[OOC] Cataclysm App

[dendarii]

PLAYER NAME Rho
PLAYER CONTACT katoptron
SOURCE BOX DRAGGED ME INTO THIS!! Blame her.

CHARACTER NAME Miles Vorkosigan
HOUSE Sacrifice
TYPE Catalyst
POSITION Teacher / Barrayaran Ambassador
ABILITIES/POWERS Miles is a B-rank Catalyst that used to be a high R-rank. He had a reputation as being a Scary Barrayaran Catalyst who could wield a ridiculous number of Artifacts simultaneously. But shit happened and now he can only really bond with his current partner, Roy Mustang. Any other bonds are painful and shallow. He has some minor fire/alchemy capabilities as a result, but nothing flashy.
CHARACTER 'STORY' TL;DR Miles is a very short kinda screwed up Catalyst from a Scary Russian Klingon Empire. He’s bonded to Roy Mustang super hard and might have died a little, but he’s fine! Really’s he’s fine.

I’m gonna break this into two sections worth of bullet points:

BARRAYAR

• Barrayar (AKA the Barrayaran Imperium) is an eastern European country that disappeared off the face of the earth about three hundred years ago.


• Basically they’re Klingons. Big military traditions, frankly kind of scary?


• They’re not 100% sure how it happened? Presumably it was Anomaly or Artifact-related, but no one knows for sure! They also don’t actually know … what happened either?? Alternate dimension, or maybe the whole country wound up in a bottle in the back of a museum for three hundred years. It doesn’t actually matter!


• Whatever caused their long exile also dialed up the background magic to eleven, causing especially strong Catalysts, Artifacts, and also Aberrations, which is the Barrayaran term for both Anomalies and also any human that has a birth defect resulting from magic.


• Anyway, about seventy-five years prior to game start, whatever effect cut them off from the world suddenly stopped! And they promptly got invaded by their neighbor, Cetaganda.


• In a move that should have been impossible for a feudal kingdom cut off from the world for over two hundred years, Barrayar fended them off. And then turned around and invaded Cetaganda right back, annexing the region of Komarr.


• So Barrayar instantly got a rep for a) being terrifying invaders with b) terrifying Catalyst/Artifact bonds and also c) being metal AF.


• They started a couple wars, but then the heir to the Barrayaran throne got himself dead in a battle. Aral Vorkosigan (Miles’ father) was declared Regent.


• Barrayar calmed down after that, mostly. They still have no chill and are probably feared by other countries? And are generally known for being kind of regressive/terrible. But they improved significantly under Aral and are continuing to modernize under Emperor Gregor Vorbarra, who took over recently.

MILES

• Miles Naismith Vorkosigan was born to Aral Vorkosigan (regent of Barrayar) and Cordelia Naismith (Air Force pilot). They met during one of Barrayar’s many early wars; Aral took her prisoner and promptly fell head over heels.


• Aral’s family wasn’t super thrilled with Aral marrying some hotshot pilot from outside of Barrayar but try to tell Aral that.


• Anyway Aral was going to retire but then the Regency happened, and also political intrigue happened, and Cordelia got poisoned while pregnant with Miles.


• This resulted in Miles having to be removed early to save his life (and Cordelia’s). His gestation was finished via artifact, specifcally some kind of glass bottle setup.


• He lived (obviously) but with significant side effects: his bones are made of glass. Literally. This stunted his growth and got him labeled as an Aberration, to his great social detriment on Barrayar.


• He attempted to join the Barrayaran catalyst corps when he was old enough, but couldn’t pass the physical exams because of his bones.


• So instead he fucked off to Pinnacle to study there, because he was gonna be a goddamn Catalyst no matter what.


• That went … okay! Technically Miles never graduated though; he got called back home and involved in a whole mess of things, including starting his own mercenary group. Long story, details aren’t super important.


• What is important is that Miles joined up with Imperial Security and ran lots of missions for them, becoming infamous as a Catalyst uniquely suited to wielding tons of Artifacts simultaneously.


• This went great right up until a mission where he had to rescue a bunch of Barrayarans stuck behind enemy lines during a recent (totally not a war) excursion. He wielded no fewer than thirteen Artifacts at once, which. Ended poorly!


• One Artifact died while bonded to him and he generally messed up his Catalyst capabilities. Also he lied about it to his commanders which. Was the worse thing honestly.


• Anyway they kicked him out to go be a Barrayaran culture ambassador to Pinnacle; Aral pulled some strings to get him installed as a teacher. Probably some people got mad about that.


• He immediately encountered Roy Mustang and they like. Instantly got codependent with each other. Both reeling from being broken down! And also having a relationship with Aral in common.


• They found themselves bonding incredibly quickly over an incursion of strange amalgamated Anomalies that originated from outside of Pinnacle. And since they’re both trying to improve their countries (Miles with the Aberration/magic radiation, Roy with his Anomaly conspiracies), they found it best to work together.


• This led them to stumble upon an awful laboratory run by Baron Ryoval (dimly in the Barrayaran orbit) and Shou Tucker (you know where this is going). Turns out Tucker was combining humans and Anomalies and making a horrific mess out of children in the name of science and also selling them to the highest bidder.


• >Roy and Miles cleaned them out, but during the fight Miles was wounded fatally and died. Oops! Fortunately, Roy was there to perform dramatic and extremely gay human transmutation.


• The event did something very strange (and possibly anomalous) to their bond; it definitely left Miles with a great big chunk of something weird in his chest instead of a heart. He’s also prone to seizures now, which further limited his ability to bond with anyone except Roy.


• He went back home for a while to convalesce. Recovered, ish? And now he’s returned to Pinnacle as the Barrayaran ambassador in full. With orders to investigate wtf is going on here, but also to Stay Out Of Trouble This Time, Goddamn You.


• Spoilers: he won’t.

ANYTHING ELSE I DON’T THINK SO?? Sorry about the bullet points, but this would have been ridiculously long otherwise.