Siranush Reda

General

Full Name: Siranush Reda
Nicknames, Epithets: Siran, Reedsinger
Gender: Female
Age: 32
Race: Ishai (equine demihuman)
Sexuality: Bisexual
Occupation: The Star of Dance
Faceclaim: Horus from Granblue Fantasy
(though I added horse ears sometimes)
Art not by me is from Granblue Fantasy

Physical Information

There is a mystical quality to Siran’s features, from her petite stature to the length of her thick, dark, earthy green hair — there’s a spritely lightness of being as though she could burst into movement at any moment. Parts of her hair appear illuminated by constant light, even in darkness; like the sun shining through fresh green leaves. Her upturned eyes burn and glow like fire, her skin is warm and tawny, contours clinging to dancer’s curves of her honed body. Her skin is host to reddish ink tattoos. Though they may seem decorative, they are a conduit to her magical techniques. Her equine tail is long and cut blunt at the ends, similar to her bangs.

Siran displays these tattoos proudly, opting for dark undergarments, with straps of pliable and fine deerskin adorned with gold. She wears a diaphanous shawl over her shoulders, adorned with gold finery, coins and tassels that rattles generously whenever she moves with force. Most of all, she wears two wings as equine ear clasps, a representation of her devotion to the Sun God. Her attire outside of court is more conservative, though she is wont to show her navel, legs and chest in many of her outfits.

Dossier

HEIGHT: 5’3
WEIGHT: 124lbs
DESIRES: To foster new and exciting challenges for the Desert Stars. To bring a smile to everyone’s faces.
LIKES: running, dancing, eating, pressed paper, Bab’el, Desert Stars, long walks, cats and birds.
DISLIKES: disrespectful and rude people, humidity, jackals, disorder, violence, sacrilege
HOBBIES: dancing; playing double reed instruments, especially the mizmar and duduk; stationery-collecting; birdwatching; and scrapbooking

General Attitude

Siranush is eloquent, discerning, and seems to radiate warm and inviting energy, alive and vibrant like the Sun. She commands attention not through dominance or boisterousness—she uplifts others with charm and grace. Often a friend to those who find it hard to speak, she’s attentive to the needs of others and often becomes the advocate or voice that speaks for them, inspiring or rallying others with her natural charisma that she learned as a dancer.

Do not take her smiles and laughter lightly, however—of all the performers in the Desert Stars, Siranush is by far the most disciplined and focused of her peers, perfecting much of her techniques and muscle isolations to strive for excellence. She is often the one to pick apart the choreography, adapting it for the level of her peers or to change sequences if necessary. Siranush is often the one that instructs and guides other dancers to perfect their craft, not because of a desire to be renowned or famous, but simply because she loves dance, rhythm, music—believing that it is synonymous with the gift of life. To her, anyone can be allowed the freedom of dance, but there is a distinction from moving your body, as opposed to striving to become a kinetic inspiration.

As a member of Nujūm al-Sahrā, Siranush often prepares for a response to conflict. As a dancer would prepare to move her body before a measure in order to arrive before the music, Siran prefers to be prepared rather than to respond to violence with violence. She anticipates and responds with defence, preferring to protect her allies and enfeeble her foes with a sound strategy.

Skills

Siran’s primary skill lies in worship, dance, and music, having trained to dance all her life. She can sight-read music, can keep a beat and a rhythm. She’s not necessarily a tinkerer, but she considers herself crafty. While folding origami is not so exciting, she likes to use mundane objects in unique ways.

NSFW

Dynamic

Switch, Middle; Dominant-leaning.

Top Kinks

Bondage, predicament scenarios, edging, multiple partners, multiple orgasms.

Turn-offs

Paper cut right down the-

Bust size

30C

Ability Information

Straw Dogs, Paper Tigers

Siranush has an extremely specialised form of phytokinesis. Instead of being able to manipulate living plants, she has control over forms of processed plant material such as but not limited to: cellulose pulp in paper, the sedge that makes up papyrus, hemp and jute ropes, linen and cotton fibres, even the reeds in woodwind instruments or natural rattan canes and baskets. If it came from a plant and it has been processed or turned into another object, she can control it. She can move it around in space, reshape it, reform it, repair it, or even create a new object from it.

The primary material of the object she manipulates must be composed mostly of plant material. For example, she could manipulate jute ropes that have been oiled and treated for use, since the primary component is jute. However, if she were to manipulate rope or material that is only partially jute and is reinforced with either animal or artificial material, she would have difficulty doing so. Magically imbued objects are harder to manipulate and require more concentration or set-up, depending on the potency of the magic bound in the item.

Her primary use of this ability is using it to vibrate the double reeds in the mizmar, which she often plays for energetic dances or drum solos, or the duduk, a more reflective and sombre-sounding woodwind. However, she does have combat and utility applications for her ability.

