@rubilykskoye info (nsfw)

ABOUT

PREFS

MONSTER

CODE CREDIT

ABOUT

Alina Starkov NAME
Cis female SEX/GENDER
Shadow & Bone (Grishaverse) CANON
1x07, searching for the stag CANONPOINT

HISTORY

ORPHAN

When Alina was a child at Ana Kuya's orphanage in Keramzin, she met Malyen Oretsev, a descendant of Sankt Ilya Morozova and a human amplifier for Grisha power. They felt inexplicably drawn to one another (Alina's power hungering for the amplifier that was made for her, and Malyen's amplifier gravitating towards the sankta destined to use it) and became best friends, eventually falling in love with one another. For much of her life, Alina believed her feelings for Mal were one-sided, but recently she has learned that Mal returns her feelings; what she doesn't know is that he's an amplifier, and that that's responsible for their pull towards one another.

MAPMAKER

As a mapmaker in Ravka's Second Army, Alina went out onto the Fold and learned that she was Grisha, a type of human with exceptional pseudo-magical abilities. Because hers involved summoning and bending light, she was viewed as a saint by the people of Ravka, and brought to the Little Palace so she could train to destroy the Shadow Fold that divided the country. This seated Alina with an incredible amount of power and responsibility at a young age, quite suddenly. In the book series, we see how that pressure overwhelms Alina and combines with her low self-worth to make her anxious and depressive.

GRISHA

At the Little Palace, Alina was made to feel like she was "more than a stick from Keramzin" for the first time — she felt important, loved, and powerful because of the way the First Army General and another descendant of Ilya Morozova and human amplifier, Aleksander Kirigan, treated her. The two developed a romantic relationship.

NAIVE CHILD

Alina's romantic relationship with Aleksander dissolves after his mother tells her that he intends to forcibly implants an amplifier into her in a manner that gives him total control over her sun summoning, so that he can weaponize the Fold and seize political power in Ravka. Feeling betrayed and manipulated, Alina flees the capital and Aleksander.

ABILITIES

SUN SUMMONER

As a Grisha, Alina can summon sunlight and shape it into corporeal form. It can be used for a light source, to burn/blind, to create a protective dome, and as a blade. This is a genetics-based power, referred to in canon as "the small science" and distinct from magic ("merzost").

In her canon, some etherealki can learn how to use elements separate from their expertise (think: ATLA), but Alina doesn't have the present ability to do this, and it's a school of thought different from her training. If I wanted her to develop this, I'd submit a powers change or plotting form.

Grisha power is also the Small Science for the most part; as such, it can only change/manipulate what already exists. In theory, Alina's power depends on access to glimmers of light that she then draws together and turns into a weapon. All of her abilities but merzost, therefore, could be limited by putting her in a lightless space/vacuum.

In the books, Grisha who do not use their power grow sick and weak. While she was not using her powers, Alina displayed symptoms of chronic illness — fatigue, sallow skin, thin/brittle hair and nails, etc.

MERZOST

While she hasn't used it at this canon point, Alina later in the series does use merzost to resurrect her boyfriend, Malyen Oretsev. Merzost is full-on magic that doesn't care for the laws of physics and the universe. It was also used to create the Fold, for example, which transformed hundreds of people into horrifying shadow monsters and also created a miles-long scar of shadow in the landscape.

Its limitations are that because it's heresy, it exacts a cost on its user. When Alina uses it to resurrect Malyen, but that is implied to swap her light summoning powers for shadow summoning. In the books, it turns her hair white once and later strips her entirely of her sun summoning, leaving her powerless. Any uses of merzost would involve a plot submission.

PERMISSIONS

Yes TOUCHING Yes KISSING Yes SEX Yes POWERS USE Yes INJURY Ask death

Sure FIGHT SCENES Let's Talk SHIPPING No FOURTH-WALLING Up to 30 days BACKTAGGING With prior CR THREADJACKING CW for pregnancy; no gender play OOC HARD LIMITS

PREFERENCES

SMUT kinks list

HORROR TROPE_1
TROPE_2
TROPE_3

MONSTER

appearance

As a light-siren, Alina takes the form of an exceptionally tall and skeletally thin humanoid woman with smooth, shiny skin of gold and ivory. Her eyes and mouth are glowing holes like pits into a shining, golden hell. She has white hair down past her knees, a garish art-deco style crown-cum-halo, and a pair of antlers growing out of her collarbones. She has three sets of gilded white biblically-accurate-angel wings coming out of her shoulder blades. Her ribcage can open up to a similar golden-light-abyss, large enough to act as a mouth to devour an adult male.

POWERS

TRANCE | Alina's monstrous form lures people to her with a siren-like trance created by her voice and by indirect glimpses of her light. She has a magnetism about her that makes people almost religiously desperate to worship her.

SUNLIGHT | In this form, Alina maintains all her power for sun summoning without any control, and therefore she blinds anyone who looks at her, burning out their eyes if they look for long enough.

DEVOURING | Once they are incapacitated, her hair draws them in as sort of grasping tentacles, and she absorbs them (whole) into her ribcage-mouth. When she eats people, her own power grows stronger — her light more powerful, her allure more difficult to resist, her base strength higher.

behavior

Desperate for love, attention, and veneration, Alina's greedy monstrous form is driven to ply and wheedle people into looking at her. She seeks followers, worshippers, lovers. But she is insatiable, for no one can actually look upon her and marvel without being scarred and horrified, and she will always devour them to increase her power instead of sharing it or protecting them.