{APP} - Abraxas
May. 30th, 2021 01:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girl_at_the_windowOOC INFORMATION
Player Name: Jormy
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
jormandugr; jormandugr
Other Characters in Game: N/A
IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Susan Delgado
Canon: The Dark Tower (specifically Book IV: Wizard & Glass)
Canon Point: After her death
Background: Wiki here, but it's pretty incomplete, so:
Susan Delgado comes from Hambry, a rural ranching town in the Barony of Mejis. Her father, Pat, was a horse rancher and well-respected in the town; her mother died when she was too young to remember, so her father is the only parent she's ever known. She grew up with him and, at some point, his sister Cordelia moved in with them. Susan and her Aunt Cordelia didn't get on at all, with Cordelia quickly despairing of Susan's wilful and tomboyish ways, but they largely tolerated one another as long as Pat was alive.
At this time, a war was brewing between the Affiliation (the central government of Susan's world) and a faction led by John Farson, who wanted to topple the Affiliation. Pat Delgado aligned himself with the Affiliation, and as a result of this, he was killed by the deputy mayor and other powerful figures in the town, who felt it would be better for Hambry to lend their support to Farson's forces. They successfully made the murder look like an accident, staging an incident where Pat's horse threw him and he broke his neck.
After this, Susan and Aunt Cordelia were left alone, and without Pat to keep up his trade, they quickly fell into poverty. Susan worked hard to mitigate this, ultimately selling off all of their horses and many of their possessions in order to keep up rent on her father's ranch, which was owned by the mayor. However, this was not enough, and they were soon in real risk of eviction. However, at fifteen, Susan had caught the eye of the mayor, Hart Thorin. He made an offer to her: he would return three of her father's horses and allow them to stay on his land indefinitely, and in exchange, Susan would become his gilly (a kind of traditionally-sanctioned mistress, nominally to bear his heir as his wife had reached menopause without children). Susan was initially very reluctant, but ultimately was cajoled into agreeing by her aunt.
To meet the strictures of tradition, Susan had to be "proved honest" by the local witch, Rhea. This meant proving her virginity, and she had to go to the witch's house to be subjected to an examination. During this visit, she saw a strange pink light coming from the witch's bedroom, and investigating secretly, discovered that Rhea had a magical artefact (the Grapefruityes it sounds silly bear with me) which she had hidden in her hut. She also angered the witch by being sharp with her, and before she left, Rhea hypnotised her and left her with subliminal orders. However, she also told Susan (to her relief) that the mayor would not be allowed to take her as a gilly until Reaping, the year-end festival, which at that time was still three months away.
On her way home, Susan met a stranger, who introduced himself to her as Will Dearborn, a boy from the seat of the Affiliation who had come to count stock. They were almost immediately attracted to one another, although due to her situation with Thorin, tried to fight their impulses. Through "Will" (whose real name she later discovered to be Roland Deschain, a young gunslinger from the Affiliation), Susan became involved in the politics of the war, acting as a guide for Roland and his friends as they tried to understand what was going on in Hambry. Susan and Will sent one another messages, using his friends and Sheemie, the mentally-handicapped boy who worked in the local saloon and with whom Susan had a friendship of her own, as go-betweens. This lasted for around a month before, spurred on by an escalation of Thorin's sexual behaviour towards her, Susan asked Roland to sleep with her and he agreed. After losing her virginity in a field, Susan's hypnotic programming kicked in, and she had to be physically restrained from cutting off her hair with a sharp rock (an order that Rhea had given her to humiliate both her and the mayor, out of spite). With her permission, Roland hypnotised Susan again in order to find out what had just happened; she told him about her visit to Rhea, but beyond a certain point, couldn't remember - this included any memory of what she had seen in Rhea's bedroom.
