Author Topic: Yasha Krāsny  (Read 2005 times)

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Yasha Krāsny
« on: August 06, 2018, 05:20:19 PM »
CHARACTER

Name: Yasha Krāsny

Age: 39

Species and Gender: Faunus Male, Lion faunus

Symbol:  A battle-scarred, snarling lion with one paw crushing a shattered crown.

Occupation: Labor Union Executive Officer, criminal, White Fang sympathizer

Appearance:
        At 6 feet, 6 inches and 230 pounds, Yasha is a big man.  Possessing a very muscular body, he has the look of a warrior, through and through.  His moderately-tanned skin and short, bristly medium brown hair suggest that he is of Vacuan descent.  Yasha has sharp features and a strong, clean-shaven jawline, with hazel/amber-colored eyes set above a narrow, straight nose.  A long, faded scar runs horizontally across the ridge of his nose and onto the top of his cheekbones.  Courtesy of his Faunus heritage, Yasha bears long and sharp canines that are visible when he smiles and speaks.  Taking these features together, he projects a commanding and imposing presence.  He has two small barcode tattoos: one just below his left wrist, and one over his right latissimus dorsi.
         While out in public or needing to appear respectable, Yasha generally wears a dark red collared shirt with a black tie.  His pants are grey and along with a matching waistcoat and suit jacket, have a barely perceptible striped pattern to them.  With this, he wears black leather dress shoes.  When expecting to perform sustained physical activity, he often wears a black cotton tank top while wearing slim, dark grey cargo pants/trousers that are tucked into tan-colored combat boots and help up by a thick, dark leather belt with a lion’s head buckle.  Over this, Yasha wears a sheepskin-colored leather jacket with an off-center zipper.  Its lapels and collar are lined with fur, giving the appearance of a lion’s mane.       

History:
        Yasha does not frequently speak of his youth, and few, if any, know of his background, other than that he is from Vacuo.  Having grown up in a nomadic clan in the deserts of Vacuo, his childhood was fraught with challenges and adversity.  His clan moved from small oasis to small oasis, but the possibility of Grimm attacks during the treks meant that the tribesman all needed to learn to defend themselves.  It was here that Yasha learned to fight.
        When Yasha was seventeen, disaster struck.  While travelling to a oasis that they had never previously been to, his clan inadvertently navigated into a nest of Deathstalker Grimm.  While the clansmen fought against the Grimm, they lacked the skills of hunters necessary to fight an entire brood of powerful Grimm.  The clan was annihilated.  In the face of the carnage, Yasha fled.  Though it was likely that other members of his clan similarly fled, he never met any again.  Fleeing into the desert, Yasha stumbled through the shifting sands.  Though having grown up in a nomadic lifestyle in the deserts prepared Yasha for navigating the deserts of Vacuo, he was exhausted and without provisions -  nearly all of his belongings were lost with his clan’s caravan to the Deathstalker attack.
        Against all odds, Yasha endured and arrived, near death, at the outskirts of Vacuo’s main city (the one Shade is located in).  An old couple took pity on the youth on death’s door and took him in, nursing him back to health.  Yasha did his best to repay their kindness, but after they passed, Yasha set out on his own. 
       Finding odd jobs here and there, Yasha struggled to make a living.  As a nomadic tribesman, he really had no marketable skills that were relevant in Vacuo’s (sole) major city.  All that was available to him were jobs dependent on unskilled, but backbreaking labor.  After bouncing around from place to place trying to find his own way, Yasha found work in a dust mine dominated by the Schnee Dust Company, in a mining town away from Vacuo’s city.  The work was physically back-breaking and though it paid decently well, there were countless safety hazards, ranging from the risk of cave-ins to the risk of accidental activation and detonation of the mined dust.  It was a tough life.  Furthermore, though Vacuo had a culture of acceptance and tolerance, that culture did not translate well into the Schnee Dust Company-dominated mining town.  Not only did he face discrimination for his Faunus heritage, but he also faced it for his nomadic, backwater origins.
        Nonetheless, Yasha found success in the mines.  A tough and hard worker, Yasha was charismatic and drew his fellow miners to him, representing their interests to corporate management.  From this, Yasha rose quickly through the ranks of the miner’s union.
        Eventually, Yasha became a full-time union worker, gaining a reputation of being an implacable defender of workers’ rights.  Despite his focus on mine workers’ collective bargaining above all else, Yasha’s being a Faunus, made him an unintentional figure in the local Faunus rights movement, seeming to unite workers’ rights with Faunus rights in a broader struggle against an exploitative and discriminatory status quo as embodied by monolithic corporations, especially the Schnee Dust Company. 
        In light of this, Yasha was sent to Vale, where species relations were more tense between humans and Faunus, as compared to in Vacuo.  Taking charge of the mining union’s Valish branch, he has since brought his relentless determination to advance workers’ rights, becoming a major thorn in the sides of both local mining companies and speciesist groups seeking to win over the local miners through the portrayal of Faunus as nothing but wage wedges.

