NPC Thread

[Iye Khara]

This is the place for putting NPCs. Characters you want to make an appearance in the story, for whatever purpose, for demonstrating a part of your character's history/personality/whatever, but don't feel they merit a place in the characters tab because they're temporary. ie, if you're like me and feel the need to create a profile for NPCs.

If you're not, consider this 'The Painkiller's Dumping Site for Temporary NPCs No One Cares About'.

And I was nearly done with the temporary NPC in question when I accidentally closed the entire browser and lost the whole thing.

So I am a bit irate. >.>

It'll be up later.

[Iye Khara]

Because no band RP is complete without the obligatory crazy ex.

Name: Her birth name is Isabelle Moraes Vieira. Well, she takes issue with the first two names. Concerning the middle name...the name 'Moraes' has just never sat well with her. Being called 'Isabelle Moraes Vieira' leaves a bad aftertaste in her ears. And as for the name Isabelle...well, she figures it's just too damn girly and feminine for her. So from the age of about ten or so, she's been 'Izzie' to anyone she cares to tell. And as such, most know her as simply 'Izzie Vieira', and very few people know her real name.

Birthdate: She was born July 27, 1982, and is thus twenty nine years old.

Role: Izzie Vieira is one of two guitarists of the speed/thrash metal band Fury (a band which, coincidentally, Vivian Nakani-Maisuradze played in for a year from about 2006-2007). Taking cues from such seminal speed/thrash metal bands as Motörhead and Slayer, Fury’s modus operandi, in the strangely verbose words of Izzie herself, is “Play as fast as you fucking can, and then play it faster. Play as hard as you fucking can, and then play it harder. Pour your entire being into the song, and then pour in a little more”. In a significant departure from most thrash/speed bands, Fury eschews the all-too-typical shredding-style of soloing in favour of brief interludes featuring heavily blues-influenced trade-off solos between the two guitarists, and tempers its typically extremely high speeds with a keen sense of groove and riffs that border on seeming like improvised jams at times.

Appearance:


The following images are reflective of Izzie’s appearance, but obviously...ignore the rifle :v

Izzie stands at a rather average height of about 5’10, with an agile, surprisingly graceful build; her quick, lithe frame is outlined with some semblance of musculature, though when worst comes to worst and she ends up in a fight (which isn’t all too uncommon given the sheer number of things that can piss her off and her utter lack of a temper) she depends more on her ability to outpace and dodge larger, stronger opponents, as well as her sheer willpower and refusal to give into pain and injury. Her skin tone is immediately indicative of her origins in Brasil; it is a dark, olive-tan shade, of the kind characteristic of those who hail from São Paulo. As far as facial features, Izzie has a rather small face, with dark, pointed features; she has a high, sloping forehead, heavy-lidded, dark eyes of a rich mahogany hue, and thin lips that are often chapped and dry (and in relation, a voice often hoarse and low) because she can literally go days sometimes without saying a word. Notably, one can also find a scar that runs vertically down her forehead, crawling almost down between her eyes, bisected towards the top by a jagged, horizontal scar that gives it an appearance akin almost to a twisted cross. It’s faded with age and not so distinct as it was, but still notable.

Just like Vivian, Izzie has a host of tattoos covering her from head to toe—it was, in fact, the coincidence that caused them to fall to talking and eventually led to Vivian joining Fury. Izzie’s tattoos are, however, of a rather different sort than Vivian’s: some of them are downright gruesome. For example, she has one across her lower left ribcage of a grievous wound, exuding crimson blood, revealing metallic rib bones (also, as it were, dripping copiously with blood); it’s rather similar to this, except, as said, with metal bones instead of...bone...bones. She has another spanning her upper back and running all the way down her right arm, depicting a corpse wrapped in what looks like spiderwebs hanging from a tree of tormented skulls and faces that extends down her arm, eventually devolving into a mass of skulls set against brimstone and blood. Another tattoo, this one across her left bicep and upper arm, depicts a saurian eyeball with a red-orange iris, set against bloodied spines similar to those found on the back/arm tattoo aforementioned. Set just above it is an inverted pentagram that looks like it was carved into her skin; and across the back of her neck and reaching to about the top of her spin is an inverted cross--this being only a smattering of the full assortment that adorns her entire body. Izzie also has a ring piercing around her left eyebrow, two studs on the right, and a single ring piercing around her lower lip.

