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deathstealer) wrote2025-06-23 09:40 am
deathstealer) wrote2025-06-23 09:40 am
[ somnia app ]
PLAYER INFO
Name: Cosmo
Preferred Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
cosmonautdelta or PM
Age: 18+
Invite Link: mod invite here
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Ranni the Witch
Canon: Elden Ring
Age: unknown, well over many hundreds of years
Canon Point: the end of the game, after the optional Age of Stars ending
Wiki Link(s): wiki link here
SOMNIA-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS
1. Dreams are how Sleep chooses you. What might draw your character into Somniaβ a wound, a wish, a weakness? Would they follow the dream, or run from it?
Ranni's story is ultimately one of sacrifice. In the Lands Between, the Golden Order of gods that rule it are corrupt. Queen Marika, the leading god, is responsible for oppression of other religions, genocide, suppression of culture, and heavy favouring toward her own godly family and those who follow her. She in turn follows guidance from the Greater Will, an Outer God (an unknowable being from beyond the stars) that is responsible for enthroning the Golden Order and keeping it in power. After being born into this extended family as a demigod, Ranni perceived that this was all rife with corruption, and decided she would have no part of it. She killed her demigod body, the thing tying her to the Golden Order and marking her as Marika's potential heir. She started a war. She withdrew for centuries. And then reemerged once more to set in motion her own plan; to rid the land of the Golden Order, and to install herself as the new god.
This plan β a plan that would eject her from the Lands Between, to dwell among the stars β was described by her as being the path of loneliness, fear, and doubt. To become a more objective god, a god that could not be swayed or curried favor with, she would have to abandon everything and live an eternity alone, among nothingness.
Where I'm taking her from post-canon, she has spent an unknowable amount of time in that nothingness, ensuring the Lands Between lives on, but unable to see it with her own eyes. Ranni is resolute, and stubborn, and has carried out plans over centuries to millennia, but even she can get lonely. Even she can wish for a moment that she could hold someone's hand, or smell fresh cut flowers, or see a sunset. It's that weakness that Sleep will have exploited to get Ranni here; the wish to partake in life again, even if she willingly condemned herself to an existence without.
2. Somnia is a slow unravelingβof worlds, and of selves. How does your character respond to fear, transformation, and losing control? Do they fight, adapt, collapse?
Ranni is a person who has always been very in control of herself, so the concept of losing that control will be horrific to her. As I note down in the Vessel Selection section, there's a real theme of transformation = corruption in Elden Ring, and so to be corrupted in that sense will be something new for Ranni. Fear, on the other hand, she will be strong against; her homelands contain all manner of horrific beasts and magics, so there's really not much that can truly phase her. Which will make it all the more interesting when the occasional horror manages to make it past her walls and instill an actual emotion in her.
At first, no doubt, Ranni will hold strong against these things. She's done atrocious things, she's seen atrocious things. It'll take a lot to truly get to her. Her initial instinct will be to research and to watch from the sidelines, though she'll fight if she's pushed to β at least in the dream sections, where she has access to her magic. In the real world, where she has no magic, her reactions will be very different. Ranni's used to being powerful; being without that power will rattle her.
Still, she won't show it for a long time. Control, both of the self and the situation around her, is important to her. Even when everything is collapsing around her, even when her own doll body is betraying her, Ranni won't show her fear early on, though it will start eating at her internally.
3. Connection is the only constant. What kind of bonds does your character formβ fast and burning, slow and wary, deep and desperate? How might that shape their time in this world?
In the game, Ranni has precisely two friends. Blaidd the Half-Wolf, her shadow, a being created for her by the Greater Will to mark her as a potential heir to Marika. And Iji, a troll blacksmith and war strategist. Both have been with her since her very early childhood β Blaidd as a sibling figure, and Iji as a guardian β and her connections to them were deep and strong, forged over many lifetimes. It's possible that she had other friends back when she was a regular demigod, but Blaidd and Iji were the only friends Ranni took with her when she killed her godly body and retreated into obscurity.
