Breq of the Gerentate

A few notes about Breq, and Ancillary Justice:

Breq is from a culture that doesn't distinguish gender. As such, she often has a hard time with pronouns, and may misgender people.

The Imperial Radch trilogy also deals in a lot of dark and complicated topics, including death, slavery, imperialism, and addictions. If you'd rather these (or any other topics) not come up ICly or OOCly between us, this is the place to reach out.

Comments are screened by default! If you'd like your response not to be screened, let me know.

player information
● name: Ptero
● age: 21+
● contact: needslineface or PM
● other characters: n/a

character information
● name: Breq
● canon: Imperial Radch Trilogy
● canon point: After shooting out the oxygen tanks in her shuttle to protect Provincial Palace Omaugh. (Ancillary Justice)
● age: 2000+ years

● (canon) background: The Imperial Radch wiki doesn't have good summaries, so I'm including my own here. (A quick note on gender-- the book uses "she" as a default pronoun, to simulate the genderless Radchaai language. In cases where characters have been gendered in other languages I'm using those pronouns for them, but some characters were not and will be referred to with 'they.')

The troop carrier Justice of Toren was commissioned approximately 2000 years ago. Like the other ships of the Imperial Fleet, Justice of Toren was part of the Radchaai military, built and maintained for one purpose: conquest. With its army of ancillaries--so-called "corpse soldiers," living bodies integrated into the ship's A.I.--Justice of Toren and other ships like it allowed the "annexation" of planets and systems into the Radch.

Only 100 years after being commissioned, the twenty-ancillary subunit One Esk started learning to sing, in order to please an unnamed favorite lieutenant. The habit continued even after the lieutenant was gone, and earned Justice of Toren a reputation as the "singing ship."

After 1000 years of serving in annexations, Justice of Toren gained a newly-minted lieutenant, one Seivarden Vendaai. Justice of Toren did not look favorably on Seivarden due to his arrogance and snide behavior, and over the course of his twenty-one years of service on the ship, it expressed that dissatisfaction through subtle slights. Those offenses continued until the day he left to take command of a ship of his own, the Sword of Nathtas.

Justice of Toren and Sword of Nathtas were both involved in the annexation of Garsedd. As far as annexations went, this one was going relatively peacefully, but the peace did not last. As the Sword of Nathtas transported Garseddai representatives to meet with the Lord of the Radch, three of those representatives, using guns and armor that none of the Radch's forces had been able to detect, attacked the crew and eventually destroyed the ship. For this act of resistance Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch, ordered the destruction of Garsedd-- the system, its people, their culture, and twenty-four of those impossible guns and armor.

Anaander Mianaai, rather than rule by proxy, had cloned himself and connected the mind of each clone. Doing so allowed him to directly govern the entirety of the Radch in a multitude of bodies, and to travel around the Radch without danger. Approximately 900 years after Garsedd, Justice of Toren was visited by four of Anaander Mianaai's bodies. During that visit Anaander Mianaai ordered Justice of Toren to hide him from its crew. He requested information from it and changed its core accesses that made it ultimately loyal to Anaander Mianaai, then influenced it to forget that those changes had been made.

81 years later, annexation of the planet Shis'urna began. In the following five years, Justice of Toren One Esk, under the command of Lieutenant Awn Elming, helped to secure the city of Ors. Due to the influence of the High Priest of Ikkt, Lieutenant Awn and One Esk were the only ones from Justice of Toren who still remained on the planet. Lieutenant Awn, and by extension One Esk, had gained the trust of the Orsians, the less-fortunate majority in the city. By extension, they had earned the dislike of the Tanmind, the more prosperous minority who often held positions of power in the region. It was due to this trust that One Esk learned from one of the Orsians that someone had planted a cache of weapons in the nearby swamp.

One Esk went to retrieve the cache of weapons, and discovered that the weapons were ones that Justice of Toren's ancillaries had confiscated previously. It reported this to Lieutenant Awn, who began to investigate. With additional help from Skaaiat (a Lieutenant on another ship, and Awn's lover) they were able to determine that the weapons had been purposefully planted by the Tanmind in an attempt to frame the Orsians for sedition. However, in order to gain access to the confiscated weapons, the Tanmind would have needed help from someone high up in the Radch chain of command.

Before they could do anything with that information, Anaander Mianaai sent one of his bodies directly to Ors, and everything immediately went wrong.

The Tanmind began to form a mob that night, stricken by the apparent murder of one of their own. To make matters worse, something began to jam communications and cut all of One Esk's segments off from Justice of Toren. Despite this difficulty, Awn and One Esk were able to keep the Tanmind mob away from the houses of the Orsians and shepherded them into the Temple of Ikkt, where Awn and Anaander Mianaai confronted them. The Tanmind attempted to blame the Orsians for the murder and also for the cache of weapons, but Lieutenant Awn was able to disprove them.