After this, Susan and Roland met frequently for sex, doing their best to hide their relationship. However, her aunt became suspicious, and Rhea - who, through the power of the Grapefruit, could see visions of things happening elsewhere, and who had been watching when the couple first had sex - knew that they were together. Furious at Susan for resisting her hypnotic command, the witch wrote a note to the mayor saying that Susan was no longer "honest". Fortunately for the lovers, she sent this note with Sheemie. Sheemie couldn't read, but sensed that something was wrong, and gave the note to Roland's friend Cuthbert, thereby alerting the gunslingers to the situation. After the three gunslingers fought over this information, they ended up bringing Susan into their confidence more fully. They told her that the Big Coffin Hunters (the mayor's "bodyguard", three men who had recently come to Hambry and held more power than they should) and the mayor's deputy were planning to supply Farson's army and would move on Reaping Night. Susan added an additional piece to the puzzle when, under hypnosis, she finally recovered her remaining memories of her visit to Rhea and informed them of the existence of the Grapefruit, which they surmised (correctly) was being held by Rhea on behalf of Farson's forces. Roland and his friends told her of their plan to counter the Coffin Hunters and try to kill as many of Farson's army as possible. Roland also showed her where his guns were hidden, and told her that if he died, she should take them and ride back for his hometown, to return them to his father and say what had happened.
Susan returned to the mayor's house the night before the Reaping. However, she was awoken by her maid, Maria, the following morning and told to leave: the mayor had been killed and the boys from the Affiliation had been blamed. Maria, concerned for her mistress' safety, encouraged Susan to leave the mayor's house. Susan did leave, but not to safety: instead, with Sheemie's help, she rode to where Roland and his friends had been staying and took his guns. (At this point in the story, we learn that she is pregnant with Roland's child, although she tells nobody this). Disguising herself as a man, she headed to the town jail where the three gunslingers were imprisoned, and shot both the sheriff and the deputy in order to free the three. This affected her deeply, as she had known the deputy, Dave Hollis, all her life and considered him to be a good man, who had only been doing her job. Still, she had successfully freed the gunslingers, and they parted not long afterwards, Sheemie and Susan being told to wait for the boys in hiding while Roland and his friends rode off to execute their plan.
Sadly, that was the last time they saw one another, as Susan was found by the Big Coffin Hunters and, when she refused to give up any information about the gunslingers, was dragged back to town and locked in the pantry of the mayor's house as an accessory to Hart Thorin's murder. Under the witch's influence, Aunt Cordelia and indeed the town as a whole were brought to the agreement that Susan and the boys (once the boys were captured) should be executed, burned on the Reaping-Day bonfire as had been tradition centuries before.
Sheemie, who had escaped being captured, came to her rescue, but in the end, it was the mayor's widow, Olive Thorin, who actually let Susan out of the pantry with Maria's help. Olive, while she had every reason to hate Susan, knew that she hadn't been involved in the murder and refused to let her be killed. She saddled horses for them both and Olive and Susan set out for the next town, hoping for refuge. But the road was blocked by Clay Reynolds (one of the Big Coffin Hunters) and two other men. Olive drew a gun she had been hiding, trying to threaten them to let her and Susan pass, but the gun failed to fire. Olive was shot and killed, and Susan was recaptured. She was dragged back to town, where the mob awaited, and with the townsfolk jeering and chanting for her death, she was tied to a stake on the Reaping bonfire and set alight.
Suitability: While Susan isn't the most politically-minded person, she does have a strong sense of justice. Her experiences in her own world have left her largely convinced that her original approach to war (of staying out of it and trying to get on with her life) isn't likely to work; the war found her in her own world, and she has every reason to assume that it will do so even faster here. Knowing that she has nowhere else to go also means that she'll quickly recognise her vested income in the outcome of the war. She's also a curious (sometimes over-curious) person who wants to understand the world around her, and is going to be keen to understand why she's been brought here. She forms close bonds with people easily and is fiercely loyal, meaning that she will come in on the side of other characters and is likely to get involved with plot that way (as, in a sense, happened in canon).
Powers: None.
PERSONALITY QUESTIONS
Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.
