Deerington App

[restinglichface]

IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Lup Taaco
Canon: The Adventure Zone: Balance
Canon Point: Post-Canon End plus two years of CRAU experience

In-Game Tattoo Placement: Inner Arm, only half of a set of antlers, Taako has the other half. When linking arms, they match up for a full image.
Current Health/Status: Lup is technically like 75% dead, but really she’s fine. No status ailments or illnesses.
Age: ~230 years old, physically in his mid to late 20s
Species: High Elf / Undead

Content Warnings: Lup’s whole deal comes with a lot of death. Not only has she died upwards of twenty-plus times over the course of her life, but now she's a bounty hunter for the Raven Queen, her world's Goddess of Death. One of her true forms is a skeleton and she can be seen 'melting away' her skin when shifting into this form. There's also the possibility of dealing with anxiety and panic attacks due to her past traumas.

History: TAZ:Balance Wiki
Lup’s wiki
Stolen Century wiki, which is the arc that she makes her first appearance in.
I'm also including a link to the TAZ transcripts right over here because reading through scripts instead of listening to over, like, 65+ hours of podcast is def easier.

CRAU History and Impact: A brief bullet-pointed history of Hadriel:
• Lup arrived in Hadriel immediately after her brother had been given his memories of her back. They were from different timelines, him from a future where she was missing, and her from before the point she even left, so it was an emotional reunion that left the woman feeling anxious for the future.
• Lup was quickly thrust into all of the emotional manipulation events that came from Hadriel's gods, some of these including: sharing her most traumatic memories with people, having her memories replaced with fake ones, broadcasting her greatest fears out to others.
• Over the course of her time in Hadriel, Lup built up relationships with her castmates - specifically Taako, Barry, and Lucretia - and all spent time working through their issues of when she'd been gone in their timelines and what had changed in her absence. Some months into her stay in Hadriel, Lup left for a canon update and returned to Hadriel from the moment she'd been broken out of her imprisonment. With the new knowledge she had of her leaving and disappearing and the chaos that ensued after, she was able to better understand and seek forgiveness from them.
• During one of Rage's events, Lup and her husband were influenced into obsessive levels of possessiveness towards one another. It eventually turned to physical violence and once the event abruptly ended, Barry disappeared with his crushing guilt, leaving Lup to try and scramble to pick up the pieces of what he'd left behind. It was difficult for her, Barry being the first person she really grew to love outside of Taako, this man she's trusted so deeply with her heart for over half of a century. Lup was always more upset with his hiding away from her than his influenced actions. It took some time for their reunion and recovery, but the time spent apart only reminded Lup of just how deeply she loved him and wanted to make it work. She feels like their connection is even stronger now after what they had to endure.
• During an event where dreams were shared, Lup got a firsthand look into who her brother was without his memories of their past together, where no Lup ever existed in this life. It was also the moment she learned about Glamour Springs and the people he accidentally poisoned there, the trauma that he still has nightmares of. That was Lup's first real leap into just how devastating her disappearance had been for her twin.
• During the Null's first invasion of Hadriel, Lup got to see her brother stabbed clean through the chest by one of the robots. Taako managed to live, but it was an event that forever shook Lup, that really hit home with the reminder that their lives aren't stuck in perpetual loops they will always come back from. Now death holds so much more consequence.
• Exactly one year after her first canon update, she left and returned to Hadriel again, this time returning from one year after the final battle with the Hunger, now with all of the knowledge of the peaceful lives they have ahead of them.
• Barry eventually disappeared from Hadriel completely, crushing Lup with how abrupt his departure was. Though she knows the man is waiting for her back home, that they have the whole of forever to be together, the idea of him having lost all of the memories they've shared together in Hadriel was devastating. However, at the end of her stay in that place, Lup was gifted with an orb that will return the memory to those who have been in Hadriel and have lost it, so a lot of her previous worries are null now. That doesn't make his absence any easier to deal with.
• In preparation for the final battle with the Null, Hope made a request to all of Hadriel's citizens to vote on how they would like to handle their enemies, if they should be killed or have their personalities completely removed and replaced forcefully. Naturally, considering who she is, Lup chooses to have them killed. Lucretia fights the decision, saying it's kinder to reprogram them. For the first time since her return, after two years of defending Lucretia from her twin at every turn, Lup feels completely taken back and hurt, like she's been lied to. It was a huge shift in their relationship - one they eventually sat out and talked through more, with the connection being made back to Taako - but it still marked a big moment in their history

The most significant piece of Hadriel that Lup is taking with her onwards is the relationships made there.

