INTRODUCTION Pyrrha Dve has limited time on page so far. To allay concerns about her playability, I have provided citations to the text to support her application from Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, and the released excerpt of Nona the Ninth. Due to POV and impersonation, Pyrrha will be referred to as Ortus, Gideon, and/or Pyrrha throughout these citations.

Character Base

• Character Name: Pyrrha Dve
• Age: ~10,000* (it's complicated). A significant portion of that was spent in the back of someone's skull, not the driver's seat. Her apparent age will be 40s or 50s. She'll deal with the awkward situation of both her original form and the one she was used to feeling like hers.
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: The Locked Tomb (03/29/2022) | Nona the Ninth Chapter 1
• Items Coming Along: 6 items only. Go bag: a few sets of clothes, some food and water, a knife, a few guns, and ammunition including a handful of herald bullets. Her primary weapon set: rapier & spear; trunk of Canaan House keepsakes (e.g., group photo from her quarters, large portrait of Cyrus & Valancy (naked, nonsexual)); Gideon the First's shaving set; & 2 more.
• Content Warnings for Character: WAR CRIMES & MASS DEATH; BEING TRAPPED IN SOMEONE ELSE'S BODY; DYSPHORIA TRIGGERS; SELF-SACRIFICE & SUICIDAL IDEATION; DUBIOUSLY CONSENSUAL RELATIONSHIPS

Character Background

• History: Wiki link
• Core Relationships:

GIDEON THE FIRST Her husband. Her necromancer. Her fellow flame who will burn for what he believes in.¹ The only person she has had no opportunity to speak with since he killed her and absorbed her soul without killing it 10,000 (with rounding error) years ago.² The person she is so good at emulating it can fool people who know him.³ She's the spymaster⁴ who had to play him with complete believability or risk her death and, of greater concern, damage him and his psyche, interfering with that completion of what they believe in.³ If you want to know what he would do, say, or think, she could tell you or emulate it fully. She knows him as well, possibly even better, than she knows herself.⁵ She maintained some level of awareness, as she drowned in the back of his mind where he kept her, so as not to consume her.⁵ That kept her up on 'current events.' However, she could never communicate with him, not consult on what they should do, not ask consent to do whatever she did.⁵ He's rarely denied her anything, and nothing she's done as him is something Gideon wouldn't permit, for those rare instances she wasn't purely playing the part.

JOHN GAIUS Her friend, her god, the fire for which she burned.¹ He saved humanity when no one else could. He gave them the opportunity to rebuild it together.⁶ He protected that humanity with an irrational ferocity that she respects.⁷ Pyrrha is not and never was blind to his faults. Nor are all his actions forgivable.⁸ She doesn't need to forgive him to love him, to serve him, and to give however many fucks she had left to him.⁸ He's the man who became god.⁶ No one could expect any more goodness out of him as a god than they did as a man.⁸

AWAKE REMEMBRANCE OF THESE VALIANT DEAD KIA HUA KO TE PAI SNAP BACK TO REALITY OOPS THERE GOES GRAVITY Wake, for short. Wake was the enemy. She led Blood of Eden to the greatest threat it had ever been to the Nine Houses and to John Gaius. She tried to kill Gideon (and Pyrrha). They tried to kill her.⁹ At the end of the day, though they believed in different and opposing causes, Commander Wake believed as ferociously, as fiercely, as to set herself aflame and die for her cause as Pyrrha did her own.¹ It's always been what attracts her. What started as a hate!fuck became a hate!love. For both Pyrrha and Gideon (yes, they have similar tastes, see?).¹ That let Wake in on Pyrrha's little secret, but she was good enough between all the attempts to kill each other and seeing both of them not to reveal it.¹ Even dead, Pyrrha still loved her and continued the relationship (along with the attempts to kill each other).¹⁰

HER FELLOW DISCIPLES Augustine & Alfred, Mercymorn & Cristabel, Cassiopeia & Nigella, Cyrus & Valancy, Ulysses & Titania, Cytherea & Loveday, Anastasia & Samael.¹¹ Though her relationships with them individually varied, Pyrrha loves them all deeply. They built the houses together. They walked the path to lyctorhood together. Each cavalier died for what they believed in, and each necromancer killed the person they loved for it. No one, not even the second group to work toward lyctorhood, has been through what they went through. Those early days, those unending sacrifices. They will always be important, and she will be glad to see any and all of them again since they are, from her point, all dead. How ironic that she outlived them all. That was never what she wanted. Never what she sought. She lost half of them to lyctorhood. She lost half of those who became saints in the last year. She lost three fourths of those in one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night.¹¹ A serious contributor to her dearth of fucks to give.

