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[Briana Sal-Soren]

• Intent: To give Briana an important item/weapon that once belonged to her first love, Astor Daaray
• Image Source: JessKetchin
• Canon Link: N/A
• Permissions: N/A
• Primary Source: Tying A Golden Knot, The Ashes

• Manufacturer: Charubah Industries
• Affiliation: Briana Sal-Soren
• Market Status: Closed-Market
• Model: N/A
• Modularity: No
• Production: Unique
• Material: Charuba Steel, Rainbow Gems, Aurodium

• Classification: Dagger
• Size: Average
• Weight: Average

• Rainbow Gem
• Charubah Steel
• Aurodium detailing

• Enduring: Forged from premium Charubah steel with aurodium detailing and a sheathed design inlaid with oceanic mother-of-pearl, the dagger is exceptionally durable and resistant to wear, making it a fully functional and incredibly sharp blade. Despite this, the blade was made for ceremonial purposes only.
• Rainbow Gem: The hilt features a single mature blue Rainbow Gem, a silicon-based lifeform from Gallinore. While intended as an ornamental centerpiece, the gem has quietly bonded to Briana through shared grief and the Force. In moments of emotional strain, it offers clarity and heightened focus, subtly reinforcing her resolve and awareness.

• Ceremonial Origins: While functional in emergencies, the blade lacks the weight, reach, and balance of true combat daggers and was never intended for prolonged battle.
• Politically Controversial: The blade is more than a weapon—it's a scandal. Briana's past relationship with Astor Daaray was once seen as a threat to Hapan order. When it became public, attempts were made on her life by those loyal to the crown. Now, by refusing to return Astor's blade, she has reignited that animosity.
• Rainbow Gem: Rainbow gems are incredibly rare and incredibly expensive — with some of them being enough to buy an entire star system. The gem on Astor's hilt is thousands of years old, placing it among the rarest and most valuable artifacts in the galaxy. Its presence makes the blade a tempting prize for collectors, criminals, and warlords alike, placing a potential target on Briana's back.

Forged centuries ago and passed from father to son through generations of Daaray nobility, the dagger was a symbol of a man's place in society—elegant, restrained, and silent. Forged of gleaming Charubah steel, inlaid with a single mature blue Rainbow Gem from Gallinore, and sheathed in mother-of-pearl and decorative aurodium, the blade was as much a work of art as it was a cage. Meant to be worn, but never drawn, something that Astor Daaray never did. Not once. Not until the day he died.

The day of his wedding, meant to be a day of pageantry and spectacle, a public pledge of strength and unity beneath the banner of the Hapan Crown, instead became a massacre with both bride and groom assassinated on the steps of their wedding altar. The Crimson Veil, an anti-monarchist faction made up of men who had been silenced, abused, and discarded by the Hapan system, chose the royal wedding to ignite their rebellion. With fire and blood, they made their statement, loudly denouncing Hapes' enduring gender inequality and the galaxy's complicity in its cruelty, through silence.

Caught without a proper weapon and left without his guard, who'd gone to protect his sister and escort the Queen from the bloodied wedding — Astor drew the one blade he was never supposed to use to fight back and died trying to defend himself.

Briana saw him fall from across the ruined cathedral, watched as Kalen stab him—saw Astor crumple in slow motion, as if time itself was trying to prolong her heartbreak. After running to him, Briana tried to staunch the bleeding from a wound that was already too deep and final. Others tried to come and help, healers came and left. But Briana stayed, held him as he died. Listened to his last truths. Lied to him as the breath left his body, promising she'd make everything right. And when he was gone—truly gone—she looked down at the blade in his hand. The one they would take, archive, and sanitize. She took it. Without permission, without hesitation.

Spoiler: The Ashes

Briana Sal-Soren:

Everything was so hazy after Astor had taken that final breath — what she'd said, whether she'd cried or wailed, the moment when they finally took his body away. All she really remembered was the weight of inevitability crushing down against her chest like a boulder and the faint memory of absconding with Astor's blade, the one he'd so often carried with him. That, and the cuff-links she'd helped Caerina design — the symbolic parts of his strength and identity that he'd managed to keep in tact and hidden from all the wolves who surrounded him, from all but the few who truly knew him. Hapes had claimed him in life, she'd be damned if they claimed him in death, too.

The Hapan court has since demanded the blade's return, citing tradition, archive protocols, royal rites, anything allowing them to strip it from her hands and lock it behind glass — away from memory, away from meaning. But Briana has refused. Not out of sentimentality. Not even out of mourning, but out of rebellion — out of refusal to let them rewrite the story, to treat his death as a tragedy and bury him politely, instead of recognizing it for the reckoning that it was.

The blade is Astors memory.
It is his defiance.
It is the last truth no one else was brave enough to acknowledge:

That Astor Daaray died not just at the hands of radicals, but at the mercy of a society and government that praised him in public and imprisoned him in private. A society and government that sacrificed him long before Kalen ever raised a weapon. And now Briana wears that truth at her hip, where everyone can see it. Not hidden. Not silenced.

A weapon, still.