For the first century of her life, Lup spent it entirely with her twin, no one else ever allowed in. The two grew up distrustful of everyone around them, and therefore, only saw others as a means of entertainment or a way to get ahead. They cheated and conned their way to survive through those younger years, never allowing themselves to form bonds with any of the people around them. And they were quite content with that, with always keeping their distance from the world. To them, they were the only two people who mattered, the only two people who made up their whole lives. But then out of nowhere, the two were thrust into a situation where their planet was suddenly gone and they were forced to spend the next hundred years jumping from planet to planet

During this stolen century, the two got to see dozens of worlds be destroyed and millions of people die. This only served as reminders to not let people in. They learned to never get involved with the people of these worlds, to see them as nothing more than dust, because they would suffer the consequences of becoming too attached at the end of every single year. For Lup, she wanted to save each world and it's populations, and would do anything to make it happen, but she still kept that distance from them, knowing no matter how it turned out, she'd never see these people again once their year was up.

But the crew of seven remained, and over the course of that century, Lup grew to love the five other people onboard the ship like family. Eventually, Lup and Taako expanded their group of two to seven. But they were the only ones.

Immediately after all of this came to an end, Lup was imprisoned in total isolation for nearly twelve years before being thrust into Hadriel. So for Lup, Hadriel was really her first chance at choosing to form real relationships with people outside of her family. It was her first step out into a world where people weren't all immediately distrustful or temporary. It was a long road in her beginning to open up and embrace the strange collection of people she met, but by the end of her stay, she was welcoming new friends with open arms, opening up emotionally in a way she so rarely ever did, showing real kindness and affection for these people she's known for so little. It doesn't mean that opening up is easy for her, but it means she finally feels comfortable doing it, which after two hundred years, is quite the step.

Another important impact from Hadriel, would have to be the reunion and repairing of her relationship with her brother. Before Lup's imprisonment, she fucked off into the night without a word to Taako, leaving nothing behind but a two word note. This alongside him losing his memories of her, has been a giant hurdle for the two to overcome together. It's taken months and many emotional discussions, but the two are finally back in sync and completely open with one another again.

Personality: Lup and Taako may be identical twins with equally wicked senses of humor, both titled singularly as 'the twins', but they are not the same elf and that shows so clearly in the actions they take over the course of the story.

Lup falls perfectly into place beneath the ‘trickster’ category beside her brother, a mischievous woman who loves scamming and hustling just as much as starting bar fights. Growing up the way she did, Lup is very distrustful of everyone she meets, always expecting the worst out of people and almost always getting proved right. Years of being passed on by relatives or being forced to bounce between moving caravans for shelter has taught her to rely on no one but herself and her twin. Due to this detachment from society, Lup takes great pleasure in scamming the people she meets. It’s explained in the first episode of The Stolen Century, that their last night on their home planet, the twins decide to hustle idiots in pool at the local bar, winning effortlessly. Instead of taking the loser’s money, they decide to take his shoes. Not because they are some sweet kicks or useful or worth anything, but they do it simply to punish him, so that he has to walk home through the streets in shame. It’s the little things like that, or her long-standing feud with Greg Grimmaldis (who only owes her fifteen dollars, but she continues to bring it up decades after his death), that show just how aloof and distrustful Lup can be.

That attitude changes over the course of The Stolen Century, of course, if only because during those one hundred years, the IPRE crew all came together as a family, learning to love and trust one another in a way that none of them had ever truly known before. For Lup, she has always just had Taako at her side and that was it. The two grew up struggling for survival on the streets, always fighting against the whole damn world just for her right to live. But quite suddenly, she now has five other people she can rely on, five other people who have stuck by her side for a whole century. She might not find herself being able to trust the rest of the world yet, but her circle is slowly but surely growing.

Despite some of her other more questionable actions, Lup can also be seen to have a very fine-tuned moral compass when it comes to decisions that hold real significance. In episode 61, the IPRE find themselves on a planet full of powerful, but peaceful robots. Lup and her brother have absolutely no qualms with looting the bodies of dead robots for spare parts, but Lup draws a line at harming any that are still functioning. Fearing that the Hunger will swoop down and consume the automatons and become even more powerful, Davenport suggests that the crew kill all of the robots themselves instead, an idea that Taako is completely in favor of. However, Lup is quick to speak out against the others:

"Are we - are we just gonna burn every world that we can’t save? Just to keep the Hunger from getting its hands on it? How does that make us any better than them? [...] This - this is the point where we get to decide who we are. I refuse to let us be - the type of people who would destroy an entire world for any reason. This - this isn’t us! This can’t be how we do this!"

