim. Worse than that, now that the girls were of age, the lord and lady were looking to marry them all off, as they had done with Lissie years before. Most days, Jokasta felt as if she were choking on her heart in her throat, watching her future set out before her on a path she had no power to choose.

The first day they brought the wyvern to the estate, its angry roars echoed off of every hallway. It was chained and caged, fresh caught from the valley of wyverns and completely untamed. The war had caught up with Albert, and his mother and father could no longer protect him from the Nohrian army, which demanded all able-bodied fighters. If there was no avoiding it, then at the very least their son would ride into battle on a mighty wyvern, the ultimate symbol of Nohrian power and honor. The nobles back in Windmire would eat their words, questioning their house’s loyalty.

The pesky matter of Albert never having so much as seen a wyvern or held an axe before didn’t seem to overly concern the lord and lady.

Jokasta was in a fiery, foul mood that day, seething with an unchecked rage. Lady Klein had blithely announced that morning that a suitable husband had been found for Ianthe, that the engagement was already agreed upon by the two families and the wedding was fast approaching, all without ever having informed Ianthe of this beforehand. That left only Jokasta left unaccounted for, their other two sisters having been sent off to their new husbands’ estates earlier in the year. Ianthe had cried and cried in Jokasta’s arms as soon as they were alone after breakfast, and Jokasta could find no words to console her that weren’t lies.

She and Ianthe hadn’t been invited to come see the great unveiling of the wyvern in the estate’s courtyard, but neither had they been forbidden from it. In between their chores, the girls sneaked out to wait with the other servants while the wyvern was dragged out before a waiting Albert.

The young lord puffed himself up with pride as he watched the wyvern snap and thrash at its restraints, snorting hot air from its nostrils hot enough to burn the weeds peeking through the dirt. The mercenary who captured the beast claimed that its color was rare and valuable, and they weren’t likely to find a more robust wyvern in all of Nohr. He spun his sale’s pitch to the lord and lady while Albert circled the creature, acting very brave and important for someone who was staring down a chained animal.

Noticing Jokaste and Ianthe watching, he sauntered over to brag about his future as a Wyvern Knight in the king’s personal retinue. Jokasta didn’t have to know anything about the Nohrian army to know he was lying through his teeth. As he slung an arm over Ianthe’s shoulder, leaning in close, singing his own praises and his empty consolations for her impending marriage, because the house just wouldn’t be the same without her shy objections to his attention, Jokasta felt just as furious as the snarling wyvern half a courtyard away.

Maybe the beast’s raw, primal anger inspired her in some way; perhaps the sight of such unfiltered indignation reminded her that she had not always kept her heart trapped in her throat, that she had been happy once, and was happy no longer. Because in that moment, when Albert leaned in towards Ianthe’s flinching, frightened face, Jokasta did something she had never done before — she didn’t hold herself back.

Her fist slammed into his face. He stumbled, tripping over a startled Ianthe, and the three of them landed in a bramble of limbs and on the cobblestones. Albert was screeching something incredulous, and Jokasta was already scrambling to her feet, feeling alive. The wyvern was screaming, the lord and lady were screaming, and between the angry shouts, the how dare you, Jokasta?!s and the you’ll pay for thats, something snapped.

Something literally snapped.

All heads turned as one a the sound of chains tearing from their hold. Everyone from the servants, the mercenary beast tamer, the lord and lady, Albert, looked on in horror as the wyvern raised its head free, shaking itself from the last of its restraints. Then all it once, its eyes, red like embers, fixed on the young bastard of a lord who had been poking and prodding it and bragging about taming it, as if such a sniveling coward could. Just as Albert raised to his feet, hands clamped around Ianthe’s arms and dragging her up with him, the wyvern drew back its head, and Jokasta knew without knowing that it was ready to roast its tormenter alive. That would have been all well and good with her, if only Ianthe weren’t in his grasp.

With a speed she didn’t know she had, Jokasta threw herself at the miniature dragon, scrambling onto the remnants of its metal collar to pull its head away, to throw off the course of its flame, anything to spare Ianthe. She slapped its snout, scolding it, berating it for letting itself get trapped in an awful place like this, for letting itself become enraged by people like his who weren’t worth its time. By the time she finished screaming, she wasn’t sure anymore if she was talking to the wyvern or to herself.

By the time she finished screaming, she wasn’t on the ground anymore.

As the vertigo hit her, she realized she was a dozen feet in the air, clinging for dear life to the neck and chains that were still attached to the wyvern. When she looked aside, its bright, coal-red eye was staring straight into her own, and he was flapping his mighty wings, keeping them both aloft above the courtyard.

Dimly, Jokasta was aware of Ianthe’s voice screaming up at her. Between her heartbeat thundering in her ears and the sound of wingbeats thundering around the rest of her, it took a moment before Jokasta understood what Ianthe was saying:

Go! Get away from here! Take her away from here! I’ll be fine!

The wyvern didn’t need to be told twice. Jokasta could only watch as the estate, and the only person left who she loved faded away from view beneath her.

The Army
It took Jokasta weeks to forgive the wyvern for taking her away from Ianthe. When they landed finally, hours outside of the city of Cyrkensia, Jokasta wanted to scream, to kick the beast, to get back to Ianthe by any means possible. But over time, in the days to come, she understood the opportunity that had been given to her, and was forced to accept that their paths had no diverged.

Jokasta called the wyvern Baldur, and their relationship took some careful coaxing. At first she was too angry to even look at him, and he too interested in his regained freedom to pay her much mind. But they had seen something of themselves in each other in that moment in the courtyard, and neither of them strayed far from the other in the days, and then weeks, and then months to come.