While it came quite near to the end of her life, the moment she first killed a man was nonetheless, unsurprisingly, an impactful one for Susan. This came about entirely through her own choices; when she was told that Roland and his friends had been arrested, she rode to find his guns, and even when she was retrieving them, considered the fact that what she had been asked to do was to take them to his father. It's clear, however, that she didn't really see this as a choice: as she picks them up, she wonders whether Roland can really believe she would do that. She views freeing Roland as the only possible way forwards, and - as her father told her, and as she often tells herself - where there is no choice, hesitation is ever a fault. This is probably why, instead of taking his guns and riding to safety, she chose to take his guns, dress in a man's clothes, and try to break Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain out of jail.
Two men are guarding the gunslingers at the time: Sheriff Herk Avery, and one of his deputies, Dave Hollis. Avery is someone that Susan is at most ambivalent about, considering him corrupt and at times stupid, and also feeling quite sure he was involved in covering up her father's murder. Dave Hollis, on the other hand, she has known since school and is quite fond of; she knows his wife, and even reflects that before he was married, they were almost sweethearts.
Susan, disguised as a cowboy, enters and pulls a gun on the two. When they don't back down, she fires a shot at the sheriff's desk. Dave Hollis, not recognising her and acting out of duty to protect his prisoners, launches himself at her with the intention of wrestling the gun away, and Susan fires without thinking, shooting Hollis through the chest. She is horrified by the reality of his death, and immediately struck by the brutality and bloodiness of guns, which she has always imagined to be a more civilised weapon. In fact, she is so shocked by what she has done that she is almost taken down by the Sheriff, who wrestles her to the ground. Still acting largely on instinct, she fires again, but misses, and only succeeds in setting her serape on fire and blowing a hole in the ceiling. However, it strikes her as Avery grabs her by the throat that she has one more chance, and she shoots the sheriff in the head at point-blank range.
After this, she frees the boys and the plot moves along, but the impact of these two killings is, like the mess they make, considerable. Susan is already crying when she puts out the fire and frees the gunslingers, and clearly distraught: she seems distracted and has to be snapped back to the moment in hand several times. Her first thought is for Dave's wife, and who will tell her; and when she returns the guns to Roland, she thinks that she would like to never touch them again. It's clear that this affects her deeply, and that her grief and guilt is genuine - and yet, after only a few moments, she is able to put it aside to focus on the matter at hand, getting Roland and his friends into their own disguises and away. This isn't out of a lack of understanding of the situation - indeed, she thinks as they leave that what she has done has cost her her soul, and that all that is left now is her child and her love - but rather, the kind of practicality that caused her to do all this in the first place.
It is partly because of this, though, that she readily agrees to stay behind with Sheemie when the boys go to enact their plan. Although she's put her grief aside and doesn't react with guilt or shame for most of the rest of her life (not that that's very long), she still dreads holding a gun again, and the thought of killing makes her sick. She also recognises, having experienced a fight, that she isn't up to a real battle - either emotionally or in the practical terms of shooting skills.
One of the most remarkable things about the impact of these killings on Susan is how easily she allows herself to put them aside. This is true even when she isn't in immediate action; when she sleeps, soon afterwards, outside the gunslingers' hut, she isn't plagued by thoughts of Dave Hollis, but rather thoughts of Roland and the good life they will have when everything is over. She still regrets Dave's death, and it is one of the few things that really stings her when people raise it as an insult, but it very quickly fades into the background. There is an underlying ruthlessness in how quickly she lets practicality and purpose take over from her clearly real regret over the killing, and while she feels that she has damned herself in some way by killing the two men, she doesn't despair over this fact.
This may be connected to the fact that, when Roland points out that she had to do it, she immediately agrees. It is clear in her management of this trauma that Susan feels her actions were and are justified by her responsibility to Roland and their baby. Her guilt and her regret remain internal, and while they don't leave her, they take a back seat to the needs of the moment: she doesn't decide that she deserves death, or give up fighting, and she doesn't allow it to distract her for more than a few moments.
It does, however, have an impact - limited in canon, but sure to grow given more than a day's time to do so - on how she views herself. She does truly believe she's crossed an uncrossable line in that killing, however necessary it might have been, and she's unlikely to ever view herself as an innocent again. She also knows, now, that killing - murder - is something she's capable of, although it still horrifies her to think of. And perhaps, knowing all of that, there was a small part of her that was almost relieved to die herself.