In regards to clothing, Izzie won’t go too all out like some of the crazier metalheads. Her ‘uniform’ of sorts is a dark green shirt that is actually the upper portion of a military outfit (who knows how she got it, but she’s fond of it); she’ll often roll the sleeves up, making way for an assortment of studded and spiked wrist bands. This is often placed unbuttoned over a t-shirt of some kind, typically a Fury band tee when performing, tucked into a pair of jeans, sometimes with a studded belt, or a bullet belt, wrapped around. As for footwear, Izzie opts for typical metal fare. As sort of a complement to the military uniform top she often wears, Izzie at some point acquired a pair of boots of the kind worn by officers in the Army, which she is fond of wearing during performances with her jeans tucked into them; however, in most cases otherwise she can also be found simply wearing a pair of converse.

Personality: Izzie is a woman who is extremely hard to get along with, in a rather different respect from Vivian. Just like her former bandmate and fellow guitarist, Izzie is highly abrasive, and when she does see fit to speak, chances are whatever is coming out of her mouth is pretty caustic in nature. The key difference being that Izzie very rarely sees fit to speak. The Fury guitarist prefers to stay silent, to the point where her own bandmates sometimes are a bit unnerved by her constant silence and tendency to speak in very short, terse statements. To get on ‘speaking terms’ with Izzie, by which is meant she’ll give you more than one word responces (and even that’s impressive), is an achievement in and of itself. And the reason for her disconcerting predilection for silence is really quite simple: silence is a very effective buffer. The metaphorical wall of silence is, for her, a literal wall that she believes shields her from the judgment of others. Izzie lives under the impression that everything she is and does is inadequate and that ultimately in all qualities she is seen as a failure. She’s convinced that others will or already do see her as physically hideous, an unintelligent, dim-witted oaf, an immature, childish fool, emotionally weak and dependent, and, above all, at best mediocre and second-rate in regards to the guitar. It doesn’t matter to her so much that she already accepts all the above as true: Izzie’s fear is that others will take her for all she already believes she is, and will deem her inferior in some way for it. By her own shaky, unstable reasoning, as long as she keeps to herself and shuts everything in, no one will ever need to know how emotionally unstable, how senseless and unintelligent, and how self-loathing she really is.

Unfortunately, the other half to her personality happens to be the other extreme. In direct contrast to her determination to keep herself contained and shielded from the judgment of others, Izzie is so quickly brought to anger and rage that it seems to fly in the face of any attempts to enclose herself emotionally from others. All that pent up emotion and frustration has to go somewhere: and wherever it goes, it takes just about any semblance of temper right with it. As a result of her self-imposed silence and containment, Izzie has more or less the temperament of a pissed off, starving gorilla about to go on a rampage, and it takes very little for her to go from ‘cold, aloof silence’ to ‘ungodly rage’. And when she is at last torn from her sanctuary of silence and terse, abrupt statements, Izzie can be fearsomely cruel and belittling towards whomever or whatever has incurred her wrath. In particular, she seems to have it out for anyone and everyone who ends up occupying the position of co-guitarist in Fury—and as a result, none too keen to withstand the nastiness and malice Izzie seems to reserve just for them, most of them end up quitting, making the spot a constant revolving door of different musicians, none of whom Izzie seems to ever find satisfying.

Vivian was one of the few people who ever managed to be on good terms with Izzie for a lasting period—and even then it didn’t end all too well for either of them. Rare was it that anyone had the magnanimous patience, willpower, and simple desire to navigate through the sudden mood swings and constant screen of bitter arctic silence—in fact, Vivian wasn’t even one of those people. Despite their constant tendency to butt heads at first—or perhaps, directly because of it—what with Vivian’s domineering attitude and brash persona and Izzie’s rapidly-provoked temperament and determination to maintain her wall of silence in the face of Vivian’s tendency to find Izzie’s buttons (which wasn’t too hard) and push them for her own amusement and to get a rise out of the typically silent guitarist. Somehow, an equation that seemed destined to result in one killing the other resulted in both of them ending up a whole lot...’closer’ than either could have ever anticipated. Izzie ended up showing Vivian that behind the wall of silence was, in fact, a living, breathing person who had her own host of fears and worries, and no one to share them with—and as a result was welling up with frustrations and doubts that had nowhere to go but dig deeper within her.

