Jossa

Full Name: Jossalyn isk Churusimpir lis Kuchruog lis isk Fuerruste

Former concubine to the second-to-last Emperor of the Navlad (before the throne lost its power). Sai of empathy so strong that without a sousi, it drives her mad. Timeline * mourning year between official crowning Time in Palace * Would make Psi concubines fight either-physical or with talents.
 * -D 14 when died * -D 15 when leave
 * -D ~17 when meet crew of Skatasi
 * Jossa wouldn't let her help with the prostitution to keep them going. Not selling herself at least. Instead, she got stuck siphoning off Joss' feels as she did her duty- same as with the Emperor. Was sedated then? Too young? Not right for a young mind.
 * Lesson Lady: concubines too old to serve, out of favo. Condition and teach new concubines what * their duties are
 * Ride mutant ostriches!
 * Conditioning: Mental strictures put in place to keep a Concubine from turning against her Lord. Done by other concubines
 * West stables
 * Fireplaces in concubines quarters. Luxery/useful
 * Concubines are from high families on other worlds. Breeding program. Send Psi women to governors, etc. Breed stronger talents. Sent those children on up the line.
 * Concubines are all 'The Mothers' to the children. They know who their individual mother is, but they're ALL Mothers
 * Concubines spell a new girl into compliance when it comes time for her to be sent off. Celebration dance. All pulled into the joy. Zarissa could overcome willpower, make them pliable and willing.
 * “Please don’t make her,” Delfi gasped. “Please don’t make her dance. It’s making her sad.” * More angry words. Sharp and piercing like the needles that made the maruste come. Then the woman’s face softened and set one hand on Delfi’s head. “I know little one. But she will enjoy the dancing. It will be a nice memory, in everything that comes after.”
 * And she watched as Jiafi came into the circle around Chethalin. The quiet sobbing stopped. The last of the tears dried up. A brilliant smile, so wide that Delfi thought it might break the older girl’s face in half, lit up the room.
 * After another bow to Zarissa, who nodded slightly, the men turned, took Jiafi by the elbows. She went willingly, if not easily. She was still stumbling; and that was blood she was leaving on the floor behind her. Delfi shuddered and cringed, reaching to feel past the block that was her headpiece. * Jiafi’s face was happy. * Her mind was blank.
 * Head concubine, Zarrissa had voice with 'silky' feel to it when making someone do what she wanted.
 * Touching the women and children of the Churus lis Kuchruis without good reason was punishable by…very bad things was all Delfi knew. If they could avoid it, they would.

Jossa Post DtS
If Jossa was on the Skatasi for around 10 yrs, it's been a while since she's sold herself, given her body op. She'd have to get back in the mindset. Syrus temper is still there, but he’s less cranky now that he’s not on the Fleet any more. It’s proximity to people thing as much as it was the Fleet itself. The more people he’s around, the more emotions hit him and the harder it is for him to function/tell what’s his and what’s someone elses. Jossa wants him to learn how to shield. He just wants to stay away from high population planets. (something for later books?)So far he’s kept going by losing his temper, killing anyone who gets too close, and using Kar as an anchor. Now that she’s gone, he’s realizing just how crippled he is. Makes him crankier. Never learned how to keep people out on his own, even though Military teaches the HIDE shield to all. He his his talent from the Military. Jossa notices how he’s mostly fine on the ship in space, or on an asteroid, but the closer they get to population the bitchier he gets. Kar father never had either of them marked as someone soul bonded, and used the indenture contract on him anyways. If he’d told them, the military wouldn’t have believed him. He was accused of breaking the indenture contract. To put that on a sai pairing is sacrilidge. And besides, he’s a man. And even if he does have sai, they don’t want it in the records as official because then they’d have to investigate why a man has it. Except they know about the Emperor’s line, because that showed in in blood test when he was brought in. Seal and redacted to hell and gone, but it was still found. That’s what Quinn was trying to dig for and didn’t find out until later. But still a sai without his sousi. Flash temper, kills people who pick fights with him in the street or try to rob him. Jossa had to keep him from killing the man who sold him the ship? Why is she still with him? One thing to take the change at getting off the base and past the Fleet and then the Armada without getting caught or killed, but now she could go anywhere. He’s not the Warlord anymore. She’s not a prisoner. She was leaving first, and he decided to come along. Biding her time while she learns this new world and tries to see how well she can survive 300 years from her own time? S thinks J is siphoning them somehow, but D is pulling them in, trying not to let them leech over to J and set her off or contaminate her. She’s wallowing, basically. And she’s twitchy around men and Syrus is the only one she knows doesn’t want to touch her for sex. J doesn’t know that though, so when she finds S putting D back in her room one night, she comes to the obvious conclusion and makes a new deal with S. Her attentions for his leaving D alone. He’d been going to whorehouses since that? Or going without? Whores. Doesn’t want to risk setting J off, because of rape and because of how explosive they were before. But he takes her up on it when she offers. Whores cost money. Knows at some point they’ll probably run off on him. Or he’ll get mad and space one or both? He uses that to manipulate her after that. He’s doing something she doesn’t like. Well, put out a little bit and we’ll see about a change in behavior. Goes from being violent and overbearing to much much more manipulative. Still violent, but sticks to killing random people in bad parts of town. Or goes to underground fights and wins. If person running the show doesn’t like him, he kills them too. Blowing off steam. The girls figure it out and start sneaking in to run bets on him. Sneaking out without contacting him either. Part of the plan to make money without his oversight. Del’s He’la makes trouble a couple times? Have to predict that S will lose or else prove that things are bad with the translation. Underground community of sai that lives on underside of society? Not so many though. Jossa: thought that when she woke up on the Fleet that she’d have to remember how to be a good concubine. This is worse. Just have to save her money from her cut of the cargo, make her bets in the fights, and save up enough to find a way to leave him behind. Doing what she can to keep him pleased when he comes to her covered in someone else’s blood and looking for a blowjob.