Does your character have a moral code, or other set of standards they try to live by?
Yes and no. Susan is a very morally-driven person, but what those morals actually are can be a little grey, and can certainly at times be overridden by survival. She judges the ethics of a situation based on that situation, and there are very few things which she would say, without exception, are always good or always bad; most things can be forgivable, to her, if they're justified. She isn't much of a philosopher, so she hasn't really sat down and mapped out what makes something moral or immoral to her, but there's a clear compass there, it's just... not always a conscious one.
The greatest guide to morality, for her, is what her father would have done: she has a very strong sense of her father as a moral authority, and many of the driving principles in how she acts - particularly when it comes to honesty and responsibility - are led by the desire to be someone he would have approved of. That means being someone who is honest and deals fairly with others, being someone who doesn't shy away from hard and dirty work when it's needed, and standing by your principles where you hold them. Pat Delgado died rather than back down on what he felt was important, and an important part of his daughter's moral code is that she should be prepared to do the same.
Her sense of duty is also a very strong driver of the kind of person she strives to be. Susan believes in doing what's necessary: for yourself, for the people you care about, and for people who can't stick up for themselves. In canon, we see this not only through her willingness to do something she finds abhorrent (contracting with Hart Thorin) in order to keep her father's ranch and ensure her aunt is looked after, but also in the fact that she goes out of her way to be kind to people, such as Sheemie, who are in a worse situation than she is. This sense of duty is also part of what makes her so forthright in her opinions, especially when they involve what she sees as injustice. She has no patience for people who see any kind of work as beneath them, or for people who think they're above others.
At the end of the day, her duty to herself or to the people closest to her will always trump more abstract moral rules: she may feel bad for killing an innocent man to save her lover's life, but she would do it again in a heartbeat.
What quality or qualities do they admire most?
As mentioned in the previous answer, honesty is very important to Susan, all the more so because she hasn't always been entirely truthful or honest herself. She respects people who speak as they find, and who aren't intimidated out of doing what they see as right. Even when people mistreat her, as they often have, she can find it in her to give them some respect if they're at least honest about it.
Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?
There are plenty of things about herself that Susan dislikes, especially at this canon point. Even putting aside her role in Dave Hollis' death and her own coldness about it (which she is aware of, and not really comfortable with), she is well aware that she's not perfect by any means. She can be reckless, can be spiteful at times, and is often selfish or vain, and she's absolutely conscious of all those things - hard not to be, when she's had her aunt over her shoulder most of her life to remind her of them.
At the same time, none of these are things that she would necessarily acknowledge disliking, and she often puts that dislike outside of herself. She's also still a teenager, and like many teenagers, more than a little confused about what she dislikes and what she accepts about herself. For example, she's at once aggravated by her more romantic and dreamy side, viewing it as impractical, and extremely unwilling to let it go; by the same token, she often dislikes her own ruthless practicality, especially after the confrontation at the jail, but simultaneously sees it as a necessary tool for survival and not something she should be condemned for. (She's at least consistent in this: she doesn't tend to condemn others for it, either.)
What is their sign, and why?
Susan's sign is the Lovers.
Loyalty is a crucial part of her character, and drives her decisions throughout her story and, indeed, her life even outside the scope of the novel. Her full loyalty isn't all that easily-won - she makes close connections easily, yes, but there are limits to her loyalty in most cases and there's definitely a hierarchy of who her loyalty is to - but it is complete. Even years after his death, her loyalty to her father still drives her, to an extent that Cordelia using his name was enough to persuade her into contracting her life away.
Similarly, her loyalty to Roland was not only enough to get her involved in the war, but also to disobey him, risk her own life, and kill two men. When she died, loyalty still sustained her: her last words were of love for Roland, and her greatest grief was not the loss of her own life, but that of her child.
She doesn't necessarily think of herself as someone who lives for other people - in fact, she would vehemently deny it, seeing herself as independent and self-reliant sometimes to a fault - but all her sense of duty and responsibility is built around protecting and honouring the people she's responsible for. Ultimately, she died out of loyalty - to her lover, and to her father's memory - and if that doesn't bring her under the sign of the Lovers, what does?