She knew she couldn’t go to Hoshido, despite her ire for Nohr. Anyone in the company of a wyvern was likely to be shot on sight, no questions asked, should they be seen anywhere within miles of the Hoshidan front lines. That meant that Nohr was her only option, much as she disliked it. If there was anything to be grateful for, it was the anonymity that the army provided. A lone girl wandering through the country with a wyvern was impossible to miss, and she had no way of knowing if the Kleins were looking for her; in the army, a wyvern-mounted soldier was much less conspicuous.

So Jokasta enlisted, and she and Baldur began training with the other recruits. The wyvern units were less uniform than the infantry units, with recruits of wildly varying backgrounds. Despite their complete inexperience, they worked hard, and they worked well together.

For the first two years, Jokasta kept to herself, and kept her head low. No matter how much better off she felt, every night she tossed and turned in her bunk, consumed with nightmares and guilt at having left Ianthe behind. Jokasta had to trust that she’d be okay, but still . . .

It wasn’t long before she earned herself a reputation as an ice queen. Rumors flew around her unit that she thought she was better than everyone else, because she rarely talked to others, and interacted almost solely with her wyvern, and because she had the impeccable manners of a Nohrian lady. For her part, Jokasta was happy to let the reputation stand — she was no longer interested in forming relationships with others. Men she had come to disdain, seeing in them only Albert’s pomp and cruelty, and women . . . women she had difficulty speaking with, without being reminded of Ianthe, and all the family who were no longer with her. Baldur was her only friend now, her only family.

None of that stopped Lusinia from trying.

Lusinia was a fellow wyvern rider in Jokasta’s unit, a talented and friendly soldier. It took time, and unending patience on Lusinia’s part, but eventually, she came to crack the surface of Jokasta’s icy facade. Slowly, Jokasta felt something inside of herself warm again.

Jokasta was twenty, and she had fallen in love.

Even during her time in the army, Jokasta had not come to love Nohr as a nation. It had produced pompous, greedy, cruel nobility like the family that had raised her, she she cared nothing for its king or its war. But she was part of its army, and it didn’t matter whether she cared or not — she fought their battles all the same. With Baldur underneath her, her wyvern unit around her, and Lusinia at her side, it was alright with her.

And then even that came to an end all too soon. It was a routine scouting mission, but routine didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. Flying by the dark of night, on their wyverns, Jokasta and her unit were almost invisible. It was by sheer fate alone that a sharp-eyed Hoshidan archer caught a glimpse of them, and alerted his camp to the approaching Nohrians. Knowing that they had lost the element of surprise, Jokasta’s unit began to turn back, flying high to stay out of reach of the Hoshidan archers.

Maybe it was a lucky shot, or maybe it was the work of a prodigy, Jokasta would never know. An arrow shot through the dark, and caught Lusinia’s wyvern in the neck. It shuddered beneath her, its wings going still, and began to free fall out of the sky, speeding, speeding to the ground. Jokasta stared in horror as Lusinia fell with it, shouting at her wyvern to wake up, to hold on, to fly and save them both.

Baldur flew into a dead dive, pulling his wings against his back as he and Jokasta raced to try and make it to Lusinia in time, to grab her even if her wyvern was lost. He pushed himself faster than he had ever gone, even without Jokasta urging him on, because her mind was too numb with fear to give him any commands. But they were too late. Lusinia’s wyvern thudded to the ground with a sickening crunch, and Lusinia did not rise up from where she landed.

Jokasta had learned well the futility of loving things by now. Anything you care for, any part of yourself that you place within other people, is destined only to be ripped away from you. She believed once that pain like that could be healed by the careful, patient touch of another, but she knows now that even that small hope is fleeting. She makes sure not to make the same mistake anymore. Any work Lusinia did to thaw Jokasta’s frigid exterior was erased; Jokasta is every bit the distant, icy queen she was when she first came to the army. The only thing that’s changed is her newfound hatred for Hoshido; Nohr might have separated her from someone she loved once, but Hoshido outright killed the other, and she’s willing to side with the lesser of two evils.

Trivia:
● Jokasta claims that Baldur is the only male she likes; she distrusts all other men.
● Jokasta is a lesbian.
● Every night, Jokasta brushes out and then re-braids her hair, to keep it from getting everywhere. The memory of having to shave it all off, too matted and ragged to unknot, when she was young prevents her from cutting it off.
● On her off-time in the army, Jokasta and Baldur go flying off alone. She likes the time to herself, and it makes it easier to avoid the other soldiers in the army. She tells all of her secrets and fears to Baldur.
● Despite her love of flying and her companionship with Baldur, Jokasta is not fond of horses or horseback riding.
● Jokasta's favorite color is actually pink, not blue. Her favorite flower is lily-of-the-valley.
● There are slits in her visor for her to see out of — her vision is totally fine underneath the mask. Her eyes are yellow-gold.
● After coming to the army, Jokasta found that she was very sturdy, and has a lot of strength. However, she has absolutely no talent for casting or defending against magic.
● She's not actually sure when her real birthday is; the birthday she celebrates is the birthday the orphanage gave her.

RP: I RP lit most comfortably, ranging from a few to several paragraphs, depending on what I think the post requires. I never expect anyone to "match" a post — RPing is supposed to be fun, and feel natural! There's no sense in trying to force it to be longer or shorter than it has to be, or it becomes stressful. These days, I generally RP on Discord. If you're in the group, feel free to ask for my Discord info!

I'm also happy to headcanon, or whatever the kids call "squeeing about our OCs" these days.

Points: 22,250 (updated 11/26)

Misc. Inventory: Princess Crown | Golden Clip | Princess Bow | Tonic x1 | Oni Mask | Level Up x1 (used 7/4) | Prince Crown

Additional Character | C-Rank Weapon | Second Seal | Princess Bow | Legendary Weapon | B-Rank Weapon | Friendship Seal