Book 3 Start Point
Jossa at the start of Book Three is damaged, emotionally and physically. Coming off the end of Book 2, she had some hope that Delfi would forgive her, given that Del started talking to her mind to mind again, but she still doesn't fully understand why Delfi is angry with her in the first place. In Jossa's mind, a mindbond is there to support the Unstable half of the sousi pairing; her in this case. She doesn't think as much about what it does for and to the Stable one. Because of this, she still fights very hard to protect Delfi from anything that might physically harm her or intrude on the mind bond (come back to this, some elements of jealousy here? Not wanting anything/anyone to distract Delfi from her job as Jossa's keeper? Delfi's husband had pulled the orbit a bit off balance. Maybe subconsciously, she saw D gravitating towards Syrus as something of the same? Sees Syrus as being Delfi's type?).

But she hasn't been able to watch out for Delfi in a while. First because Jossa got stabbed during the escape from the noble's mansion in Book Two, putting her in a med unit and out of commission for several days. Next, because she was still weak after coming out of the unit, and not up for carrying her weight in any part of the relationship. And then, Delfi snapped and lost her temper, shutting Jossa down and then shutting her out of the mind bond completely. Delfi only did the bared minimum to keep J from tipping over the edge as they ended up caught by Tarva and her people, and taken along on Tarva's quest to find Syrus. The girls escaped, but they weren't free for long, and Jossa didn't get much of a chance to try to reconnect with Delfi.

So here she is, still reeling at the beginning of the book. She'd going to wake up, probably in either a cell or a medward, reach for Delfi, and find out she's not there. NOT. THERE. And she'll think the worst, because she knows D is already mad at her. Instead of doing what she used to do, which is assume D is dead if she's not talking in the bond, she'll jump straight past that and into "she really did abandon me"

So we'll have grief, loneliness (abandonment?) anguish, self-blame, anger at D for betraying their bond, and any number of desperate attempts to reestablish contact. And Jossa is going to spiral. Probably round and round these emotions, drawing further into herself, then flinging them all wide, then back in, then out again.

She'll stay this way until Tarva gets close enough to stop it, but probably won't come out of it entirely. Either she's going to get stuck in whatever emotion she's feeling when Tarva hits her with the Null whammy, or she's going to go completely vegetative, so far as emotions go.

I don't think, for the first part of the book at least, that Jossa will have much say or be much interested in what's going on around her. Tarva will be taking care of business (and every time T leaves Jossa's range, Jossa goes off again, causing chaos and mass panic).

But she'll eventually start to notice what's going on. And that she's being suppressed by T. This will make her desperate, and probably angry. By this time, Delfi and Syrus are moving around down on the planet, and Delfi reaching across the bond every so often and not finding Jossa there either.

So Jossa might try to take Tarva out, to get the suppression gone. When that doesn't work (maybe she take T out and escapes, thinking T is dead, but T isn't), she'll have to get T to trust her enough to voluntarily lower the Null field so they can try to make contact. Maybe have this play into the climax somehow? T needs to do this because the only way they get through a particular test/struggle is with the help that Delfi can (hopefully) give? Or else better, Jossa has to use her own abilities, without Delfi, to get them out of a sticky situation. Having Delfi save the day via Jossa and the mindbond would be reinforcing Jossa's dependence on Delfi to fix things for her. Having Jossa do the reverse, saving Delfi without understanding the issues between them, will reinforce what she was doing to Delfi with the sex and 'protecting' from Syrus. So it will have to be Jossa getting herself and someone out of a fix, entirely on her own.

So that's the end goal. Jossa needs to learn to stand on her own two feet and not use Delfi as a crutch. She also has to stop trying to force Delfi into the position of the protected one too. How can she really be protecting Delfi if all she's actually doing is self-preservation, keeping the source of her sanity locked into dependence. Maybe Tarva will call her on it a few times. Maybe one of the people she runs into along the way will as well. I don't want a magic device to whap her upside the head with a cheat though. A nudge maybe. A cheat, no.

Woven into all this is the other issue. The sex. She's going to have to realize what Delfi meant with the sex not being protection (go back to the argument in Book Two for the exact phrasing, because Delfi actually cut down to the meat of the issue, but didn't expand/talk about the surface manifestations of the manic beastmode sex-a-thon Syrus and Jossa had been having).

Maybe that's it. Jossa addresses some of the deepest issues, and with those taken care of, can step back and see what the triggers were for Delfi. Syrus will probably take the opposite track. He'll see the surface hurts for what they are, and work his way deeper from there?

Either way, Jossa probably needs some clarity of thought before she can think of the sex with anything but a)residual addiction lust and b)anger that D doesn't see what J was trying to do. Because J, when she realizes that D and S are alive and together, is going to be very, very, very worried about S being around D without a buffer. Probably to distraction. That'll be a great time for Tarva to make a comment about 'have you ever known him to force a woman' and they can have that conversation and Jossa come out feeling justified, because he did try to use his own sai to get her to sex him.

But really, how different is that from when she used it to whammy him into seeing her instead of Delfi? Or when she used it on men who might otherwise have passed her by when she needed them to pay to sex her (write a couple shorts for that?). Maybe Delfi can bring that up later, either to Syrus, or to Jossa when they finally make contact.