So, we can assume that Ranni is a slowburn when it comes to relationships. She doesn't seem like a social butterfly at all, content to live in isolation with relatively no access to people outside her inner circle. She feels deeply for those she considers close, and was just fine with abandoning the rest of her family and letting them think that she was dead.
In this world, she won't be forming connections quickly. To most other characters, Ranni will likely be a figure of mystery. She won't talk about herself to anybody she doesn't deeply trust β on the TDM, she even made the deliberate decision to not tell anybody that she's a god, pretending to be a mere witch instead β and will keep others at arm's length. Of course, there will inevitably prove to be the occasional character that worms their way into her heart, which will be all the more interesting if it happens rarely.
4. What are two major forces in your characterβs personality that are often in conflict? (Ex: logic vs emotion, power vs guilt, obedience vs rage, etc.)
Ironically, this answer ties into the above question: one big conflicting aspect of Ranni's personality is her restraint toward connection, and her want of connection.
In the game, the player character is called the Tarnished. They are from a group of people were banished from the Lands Between, and the player character has found themselves back there, memoryless, directionless, but being able to see the guidance of grace; the thing that gives the Tarnished life, and purpose. The guidance directs them toward the various gods (ie. bosses) in the game, funneling them toward becoming the new Elden Lord, the consort of Queen Marika, and putting the runes of the Elden Ring back together to potentially restore peace to the land. When the Tarnished meets Ranni, she introduces herself by a pseudonym, passes on a useful item, and tells the Tarnished they'll never meet again.
In their second meeting, Ranni practically spills most of her secrets. The question of who made the instigating action that started the war (stealing the rune of death and half-killing a demigod) has been this huge mystery rife with conspiracy for probably hundreds of years, and Ranni's just casually like, "oh yeah, I did all that", in their second meeting. She knows at this point that this particular Tarnished is something special, and soon extends to them an offer to work with her. This betrays a deep appetite for wanting to trust people, wanting to extend her social circle, while simultaneously being largely reserved about everything else.
Later, Ranni tells the Tarnished all of her other secrets. She even shows them the location of her godly body, a burnt husk at the top of a tower. She ultimately comes to trust the Tarnished quite quickly when we can assume that she hasn't trusted anybody else that quickly in eons. At the end of the game, the Tarnished has the option to become her consort and bring about Ranni's ending, the Age of Stars, where she becomes the new god.
All of this is one big conflict with each other. She only has two friends for centuries, but trusts the Tarnished quickly. She didn't tell anybody else about who she was, but tells the Tarnished in the second meeting. To me, that suggests that she holds herself at a great distance from most people, but deeply desires real connections and the forging of friendships that she can trust. That conflict is going to be especially interesting in this game, where connections are a huge part of it.
VESSEL SELECTION
Which Vessel Type are you choosing: Token or Offering? Offering
Why does this Vessel type feel appropriate for your character?
For picking Offering in particular: Ranni is already a mage and master of various schools of magic, though she obviously won't be able to use her magic at times here. There's a big theme of physical transformation as a mark of corruption (both internal and external) in Elden Ring β her brother offered himself to a snake and merged with that snake, other demigods experience constant growth of horns, the demigod that Ranni killed turned into a horrible plant-like thing that spread through the earth. Ranni has had her own transformation, that of a normal humanoid into a spirit inhabiting a doll, but it'd be interesting to take that transformation even further.
For my choice of Seraph in particular: though angels aren't strictly a thing in Elden Ring lore, much of the symbolism of godliness is still there. Wings, almost-halos, incorruptible bodies, multitude of eyes, etc. It feels appropriate for Ranni to start displaying these things, as a god. The multitude of eyes, in particular, would actually reflect a symbol of corruption of Death in Elden Ring terms, and would be horror material for Elden Ring characters. I intend to work in a lot of lunar imagery (a moon-like halo, etc) for her, as that's her biggest domain of magic.