Even though her morals can often seem a bit shaky, Lup takes no delight in hurting the innocent, only those she sees as her enemies. A point that comes back to haunt her during their 99th cycle (in episode 66), when the powerful gauntlet she’s created has fallen into the wrong hands and leaves at least a thousand of innocent people dead. Lup is heartbroken and can’t quite shake the guilt looming over her head (“I just- I can’t help but ask… did we make the right decision?”). It’s this guilt that drives her to leave her brother and her friends without a word, deciding that her conscience can only be cleared by taking her gauntlet back and hiding it away forever.

Going hand-in-hand with her difficult childhood, Lup is more than a little hot-blooded and combative, quick to rise in anger and stubborn as hell. When the crew fell upon the 65th plane, they are held as captives and given a trial for their past sins, where they are read out their crimes. While the rest of the crew at least fights their sentences a little, Lup doesn’t even give the Justices a chance to read them off, deciding to list them herself.

Lup: Uhh wait, I’m gonna guess. I mean, definitely some lust, um… some gluttony in there, probably; pride, for sure—did I miss anything?
Taako: Wrath? Did you for—don’t forget wrath.
Lup: Oh, hella—hella wrath, yeah, definitely. [...]
Lup: Did I get everything?
Justice 3: Yes? H-how do you—how do you plead?
Lup: [laughs] Guilty, yeah.

Along with that, Lup is often rude, abrasive, loud, overly confident, and reckless. She curses freely and says exactly what she’s thinking, no matter how insensitive it might come off as. While Taako and Magnus at least try to be a little subtle about destroying the shitty gifts Merle gave them, Lup just smashes it to the ground at his feet (“Cool! I don’t— I don’t want that. [..] Mm, it’s a dead fish. I don’t want that on my head. Merle, you get that I don’t want that on my head, right?”). When it comes to confrontations, Lup will always be 100% on the side of fight over flight. But, on the opposite end, she’s also courageous, loyal, and selfless to a fault. She would do anything to protect the family that she’s made along the way, even technically giving up her mortal life for the chance to get a one-up on the Hunger by becoming a Lich.

For all of her detachment and faults, Lup is friendly and gregarious, an extrovert in the extreme. She’ll absolutely socialize with anyone and everyone, though she'll quietly be much more picky about the actual people she’ll let in close. She loves pranks and jokes of any kind (especially if she’s the one initiating them), but can also take a good goof from someone else like a champ. When it comes to emotions, Lup is a woman of extremes, feeling the whole spectrum of them intensely. It makes her happiness that much brighter to behold and her wrath that much more terrifying. She's still not as well equipped to deal with serious moments as others with more stable upbringings, oftentimes resorting to jokes to ease the discomfort she feels.

Lup is also a bit of a master of the arcane sciences by this point, having graduated at the top of her class (with Taako) from university and then having spent the last one hundred years studying the Light of Creation along with Barry. She's shown to be extraordinarily smart, the whole plan of creating the grand relics to hide from The Hunger coming from the two of them.

Since the defeat of the Hunger and a new peace has settled into their lives, Lup has been working to find her place, both within her family's lives and within the world as a whole. While she was frozen in time, everything and everyone kept moving forward, and now she's struggling to catch up. Lup pretends to not be so bothered by it, turning more towards her joy in just being free again, but there's always a note of worry and fear in the back of her mind. It helps that she has so much to do now - there's reconstruction to this world, relationships to rebuild, and a new job to throw herself into - but it's still always there, especially coming out when she's alone.

After her decade-long imprisonment, Lup has a deep fear of the dark, small spaces, and of not being seen/heard. Even this long since she's been freed, she still has frequent nightmares of being captive and can fall into severe panic attacks when trapped.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: Lup is a level 16 DnD wizard (5th edition), which means everything is overly complicated. In DnD, wizards cast their spells by using their acquired magical knowledge and experience. To do this, they have to prepare a certain number of spells daily that can be used, but once those have been used up, they are completely out until they are able to take a long rest (eight hours) and recharge their spell slots. Going a little further into things, Lup is specifically an Evocation Wizard, which is described as a spellcaster who "creates powerful elemental effects such as bitter cold, searing flame, rolling thunder, crackling lightning, and burning acid." Her full list of spells is right over here.