Paper Dolls

In some purification rituals, figures of human or animals are used as ceremonial objects as a substitution for living beings. They often absorb sin, malaise, and curses. This is where Siran gains her inspiration from. These paper dolls, called “Mondo”, are often depicted in a shape of a person or a bird. Siran can conjure these beings made of paper that are imbued with her mana to do her bidding.

Usually, Mondo are conjured to perform risky orders for their masters, such as spying, enemy tracking, and intelligence gathering, though the political climate of Nyrri deems those services unnecessary. With enough time and resources, if she knows of a person’s name, birthdate, or base desires (at least two of three is needed, three out of three is best), she can use it against someone. By writing these details on a Mondo, she can activate her mana and can possess someone and manipulate their movements. Someone strong or resistant to magic could struggle out of this, though most people can resist the movements to some extent. This ability requires an immense amount of concentration and mana expenditure for Siran. If used in combat, it’s at best, impractical, and at the worst it would leave her wide open.

Absterge

Another part of Siran’s ability over phytokinesis is to break things down, though this requires some knowledge of alchemical processes. Naturally, this only applies to objects she would have control over (processed plant material). She can separate or render something useless by desynthesising it to its base components. She has to touch an object in order to desynthesise it. When an object is broken down, the dye, ink or paint becomes resaturated and often runs or pools from the object. This is not ideal for her, but ideal for someone else.

Najm-al Harakah

Al-Hilāl (Heru-Ur)

In the form of Al-Hilāl, the Heru-Ur manifests as something like a chariot, though the wheels are attached to the talons of a great bird. Golden wings are attached to the back, along with a aureole or halo of bright light. Siran is similarly clothed with in gold armour. She seemingly levitates or walks on air, moving through the sky with the ease of a phoenix. Her mondos take on light-aspected element in this form, being able to cast beams of light by Nyere’s grace.

Al-Ẓuhūr

A formidable colossus with giant wings, the structures and minarets atop its broad pauldrons resemble the skyline of Nyrri herself. The powers of the Mondo are absorbed within the Al-Ẓuhūr, and each beam of light becomes as the divine radiance of judgment. While the Al-Ẓuhūr is less mobile in this form, Siran controls its movements and the patterns of attack by dancing, making those scatter by the patterns of the motes of light that appear on the field.

Weapon: Mondo

Basic Application

Siran keeps sheets of paper with her to fashion into paper dolls known as Mondos (detailed earlier). The most practical application of her abilities in combat is to defend and attack with multiple Mondos. Like a school of fish, she could form substantial barriers to defend the brunt of most attacks, or attack and cut if necessary.

Barrier Defence

She can use the Mondo to help ward and protect her allies. This involves writing her allies’ names on each Mondo, which is then hidden or placed on their body. This acts as a conduit to her mana, granting her allies powerful mana barriers that prevent against incoming harm, as opposed to healing them after being damaged.

Emergency Healing

In addition, the damage Siran does with her Attacking Mondos is transformed as regenerative magic to her allies. In more dire situations, she could destroy all named Mondos, breaking mana barriers to restore a substantial amount of health.

Curse Absorption

Each personalised Mondo can absorb simple curses or ailments. In order to clear a companion of an ailment, she would have to either destroy the Mondo that has their name on it, erase the name, or rewrite someone else’s name. The afflicted person is then cured.

Curse Transferrence via Rewriting

Rewriting someone else’s name on a Mondo and attaching it to a specific person instead transfers status ailments to them. To rewrite someone’s name mid-battle on a new Mondo can be unwieldy, so she often relies on Bab’el for support in the heat of battle.

Weaknesses

Since they are made of paper, they have a weakness to fire and highly pressurised water that could destroy the pulp. While they can be effective weapons, each Mondo is not very sturdy and can be cut by someone else.

Backstory

Siran’s devotion to Nyere’s name started with her first festival. It was a kaleidoscope of colour and sound, the young girl enchanted by the revelry. She wished to be like the performers upon the stage. Her parents, humble labourers, were at first hesitant to the idea of their daughter offering her life to the service of the gods. However, money was of no import, only a trueness of heart. To be an entertainer in Nyrri was a high honour, for you dedicate your life and craft for something sacred. The young girl was sequestered away in the grand temple of Nyere, after demonstrating her passion and interest.

Making such a transition was not easy: dancers on stage make all their movements seem effortless, though the training is anything but. In her childhood and early adolescence, Siranush was volatile, fickle, a troublemaker, and prone to bursts of anger. She had a tongue like spitfire and a competitive streak that refused to surrender. Even then, she was a wonderful dancer, full of energy and vivacity—so her elders prayed that she would grow to be more dignified and restrained with the years.

If it were not for such a tempestuous nature in her youth, she would have never met Bab’el. On her thirteenth summer, Siran witnessed the coronation of the Pharaoh. She was only instructed to observe and watch for most of the coronation, a role that was shared with another girl from the Temple of Tullam, Bab’el. Upon seeing Nadine, Siran orchestrated a plan to steal away when the time was right. When she learned that Bab’el harboured the same desire, Siran cast aside her competitiveness in order to gain an accomplice. She could worry about who would be in favour when they reached the Pharaoh.

