Huyi Kuoroe
Huyi Kuoroe
The woman sitting at the punch table lined up the cards in front of her and frowned. These were the punch masters, each two plates of thin hammered iron clamped together, the front plate being gridded with tiny punch holes, and the rear gridded with even tinier hinged studs, allowing the corresponding hole to be plugged closed or popped open to preference. She picked up the suspect master, flipped it over, and began to deftly adjust the hole pattern with a needle, popping studs out and pushing others into place. Putting the master back, she returned to staring at the cards in front of her.
She was jolted out of her thoughts by the door loudly clanging open, with a ranger carrying an armful of pastries stepping through. "Huyi, I'm back! Got those strawberry pastries you liked last time!"
The woman furiously scribbled a note on a pad and held it up to read. 'Don't *do* that!', it said, with the 'do' underlined twice.
Kyris sighed. "If you didn't want to be interrupted, you should have put up that 'Artist At Work' sign that Phanae made for you." She put a pastry down on the punch table before peering at the cards. "Anyway, should I let you get back to work, or?"
Huyi shook her head and motioned to the wall playbox. Nodding, Kyris sat at the table as the composer placed each punch plate into its slot. Unlike the common-production floor-boxes, which compacted several instruments into a single machine run off a composition playback card, the playbox on the wall mounted each instrument individually, requiring multiple cards to manage each instrument. She checked each card's position, nodded, and threw the lever on the wall open.
As the rods and cams began to churn, the punch plates slowly descended into their slots, and the sound of summer began to play in the room. This was a modified version of Caritt's Solstice, the troubador's melody of the second season prior, but with another melody mixed in....Waterflow? Kyris closed her eyes and could see the song's picture, early in a bright summer morning, water burbling over a small brook, not as high as it was in the spring but still deep and clear enough to take a refreshing dip.
And she opened her eyes again, at the same time Huyi did. One of the clarinet chords was off, breaking the pleasant tone with a harsh and high pitched whine. The rest of the song played out but with a tinny and unnatural quality, before ending with a low viola murmur. The composer grunted and pushed the playbox's lever shut, and with a grinding noise each card popped back out of its slot. She took her seat again, but this time reached for the pastry.
"Needs more work, I suppose, but it's sounding pretty good!" Kyris tried to be encouraging. The composer gave her a glare before biting into the strawberries.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Kuoroe is underweight and thin for her age. Her lack of ability in playing musical instruments directly is partially due to some sort of physical malady in her left arm; though visually fine, Kuoroe is lacking fine motor control in her left hand. She is a mute, unable to form any vocalizations other than low grunts.
Identifying Characteristics
Kuoroe has a scar on the left edge of her mouth extending downwards, the product of a bullying incident as a child, and her hair is perpetually styled in a way to look permanently disheveled.
Apparel & Accessories
As if to emphasize her muteness, Kuoroe always wears a heavy scarf around her neck and mouth in public, covering the lower part of her face completely, even in the heat of Second Season.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Huyi Kuoroe is a native of the Etoile Capital City. Born mute to a single mother, she was educated at a state-run facility for the impaired. While there, she demonstrated no particular talents or aptitudes at her studies or at any musical instrumentation.
This changed at the age of thirteen, when Kuoroe was identified as the culprit in a prank at a local manufactory, having switched the Playback Cards at the manufactory's floor-box with those of her own making. The playback from the cards, however, wasn't merely random noise - cards with simple random patterns can cause interference between the tightly compacted instruments of a floor-box, damaging the instruments and requiring a costly refurbishment. Kuoroe had, on the other hand, without any actual training or practice but merely examining the card patterns themselves, had been able to craft cohesive musical compositions. The teenager was remanded into the care of The Academy of Etoile under Professor Silvia Creighton, the noted pianist, for training in a novel Etoilean profession, that of the floor-box composer. Kuoroe is so far the only musical composer that directly uses the music-playing floor-box itself as her instrument.
Kuoroe proved a natural at musical theory and composition, but was a stubborn student, unwilling to follow the classical musical paradigms. After two years, Creighton released her protege into the world on a sabbatical from the Academy, telling her to return only when she desires to further advance her compositional skill. Kuoroe has spent the last year as an avant-garde composer, with her playback cards in high demand among floor-box enthusiasts and collectors. More than a few of her works have actually been 'decomposed', the term used when musicians transcribe her cards back into the constituent instrumental scores and play the song as a traditional set piece band.
Education
Huyi Kuoroe officially remains a student of musical composition at The Academy of Etoile but is on an indefinite sabbatical.
Employment
Kuoroe maintains her own atelier and workshop in a basement of a building in Central District of the Etoile Capital City. The basement has been outfitted with a full range of automated instruments attached to card readers, essentially a Power engineer's workshop dedicated solely to producing music. Though her cards themselves are distributed for free, she is sponsored by several wealthy patrons vying to be the first to hear whatever new songs she produces.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Kuoroe would be the first to declare that her motivation is self-expression; without her voice, she speaks through her music. Her natural gift at producing compositions for floor-boxes is, in her eyes, merely a tool to draw out the songs trapped in her own head, unable to be expressed otherwise through song or musical dexterity.
This insatiable desire to express herself uniquely has caused major clashes with virtually all customary or traditional modes of education and thought; Kuoroe does not get along with either the Canticler's Guild or the master of the Troubadour's Troupe, and her relationship with her Academy mentor is fraught.
Vices & Personality flaws
Kuoroe has a sweet tooth and is addicted to pastries from Morrison's.
Social
Contacts & Relations
Six patrons, including Lord Hull of Grand Harvest, all back Kuoroe with significant resources, in exchange for the simple favor of being the first to hear her compositions and receive copies of her Playback Cards. Other than her patrons and a few friends from the Academy, Kuoroe keeps to herself, holing up in her atelier for multiple days at a time and rarely venturing out on her own.
Family Ties
Kuoroe is estranged from her mother, blaming her for her institutionalization as a child, and has no other family of note.
Current Location
Age
16
Children
Gender
Female
Eyes
Grey
Hair
Black
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Medium Brown
Height
5'3"
Weight
95lb
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Nice read! I like the opening story, sets the tone well for the article. Also pretty interesting that she is a composer who uses playback cards a lot, can I imagine it is somewhat in the same way as a music box?
Yup, music boxes that can play different things based on the cards you put in them. The idea that someone could make music without ever touching or playing an instrument is something that happened in the real world fairly recently, so that was the root idea here.