SAMPLES & ARRIVAL
Samples: TDM toplevel here and another TDM thread here.
Arrival Scenario: Imprisoned.
Player Name: Jormy
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact:
jormandugrOther Characters in Game: N/A
IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Susan Delgado
Canon: The Dark Tower (specifically Book IV: Wizard & Glass)
Canon Point: After her death
Background: Wiki here, but it's pretty incomplete, so:
Susan Delgado comes from Hambry, a rural ranching town in the Barony of Mejis. Her father, Pat, was a horse rancher and well-respected in the town; her mother died when she was too young to remember, so her father is the only parent she's ever known. She grew up with him and, at some point, his sister Cordelia moved in with them. Susan and her Aunt Cordelia didn't get on at all, with Cordelia quickly despairing of Susan's wilful and tomboyish ways, but they largely tolerated one another as long as Pat was alive.
At this time, a war was brewing between the Affiliation (the central government of Susan's world) and a faction led by John Farson, who wanted to topple the Affiliation. Pat Delgado aligned himself with the Affiliation, and as a result of this, he was killed by the deputy mayor and other powerful figures in the town, who felt it would be better for Hambry to lend their support to Farson's forces. They successfully made the murder look like an accident, staging an incident where Pat's horse threw him and he broke his neck.
After this, Susan and Aunt Cordelia were left alone, and without Pat to keep up his trade, they quickly fell into poverty. Susan worked hard to mitigate this, ultimately selling off all of their horses and many of their possessions in order to keep up rent on her father's ranch, which was owned by the mayor. However, this was not enough, and they were soon in real risk of eviction. However, at fifteen, Susan had caught the eye of the mayor, Hart Thorin. He made an offer to her: he would return three of her father's horses and allow them to stay on his land indefinitely, and in exchange, Susan would become his gilly (a kind of traditionally-sanctioned mistress, nominally to bear his heir as his wife had reached menopause without children). Susan was initially very reluctant, but ultimately was cajoled into agreeing by her aunt.
To meet the strictures of tradition, Susan had to be "proved honest" by the local witch, Rhea. This meant proving her virginity, and she had to go to the witch's house to be subjected to an examination. During this visit, she saw a strange pink light coming from the witch's bedroom, and investigating secretly, discovered that Rhea had a magical artefact (the Grapefruit
On her way home, Susan met a stranger, who introduced himself to her as Will Dearborn, a boy from the seat of the Affiliation who had come to count stock. They were almost immediately attracted to one another, although due to her situation with Thorin, tried to fight their impulses. Through "Will" (whose real name she later discovered to be Roland Deschain, a young gunslinger from the Affiliation), Susan became involved in the politics of the war, acting as a guide for Roland and his friends as they tried to understand what was going on in Hambry. Susan and Will sent one another messages, using his friends and Sheemie, the mentally-handicapped boy who worked in the local saloon and with whom Susan had a friendship of her own, as go-betweens. This lasted for around a month before, spurred on by an escalation of Thorin's sexual behaviour towards her, Susan asked Roland to sleep with her and he agreed. After losing her virginity in a field, Susan's hypnotic programming kicked in, and she had to be physically restrained from cutting off her hair with a sharp rock (an order that Rhea had given her to humiliate both her and the mayor, out of spite). With her permission, Roland hypnotised Susan again in order to find out what had just happened; she told him about her visit to Rhea, but beyond a certain point, couldn't remember - this included any memory of what she had seen in Rhea's bedroom.
