Reaper | Character Spotlight | Day 3
Day Three of Reaper's character spotlight!
If you aren't aware, character spotlight is a neat thing by @did-i-do-this-write, basically you babble about a specific character for as long as you choose, until essentially you have nothing left to babble for! It's great :)
[Reaper's Character Spotlight will go on for one week (Sept 12th to the 19th). This means any character asks sent during this week will be about her, and (hopefully) I put out more about her every day of said week lol. If you have any follow-up questions, I'd love to answer them :)]
Beliefs (my favorite :>)
Reaper's main belief in the world is that, in the end, there is no one you can truly rely on but yourself. This started due to events shortly after her Awakening, and really all her lives since. This slowly changes over the course of the story as she meets people she can finally trust in and feel safe around, but even during those beginning stages, she views her companions as people she's teaching that belief to. She's helping them learn how to defend themselves, because she isn't always going to be there to do it for them.
Her second belief is a lot simpler: Authority figures can go fuck themselves.
Reaper and authority figures have always had a rocky history, which really started because of her thieving life, but later evolved as Reaper saw them for what most of them were: manipulating liars. Be it Archivists or religious leaders and Clerics, all of them in her eyes are simply using their power to control the masses to get what they want, and usually keep their riches to themselves.
This is part of the reason that Reaper is essentially an atheist. She views religion, which is a big thing on Dridon, as simply a way to control people, and anybody who believes in it to be a bit loony. Some of them she sees as simply misguided, but usually conversations she tries to have about religion devolve in them hating her for her 'heretical' ways. That, or the Abyssalist gets uncomfortable and tries their damnedest to leave the conversation, as if they don't want to test and poke at their beliefs (which Reaper finds stupid, and to her only further proves her belief that religion is just brainwashing in the end.)
The main religion on Dridon is called Abyssalism. Its followers, called Abyssalists, worship The Black as a generous deity that they must respect, lest bad tidings befall them. They believe they are all here for a reason only known by The Black, but try to find that reason with meditation and burning prayers. They also believe their deaths happen for a reason ordained by The Black, and see it usually as some form of punishment for something done prior.
There is a sect of Abyssalism, currently called Nothosis [know-tho-sis] (though it may change in the future). They are a smaller group, but believe firmly in reconnecting with The Black in a way everyone else seems to have discarded. They do see The Black as the ultimate God, but their end goal is to reunite with it some day and escape this cycle of life and death, of mere fleeting moments with their God. They believe that everything is preordained by The Black, and everything happens for a reason, even if they don't understand why yet.
Both Abyssalists and Nothians, or Children of Nothing as they're more formally called, both highly believe in essentially karma. Unfortunately, most of them twist it to fit their own selfish ways. Usually, they wish harm to befall those that have wronged them, saying 'The Abyss will not take kindly to your actions' while ignoring their own possibly harmful actions. Some of them are even prone to inaction because of this, thinking The Black will deal out justice for them on their aggressors. With these few, Reaper gets annoyed with, because she's a firm believer in dealing out justice for yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.
The last sort of major belief system on Dridon is what's called The Paradigms, supposedly the pinnacle of human qualities. The story behind them are contradictory and usually vague--some think the Paradigms are instilled into people upon Awakening, some think they were true, extraordinary people who disappeared along with The Vanished, some think that 'The Paradigms' were a bunch of really convincing drunkards or the fabrication of a hopeful one long ago. But the Paradigms themselves always stay the same: Power, Energy, Will, and Spark. And each has their own Code, or a belief tied with it.
These Codes, however, really only enable people to look out for themselves selfishly, at the cost of others. As such, Reaper doesn't like it a lot, and given a lot of people who follow The Paradigms also believe in folklore like The Vanished and that people dying a lot makes them devolve into Soulwalkers, Reaper again just chalks them up to lunatics. A fun fact, though, is there's a game called Codes, akin to rock-paper-scissors and played with wooden tablets, that's inspired by The Paradigms :)
Reaper's met more Abyssalists, and has only heard of Nothians, but her problem with both is again the fact she simply sees both religions as a form of control, using the main tool everyone has access to: The Black.
Reaper herself believes that that's just what The Black is: a tool. She doesn't think it has any true sentience to it, and is just there to facilitate regeneration and people's reserves. She detests the idea of it having sentience and being some sort of god, because then that means it cares not for the people of Dridon, people it created. Overall, she really only believes in things she can see, that she has solid proof of.
An example of this is Remnants, ancient buildings scattered around Dridon that are rumored to have been around before most people Awakened, during the supposed time of The Vanished. She doesn't believe that part, only that Remnants do exist, as she's both seen them and heard of Archivist plans of when and where to visit them. She hasn't been in one, as usually they're guarded by people hired by whichever Archivist is closest to it (those guys really like studying Remnants, annoyingly just to get more money for themselves by crowd funding their research).
The last major part of her philosophy is that people deserve justice for how they've been wronged. The only issue is that they rarely, if ever, get it. But as such, Reaper believes herself to be sort of that force, a vigilante almost, helping people when she can afford to and giving them that small bit of justice to live a little bit better moving forward, even if it won't last too long in the end.
Reaper's beliefs are some of my favorite parts about her, so I'm happy I get to share them, and hope you enjoyed them! As always, if you have any followup questions feel free to ask! I'll be happy to answer :)
