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applications

applications

APPLICATIONS

Eastbound is primarily an invite-only game — each existing player can currently invite up to one person per month, or get in touch about further invites. Existing players can hold two characters in game. A third character can be applied, if players can prove they have met activity requirements for two consecutive months with their existing two characters and have stayed engaged with the game. If you don't have an invite, somehow stumbled upon this neck of the woods, and you’d like to stay, drop the mod journal a line — we'll try to figure it out.

As of Oct. 1, cast/game caps are off. Please note, as of Dec. 1, Eastbound only has 3-4 months of gameplay left.

WHAT CHARACTERS CAN BE APPLIED?

YES: canon and original characters, if they have a solid and consistent personality and background. Characters brought in after they've died are a-okay. For characters taken from a time point just as they're in the process of dying, please read below on meeting medical requirements.

NO (at this time): real people, original characters set in a canon environment, characters from canons or canon instalments that have been released for less than one month, characters with imported development from other games (CRAU), alternate universe, or gender-swapped versions of canon characters.

Children or characters with very specific medical/magical/environment needs: appable, but please make a note of how your character will ICly meet their requirements and stay alive. Likewise, if you are applying for a character taken just as they're dying, provide a suggestion for how they can be kept alive on arrival (this might be easier in some app cycles than others). You can bend the world a little to make miracles happen (ex: a substitute for the medication your character needs to survive can be found for a high price at certain apothecaries, etc.)

Characters that were dropped or swept by activity checks: yes, but they’ll come back without their previous memories, if they are applied in by a different player.

APPLICATION FORM & INSTRUCTIONS

EXISTING / RETURNING PLAYERS

NEW PLAYERS

PLAYER NAME: 
CONTACT:
REFERRED BY: Who invited you, please? c:

CHARACTER: 
CANON:
CANON POINT:

BACKGROUND: written or linked history both fine. Bullet points also a-okay. If no information is available in English, please write this out in short.

ABILITIES | POWERS: Include any relevant power restrictions, so you don’t break our playground.

PERSONALITY: make sure this ties back to the character’s time point and background.

SAMPLE: one or more samples to showcase the nuances of your character’s personality. Submit at least one prose sample of five comments or more. You can link memes, PSL or other game threads, provided they took place within the last 12 months. You can also write a single prose sample in the game or character canon setting, if you think you can cover good introspective ground that way, or a top level with enough variety to show how the character engages in various scenarios. 
 
INVENTORY: No world-breaking items. For living or magical beings, or anything colossal (think... Gundams...) please let's talk beforehand!

SUITABILITY: Eastbound is a plot-heavy game that typically features sleuthing, action and the undead. How is your character likely to deal with all that (and the game bear)?

NOTES: Are there any particular accommodations your character will need? How do you propose to handle that?

APPLICATIONS CLOSED

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If you're 84.95% sure you'd like to apply, please fill out the below in a reply to this comment — this acts as a lowkey reserve list for three days and also just helps know how many apps to expect in the short term and how much coffee to bring along \o/

Edited 2022-06-17 20:19 (UTC)

(no subject)

groundrules - 2023-12-04 18:07 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Solar
CONTACT: Plurk: Youkofox13; Discord: Solar #6657

CHARACTER: Eleven
CANON: Dragon Quest XI S
CANON POINT: Act 2; Pang Lai -> Void

BACKGROUND:

Eleven was born the Luminary, a child chosen by Yggdrasil and destined to defeat the Dark One.

Shortly after his birth, the forces of darkness attacked the kingdom of Dundrasil and forced his parents to flee. They both perished in the attack, and Eleven was found by a kindly old man by the name of Chalky in a distant village downriver. He was given to and raised by his daughter, Amber.

For 16 years, Eleven grew up perfectly ordinary in the secluded mountain village of Cobblestone with his best friend, Gemma.

But it was during his coming-of-age ceremony that the mark on the back of his hand lit up for the first time, summoning lightning to fell a creature endangering Gemma. Shortly thereafter, his mother told him he was the reincarnation of the Luminary of Legend, and to seek his answers in the capitol city of Heliodor.

He set out and met with King Carnelian, only to be cast into the dungeon and branded a harbinger of calamity, the Darkspawn. Destiny intervened in the form of a thief named Erik in the cell across from him, and together, they escaped the dungeon to a life on the run from Heliodorian soldiers and their allies.

When finally he returned to Cobblestone, the village had burned, and no signs of life remained. An Yggdrasil root lent him a vision of the past, and guided by wisdom of his grandfather, Eleven dug up a box of letters. One from his birth mother, the Queen of the fallen kingdom of Dundrasil, and one from his grandfather Chalky, to give him immediate guidance.