At this point, Anaander Mianaai pulled Lieutenant Awn aside and began to harshly question them while one of One Esk's bodies looked on. After that, Anaander Mianaai ordered Awn to have the Tanmind executed. They protested and nearly refused, but ultimately ordered all of the One Esk segments to kill the eighty-three Tanmind who had come into the Temple of Ikkt. When One Esk finally found and destroyed the device that had been blocking its communications, it discovered that one of its ancillary units, One Esk Nineteen, had been killed during the blackout.

Before the cleanup began, Anaander Mianaai asked One Esk when the last time he had visited it was. Despite knowing of the most recent visit where Anaander Mianaai had stayed onboard it unbeknownst to the human crew, One Esk found itself compelled to name a time 200 years earlier, instead of the one 94 years prior.

After that night, One Esk, Awn, and Skaaiat all reached the same conclusion: That Anaander Mianaai, somehow, had been responsible for supplying the confiscated weapons for the Tanmind to plant, and that Awn's connections with the Orsians of the lower city had ruined that plan, causing Anaander Mianaai to order the death of the Tanmind.

In the wake of that incident, Lieutenant Awn and One Esk were finally recalled to Justice of Toren, who in turn was sent away from Shis'urna and back toward Valskaay. As the ship prepared to leave a medic began the process of slaving a new body to Justice of Toren to replace the One Esk segment lost in Ors. When Awn heard about this, they immediately went to comfort the new ancillary body as it was slaved to Justice of Toren's systems. One Esk was irritated with the medic over the choice of body, as this new ancillary unit did not have a good singing voice.

Before Justice of Toren could begin to gate to Valskaay, it was joined onboard by three of Anaander Mianaai. Much like the previous visit, this one was done in secrecy, and Anaander Mianaai went to one of the unoccupied decks, after forbidding Justice of Toren from telling anyone that he was aboard.

In the days that followed, Justice of Toren found itself trapped--forced to act as though this Anaander Mianaai was gaining direct access to its systems, even though some previous meddler had locked those accesses away. The reason why eventually became clear: Anaander Mianaai was at war with himself, convinced that the 'other him,' (Reformist Anaander) was corrupted by the savage aliens called the Presgr. He (Traditionalist Anaander) was here to assure Justice of Toren's loyalty (something impossible, since the 'other' Anaander Mianaai had gotten to it first) and to determine which version of himself Justice of Toren's officers were loyal to. He concluded that Lieutenant Awn was a weapon of his enemy.

A week into the journey, Anaander Mianaai ordered Justice of Toren to bring Lieutenant Awn to him. He revealed to Awn that he was the one who had planted the guns and rallied the Tanmind in Ors, before ordering Justice of Toren's One Var unit to kill Lieutenant Awn.

One Var did so, but the emotional backlash from One Esk over Awn's death was so strong that the One Var unit immediately killed one of Anaander Mianaai's bodies. Anaander Mianaai immediately realized that his other self/his enemy must have gotten Justice of Toren's allegiance first, and immediately activated a device that shut down Justice of Toren's connection with its ancillaries, much like the device had in Ors. One Esk's units were familiar with this experience, and were prepared to defend the ship from Anaander Mianaai. After some consultation, they began to split up to accomplish different tasks. One Esk Nineteen was given its own mission--to find the Reformist Anaander Mianaai and tell him what had happened.

One Esk Nineteen managed to get onto a shuttle and escape, only to see the ship vanish into thin air. Anaander Mianaai had breached Justice of Toren's heat shields. Without containment, the ship's engines were so hot that they vaporized the entirety of Justice of Toren and its crew-- with the exception of One Esk Nineteen.

One Esk Nineteen was found and taken in by a group of cyborg-modified humans, as they drifted on the outskirts of Radch space after escaping Justice of Toren's gate. For six months, One Esk Nineteen struggled to learn how to exist as her own person. After that time, she managed to get passage out of the system, and could finally continue her desperate last mission from Justice of Toren, to tell Anaander Mianaai what had happened.

In the following nineteen years, One Esk Nineteen did a lot of things. She took on the identity of Breq Ghaiad, worked in various jobs as a cook, janitor, and pilot, among other things, and used the time to learn eleven languages. At some point during this time, Breq ended up in the Itran Tetrarchy, and became a devotee of She who Sprang from the Lily. Breq also made a lot of money during that time. She started to learn the ways to hide her origins and disable some of the modifications and implants that would mark her as an ancillary. And, during those nineteen years, Breq's plan began to change from the initial mission given to her by Justice of Toren. She decided that rather than just telling the right Anaander Mianaai, she wanted to kill him, as many of his bodies as she could. She wanted to force his war with himself out into the open, where it could not be ignored.

