Character Notes: Celeste Steel Celeste Steel's original origin was from the BESM Campaign Oversized Robot Owessar, as a roll played by the voice actress Kanako Yoshihara. Aside from a small tale in the backstory, this character was never refferenced, but layed down in her list of rolls played. Therefor here I am further developing the background of the character. The background the character originates from is a ficticious game series called Spirit Blade. Celeste is one of the most reccuring characters in the seven-game series. The setting began as a combined mideval/modern world, with martial artists, samurais, knights, and so on. It's a twist-together of Soul Calibur and other fighting games. The game series happens over a long period of time, and characters reincarnate several times. A fighting style may be seen on a completely different character between two games, due to reincarnation. Therefor the game has taken place in many time periods, starting in mideval times and slowly progressing forwards. Instead of Reincarnation, some characters return as posessed ghouls, like the martial artist from Shaman King. These characters are corpse versions of their previous game's incarnation, with a seal on their forehead and tendancy to be hunched forward as an idle animation. The winner of each game/tournament is given prolonged life so that (s)he may re-appear in the next game, regardless of wether or not (s)he appears as the boss of the next game. Celeste is the exception in this universe. She does not reincarnate, she rather has eternal life. Therefor she has appeared in every game in the same state, with minor changes. She is not invincible, however, and can be knocked out for a prolonged period of time. It is theoretically possible to kill her, but nobody has tried. The focus of the games is on the legendary dagger known as the Spirit Blade. The holder of it has eternal life and unstopable defense. However, offensive abilities are not increased. To become a truly formidable warrior, one must stab his/her self in the heart with the weapon, which grants near-unlimited combat power. However, the ability to regenerate is sufficiently minimized in this status, and it cannot be used unlimitedly. The blade uses the user's very essence to create such power, so it causes you to age, and weakens you as soon as you no longer posess it compared to how you would be if you had not spent time like this. Needless to say, it is a well-sought weapon which can change the course of history. What follows is a short game-by-game summary. Spirit Blade: (mideval ages) Count Duchov gains posession of the Spirit Blade before the game begins. The previous owners had kept their use of it in secrecy, but Duchov tests its limits in combat, and soon rumor spreads. 10 warriors travel to Duchov's domain, confronted by a shadowy figure early in their travels. Along their path, they collide and fight repeatedly. Some give up, and four reach Duchov's province. The mysterious figure, clad in black, confronts each of them upon their arrival, forcing two to retreat. The man, who calls himself 'Dark', explains to all four that he does not work for Duchov, he was simply here to act as a test, to see if the fighters had the potential to go the next level. The remaining two, a samurai and a tibetan monk, made it to Duchov. Sunamaru, the samurai, arrived first and was killed by Duchov as the monk arrived. The monk was able to attain victory and take the spirit blade for himself. Spirit Blade 2: Spirit Blade 3: Spirit Blade 4: (Only a few months after third) Spirit Blade 5: Spirit Blade 6: Spirit Blade Beach Volleyball: (A few months after sixth) (not sure if I actually want to do this one) Spirit Blade 7: Celeste's personal history: Celeste Steel was a decently respected knight in her kingdom of first residence, despite being a woman. She was far from being the first female knight, but usually seen by others as a good reason to continue allowing knightship to women. While she was not the strongest around, her high morale and unfaltering work ethic made her a knight to look up to. In the times of Count Duchov's posession of the Spirit Blade, her kingdom was conquered and annexed. Duchov proceeded to remove women from knightship, leaving Celeste as a wanderer. Her dream was to restore the kingdom's honor, but she knew she lacked the means to do so. Depressed, Ms. Steel walked across the lands, doing good deeds whenever a situation would call. Still, she lacked a purpose. Eventually she came across a mystical waterfall. A spirit appeared and told Celeste the legend of the Spirit Blade, and how Duchov was the one that had it. The spirit offered Celeste power and eternal life in order to fight for peace, assuming she agreed to the life of a warrior maiden. That is to say, a life of fighting only for peace, seeking out evil and destroying it, and eternal chastity. Celeste gladly accepted, and was bestowed with enormous