In character info
Out of Character Information
player name: Bree
player livejournal: angelcallie
playing here: Riza Hawkeye
where did you find us?while looking for a Claymore community
are you 16 years of age or older?: yes, I’m old
In Character Information
character name: Deneve
Fandom: Claymore (manga)
Timeline: The end of chapter 103/beginning 104, while she and Helen are running from Priscilla toward the Giant.
character's age: unknown, appears to be in her early/mid twenties
powers, skills, pets and equipment: Deneve was made into one of the Organization’s warriors, sometimes called Claymores, and therefore has above-average speed, strength, and healing abilities. In addition, due to pushing her own limits and partially awakening, she surpasses most normal Claymores in those same abilities. Her ability to heal her body is especially well developed, to the point where she can regenerate a severed limb in a matter of seconds.
She has with her two very large swords, her claymores, and has developed a style that allows her to fight with great proficiency using one in each hand.
canon history: Deneve’s early childhood seems to have been fairly typical. She lived with her mother and father and her older sister, with whom she was quite close. They fought, like siblings do, but the bond between them was strong. So much so that, when the family was attacked by yoma when Deneve was still a little girl, her older sister made sure she was safe without even thinking of herself. She shoved Deneve under the bed on which her dead parents were laying so the smell of the bodies would hide her from the yoma. From under the bed she watched her sister get torn apart by the monster, clamping her hands over her mouth to keep herself from making any noise.
Like most little girls who are orphaned by yoma, she was sent off to the Organization to become a warrior. She made it through the training and eventually attained the rank of number 15 within the organization. Despite desperately wanting to strike back at the creatures that murdered her sister, her fear of dying was so great that she became a defensive warrior. This, in her mind, was a weakness and a failure to strive for the vengeance she should want to take for her sister, and her own cowardice disgusted her so much that she began to fight in an almost suicidal way, throwing herself into battle with no regard for her safety. She continued in this manner (“miserably” as she puts it, suffering most likely from survivor’s guilt and the requisite self-loathing) until she was paired with the number 22 warrior. This warrior, Helen, could immediately see to the source of Deneve’s miserable fighting style. She told her that they were still human and that being afraid of death was natural and nothing to punish herself over. Those words didn’t change everything and Deneve still felt some guilt and self-hatred, but they did reach her and make her realize that the way she was carrying on wasn’t good for anyone. From that, a strong friendship grew between the two warriors despite their very disparate personalities.
Though she stopped throwing herself into battle without caring if she lived, she did not stop causing trouble. She was known to pick fights with other warriors and, on one occasion, intentionally tested the limits of her powers and caused herself to partially awaken. Sometime after this, she and Helen met Miria and Clare on an awakened being hunt. It was through this encounter that Deneve first learned of the treacheries committed by the Organization and the seeds of rebellion were sown in those four warriors.
She is later also assigned as part of the force sent North to combat the gathering awakened beings there some time later. This, like the hunt she and the other three were sent on earlier, was another bid by the Organization to save face and remove troublesome warriors from their ranks. She is assigned to work on a team with a warrior named Undine who she takes an immediate dislike to because of her showy muscles and unprofessional attitude. Though, as Deneve observes her captain, she is able to piece together why Undine is such an exhibitionist with her strength and why she uses two swords. She feels a kinship with her captain because she recognizes things in her that she knows are within herself, a weakness and a corresponding hatred of weakness. When Undine is later killed in battle by Rigaldo, Deneve takes her death very hard, upset with herself for not even being able to lay one strike on the lion man in vengeance for Undine’s murder. Like Undine did with her friend before, Deneve takes Undine’s sword and adopts the dual blade style of fighting her captain used before her.
After their “deaths” in the Northern campaign, Deneve and the other six surviving warriors spend seven years in the north country, hiding from the Organization and training their bodies until they “puked blood” as Deneve puts it. She spends the time perfecting the use of her two sword technique and masking her yoki. When Clare and Miria decide to go back south, she and the other warriors all go along of their own volition.