Choose one OR list three subclass options within your chosen Vessel type that you think would suit them: Seraph
Name: Cosmo
Preferred Contact:
Age: 18+
Invite Link: mod invite here
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Ranni the Witch
Canon: Elden Ring
Age: unknown, well over many hundreds of years
Canon Point: the end of the game, after the optional Age of Stars ending
Wiki Link(s): wiki link here
SOMNIA-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS
1. Dreams are how Sleep chooses you. What might draw your character into Somniaβ a wound, a wish, a weakness? Would they follow the dream, or run from it?
Ranni's story is ultimately one of sacrifice. In the Lands Between, the Golden Order of gods that rule it are corrupt. Queen Marika, the leading god, is responsible for oppression of other religions, genocide, suppression of culture, and heavy favouring toward her own godly family and those who follow her. She in turn follows guidance from the Greater Will, an Outer God (an unknowable being from beyond the stars) that is responsible for enthroning the Golden Order and keeping it in power. After being born into this extended family as a demigod, Ranni perceived that this was all rife with corruption, and decided she would have no part of it. She killed her demigod body, the thing tying her to the Golden Order and marking her as Marika's potential heir. She started a war. She withdrew for centuries. And then reemerged once more to set in motion her own plan; to rid the land of the Golden Order, and to install herself as the new god.
This plan β a plan that would eject her from the Lands Between, to dwell among the stars β was described by her as being the path of loneliness, fear, and doubt. To become a more objective god, a god that could not be swayed or curried favor with, she would have to abandon everything and live an eternity alone, among nothingness.
Where I'm taking her from post-canon, she has spent an unknowable amount of time in that nothingness, ensuring the Lands Between lives on, but unable to see it with her own eyes. Ranni is resolute, and stubborn, and has carried out plans over centuries to millennia, but even she can get lonely. Even she can wish for a moment that she could hold someone's hand, or smell fresh cut flowers, or see a sunset. It's that weakness that Sleep will have exploited to get Ranni here; the wish to partake in life again, even if she willingly condemned herself to an existence without.
2. Somnia is a slow unravelingβof worlds, and of selves. How does your character respond to fear, transformation, and losing control? Do they fight, adapt, collapse?
Ranni is a person who has always been very in control of herself, so the concept of losing that control will be horrific to her. As I note down in the Vessel Selection section, there's a real theme of transformation = corruption in Elden Ring, and so to be corrupted in that sense will be something new for Ranni. Fear, on the other hand, she will be strong against; her homelands contain all manner of horrific beasts and magics, so there's really not much that can truly phase her. Which will make it all the more interesting when the occasional horror manages to make it past her walls and instill an actual emotion in her.
At first, no doubt, Ranni will hold strong against these things. She's done atrocious things, she's seen atrocious things. It'll take a lot to truly get to her. Her initial instinct will be to research and to watch from the sidelines, though she'll fight if she's pushed to β at least in the dream sections, where she has access to her magic. In the real world, where she has no magic, her reactions will be very different. Ranni's used to being powerful; being without that power will rattle her.
Still, she won't show it for a long time. Control, both of the self and the situation around her, is important to her. Even when everything is collapsing around her, even when her own doll body is betraying her, Ranni won't show her fear early on, though it will start eating at her internally.
3. Connection is the only constant. What kind of bonds does your character formβ fast and burning, slow and wary, deep and desperate? How might that shape their time in this world?
In the game, Ranni has precisely two friends. Blaidd the Half-Wolf, her shadow, a being created for her by the Greater Will to mark her as a potential heir to Marika. And Iji, a troll blacksmith and war strategist. Both have been with her since her very early childhood β Blaidd as a sibling figure, and Iji as a guardian β and her connections to them were deep and strong, forged over many lifetimes. It's possible that she had other friends back when she was a regular demigod, but Blaidd and Iji were the only friends Ranni took with her when she killed her godly body and retreated into obscurity.