Izzie is, at her core, a very bitter person, characterised by a deeply cynical, pessimistic, and a wholly negative approach to viewing herself and the world around her. It can be said that deep down she feels a rather all-encompassing disappointment with how everything is, an ever-present dissatisfaction with her life that doesn't go away--she just buries it away and tries not to think about it. Sometimes, however, she can't help but wonder if this really is all there is to life--because as it is she really isn't happy with life. This wasn't a problem for Izzie when she was with Vivian because with Vivian she was genuinely happy and, for a moment, found what it was she had wanted from life (and this applied to Vivian as well). Once Vivian up and left, however, that void came right back more severe than ever, and it left Izzie more bitter and unhappy than ever. Having never come to trust someone so intimately as she did with Vivian, having never felt towards anyone the way she felt towards her and having never been able to feel the way she did when she was with Vivian, even four years later Izzie has failed to recover from what she perceives to be the ultimate betrayal Vivian dealt her, especially since for the longest time she had no idea why Vivian did it and believed it was because, just as Izzie had expected would happen if she revealed herself, Vivian saw Izzie as inadequate and inferior. To this day, Izzie fixates on the relationship with Vivian and, convinced that Vivian is literally the only person she can possibly be happy with, wants nothing more than to somehow get Vivian to be with her again.

Background: On its face, the early life and childhood of Isabelle Moraes Vieira was nothing too tragic, nothing that would make you either weep in sympathy or facepalm at the sheer cliché magnitude of the tragedy. Her parents were both immigrants from Brasil who arrived in the US about four years before the birth of their daughter—both of whom were quite strict, and deeply traditional in many ways. And throughout her life, it seemed, Isabelle did nothing but disappoint her parents and those around her, whether wilfully or completely unintentionally. Nothing she did seemed to please her parents, who always found something to criticise about her or her performance. Her grades in school were never good enough, not even when Isabelle sacrificed everything she could and worked herself to the ground to perfect her schoolwork. There was always some glaring, painful imperfection in her physical appearance, even when she wore the most beautiful dress she had (and her parents weren’t doing too well financially, so that wasn’t saying much), did her hair up as best as she could, and did her utmost, sometimes to the extreme, to remove any physical imperfection that was visible—and yet her parents could still find something that made her hideous and repugnant to look upon. And once she received the scar that now adorns her forehead (if asked about its origins, she responds merely with “I fell.”), it became evident that now she never was going to be the physically perfect, beautiful girl she strove so hard to be to please her parents.

It was a slow, arduous process before Izzie came to the conclusion she didn’t care anymore. And she stopped trying, deciding that no amount of trying would fix the fact that she was inherently flawed and somehow imperfect in every way—it was the only logical explanation the young child could find, her mind, still developing as it was, extremely malleable and affected by all around her, for how nothing she did seemed to please anyone around her—in fact, it only seemed to make them all the more dissatisfied and frustrated. So she just stopped trying—in fact, she avoided her parents altogether, and began to refuse to talk to anyone, deciding she didn’t want it to become obvious just how deficient and inadequate she really was. And even then, in that era of self-loathing and determined apathy, she continued to disappoint her parents—from the moment she started listening to that ‘godawful racket excuse for music’ as an outlet for pent-up frustration and anger and wearing leather and metal, to the moment Isabelle, or Izzie as she already preferred to be called, decided she was a lesbian. She just didn’t care. Her grades took a nose dive, she lost any interest whatsoever in making herself look appealing, and she became aloof and reserved to the point where some of the staff at her school became concerned that she was suicidal or depressed.

One of the staff members, the teacher of one of the classes Izzie had once excelled at and was now in danger of permanently failing, took note of this, and decided to take action. Noticing that she’d begun to take an interest in rock music of sorts, he approached her one day after class and gave her something that would change her life: a guitar, a Fender Squier Stratocaster. It was, frankly, not a very good one: he’d bought it for his son when he was about twelve or thirteen years old, but the boy eventually lost interest and the instrument fell to collecting dust in the storage room. Along with it he lent her a self-teaching book, hoping the instrument would perhaps help her find her way back from the sudden depressive episode she seemed to have fallen upon, for reasons neither he nor any of the other staff would ever know of.

Her efforts at first were paltry. Why should she even have tried to make something of playing the guitar when she was already convinced she was predisposed to fail at it? Nevertheless, she conceded that somehow, even in her first attempts when she sounded like shit whether or not you used her extremely harsh standards for herself, just trying to figure out how to play some of the songs she enjoyed seemed to make a difference. She was still bitter, and refused to emerge from the sheath of silence she had placed over herself, but it provided satisfaction, even if she quickly reminded herself how doomed to failure she was, to find herself able to play a certain blues riff, or a particular metal lick. And with that satisfaction, she began to go at it with increasing determination and gusto.