After this, Susan and Roland met frequently for sex, doing their best to hide their relationship. However, her aunt became suspicious, and Rhea - who, through the power of the Grapefruit, could see visions of things happening elsewhere, and who had been watching when the couple first had sex - knew that they were together. Furious at Susan for resisting her hypnotic command, the witch wrote a note to the mayor saying that Susan was no longer "honest". Fortunately for the lovers, she sent this note with Sheemie. Sheemie couldn't read, but sensed that something was wrong, and gave the note to Roland's friend Cuthbert, thereby alerting the gunslingers to the situation. After the three gunslingers fought over this information, they ended up bringing Susan into their confidence more fully. They told her that the Big Coffin Hunters (the mayor's "bodyguard", three men who had recently come to Hambry and held more power than they should) and the mayor's deputy were planning to supply Farson's army and would move on Reaping Night. Susan added an additional piece to the puzzle when, under hypnosis, she finally recovered her remaining memories of her visit to Rhea and informed them of the existence of the Grapefruit, which they surmised (correctly) was being held by Rhea on behalf of Farson's forces. Roland and his friends told her of their plan to counter the Coffin Hunters and try to kill as many of Farson's army as possible. Roland also showed her where his guns were hidden, and told her that if he died, she should take them and ride back for his hometown, to return them to his father and say what had happened.
Susan returned to the mayor's house the night before the Reaping. However, she was awoken by her maid, Maria, the following morning and told to leave: the mayor had been killed and the boys from the Affiliation had been blamed. Maria, concerned for her mistress' safety, encouraged Susan to leave the mayor's house. Susan did leave, but not to safety: instead, with Sheemie's help, she rode to where Roland and his friends had been staying and took his guns. (At this point in the story, we learn that she is pregnant with Roland's child, although she tells nobody this). Disguising herself as a man, she headed to the town jail where the three gunslingers were imprisoned, and shot both the sheriff and the deputy in order to free the three. This affected her deeply, as she had known the deputy, Dave Hollis, all her life and considered him to be a good man, who had only been doing her job. Still, she had successfully freed the gunslingers, and they parted not long afterwards, Sheemie and Susan being told to wait for the boys in hiding while Roland and his friends rode off to execute their plan.
Sadly, that was the last time they saw one another, as Susan was found by the Big Coffin Hunters and, when she refused to give up any information about the gunslingers, was dragged back to town and locked in the pantry of the mayor's house as an accessory to Hart Thorin's murder. Under the witch's influence, Aunt Cordelia and indeed the town as a whole were brought to the agreement that Susan and the boys (once the boys were captured) should be executed, burned on the Reaping-Day bonfire as had been tradition centuries before.
Sheemie, who had escaped being captured, came to her rescue, but in the end, it was the mayor's widow, Olive Thorin, who actually let Susan out of the pantry with Maria's help. Olive, while she had every reason to hate Susan, knew that she hadn't been involved in the murder and refused to let her be killed. She saddled horses for them both and Olive and Susan set out for the next town, hoping for refuge. But the road was blocked by Clay Reynolds (one of the Big Coffin Hunters) and two other men. Olive drew a gun she had been hiding, trying to threaten them to let her and Susan pass, but the gun failed to fire. Olive was shot and killed, and Susan was recaptured. She was dragged back to town, where the mob awaited, and with the townsfolk jeering and chanting for her death, she was tied to a stake on the Reaping bonfire and set alight.
Suitability: While Susan isn't the most politically-minded person, she does have a strong sense of justice. Her experiences in her own world have left her largely convinced that her original approach to war (of staying out of it and trying to get on with her life) isn't likely to work; the war found her in her own world, and she has every reason to assume that it will do so even faster here. Knowing that she has nowhere else to go also means that she'll quickly recognise her vested income in the outcome of the war. She's also a curious (sometimes over-curious) person who wants to understand the world around her, and is going to be keen to understand why she's been brought here. She forms close bonds with people easily and is fiercely loyal, meaning that she will come in on the side of other characters and is likely to get involved with plot that way (as, in a sense, happened in canon).
Powers: None.
PERSONALITY QUESTIONS
Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.
While it came quite near to the end of her life, the moment she first killed a man was nonetheless, unsurprisingly, an impactful one for Susan. This came about entirely through her own choices; when she was told that Roland and his friends had been arrested, she rode to find his guns, and even when she was retrieving them, considered the fact that what she had been asked to do was to take them to his father. It's clear, however, that she didn't really see this as a choice: as she picks them up, she wonders whether Roland can really believe she would do that. She views freeing Roland as the only possible way forwards, and - as her father told her, and as she often tells herself - where there is no choice, hesitation is ever a fault. This is probably why, instead of taking his guns and riding to safety, she chose to take his guns, dress in a man's clothes, and try to break Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain out of jail.
