★ Character Information ★

Character Name: Shuos Jedao
Character Age: 449 years
Character Species: Voidmoth
Current Health: Healthy
Outfit: Practical black clothes. Think utility, capable for assassination work without looking like it's for assassination work.

Character Canon: Machineries of Empire
Link to History: Wiki article providing backstory. Summary

Canon Point: End of Glass Cannon | 2019
Canon Iteration: Original canon

★ Folkmore Roles & Attributes ★

Skills:
Canon Abilities:

Role: Familiar
Role Qualities/Attributes: Primary animal forms will be geese and foxes. He will also sometimes have geese necks/heads for hair and/or wings. Note, sometimes these will have normal internal structures and other times be like the inside of a voidmoth.
Role Reasoning: "I'm your gun." While incredible at a great many things, Jedao does not (contrary to many people's fears) wish to lead more than the soldiers under his command. He chose the Deuce of Gears (cog in the machine) as his banner. He's considered the Drowned General. He's not the leader. So long as he's supporting someone he believes in, he's content to execute their vision. Mind you, finding such a person is difficult, and he will act against those he obeys when they are unethical pieces of shit.

Coming to Folkmore alone, Jedao is a gun without a hand to wield it, a weapon without a target. Without that, he will contribute to low level chaos—think untitled goose game but with an experienced assassin and former revenant. Behind the chaos, he'll be looking for someone whose gun he can be, someone he can kneel before and offer himself to, for it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single legend/myth in possession of good fortune must be in want of a familiar.

★ Personality ★

CW: suicide, suicidal ideation, torture, state sponsored violence, death of children/teenagers/etc, rape, dubious consent, lack of boundaries, ritual torture, enslavement (alien species), mass murder

Option 2.

What was the most traumatic experience your character endured? How did this change them?

At the end of his first year at the Shuos Academy, Jedao anonymously designed and submitted a game to the annual competition. It was heretical, impossible to play without committing acts punishable by death by public torture. Despite that, it was played. His best friend and boyfriend was caught by a high official from another faction and killed himself to avoid a worse death.

Jedao blamed himself, for writing the game. The world he lived in, one where anyone, even teenagers, were subject to torture and execution, wasn't news. He wasn't naive. However, it was the first time he saw the horror of it so close and personally, the first time it came at his hand. Jedao decided then and there he would bring the Heptarchate and its High Calendar down. He built emotional walls, changed tracks to assassination, set aside his desire to have kids, and focused his entire life around that goal.

When Jedao Two learned about this trauma anew, he compared it to other trauma he'd experienced since his creation, took it poorly, and sought to become his full self again.

What is the most important and defining relationship(s) in your character's life and why?

When Jedao slaughtered his way into immortality, he placed himself entirely within Nirai Kujen's control. It was a high risk gamble that paid off ButAtWhatCost.gif. Their relationship defines Jedao's life, unlife, and relife.

As a skilled psych surgeon, Kujen had removed his conscience before they met. He figured out Jedao's plans and confronted him; that forced them to work together. In the Black Cradle, Kujen took Jedao completely apart and put him back together over and over and over. Sensory deprivation, pain, and only lifeline… They were partners in treason betraying each other, romantic and sexual partners without proper consent and boundaries… Kujen did not judge Jedao, an aspect of his appeal. Part of Jedao still loves and cares for Kujen, despite knowing he's the primary architect of the High Calendar and depended on it to live.

Kujen killed Jedao's anchors, ordered the destruction of him (whatever) and his fleet (death to hexarch), and used people on a personal and massive scale. Jedao hates himself for caring about him. He misses him. He did what the world needed. He cannot escape Kujen, even now, as his body was made by him.

Like Kujen, Jedao made himself a monster—slaughtering innocents, slaughtering his own people, committing atrocity after atrocity—to defeat the evil of the hexarchate. Cheris took his goal, his genius, and his plans, and succeeded. Yet he feels separate from everyone in a way that seems similar to the way Kujen was separate. He can only hope the world that follows will be better. Unlike Kujen, he makes sure to refuse and deny ruling power because he trusts himself with it as much as he trusted Kujen.

What is your character's safespace? When do they feel the most settled and comfortable? When do they feel confident and relaxed?

After decades and even centuries of sensory deprivation, Jedao dislikes the dark. He needs light (and color oh wonderful color) to feel safe and at ease. Somehow, as a trained assassin, arch traitor, and secret rebel for hundreds of years while being the most hated man in history, Jedao's paranoid and cannot readily relax easily. His face is also famous for its frequent portrayals in dramas. Back home, that means he needs privacy and physical safety for emotional safety. The constant surveillance at the Fortress of Eyes or aboard ships means "privacy" has been limited at best.

Away from the world that knows him, it will be easier. Give him physical comforts, nightlights, and people he can socialize with, and he'll enjoy a nice surface existence. (Who needs to handle trauma when they can enjoy eating good food and talking with people who don't want him dead with their whole being?) (Everyone with trauma, including him, that's what other people and trials are for). His physical needs are quite limited, so he's satisfied and comfortable pretty easily.

Place Jedao in a game or a dangerous battle, he'll relax. Those are the easiest times. The stakes can be as low as pride in game performance or as large as millions of lives. While it makes others tense, he relaxes. The primary exception was the terrible way he learned he was a moth—with a weapon that hurt him, used to slaughter hatchlings. As long as he's not blindsided like that, he's good. He's got this.

What would your character sacrifice to get what they want or to reach their potential? What have they sacrificed already?

What Jedao wanted and Jedao's potential are vitally different concepts.

Jedao sacrificed everything to take down the Heptarchate/Hexarchate: his career plans, his personal relationships, his desire for children, all other ethics, his desire to live, his agency, his life, and his unlife. He also sacrificed the people most loyal to him, motivated the terrible deaths of most of his relatives, and so many many many more people. His logic came from an ethical utilitarian standpoint: the Heptarchate fought heresies its entire existence, all of which failed and most of which supported as unethical of practices as the Heptarchate's High Calendar. Any path which successfully stopped the High Calendar would, in the end, lead to the fewest deaths and the least evil.

At one point, he thought he would die and confessed his plans to a fellow Shuos agent. When they realized they were being rescued, Jedao killed him with his consent—it was the only way his plan stood a chance. Of everything he sacrificed, it was so little, but it taught him to stand by the rest. No real human relationships and intimacy for him.

It worked.

Except he's stuck in an immortal body. Instead of the end, it's a beginning. Once again, Jedao has to question his potential, face his trauma, and determine what is worth it. Should he be convinced something is the right path, is worth it, he'll sacrifice anything necessary to achieve that good, but he doesn't trust himself to know that. The best, he sees, is to determine someone he can believe in and do what they determine is necessary.