ALECTO Pyrrha has also always loved Alecto.¹² Though Alecto freaked most of the disciples out, she was the living embodiment of what Pyrrha believed in. Someone who burned for what they believed. People may have missed it in Alecto, but she was loving and strong and monstrous yes but in the very best ways.¹²

CAMILLA & PALAMEDES So goddamned young. So smart and stupid. So naive and idealistic. They're a constant reminder of her pre-lyctorhood days. Only so much pain and loss later, Pyrrha's more cognizant of the costs. They formed a household around Nona, and when Pyrrha thought she was done loving new people, they slipped past her defenses into her heart.¹³

GIDEON NAV The baby that might have been hers.³ The only other cavalier to go through something like she did.⁵ Pyrrha doesn't really know Gideon so much as feel some amount of responsibility for her.¹⁴ If she'd known what was going to happen, if she'd been able to, she may have taken the baby to raise. Or maybe she would have simply dropped her tiny ass down in some admiral/former admiral's lap.¹⁴

HARROWHARK THE FIRST A life for a life. Pyrrha told her how to protect herself from Gideon because Harrow had saved their lives from Wake's revenant. Fair is fair.¹⁵ She's also gotten rather fond of Harrow's body, though Harrow hasn't definitively been occupying it of late.^{13, 14} She's much like Anastasia,¹⁶ and they have loving Alecto in common.¹²

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:

DUTY; DEDICATION; LOYALTY; BURNING FOR WHAT SHE BELIEVES Though Gideon lived up to the name the Saint of Duty, he carried that name for Pyrrha.¹⁷ When Pyrrha believes in something, it's all in. 100%. Far beyond survival instinct.¹ Half of the disciples became necromancers; half of them dedicated themselves as cavaliers.¹⁸ Pyrrha became much better at fighting than she ever was pre-Resurrection.¹⁸ Name a weapon she could get her hands on and she learned it.¹⁹ All manner of guns, swords, and other weapons.¹⁹ Heck, she became known for using a spear as the off-hand weapon.²⁰ It was clear early on, there was war and would be fighting.¹⁸ So she made herself a living weapon.¹⁸ Pyrrha isn't eager to throw her life away for nothing. She's not thoughtlessly self-sacrificing for this that or the other thing. Pyrrha has built what she believes in.⁴ She and Gideon founded the Second House.⁴ She led the Houses' spy agency because information was armament as much as a rapier or spear or nuclear bomb.⁴ That wasn't the end, though. The group study project, the mega theorem they built for lyctorhood, depended on the cavaliers' deaths.²¹ The necromancer's needed that power to fight Resurrection Beasts.¹² Pyrrha didn't force Gideon's hand the way Alfred and Cristabel forced Augustine's and Mercymorn's.^{1, 22} They both saw the results. They knew what would come. They loved each other dearly, and the trait Pyrrha loved so much, the loyalty, the devotion, the unwavering steps for what they believed in was how she convinced Gideon.¹ In some ways, Pyrrha knew he was getting the rawer deal, to lose her and to have to live with it. He was the necromancer. She wasn't. They weren't interchangeable parts. In true partnership, they walked the eight-fold path, and Pyrrha gave her life and her soul.⁵

SOCIABLE; PEOPLE SKILLS; COOPERATION; SPYING Resurrection's a trauma, and they built a whole new society with the Nine Houses.¹⁹ The Second House was founded around purpose and partnership.^{23, 24} Spying, however, was always the time Pyrrha depended on these skills most. She weaponized them. She embodied her roles so completely very few could see through them. She put together puzzle pieces of information. She managed webs of connections as a spymaster.⁴ The world had ended; there was no sitting back and leaving the work to someone else. She became better because she had to. At the end of the day, her ability to read people and use that have gotten her more than a rapier ever has.