Two men are guarding the gunslingers at the time: Sheriff Herk Avery, and one of his deputies, Dave Hollis. Avery is someone that Susan is at most ambivalent about, considering him corrupt and at times stupid, and also feeling quite sure he was involved in covering up her father's murder. Dave Hollis, on the other hand, she has known since school and is quite fond of; she knows his wife, and even reflects that before he was married, they were almost sweethearts.
Susan, disguised as a cowboy, enters and pulls a gun on the two. When they don't back down, she fires a shot at the sheriff's desk. Dave Hollis, not recognising her and acting out of duty to protect his prisoners, launches himself at her with the intention of wrestling the gun away, and Susan fires without thinking, shooting Hollis through the chest. She is horrified by the reality of his death, and immediately struck by the brutality and bloodiness of guns, which she has always imagined to be a more civilised weapon. In fact, she is so shocked by what she has done that she is almost taken down by the Sheriff, who wrestles her to the ground. Still acting largely on instinct, she fires again, but misses, and only succeeds in setting her serape on fire and blowing a hole in the ceiling. However, it strikes her as Avery grabs her by the throat that she has one more chance, and she shoots the sheriff in the head at point-blank range.
After this, she frees the boys and the plot moves along, but the impact of these two killings is, like the mess they make, considerable. Susan is already crying when she puts out the fire and frees the gunslingers, and clearly distraught: she seems distracted and has to be snapped back to the moment in hand several times. Her first thought is for Dave's wife, and who will tell her; and when she returns the guns to Roland, she thinks that she would like to never touch them again. It's clear that this affects her deeply, and that her grief and guilt is genuine - and yet, after only a few moments, she is able to put it aside to focus on the matter at hand, getting Roland and his friends into their own disguises and away. This isn't out of a lack of understanding of the situation - indeed, she thinks as they leave that what she has done has cost her her soul, and that all that is left now is her child and her love - but rather, the kind of practicality that caused her to do all this in the first place.
It is partly because of this, though, that she readily agrees to stay behind with Sheemie when the boys go to enact their plan. Although she's put her grief aside and doesn't react with guilt or shame for most of the rest of her life (not that that's very long), she still dreads holding a gun again, and the thought of killing makes her sick. She also recognises, having experienced a fight, that she isn't up to a real battle - either emotionally or in the practical terms of shooting skills.
One of the most remarkable things about the impact of these killings on Susan is how easily she allows herself to put them aside. This is true even when she isn't in immediate action; when she sleeps, soon afterwards, outside the gunslingers' hut, she isn't plagued by thoughts of Dave Hollis, but rather thoughts of Roland and the good life they will have when everything is over. She still regrets Dave's death, and it is one of the few things that really stings her when people raise it as an insult, but it very quickly fades into the background. There is an underlying ruthlessness in how quickly she lets practicality and purpose take over from her clearly real regret over the killing, and while she feels that she has damned herself in some way by killing the two men, she doesn't despair over this fact.
This may be connected to the fact that, when Roland points out that she had to do it, she immediately agrees. It is clear in her management of this trauma that Susan feels her actions were and are justified by her responsibility to Roland and their baby. Her guilt and her regret remain internal, and while they don't leave her, they take a back seat to the needs of the moment: she doesn't decide that she deserves death, or give up fighting, and she doesn't allow it to distract her for more than a few moments.
It does, however, have an impact - limited in canon, but sure to grow given more than a day's time to do so - on how she views herself. She does truly believe she's crossed an uncrossable line in that killing, however necessary it might have been, and she's unlikely to ever view herself as an innocent again. She also knows, now, that killing - murder - is something she's capable of, although it still horrifies her to think of. And perhaps, knowing all of that, there was a small part of her that was almost relieved to die herself.
Does your character have a moral code, or other set of standards they try to live by?