After destroying a very powerful awakened being in Rabona, Miria tells them all everything she knows about the Organization creating both the yoma and the Claymores because of a war in another land. She gives all the warriors the option to tie up loose ends before they launch their assult on the Organization, which she acknowledges will probably be their final battle. Helen decides to go south to visit her old home town and Deneve, who has no interest in visiting the place she came from, agrees to go along.
On their way south, they meet one of the Organization’s warriors, Deitrich, and help her to defeat an awakened and save her unconscious team. For this, Deitrich feels indebted to them and tries to help them, saying there are demons further south, but refusing to really explain further because she’s still loyal to the organization. Helen and Deneve keep going anyway, until they come to a village from which they sense a huge yoki that they conclude belongs to Isley. Helen wants to have a look at him and for a moment Deneve looks as if she might want to fight him because he was the mastermind behind the invasion of Pieta that killed so many of their comrades seven years ago, but they both go down into the village with their yokis hidden and cloaks over their heads.
This does not shield them from Isley, however, who can sense them despite their masked power. He slices Deneve practically in half down her side and proceeds to fight with Helen until the “demons,” or abyssal feeders, show up and attack him. Deneve, who had regenerated her body by then, and Helen, who had taken a few bad injuries including a spine to the eye, flee with Deitrich. Once they are far enough away, Deitrich explains what the abyssal feeders are and that they have been honed to hunt for Isley, even as the creatures are destroying him.
Deneve decides that she and Helen should scrap their homecoming and meet up with Clare and Cynthia and Yuma because Helen cannot regenerate her eye on her own and Cynthia would be able to help her. They head west, right into the mess that is starting around Clare and the fused remains of the Abyssal One Luciela and her sister Raphaela, a former warrior of the Organization. Cynthia heals Helen and the pair head toward the center of the horrifying yoki to find Clare.
By that time, the Giant had formed and when the pair find Clare, they also find themselves in the middle of a battlefield with awakened beings sprouting from the spines shot out of the Giant. The three of them manage themselves well enough, living through a half a day of fighting largely uninjured. But at the beginning of the second volley, the creature called Priscilla shows up and at first Deneve isn’t sure how she can just walk through the flying spines and creatures, but then they see what she can do and Deneve knows that even the three of them together are no match for her. Clare tries to fight Priscilla anyway, but finds that she cannot push herself into an awakened form and loses consciousness. Helen and Deneve take the opportunity to momentarily distract Priscilla, grab Clare and run. Priscilla pursues, and Deneve knows that they have neither a chance of outrunning her nor a hope of winning against her in battle. So she decides to head toward the Giant that was Luciela and Raphaela because setting the two monsters on each other would be their best chance of surviving. Deneve passes Clare to Helen and runs ahead in order that she can take the brunt of the attack from the Giant’s projectiles.
personality: At first glance, Deneve appears to be cold, proud, harsh, and critical, and there is some truth to that impression. She is something of a perfectionist and, while she doesn’t necessarily hold everyone to the same standard to which she holds herself she does expect excellence from those around her and isn’t shy about letting them know if they disappoint her. Her assessments of fellow warriors can sometimes even border on insulting, especially if the other warrior is ranked below her or shows an attitude Deneve finds arrogant or unprofessional. She is not at all afraid to knock someone down a peg or two if she thinks they need it.
The expression she most often wears could possibly most accurately be described as a lack of expression. Eyes level, mouth set, unreadable, she gives away nothing and makes no concessions. She is very private and will rarely share her personal experiences, and when she does tell someone about her life she will often subvert it by saying it is something she heard or that it has no relation to her own experience. This could be a defense mechanism or she could just be trying to be difficult, depending on who she’s talking to. Getting a complete, honest and heartfelt reply from her is quite rare and generally only happens when that level of emotion is required to get through to the person to whom she is speaking. Getting a smile out of her is about as likely as seeing snow fall in June.