So, we can assume that Ranni is a slowburn when it comes to relationships. She doesn't seem like a social butterfly at all, content to live in isolation with relatively no access to people outside her inner circle. She feels deeply for those she considers close, and was just fine with abandoning the rest of her family and letting them think that she was dead.
In this world, she won't be forming connections quickly. To most other characters, Ranni will likely be a figure of mystery. She won't talk about herself to anybody she doesn't deeply trust β on the TDM, she even made the deliberate decision to not tell anybody that she's a god, pretending to be a mere witch instead β and will keep others at arm's length. Of course, there will inevitably prove to be the occasional character that worms their way into her heart, which will be all the more interesting if it happens rarely.
4. What are two major forces in your characterβs personality that are often in conflict? (Ex: logic vs emotion, power vs guilt, obedience vs rage, etc.)
Ironically, this answer ties into the above question: one big conflicting aspect of Ranni's personality is her restraint toward connection, and her want of connection.
In the game, the player character is called the Tarnished. They are from a group of people were banished from the Lands Between, and the player character has found themselves back there, memoryless, directionless, but being able to see the guidance of grace; the thing that gives the Tarnished life, and purpose. The guidance directs them toward the various gods (ie. bosses) in the game, funneling them toward becoming the new Elden Lord, the consort of Queen Marika, and putting the runes of the Elden Ring back together to potentially restore peace to the land. When the Tarnished meets Ranni, she introduces herself by a pseudonym, passes on a useful item, and tells the Tarnished they'll never meet again.
In their second meeting, Ranni practically spills most of her secrets. The question of who made the instigating action that started the war (stealing the rune of death and half-killing a demigod) has been this huge mystery rife with conspiracy for probably hundreds of years, and Ranni's just casually like, "oh yeah, I did all that", in their second meeting. She knows at this point that this particular Tarnished is something special, and soon extends to them an offer to work with her. This betrays a deep appetite for wanting to trust people, wanting to extend her social circle, while simultaneously being largely reserved about everything else.
Later, Ranni tells the Tarnished all of her other secrets. She even shows them the location of her godly body, a burnt husk at the top of a tower. She ultimately comes to trust the Tarnished quite quickly when we can assume that she hasn't trusted anybody else that quickly in eons. At the end of the game, the Tarnished has the option to become her consort and bring about Ranni's ending, the Age of Stars, where she becomes the new god.
All of this is one big conflict with each other. She only has two friends for centuries, but trusts the Tarnished quickly. She didn't tell anybody else about who she was, but tells the Tarnished in the second meeting. To me, that suggests that she holds herself at a great distance from most people, but deeply desires real connections and the forging of friendships that she can trust. That conflict is going to be especially interesting in this game, where connections are a huge part of it.
VESSEL SELECTION
Which Vessel Type are you choosing: Token or Offering? Offering
Why does this Vessel type feel appropriate for your character?
For picking Offering in particular: Ranni is already a mage and master of various schools of magic, though she obviously won't be able to use her magic at times here. There's a big theme of physical transformation as a mark of corruption (both internal and external) in Elden Ring β her brother offered himself to a snake and merged with that snake, other demigods experience constant growth of horns, the demigod that Ranni killed turned into a horrible plant-like thing that spread through the earth. Ranni has had her own transformation, that of a normal humanoid into a spirit inhabiting a doll, but it'd be interesting to take that transformation even further.
For my choice of Seraph in particular: though angels aren't strictly a thing in Elden Ring lore, much of the symbolism of godliness is still there. Wings, almost-halos, incorruptible bodies, multitude of eyes, etc. It feels appropriate for Ranni to start displaying these things, as a god. The multitude of eyes, in particular, would actually reflect a symbol of corruption of Death in Elden Ring terms, and would be horror material for Elden Ring characters. I intend to work in a lot of lunar imagery (a moon-like halo, etc) for her, as that's her biggest domain of magic.
Choose one OR list three subclass options within your chosen Vessel type that you think would suit them: Seraph