character information

[pilgrimages]

quick hooks

mid 20s.
bisexual.
superpowered.
the witcher meets crystalpunk with religious cults.

has an eldritch god trapped inside of her, taps into its power to fight a war.

just wants to earn love/redemption from a theocratic society that hates her existence.

as a result of anger issues from trauma, control over said eldritch being is questionable. needs to learn to Let It Go 🎵

details

background

juna was born and raised in neunstadt, a community of mostly former soldiers who held fast against polonivka in the third war of expansion. as a teen, she was betrayed by her first girlfriend and forcibly outed as bisexual, which led to queerphobic hate crimes and abuse by her community and family.

this trauma led to rage and pain that made her a prime vessel for a goetia (nature spirit of destruction and rebirth) called astra, which possessed her. juna keeps its power contained, but struggles to control it when overwhelmed by emotions like anger and grief.

theurgians, the dominant religious group, believe that women like juna become possessed by these spirits, which they call Sin, as a result of some transgression — as such, they consider these women repulsive. despite this, the theurgian theocracy of çarcagne uses what they call Sinners, women possessed by goetia, as soldiers to wage their war against polonivka.

recruited by the çarcagnans, juna and six other Sinners train under the mentorship of a theurgian priest and use their power to fight the poloniks.

personality

convinced that she has committed some transgression by her mere existence and pain, juna is primarily motivated by the desire to redeem herself and earn love from her community. she does this through acts of service — protecting them, fighting for them, etc. — but also through trying to repress the parts of her that her society deems unpleasant, including her queerness, her rage, and her power.

however, her disposition is not remotely meek and servile. because of the time she spent on her own after being alienated by her hometown, she has grown cynical and cold. she distrusts others, speaks harshly, and is pretty pessimistic about most things.

she strives for recognition mostly because she conflates it with acceptance and belonging. however, the denial of love and acceptance, and the ongoing need to repress the pain that comes with it, also makes her an unpredictable powder keg of anger and pain. for instance, she can be deliberately mean as a way of assuring control over the self-fulfilling prophecy of how people don't like her and will reject her.

more than anything, she needs to learn how to confront the anger and hurt she feels towards the communities that continue to reject her. that way she can stop seeking love from a place that will never give it, and learn to move past that anger and hurt towards healing and letting go of it so it no longer controls her life.

powers

all of juna's powers come from the eldritch force contained within her. her connection to the goetia is the only thing that makes her more than an ordinary human — interfering with it would obviously depower her.

when she is fully trained and in control of the connection to her goetia, she has access to all of astra's powers, including:

pyrokinesis/pyrogenesis
umbrakinesis/umbragenesis
photokinesis/photogenesis
telekinesis and telepathy (including flight)
necromancy (motor control over the dead)
personal body transformations (demon physiology — wings, horns, claws, extra eyes, heightened senses, strength, and durability; cellular regeneration; incorporeality, changing states of matter)

however, this requires utter emotional stability (an oxymoron for those who are able to host goetia, as the bond is only created through trauma) as well as training. in reality, juna's powers are poorly controlled and unpredictable. while they never fail to come when called, her unmanaged anger and pain can cause them to come out unsolicited, leading to terrible accidents and outbursts.

in addition, hosting the goetia is slowly killing her. the more she uses her powers, the more ill she grows, coughing up black blood as her insides rot. :) because the goetia is slowly trying to expand further into this world through its connection to juna, and it isn't sentient enough to know how to stop itself.

areas of interest

please piss juna off by:
- prompting discussion of theurgian doctrine, then criticize/dismiss it
- criticizing soldiers and the military
- invading her privacy (especially seeing evidence of her being ill)
- bemoaning the unfairness of circumstance as if it matters

juna hurting people by losing control of powers
others talking juna down (or attempting to talk juna down) after she loses control
juna being full-on possessed by astra

talks about:
- conditional love
- what family is/means, its role
- what power should be used for and who gets to wield it
- what is sin?
- how do we redeem ourselves after transgressing?
- queerness and how queer ppl's upbringing/culture influences relationships (i'd really like to see her chafe with a queer person who does not have any conflict over their queerness and emphasize how they don't rly have anything in common — how queer people accepted into the mainstream ultimately feel no need for Queering the mainstream and therefore accept norms vs challenging them)

i want someone to confront juna with the fact that she was mistreated by family/religion
i want someone to help her process that it's okay to be angry about her mistreatment and the injustice in her society
i want someone to tell her she didn't deserve it and didn't do anything demanding penance/redemption/etc.
i want her to hurt people she loves while she's a big ol' spiraling mess about that loss of purpose/direction
i want people who accept/like/even love her but who are also ultimately using her "for good"
i want her to feel alienated by participating in discussions where people take for granted that she has no philosophies or experiences in common with the Bad Guys.


i want to play with juna's cynical "i might as well be selfish" teen/early 20s era when she hates herself overtly (cw: internalized queerphobia here)

i want to play with brainwashed cult participant theurgian soldier juna and do military mission-y things as well as sort of chip away slowly at the contradictions and inconsistencies that disprove theurgian doctrine

things i'm hoping to figure out through playing juna:
- how might finding belonging in a queerphobic theocracy get reconciled when she's actively discovering the lies in its tenets?

the betrayal of her original love interest — what happens when they meet again? are there still feelings or did juna get over it?

a new love interest (f/nb/trans) who accepts çarcagne as the lesser of two evils and therefore worth supporting vs juna who can't tolerate being used anymore.