        Unfortunately, when people look at Yasha’s outstanding record as a champion in the labor movement, few realize exactly what it took to win the victories that Yasha has won.  In the beginning, establishing a reliable regime of collective bargaining was tough.  Vacuo, for lack of a better word, was little beyond its dust mines and Shade Academy, as far as an organized society went.  With so many nomadic peoples such as Yasha coming and going, temporary workers were plenty, and so it was easy for corporate management to find wage wedges.  On top of that, despite what Yasha would later assert in Vale, many companies had indeed followed the model of the Schnee Dust Company, using Faunus as wage wedges and strike breakers that further made orchestrating any meaningful collective bargaining difficult.
       It was in such circumstances that Yasha needed to resort to more forceful tactics.  Extortion, blackmailing, bribing, and intimidation - all were necessary to forge the mine workers into a strong union and overcome the threat of wage wedges and strike breakers.  With this, marked Yasha’s descent into the criminal underworld.  While refusing to engage in the more base forms of criminal enterprises, such as human and faunus trafficking, prostitution, and drug distribution, Yasha’s union, for all of the good it brought to the local labor movement, was a criminal racket.  Certainly, many with knowledge of the criminal underworld distinguished Yasha and his associates from more depraved gangsters, for he was a “nicer” kind of criminal, and at the end of the day, his was a noble cause, or at least began as one.  However, it did not change the fact that more than once, blood was spilt. 
       Today, Yasha’s enterprises, which at times are difficult to clearly distinguish from the labor union itself, tend towards white collar crime, primarily in money laundering, fraud, and usury.  Most notably, Yasha’s control of the mine workers’ union as well as allied unions, its pension funds, and its associated political action committees has allowed him to transform illegal profits into ostensibly legitimate funds, especially within Vacuo’s weak government jurisdiction.  While not particularly associated with any other criminal group, his money laundering services and fraud enterprises have seen him rub shoulders with all walks of life in the criminal underworld, such as Obsidian Rose, the notable crime syndicate.  Furthermore, Yasha has sought to divert some of these funds to the White Fang movement, for though he has no particular stake in seeing an independent all-faunus state, his experiences in the mines left him with a strong vendetta against the Schnee Dust Company, as well as other mining companies with discriminatory labor practices that follow the SDC pattern.

Personality:
        As a person looked up to for his achievements in furtherance of the labor movement, Yasha presents himself as a dignified and respectable individual.  While self-educated, he has an air of sophistication and intellectualism untainted by any pretentiousness or insecure overcompensation.  Often soft spoken, yet bold, forceful, and unafraid to make a stand when necessary, Yasha is admired for the apparent strength of his convictions within the context of the labor movement, giving him an aura of nobility as he champions the common man.
        On a more personal level, Yasha’s sophistication is tempered with a sort of down-to-earth feeling, and many find him likable and charismatic.  He possesses a can-do attitude that marks him out as a dynamic man of action, reliability, and commitment.
        Further down, however, Yasha is a person quite different from what most others make him to be.  His time in Vacuo’s mines under the yoke of the Schnee Dust Company taught him the value of strength and power, and as his position in the public eye grew from his exploits as a rising star in the labor movement, so did his pride.  Having risen to power as a union leader, it has become unclear if Yasha’s continued fight against corporate abuses is motivated by true concern for workers or if at this point, he is fighting for the sake of empire-building.
        This prideful aspect is most clear when it comes to Yasha’s criminal enterprises.  Yasha has long since abandoned any attempt at justifying his criminal enterprises as regrettable but ultimately necessary actions for the sake of maintaining the momentum of the labor movement.  Here, Yasha’s ambitious nature makes him domineering, callous, and ultimately, cruel, as he seeks to carve out his own niche in Remnant’s criminal underworld.
        Nonetheless, Yasha harbors great disdain for the Schnee Dust Company.  He understands that the SDC, with regards to its treatment of Faunus, is unrepresentative of most humans, which is why he has yet to formally align himself with the White Fang movement, but he views the Schnee Dust Company as a symbol of an old, cruel, and corrupt order that must be removed to give way to the new for a better tomorrow.  In this aspect, Yasha harbors a small glint of anarchic idealism, perhaps pointing to the culture of freedom and perseverance that he developed during his youth as a Vacuan tribesman.