In battle and in everyday life, Deneve is usually the first one to say what must be said or do what must be done. Even if it is terribly harsh, she will execute the action without hesitation. Sharp words and swift kicks are most often employed by her to get to the point and show the seriousness of a given situation. She uses violence generally with as peaceful an expression as she might wear to drink tea, though it is possible to anger her. Her fury riles her determination and she becomes a single-minded fighter bent on revenge for whatever transgression first moved her rage. She’s not much for screaming, either in anger or pain, preferring to speak in a level but burning tone to show her displeasure. She makes a point to show as little emotion as possible because she sees the display of them, at the very least, as a weakness of sorts and she has tried to steel herself against all weakness. But, though she will never be described as warmhearted, a closer examination of these actions shows that it is (almost, though she does enjoy making a bit of trouble) all designed with the good of her comrades in mind. She is quite the believer in tough love.
As far as thought process goes, she is extremely logical and almost scientific in her approach to things. If there is a hypothesis, she will test it and measure the results. She is extremely observant and able to piece together small details she notices into complex conclusions which are generally correct. Her companions often look to her to decipher whatever is going on around them.
why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting? Like the other claymore wielding warriors, she has spent most of her life dealing with monsters and fighting and surviving. She can definitely defend herself and handle pretty much anything Anatole can throw at her.
Writing Samples
Network Post Sample:
*note* Deneve’s a bit of a stoic, so I’ve leaned more toward the second option for the less chatty characters with her network post.
[Video]
[First there is static, fluctuating as a few buttons are systematically tried before the video function turns on. On the screen appears a woman’s face, her expression mostly blank but with a slight arch in her eyebrows that conveys irritation. Her hair is cut very short, giving her roundish face a more severe appearance than it might otherwise have had. The eyes peering down with some small measure of visible curiosity and annoyance are silver. Some people here may recognize the shade.]
Hmph. Seems like more trouble than it’s worth.
[Her voice is cold and somewhat distant. She seems to be referring to the device itself rather than another being. She turns her head away as if listening to something else and the hilts of two swords can be seen over her shoulders.]
They tell me this thing is used to communicate
Miria. If you can hear this, please respond.
Helen. Where are you? Do you still have Clare? What’s happened?
[She stares for a moment, waiting. She’s calculating perhaps, her gaze appraising and emotionless.]
So much for that experiment.
[Transmission ends.]
Third Person Sample:
Deneve had not particularly cared for waking up in a strange room. Or, more accurately, she was extremely displeased with the fact that she had somehow fallen asleep in the middle of running for her life. She could not really account for the fact that she was still breathing now, considering the monster that had been pursuing her and Helen, but she supposed she should be glad at least that she still had both her swords and her head was still attached to her body. Not knowing where Helen and Clare were, however, had now become her biggest concern.
She had left the little bare room only moments after waking. With the familiar weight of two claymores and the souls of her comrades fallen in the North on her back, she had ventured out into the strange city. It was really unlike any settlement she had come across before. The buildings were old but strong, it seemed, and the streets had been neatly paved with stone. The careful architecture and attention to detail were unfamiliar to her, the villages she was accustomed to generally being somewhat haphazard and swiftly constructed with very little as far as decoration. With the threat of yoma looming all the time, she had always supposed that the attractiveness of structures had been sacrificed for ease of construction. People did tend to feel safer when they had shelter of some kind. The exception to this would be cities like Rabona which were decently well taken care of and built with pleasing aesthetics in mind. But then, with their policies they didn’t usually have to worry about regular yoma attacking.
She wondered if this city was like that one, if her kind wasn’t really welcome here. If the looks she was getting from the people were any clue, she wasn’t exactly a welcome sight. It wasn’t surprising really, as she made no attempt to disguise herself. She had discarded her cloak a lifetime ago when she and Helen and Clare were facing the awakened creatures that had come from the Giant’s projectiles, and so walked the streets in her worn black attire, sleeves sliced off and covered in dust and blood. And the two huge swords uncovered on her back probably weren’t making her inconspicuous either.
But she didn’t really care about any of that just now. What was important was finding Helen and Clare and making sure they were all right. It bothered her only a little that the city was unfamiliar. She may have been in the other land Miria had talked about where the war raged away unending for all it mattered to Deneve. She didn’t know how she had come to be here, but she would stop to consider it only when she knew her comrades were safe.