In order to do that, Breq needed a weapon capable of slipping past Radch security, and she was one of the few people alive who still knew that there had been weapons capable of doing just that, at Garsedd. She also knew a key detail: that the Garseddai culture always did things in multiples of five, and that only twenty-four guns had been destroyed after Garsedd. Her search for the remaining gun followed a tenuous trail to Arilesperas Strigan, a doctor and collector who had fled his home to the middle-of-nowhere planet of Nilt, an icy planet far from Radch space.

On her way to find Strigan, Breq found Seivarden Vendaai, her former lieutenant, naked and dying in the snow. Despite her better judgement, she saved his life, only to find that he had developed a drug addiction somewhere on his way from the Radch to Nilt. Reluctant to abandon her mission, she dragged him along as she went to find Strigan, while she waited for him to come down from his high. When she found Strigan, she struggled to convince them to give her the Garseddai gun, and to convince them to admit that they had it. In the meantime, she discovered that Seivarden had managed to escape the destruction of his ship in a stasis pod, but had been lost in space for centuries, only to be discovered a few years prior. Breq was finally able to convince Strigan to give her the gun by telling them about her history and what she planned to do with it.

After buying the gun from Strigan, Breq, with Seivarden in tow, began the process of leaving the frozen southern reaches of Nilt where Strigan had hidden themself away. Before they could start to travel toward the spaceports along the equator, however, she discovered that Seivarden had stolen and sold her flier. Assuming that he'd used the money to buy more drugs, she stormed off, planning to find her way off the planet herself. As she crossed the bridge out of the town, Seivarden chased after her. They began to fight, and a misstep nearly sent Seivarden off the bridge and to his death. Breq jumped off of the bridge and used her armor to protect the both of them from the fall, at the cost of severe injury to herself.

When she woke up in the hospital, she found out that Seivarden had survived the fall and brought help for her. She healed relatively well, except for her right hip, which lingered and continued to bother her. Seivarden explained that he had sold their flier intending to buy kef, but hadn't, and expressed to Breq that he wanted to go sober, and to stay with her, even though at the time he had no idea that she had once been Justice of Toren. Instead, he was under the impression that she was a special agent of the Radch, sent to bring him back. Unable to dissuade him from coming with her, Breq finally agreed to bring him with her, as her servant.

In the seven months it took them to travel to the Omaugh Provincial Palace, the nearest part of the Radch which would be sure to contain bodies of Anaander Mianaai, Breq hatched what plan she could. She would use the return of an infamous lost Captain to the Radch to attempt to gain an audience with Anaander Mianaai, all while posing as a tourist from the far-off Gerentate. She was shaken, however, to discover that Skaiaat Awer, Lieutenant Awn's former lover, was the Inspector Supervisor of the docks at Omaugh. Nevertheless, she continued to help Seivarden in the process of attempting to regain his status before the destruction of his ship. While waiting for his audience with Anaander Mianaai, Breq and Seivarden were invited to a social gathering where Justice of Toren was discussed. Unable to stifle her emotional reaction to her former name, Breq knew that the Station's AI would pick up on that anomalous reading, and that incongruity would be sure to attract the attention of Anaander Mianaai.

Sure enough, she and Seivarden were almost immediately brought into an audience with Anaander Mianaai, who confronted her with three bodies, who immediately identified Breq as Justice of Toren, to Seivarden's complete shock. Breq told the Lord of the Radch that he was at war with himself, then shot one of the bodies present. Before she was able to do more, however, the Reformist Anaander activated a failsafe that allowed him to take control of Breq's body.

Almost immediately, the Anaanders activated one of the communications blockers, but it wasn't soon enough to keep the two versions of Anaander for beginning a battle for the station. The Traditionalist Anaander, at a disadvantage in his recruitment, was at a particular disadvantage if the word got out-- as such, his goal was to destroy the station entirely, and the easiest way to do so would be to approach the nearest military ship, Mercy of Kalr, and breach its heat shields just as he had done to Justice of Toren.

Breq, Seivarden, and the Reformist Anaander Mianaai managed to secure the docks with the help of Skaiaat Awer, who worked alongside them after being told that Breq was the last remaining piece of Justice of Toren, and that Lieutenant Awn had died with the rest of the ship. To ensure that none of the ships in the area would come in close and assist the Traditionalist Anaander, Breq took a shuttle out herself, to warn Mercy of Kalr and the other ships in the area not to let anyone aboard them.

She was able to warn Mercy of Kalr, but her ship was nevertheless attacked by some of the Traditionalist Anaander Mianaais. Rather than let them take over her shuttle and therefore get access to Mercy of Kalr and its engines, Breq shot through the shuttle's oxygen tanks, causing them to explode, taking the Anaanders with it and severely injuring Breq in the process.

● abilities: Breq is an ancillary, aka a "corpse soldier," and as such is modified in a number of ways.

