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"An artist's limitations are his best friends." --Andrew Lloyd Webber
Description
- At one-hundred-seventy centimeters tall, Roque seems unremarkable as far as anthropomorphic white rabbits go. What does mark her as unusual is the fine, slightly-irregular cross-stitching that holds her eyelids closed. Her right ear is pierced several times along its outer edge with silver rings, while her left holds a smaller number of dangles and baubles near the base. She wears a black silk robe, trimmed in violet, held in place with a sash the same color as the trim. The strip of silk about her waist is tied offcenter in an ornate, complex bow.
Background
- Roque is a product of the Victorian Retrotech Collective, one of a number of individuals created to test the limits of hypnopaedia for implanting moral and ethical guidelines into their subjects. However, because of her keen hearing, even before she took away her own eyes, she would wake at night and listen to the whispers hanging in the air over she and her crèchemates. This conscious awareness of her own programming made it less effective, and she was ultimately able to overcome it to a sufficient degree to leave the enclave's protective embrace.
- This is not to say that she disagrees with the Victorians. In many ways, their teaching has taken root far better than they could have anticipated. She believes that anything truly worth having is worth making from scratch, that violating privacy is one of the worst imaginable taboos, and that tradition is vital for a sense of history and reflection. However, she is far more likely to create her own traditions than to follow those established by others, and she openly embraces the Downward ideal of self-expansion and self-modification for growth and development.
- Her eyes are the first in what she hopes to be a long series of self-denials aimed at guided evolution, but are also the result of her first true crisis of faith. When she left the VRC, she outwardly rejected their teachings, but inside she panicked. Absent their worldview, of limited resources and finite existence, what point was there to being self-aware? When everything could be done without question, what was there to do? Her answer came in the form of blindness, of refusing herself the power of sight, that she might learn to operate without it as if she had never seen. She believes that the day she has forgotten she once had eyes will be the day she is free to take them back, to find herself some new limitation to overcome.
- Recently, while climbing the Cube Tree, she realized that her lack of sight was no longer really a hinderance to her mobility, and she has begun investigating the next major limitation in her life. Not everyone around her, though, has taken to this well.
Current Developments
- Pruning the Body to Grow the Mind
- With her telepathic abilities well in hand, Roque now wonders what other mental abilities into which she can tap, and what she will need to do to herself to get there. A chance conversation with Flenser? has left her wondering if the path to self-development truly is in self-denial and asceticism. She doesn't yet think taking it to Flenser's extremes is a good idea, but the concept of evolution through self-limitation appeals to her strongly.
- As part of her crèche experience, the Victorians used hypnopaedia to impress upon their newest members the ideals, values and goals of the VRC. In Roque's case, however, this conditioning is incomplete, leaving her with an awareness of her programming and the impetus to follow it but not the subliminal mandate that is in her crèchemates. She is actively seeking to remove this last tenuous thread tying her to the Victorians, but Davan seems insistent on using this programming at every opportunity to manipulate her.
Current Associations
- Untitled she met through Diafeara, but the two quickly developed a romance built on their shared love of the flamecat and their shared values and beliefs.
- Laelys and Roque were a casual friendship that swelled into something much deeper when she opened herself to the dragon's trust.
- Flyte was at first her healer, but has become so much more. At times she feels like a burden on him, but she strives every day to rise above her base origins, and she considers him an inspiration.
- Robin is her pet, her guide-dog, her guardian and her confidant.
- Diafeara was her first lover, and Roque very much hopes she may one day again consider the flamecat as such, but Roque's talk of her next self-limitation caused Diafeara to end the relationship. Roque's feelings for her haven't changed, but communication between the two has become strained.
- System started as a quirky and amusing data probe, but listening to his evolution to devoted partner to Ataxia has intrigued her greatly.
- Onya is one of those that Roque helped explore and discover the Mess, one in her own ways as limited as she, that Roque is glad to have been able to assist.
- Phoenix has been there to help Roque with every medical need she has brought to him, and she feels forever in his debt for his assistance.
- Claver is one of Roque's crèchemates from their shared time in the Victorians, though the wolf makes her uncomfortable.
- Davan will apparently stop at nothing to exert his authority over her, by any means possible.