So Siran used all her skills for troublemaking for good, slipping away unseen in elaborate corridors, hiding from guards, causing distractions, until she finally saw the Pharaoh enter the grand bathhouse. The two girls made their way inside, excitement pounding in their hearts at the anticipation for meeting the Pharaoh. So bickering and wrestling along the way, the two knelt before the Pharaoh… and declared their desire to be married to her.

She would never forget when the Pharaoh pinched their cheeks and kissed their heads before telling them that she’d see them when they were older. This answer did not disappoint Siran. In fact, it gave her a goal. So she and Bab’el initiated a friendly rivalry to continue down the path of nuns, to become head priestess of their respective temples. The first one to do so would have the right to propose to Pharaoh.

After that fated meeting, Siran began to work on herself. She pushed herself even harder in dance, challenging herself daily to the point of aching calves and a tender core. Her volatile nature had been tempered with discipline, though in order to become head priestess of Nyere, she would have to genuinely be at peace with herself.

The former Head Priestess at the time knew of this. The elderly woman could see Siran’s spark and passion as being earnest. She handed Siran a duduk, and taught her how to use the double-reed to produce such a beautiful, plaintive sound. Siran started to contemplate, pause, and think. Her breath as one with the instrument, she learned to channel her strong emotions into music.

The same priestess also taught her the art of specialised phytokinesis, a seldom-learned skill that was difficult and precise. She passed on the techniques of the Mondo to Siran, so that she could learn to use the paper dolls to cleanse, purify, and protect others. Whenever her paths would cross with Bab’el, that impish, competitive desire to have the Pharaoh had faded, and she had come to fall in love with the other woman with each continued meeting.

At age twenty, Siran and Bab’el were both set to inherit the title of head priestess of their respective temples. When the Pharaoh reminded them of their visit in the bathhouse, she was both surprised and delighted that the Pharaoh would remember her promise. Even though Siran and Bab’el had promised themselves to each other on the Feast of Daephine in the year prior, she had no hesitations or objections to having three join the union.

However, it was not to be. The wedding ceremony never came, and instead, funerary rites were prepared for the Pharaoh. Nyrri’s councillor had hidden an illness from the city. Siran had discovered it before Bab’el. She secretly spent countless days and nights trying to heal the affliction with her magic. Sadly, the Pharaoh only smiled, saying that as Tullam would provide, none can deny the call when it was their time. None could overturn the decision of a life lived.

That year, Starlight Stage did not shine with light, and remained empty. The city of Nyrri became a place of grief, every corner and sight a reminder of the loss, each toll of the mourning bells another crack in her heart. Taking it as her own personal failure, Siranush ran—and vanished from the city into the wilderness.

Grieving was both penance and pilgrimage, though much of the time, Siranush was caught up on reflection through the harsh trials of her wanderings. She spent time in the eastern regions, crossing past the Nepavi Sea to unexplored lands. There, Siranush lived as a stranger and traveller. She put aside dance and song for a life of simplicity. Over time, she opened up to people, and did her best to help them once she understood their language. But she would never once join in their celebration or joy, always watching from afar.

Until one day, a child had dragged her by the hand to see the winter festival. The dance on the stage was a kaleidoscope of colour and sound. It was so unlike Nyrri, yet in heart and spirit, she was transported back to her first festival and remembering her heartfelt desire to perform. That night, she dreamed of Nyrri and Bab’el, calling her back. She hastened her journey back to her birthplace that she abandoned.

Siran arrived a moon after Soraya took the position of Pharaoh, too late to have seen the inauguration ceremony. Integrating back into the culture of Nyrri was challenging, some seeing her as a prodigal daughter—some scorned her return, others were overjoyed. With a new high priestess of Nyere, she could not supersede her old position, but she could certainly challenge for a new one.

Even though she had cast aside dance and song in mourning, she had returned to it by trial. It seemed downright laughable that she would be a challenger in the Rite of the Undimmed when she had no music or choreography planned: but she had a vision. This Rite of the Undimmed would choose both Song and Dance from their contestants. There were two teams: the dancer and musician with carefully rehearsed repertoire, versus Siran, with the complete improvisation and trust of her accompanist.

Once Siran heard the drone of the maqam, as as the musician began to perform their solo taqsim, so did Siran. The movements of the dance was inward, reflective and sombre, at first. As the instrument cried, this reflected with Siran’s dance of flowing figure-eights. When the music crescendoed, she came alive, blending both folk dance from Nyrri with the dances she saw across the sea, creating a new signature dance combination: the “Singing Reed”. To witness it come alive in motion was nothing short of a miracle, binding her to the role of the Star of Dance—one of the most highly contested Stars, Siran still faces challengers to her position afterwards with grace and the smile of a natural performer.

Axia

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