Wizard magic doesn't come with any weaknesses exactly, except that wizards themselves are a little physically frail and have that limit of just how many spells they can cast a day. For warping though, I'd love to see Lup's spells backfire more frequently or just totally do the reverse of what she expects. Specifically, I'd like for her magic to become increasingly more unstable depending on the level of the spell. For example, a basic cantrip like Produce Flame would work nine times out of ten. But a level eight spell like Sunburst would actually only work one in ten times. Some wonky side effects of her backfired spells could be Fabricate creating something fleshy and horrific instead of what she's trying to make or Sending sending her a dark whispered message from no one instead of her sending one out to someone else. I specifically want these side effects to be more on the horror side to stay true to the setting.

Along those same lines, all of her necromancy-based spells will work as intended.

As an elf, Lup also has Darkvision, which is described as superior vision in dark and dim conditions. She can see dim light within 60 feet as if it was bright light, and in total darkness she can see as if it was dim light. Lup can not discern color in darkness, only shades of grey. She also is resistance to charms and immune to sleep spells. Elves also do not need to sleep to feel rested, they only need to fall into a trance-like meditation for four hours.

In addition to her spells as a wizard, Lup also has the following abilities granted to her by the Raven Queen:

☆ Form Manipulation: Though still an elf in appearance, Lup has three forms that she can swap between at will. The first is just her normal, elven appearance, which is completely unchanged outside of being cold to the touch, having no heartbeat, and not needing to breathe. From there, she can shift seamlessly into her reaping form, full on skeleton in a long robe, very classic grim reaper. And the last is a ball of floating light, which is essentially just her raw soul. Though Kravitz can take this form to possess others, Lup doesn't have that skill down quite yet, so she isn't able to.

☆ Portal Rifts: Lup's able to rip portals anywhere to hop between different areas or planes, bringing items or people along with her. Basically a free teleport spell, just much flashier.

☆ Flight: Lup can fly without the use of magic.

☆ Summoning: Lup can summon her reaper's scythe to her at any point.

As a reaper, Lup is weak to light or radiance-based attacks. In regards to her powers warping in Deerington, Lup is going to have a much more difficult time shifting between her different appearances except for when her emotions are running high, then it's going to be difficult to hold onto her appearance. Just imagine the skin of her face melting away to reveal the skeleton beneath, but then almost immediately, reversing, then melting again, leaving patches of bone peeking through flesh. Gross things!! Her portals will also only work properly sometimes, other times opening up in random spots around town, but more frequently dropping her right into the forest.

Lup has a language proficiency as she's fluent in six different languages. She's also an accomplished cook, having worked with her twin in the kitchen for over two hundred years now. The pair have spent a full century going from world to world around the universe and enjoying all of the different kinds of cuisines available there. During this time, they not only were able to learn new techniques in the kitchen, but they also had to forrage and make do with ingredients they didn't fully understand. Because of this and their childhood of scavenging, the two are very skilled in making a meal out of anything.

Inventory:
☆ her reaper scythe - taking the weapon slot
☆ phone from Hadriel
☆ bag of various clothing and accessories - included are all of her summer wear, her favorite oversized sunglasses, a rolled up ball of at least ten different scarves squished at the very bottom, her magicked flower crown, her magicked ice necklace, her husband's ring, her own ring, and at least one or two of Peanut's outfits
☆ her husband’s journal from Hadriel
☆ one half of a pair of magical earrings that act as long distance walkie-talkies, sends only to Taako
☆ her magical blessing orb from Hadriel (all for sentimental value, since it's magic won't actually work in Deerington)

Writing Samples: TDM Link and Thread from Hadriel!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Mey
Player Age: 33
Player Contact: meyggy

Other Characters In Game: N/A
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Lup Taaco: Mey
Permissions for Character: Here
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: As long as it isn't cracky, I'm here for it!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: I really love digging deep into past trauma and pushing the boundaries of a character's psyche, to see how desperately they react. I love puzzles and characters working together to put all of the pieces together, especially in regards to deep game lore. I love characters who normally have all of the power suddenly getting that ripped away from them.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Nope!
Additional Information: Nope, thank you!