Yes and no. Susan is a very morally-driven person, but what those morals actually are can be a little grey, and can certainly at times be overridden by survival. She judges the ethics of a situation based on that situation, and there are very few things which she would say, without exception, are always good or always bad; most things can be forgivable, to her, if they're justified. She isn't much of a philosopher, so she hasn't really sat down and mapped out what makes something moral or immoral to her, but there's a clear compass there, it's just... not always a conscious one.
The greatest guide to morality, for her, is what her father would have done: she has a very strong sense of her father as a moral authority, and many of the driving principles in how she acts - particularly when it comes to honesty and responsibility - are led by the desire to be someone he would have approved of. That means being someone who is honest and deals fairly with others, being someone who doesn't shy away from hard and dirty work when it's needed, and standing by your principles where you hold them. Pat Delgado died rather than back down on what he felt was important, and an important part of his daughter's moral code is that she should be prepared to do the same.
Her sense of duty is also a very strong driver of the kind of person she strives to be. Susan believes in doing what's necessary: for yourself, for the people you care about, and for people who can't stick up for themselves. In canon, we see this not only through her willingness to do something she finds abhorrent (contracting with Hart Thorin) in order to keep her father's ranch and ensure her aunt is looked after, but also in the fact that she goes out of her way to be kind to people, such as Sheemie, who are in a worse situation than she is. This sense of duty is also part of what makes her so forthright in her opinions, especially when they involve what she sees as injustice. She has no patience for people who see any kind of work as beneath them, or for people who think they're above others.
At the end of the day, her duty to herself or to the people closest to her will always trump more abstract moral rules: she may feel bad for killing an innocent man to save her lover's life, but she would do it again in a heartbeat.
What quality or qualities do they admire most?
As mentioned in the previous answer, honesty is very important to Susan, all the more so because she hasn't always been entirely truthful or honest herself. She respects people who speak as they find, and who aren't intimidated out of doing what they see as right. Even when people mistreat her, as they often have, she can find it in her to give them some respect if they're at least honest about it.
Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?
There are plenty of things about herself that Susan dislikes, especially at this canon point. Even putting aside her role in Dave Hollis' death and her own coldness about it (which she is aware of, and not really comfortable with), she is well aware that she's not perfect by any means. She can be reckless, can be spiteful at times, and is often selfish or vain, and she's absolutely conscious of all those things - hard not to be, when she's had her aunt over her shoulder most of her life to remind her of them.
At the same time, none of these are things that she would necessarily acknowledge disliking, and she often puts that dislike outside of herself. She's also still a teenager, and like many teenagers, more than a little confused about what she dislikes and what she accepts about herself. For example, she's at once aggravated by her more romantic and dreamy side, viewing it as impractical, and extremely unwilling to let it go; by the same token, she often dislikes her own ruthless practicality, especially after the confrontation at the jail, but simultaneously sees it as a necessary tool for survival and not something she should be condemned for. (She's at least consistent in this: she doesn't tend to condemn others for it, either.)
What is their sign, and why?
Susan's sign is the Lovers.
Loyalty is a crucial part of her character, and drives her decisions throughout her story and, indeed, her life even outside the scope of the novel. Her full loyalty isn't all that easily-won - she makes close connections easily, yes, but there are limits to her loyalty in most cases and there's definitely a hierarchy of who her loyalty is to - but it is complete. Even years after his death, her loyalty to her father still drives her, to an extent that Cordelia using his name was enough to persuade her into contracting her life away.
Similarly, her loyalty to Roland was not only enough to get her involved in the war, but also to disobey him, risk her own life, and kill two men. When she died, loyalty still sustained her: her last words were of love for Roland, and her greatest grief was not the loss of her own life, but that of her child.
She doesn't necessarily think of herself as someone who lives for other people - in fact, she would vehemently deny it, seeing herself as independent and self-reliant sometimes to a fault - but all her sense of duty and responsibility is built around protecting and honouring the people she's responsible for. Ultimately, she died out of loyalty - to her lover, and to her father's memory - and if that doesn't bring her under the sign of the Lovers, what does?
SAMPLES & ARRIVAL
Samples: TDM toplevel here and another TDM thread here.
Arrival Scenario: Imprisoned.