Unfortunately, by the time she graduated high school, Izzie’s grades had dropped to the point where her prospects for university or college were not looking promising at all. She was quick to move out of her home as soon as she could, but having little to sustain herself beyond a series of minimum wage jobs that were quickly lost as a result of her adamant refusal to speak to strangers or unfamiliar people when not absolutely necessary, it quickly came about that Izzie had to turn to the guitar skills she regarded as subpar and mediocre for sustenance—and it was a couple of years of minimum wage slaving away before she worked up the courage to try to make a living off the guitar. Attempting to find her way into the world of professional music, however, only made, to her, even more apparent how much better others were in regards to the guitar. Trying to make it in an environment in which Izzie didn’t even think there was any point to showing up to an audition because she was convinced right before her eyes someone was just gonna shred out some crazy-ass solo she couldn’t for the life of her conceive and get the part without so much as a glance at her, wasn’t all too easy, at least not for Izzie, but given the guitar was the one skill she now had to her name, it was either keep trying despite the insecurities that preyed upon her doubts in her own skill and convictions that she was headed straight for failure, or pretty much fall into financial destitution (even more financial destitution than she already was in). Against what she felt to be her better judgment, she chose the former.

It paid off. Izzie ended up auditioning for a drummer, a singer, and a bassist who were looking to start off a speed metal band in the vein of classics like Motörhead; taken aback by her abrupt terseness though they were, they impressed with what they perceived to be the ‘raw, metal-blues’ hybrid of music. Which Izzie didn’t really get, seeing as she’d only ever played what she thought sounded good, but the band members liked what they were hearing, and gave her the part. Which was, one should note, just about the first time anyone’d seen Izzie look genuinely excited and happy in what seemed like too long, especially to Izzie.

Soon after, after she’d long since managed to collect herself and reinstate the previous policy of subdued emotional and verbal responce, Izzie and the band, newly christened as Fury for the high-speed sound they were going for, were making covers of bands like Iron Maiden, Motörhead, Deep Purple, and classic Judas Priest. At this point, Izzie was the sole guitarist, and was beginning to feel that having a second guitarist to play the underlying riff while Izzie soloed, or vice versa, or simply to have another guitar there to add force to the riffs, would make the music more effective and powerful. The band conceded, deciding to hold auditions that weekend.

Before then, Izzie attended a Deicide concert, whereupon she came across a woman with multi-coloured dreadlocks and utterly covered in tattoos, more than matching the vast assortment that adorned Izzie’s own body. Well, people with that many tattoos, even in a crowd full of metalheads, were pretty rare, and it seemed even Izzie couldn’t help but eventually fall to talking with the strange, raucous woman. Eventually, the woman (who introduced herself as Vivian Something that Izzie couldn’t pronounce for the life of her) mentioned that she was a guitarist—and Izzie, her interest piqued, invited Vivian to come audition for the open spot in Fury. Vivian arrived the next day, plugged her guitar in, and promptly proceeded to receive the part without question. For a time Izzie was even afraid that Fury was going to kick her out in favour of just having Vivian, feeling that Vivian’s technical, furious approach blew her rougher, less refined style right out of the water, but after a while, Izzie adjusted to having Vivian there as well.

Which is to say, they immediately took to butting heads at every point. Izzie was beginning, despite her tight-lipped mannerisms, to consolidate herself as the leading figure in Fury, but Vivian, with her domineering, authoritative way of dealing with others, clashed ceaselessly with the older guitarist. Time after time, Izzie would lose her temper and even traded blows at times with Vivian over everything and anything. Vivian would figure out what caused Izzie to blow her top and expose the person behind the wall of silence, and then she’d proceed to do it over and over again, much to Izzie’s distress. It wasn’t uncommon to hear Izzie shouting every way in which Vivian was a witless fucking idiot and an annoying fucking cretin with nothing better to do than irritate the shit out of her, only for Vivian to then proceed to make some snarky quip that infuriated Izzie even further—often followed by Izzie throwing herself angrily at Vivian and launching a fistfight.