potential. She did not have any more power now, but the maiden explained that if she trained, she would be able to far surpass the strongest of ordinary humans. After attaining this power, the man to be later known as 'Dark' approached Celeste to test her strength, now that she had the potential to defeat Duchov. Celeste won, and Dark dissapeared, leaving Celeste with many questions. She was later defeated by Dark outside Duchov's territory. For making it so far, Dark explained that he did not meet her initially to push her off the path, but rather to inspire her to become stronger. Celeste asked if his objective, then, was to force the world's strongest warriors to meet and fight. Dark's response was that his purpose was to 'push the stagnant wheel of destiny into motion'. Celeste doesn't understand, and returns to the mystic waterfall, defeated. Throughout the games, since Celeste is the only character to consistantly reccur, she's underwent changes. As the fan favorite of the series, she was changed to further please the fans. Obviously, her figure improves in each installment, spesifically noticable after each time jump. Her armor becomes more elaborate over each of the first three games, and very different in SB4 (see plot for more details). In Spirit Blade five she makes her greatest change so far, being listed as a different character class, "Heavy Knight" instead of "Knight". This consists of much heavier armoring than before, and a significantly larger weapon, changing from Longsword to Long Greatsword. Slow progression continues in six and seven. As a Heavy Knight, Celeste's armor doesn't appear to slow her down greatly because of her physical strength. Her armoring is heavy, her hits are hard, and hit animations don't take much time. Because of this, by the time of Spirit Blade Five she is a hidden character from that point onwards. Clearly she would make the game too easy to play. Her inherent flaw, which both causes social problems and balances her in a game sense, is her inability to control her strength. She can either perform mild actions, not suitable for combat, or full-out applications of her strength. For example, she can easily shake hands without a problem, but if she were to arm wrestle with someone and put forth any effort to win, the opponent would wind up with a broken arm. She realizes this problem, and it's one of the reasons she's socially defensive. She doesn't want to get into situations in which she has to defend herself physically, because this will ultimately mean causing harm to those around her. In a game sense what this means is that none of her attacks have a cancel command, and if she misses, the delay afterwards is great. If an enemy performs an advanced defense like a guard-parry, this will leave Celeste open for a long amount of time. She does have fake-out commands, however. Moves that appear exactly as normal attacks, but stop short. Part of the heavy armor's purpose is to limit her strength via the weight. This controls her strength. Also, as a heavy knight she explicitly wears multiple layers of armor to keep from seeming sexually appealing. If someone advanced on her, she'd eventually need to repell them, and she knows she can cause more damage than she wants. Even as a normal knight she saw no purpose in dressing in an alluring manner, as she noted women who tended to do so would use this to fufill their desires by dishonorable means. As skilled and noble knight she saw no purpose in doing so. Personality: Celeste is very modest, thoughtful, and caring. She has strong determination, faith in her beliefs, and a will that's hard to sway. Her skills of cunning and deception are next to zero. She can also be fairly easily tricked. Celeste cares a lot about her family, and keeps a detailed record of her entire family tree. She frequently checks up on her great nieces and nephews, and will confront their spouses if she feels that something not right is going on. Naturally, because she's so determined and has a hard time restricting her own strength, she scares the shit out of said spouses. In casual social situations, she will apologize perhaps too much, and after fights she will try her best to make sure her enemy is in a stable condition. In combat she displays her determination, and won't hold back. Because of this she wastes time before combat telling her opponent to watch themselves, because she knows she can't adjust her strength. If she has to fight against a friend, she'll try hard to avoid the fight entirely. Not for defensive reasons as much as for the sake of covering, she has a strong dislike of being under-armored. If more than her uppermost layer of armor is removed, Celeste feels nervous and uneasy. She doesn't like her curves to be exposed, and likes the fact that her armor restricts her strength somewhat. When reduced to her chainmail underwear, she's extremely off-balance, and constantly worried that someone is watching.