- Enhanced reaction times and accuracy. While they aren't infallible, ancillaries are AI-controlled soldiers that have a faster processing speed than humans, which allows for almost uncanny aim and being able to get the drop on human fighters more often than not.

- Implants that she received as part of her conversion into an ancillary. These implants initially facilitated her connection to Justice of Toren, when it still existed. She still has minor optical and communication implants, and the communication implants she can use to directly communicate with other ship and station A.I. and receive data feeds from them, though she can occasionally have a hard time multitasking while processing it.

- Armor that appears as a silvery barrier around her when she activates it, that protects her from physical attacks, by converting kinetic force into heat. It's not infallible, but it can and will stop bullets, or lessen the impact of a fall. The armor won't go down until she wills it down, or she dies.

In addition to these abilities, Breq has some eclectic knowledge she's collected in her long life. Her main experiences have been those of a soldier, of course, but she also knows more than eleven languages, and has experience accumulated from a number of odd jobs.

She also carries with her the Garseddai gun. The gun is basically undetectable by security systems in her home universe, and the bullets it shoots are designed to move for exactly 1.11 meters after hitting their targets. It is capable of breaching Radchaai armor.

● strengths:
- Compassion: Breq would try to tell you otherwise, but she cares deeply for the wellbeing of others. She finds herself being compassionate even in situations when it's not in her best interest. That becomes particularly clear in her treatment of Seivarden, whose life she saves multiple times despite her professed hatred toward him. As he puts it, "If that's what you're willing to do for someone you hate, what would you do for someone you loved?" Although Breq may not express her affection physically or verbally, she will always stand by those who have earned her affection.

- Defender: Breq hates to see injustice happening in front of her. Though she tries to be a realist, she will be generous with her money and time if she thinks she can change someone's life for the better. She's particularly sensitive of how those in power treat those beneath them, and will take the underdog's side almost every time.

- Quick thinker: When confronted by a problem, Breq is always one to jump into action. She's reluctant to stand by and watch when she can act, and prefers not to spend her time navel-gazing when she could be moving toward her goals. She can be patient, but she's often dogged in her pursuit of her goal, and will gamble on long odds if she thinks the reward will be worth it, a habit that has served her well in the past.

- Music Lover: Breq has a deep and abiding love for music of all sorts, and little delights her more than finding new songs to sing. Despite having a less-than-stellar voice, she hums nearly constantly.

● weaknesses:
- Self-sacrifice: After Justice of Toren's destruction, Breq considers herself to be a broken remnant of her former self. She therefore often pushes herself beyond her limits for the sake of her goal and expresses disbelief when others save her, considering that she is "just an ancillary."

- Agoraphobia: "Confined" to the perceptions of a single body, Breq often feels unsettled by her inability to monitor the environment around her. She can deal with some of it by keeping a wall to her back, but when put into open spaces, she quickly becomes jumpy.

- Social blindness: Although Breq is observant, she has some consistent blind spots in her awareness of emotions and social norms. As a product of the Radch, Breq often struggles to determine a person's gender and finds assigning pronouns stressful guesswork. She also has to put in conscious effort to maintain facial expressions, as they do not come naturally to her.

When it comes to herself, Breq routinely fails to recognize that other people can read her. She is often surprised when other people correctly assess her mood, and has to be told how they were able to do it. She has even failed to realize that she was crying on a number of occasions until it was pointed out to her.

-Desire for revenge: For all that she cares, Breq can hold just as much of a grudge. In her resentment toward Seivarden and Skaaiat, she put her mission at risk by taking out her anger on them in pointed questions, even in situations where she was trying to hide her identity from them. Even more dangerous was her willingness to start a civil war with the potential to tear apart the entire Radch, if it meant getting her revenge on Anaander Mianaai.

● job skills (optional): An experienced soldier with many years of experience, and inhuman reflexes despite an injury to her right hip that troubles her sometimes. She's skilled at learning languages, and has done a number of odd jobs in her life.

● network username: breq

● network sample:

[There's a moment at the beginning of the video where nothing is happening. Breq is leaning forward slightly, one hand raised as she fiddles with something on her device, her eyes focused away from the screen. Then she sits back, and the hand drops into her lap. Her expression, previously completely blank, now transforms into a congenial smile in the blink of an eye, the perfect impression of casual friendliness.]

So, Riverview.

Do you know any good songs? The kind of thing you sing to yourself while working, or with friends. I'm not opposed to anything with instruments, either.

[A tilt of her head, a vague gesture with one hand.]

I'm something of a collector.

[There. Message complete, she lets the muscles of her face relax, drops the smile. In the brief slice of time before the recording ends, any viewers will see Breq, expressionless once more, before she reaches out, and--click-- the video ends.]


● prose/action sample: 1 2