(2+) Negative Experiences:

DISILLUSIONMENT; LOSING HER RELIGION; FUTILITY Pyrrha was the first person to learn that cavaliers didn't need to die, at least not completely, for lyctorhood.⁵ Case in point, herself. She lost her life. She lost so much more, so much of herself, to the incomplete consumption of her soul, to drowning in the back of Gideon's mind, to playing him so well the line was sometimes blurred between them, to ten thousand years of John's implacable trauma and vengeance.^{5, 7} Pyrrha scraped moments out for herself, but it never felt like living.²⁵ Then everyone lost their shit. The other lyctors abandoned the River and Number Seven, but Gideon, in character to the man she'd always loved, did not. His death to drive the Resurrection Beast away was a large enough blow for a decade. That night and the parade of deaths refused to end. Briefly, she thought John was gone, so she readied herself to spill the beans with Augustine and Mercymorn, much as that would drive the knife deeper in their hearts for what they did to Alfred and Cristabel. But no, John did not die so easily, and instead Mercymorn died.²⁶ Soon to be followed by Augustine.²⁷ In the depths of the River, on such a bad day, Pyrrha had lost faith in everything and felt no reason to bother to carry on.²⁹ Except for the baby. She dragged that body with her through the River back to the world because the baby wasn't ready to die.^{14, 29} Her world, her aims, her reasons for living and efforts toward it don't symbolize some renewal of faith. Her heart and her beliefs are shattered, and her focus is far narrower than it's ever been.³⁰ It's all she can manage after 10,000 years of trauma with little to show for it. Her bank account for fucks is at zero, but apparently she can leverage some debt.

LOVE WITHOUT LIMITS; LOYALTY WITHOUT BOUNDS; LACK OF BREAKING POINT Pyrrha has a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong. She's aware of the faults of the people she cares about. She recognizes all the bad they've done, what they've fucked up, the damage they've caused, the unforgivable nature of their actions. She isn't blind. There's simply no point at which her love and her loyalty break.⁸ She knows he lied to them and led them down the path where all the necromancers had to become monsters; they all killed their cavaliers. John could have led them another way, but he didn't.⁸ Despite his fears and abandonment issues,³¹ Pyrrha never has or will stop loving him. She saw the monstrous heart in Alecto as much as Augustine or Mercymorn or anyone else.¹² She also saw the deep love, the kindness, the pained sense of loss. No matter what Alecto did, nothing could overshadow what Pyrrha saw to love.¹² And Wake? How could she not love someone who lived up to the central tenet of Pyrrha's being even if they were enemies even if one day one of them would kill the other?¹ It's a fault, a weakness, a moral failing on her part. Pyrrha acknowledges that. She then simply keeps going. She wouldn't revenge John and kill Mercymorn and Augustine.² She wouldn't revenge them and kill John.⁸ Wake, yes, but they had always tried to kill each other from the start. It's hardly shocking that John would trump her. Though she did shoot Wake out of Cytherea's body for love's sake. John didn't need her. Once Pyrrha loves someone, she loves someone. No expiration date. No amount of monstrous and evil deeds can break it. Her loving someone is a dangerous thing.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers:

LYCTORHOOD PARTNERSHIP Although not a necromancer, Pyrrha has limited powers from the partnership. She no longer ages, is harder to kill, and heals quicker than a normal human being but not instantaneously recovering from major injuries. Her thoughts, inner emotions, and physical condition cannot be magically or psychically detected from any distance greater than in-physical-contact. Since she is not a lyctor, she is not affected by heralds, i.e., seeing one does not make her go insane.

TRAINED SKILLS Pyrrha has trained skills related to fighting including a wide range of guns and sharp weapons; since she served as a cavalier, her primary weapon set is a rapier and spear. She also founded the intelligence agency for the Nine Houses. It came with such fun responsibilities as training for years to resist torture, managing people of various egos, and piecing together fragments of intelligence. She's an excellent spy, skilled at reading people and playing roles. Her greatest role of all time is Gideon the First, her husband, her necromancer; Pyrrha's seamless at playing it. Only magic gives it away.

• Blood Type:

• Omen:

• Blessed Day:

• Patron Pthumerian:

• Blood Power Manifestation:

Her powers are relatively limited, and the durability/healing overlaps neatly with sleeper blood. Pyrrha's never met a weapon she doesn't like; with the help of people who make weapons, she'll likely make a flaming weapon and bullets. With people she cares about and, to a lesser extent, others, she'll use her blood to fight beast transformations. Bullets made of Coldblood may be a way to get that process going from a safe(r) distance. In time, she will explore her limits with the elemental abilities listed on the blood types page.