Yet in the same way they seemed to clash and oppose one another, Izzie and Vivian worked almost excellently together. Vivian brought to the band a harder, heavier, thrashier sound, finding a way to meld it perfectly with Izzie’s blues-inflected style and the speed metal approach of the rest of the band, and Izzie found herself rapidly taking favour for the new style of thrash metal Fury was beginning to play. It applied also to Vivian, who couldn’t help but appreciate the wisps of the blues that Izzie integrated with thrash metal seamlessly. Even outside of music, there were times when Vivian and Izzie, for all the ways they managed to get on one another’s nerves constantly, got along strangely well. It came to be that they were liable to be agreeing and seeing perfectly eye to eye one moment, only to be at each other’s throats the next.

Neither of them could really point out at which point they started sleeping together, but eventually they did acknowledge that they were in a relationship with one another. It started as a purely physical relationship—but before either of them could really stop themselves they actually began to feel a lot more towards one another than that. They began to be more open with one another than they were towards anyone else, more willing to cast aside their respective masks and show one another who they really were. Izzie was willing to tell Vivian her real name and became more expressive and talkative when with Vivian, to the point that sometimes she wouldn’t shut up once she realised how comforting it felt to talk to someone she trusted without holding back. And at the same time, Vivian felt herself unconsciously beginning to trust and truly enjoy being with Izzie—and it was not until much later that Vivian realised that she was allowing herself, for the first time in what felt like years, to truly be happy with someone without fearing constantly for the consequences.

This was just fine with Izzie, who genuinely enjoyed being with Vivian on a more than physical level and thought that maybe she even loved Vivian. On the other hand, when Vivian realised she had long since begun to care for Izzie on a far more personal scale, when she realised she was beginning to share more than just physical passions with her, Vivian freaked.

Afraid that if she let herself truly care about Izzie it would only cause her pain and grief, and operating on the entirely unreasonable (and quite typical of her) fear that if she stayed with her Izzie was going to somehow leave her (whether of her own accord or otherwise), Vivian acted completely on impulse and simply fled. She quit Fury and left as quickly as possible, leaving Izzie devastated and, ultimately, even more bitter than ever. She felt confused and deeply wounded, as though by leaving Vivian had spat in her face and mocked her to her face—and Izzie came to the immediate conclusion that Vivian’s reason for abandoning her and Fury was that ultimately Izzie had proven inadequate and undesirable. She became fixated on the relationship she’d had with Vivian; because, to this day, she unconsciously associates Vivian with that feeling when the void of disappointment and self-loathing is no longer there and she no longer feels that overbearing disappointment with life, Izzie does still bear the feelings she had towards Vivian, and they haven't gotten any weaker over time. She actually thinks now that she knows why Vivian left--Izzie has come to believe that Vivian got freaked out by the fact she and Izzie were so close. She hopes one day to confront Vivian and make her realise that she and Izzie simply ‘belong together’--it seems obvious to Izzie. She thinks Vivian is blatantly ignoring what she knows to be reality and refusing to face the truth; in essence, neither Izzie nor Vivian ever managed to move on past what happened, but while Vivian tries to justify what she did, or tries to regard it as 'just a brief, physical thing’, Izzie fixates on the relationship she had with Vivian and simply can't move on.

At least now, she believes she actually has a chance. Because the big concert is rapidly approaching, and Izzie is well aware that Legion, the band Vivian decided to start after bailing out on her and Fury, will be one of the headliners.

Playing Style: Izzie normally leaves the more technical playing to whoever happens to be the co-guitarist in Fury at the time, finding that in general when it comes to solos, you can shred up and down the neck as fast and as chaotically as you like, if you can't bend into the solo and really feel it, it's pointless. And as such Izzie forgoes the all too common tendency in metal to use solos as an opportunity to show off the guitarist's vast lead skill, and instead combines palpable notes of the blues with melodic metal arpeggios and leadwork to craft a solo that she feels truly complements the song and its dynamic.

As far as riffing and playing the song itself, Izzie leans more towards thrash/speed metal. She's very good at extremely high-speed, palm-muted chord riffing, though more often Fury's music consists of rapid single notes, giving it a very tight, precise, but heavy feel to the music.

Instrument: Izzie largely alternates between two guitars: one an onyx black BC Rich Beast with crimson pinstripe lining, the other a BC Rich King V with war tribe finish. Both are tuned, as with the rest of Fury, to Dropped C.

EDIT: Shit. I didn't mean for it to take up so much space on the OOC. But I don't know how to use spoiler tags on this site. ._.