Aura and Semblance: Dark Guardian
       Yasha’s semblance involves the creation of a peculiar aura construct that has the appearance of a large, shadowy, muscular being with a featureless face and emanating a smoky aura.  However, the being is not limited to this form and can distort its appearance to reflect Yasha’s frame of mind or whatever he wills it to be.  This shadow construct can and often acts independently of Yasha and is more a reflection of his subconscious.  For the most part, the construct is attached to Yasha, seeming to at least physically originate from his shadow, though the construct can, at any time, leave Yasha for brief periods of time, requiring much more aura expenditure to maintain its separation.  The shadow construct varies in its corporealness, ranging from being merely a thick haze to being fully corporeal.  Generally speaking, the more corporeal the shadow construct, the easier it is to attack directly, causing increased taxation of Yasha’s aura reserves. 
        The construct can directly fight in its corporeal form and is generally much stronger and faster than a person at his or her physical peak, giving Yasha an edge in both surprise and combat ability.  Furthermore, Yasha can expend extra aura to warp to the Guardian while it is separated from him, suddenly disappearing and then reforming at its location.
        One notable ability of Yasha’s semblance is for the Guardian to leave him and instead enter his weapon.  During this time, Passover is empowered, doing much more damage, but in exchange, Yasha’s aura drains at a significant rate, meaning that this can only be done for very brief periods.  Much as the Guardian is not permanently bound to Yasha, it is not bound to Passover during this period and can leave it any time Yasha wills it.

Combat Behavior: 
         Yasha is a very physical attacker and a passionate fighter, easily engrossed by the thrill of battle and the visceral feel of Passover’s blade cutting through enemies.  Despite the power of his semblance in close combat, Yasha prefers to rely on his own skill with his scythe blade than on the raw strength offered by the Guardian.  To this effect, Yasha wields Passover in a way that utilizes and efficiently conserves the momentum of his swings, epitomizing the broad, sweeping strokes of a scythe (more like how Ryu Hayabusa uses the Eclipse Scythe in Ninja Gaiden than like how Ruby uses Crescent Rose).  With this style of scythe combat, Passover’s shorter handle becomes more useful, than a scythe handle of traditional length, as it offers increased control in exchange for blade reach. 
        When Yasha does utilize his Guardian, it usually is for the purpose of surprising an unsuspecting enemy or when the Guardian’s physical strength is desperately needed, such as against larger Grimm.  Otherwise, it is quite possible for Yasha’s opponents to go entire fights against him without realizing he has a semblance that he knows how to use.
        Given Yasha’s preference for close combat and lack of ranged weapons or abilities, he struggles with enemies who are able to maintain a distance from him while being able to do damage to him.  Though Passover has mechanisms for using kinetic dust to create blade arcs that effectively extend the reach of the blade, such range-enhancing mechanisms are limited by the amount of dust available and is not a viable option.
       
WEAPON

Name: Passover

Primary Form: a large scythe with a shorter-than usual handle.  There is a sharp weighted end on the other side of the handle.

Secondary Form: The scythe head can rotate upward to make Passover into a traditional warscythe or a large-bladed glaive.  Alternatively, the head can rotate inward for easier stowage.

Tertiary Form: The blade-head can be removed from the shaft, revealing a spear blade, making Passover into a long-bladed short spear or a long iklwa.

Dust Functions: Passover’s head, in which the blade is set, carries slots for dust, allowing Yasha to make arching dust attacks that follow the scythe blade’s motion.  While Yasha could use any dust type, he prefers to use kinetic dust to effectively extend the blade’s reach

History: When Passover was made, as well as under what circumstances it was made, is totally unknown to nearly all but Yasha.  Yasha’s affiliates note that Yasha possessed the weapon even before he joined them in their enterprises, but how much earlier, none can say.  However, ever since Yasha’s elevation in the public eye as a hero of the people, he has kept a distance from being personally involved in criminal operations, and as a result, Passover has seen little use.  Nonetheless, when Yasha wields Passover, there can be no doubt that there will be much blood spilt.