They traveled to Hotto, and met the twin sages Veronica and Serena, who pledged their lives to protect the Luminary they'd sought after. The quest to get to Yggdrasil began in earnest, with the first piece of the puzzle requiring the Rainbough. While in search of it, they were joined by the famous circus jester Sylvando in the desert city of Gallopolis, then led from the martial arts city of Octagonia to the ruins of Dundrasil, they're joined by Rab and Jade- the former revealing himself to be Eleven's maternal grandfather.

With the Rainbough in hand, the party was granted a vision of an altar deep within the First Forest, requiring six colored orbs to form a rainbow bridge leading up to Yggdrasil's floating island. They traveled the world in search of them, traversing ruins, an underwater kingdom of mermaids, and identifying the false queen of a kingdom frozen solid by a witch's magic.

The Arborian Highlands served as their final stop in Erdrea, a town carved into the mountain an inhabited by people calling themselves the Keepers and devoted to serving the cause of the Luminary. They learn that while Eleven was the reincarnation of Erdwin, the Luminary of Legend that last defeated the Dark One a millennia ago, the twin sages Veronica and Serena were split reincarnations of Erdwin's former companion, Serenica.

Led to the First Forest by the High Priest Benedictus, the party made camp beneath Yggdrasil, then journeyed on to Yggdrasil's Heart, where the Sword of Light hung in suspension, accessible only by the power of the Luminary.

But just as Eleven reached for it, he was struck down by a knight of Heliodor, Jasper. Carnelian revealed himself to be possessed by the dark spirit, Mordegon, and it was Mordegon that pried the power of the Luminary from Eleven and used it to deceive the Heart of Yggdrasil to relinquish the Sword of Light. Under his dark influence, he warped the blade to the Sword of Shadows, and used it to absorb the power of the World Tree. Yggdrasil fell, Her light extinguished, and Eleven was lost beneath the waves.

He awoke months later as a fish, brought back from the brink of death by the healing magic of the mermaids. They cloaked him with a fishy disguise to hide him from Mordegon's spies.

(sorry the mermaids always rhyme, it's a whole Thing)

Queen Marina's magic allowed her to showcase the events that occurred while he recovered. With Yggdrasil's fall, darkness prevailed. Countless lives lost to Mordegon's legions of monsters, entire kingdoms in ruin, and fast-fading hope weighing the hearts of scattered survivors. A Hero had emerged, leading them to a safe sanctuary.

But Mordegon's forces had their eye on Nautica as well, with Alizarin pounding at the barrier protecting the underwater kingdom. Queen Marina forced Eleven to flee while the forces of darkness tore through her fair city.

He was summarily fished up off the Emerald Coast by Blue John and returned to his normal human form. Guided toward the safe haven of The Last Bastion, he found a fortress overlaying the ruins of Cobblestone and occupied by Heliodorian forces under the command of the same knight that hunted him across Erdrea before The Fall: Hendrik.

More important than that however, the villagers were alive. Gemma informed him that while Jasper had ordered them all killed, it was Hendrik that intervened and had them locked up in the castle instead. But now that Heliodor lay in ruin, they'd built up the ruins of Cobblestone to use its natural defenses against the forces of darkness.

King Carnelian had returned to his former self, absent memories of the past 16 years. He oversaw the fortress, and ordered Eleven to fight alongside Hendrik in its defense against a coming onslaught of monsters.

Eleven and Hendrik soon found themselves sent out to oust the demon from Heliodor Castle, in hopes of restoring some of the light to the land before the citizens perished from starvation. Tensions ran high, but in confronting the demonic form of Jasper, Hendrik expressed his newfound duty to protect the Luminary from harm. Jasper fled, replaced by the Spectral Sentinel Tyriant, and upon defeating him, returned to The Last Bastion. The sun rose over Heliodor at last, and Hendrik swore an oath to serve as the Luminary's sword, shield, and unswerving companion.

They traveled to Pang Lai, a mountaintop monastery with deep ties to the Luminary, where they were greeted with muted celebration, but no real guidance. Hearing of a traveler endangered at the peak of the mountain however, Eleven and Hendrik went to the summit and it was there that Eleven allowed his soul to be sent into the Void in hopes of recovering his grandfather's soul and return it to his body.

ABILITIES | POWERS:
Innate Spells:
Frizzle/Sizzle- Low to mid-level fire spells that deal damage to individual or a group of targets.
Bang/Boom- Explosive spells deal damage to all enemies.
Heal- High-level healing capabilities.
Snooze/Kasnooze- Has a chance to sleep an enemy/group of opponents

Luminary Abilities:
Zap/Kazap- Mid-range lightning damage to grouped enemies.
Holy Protection- Wards off weaker enemies for a short time.
Kaclang- Turns an ally into an invincible metal statue for a short time.

Abilities:
Dual-sword Specialization- Eleven can dual wield one-handed swords.

Flame Slash: Deals fire damage to a target.
Gigaslash: Deals heavy lightning damage to all enemies.

Story-related abilities-
As the Luminary, Eleven is the only one that can see tiny white spirits of lost time in Erdrea.
He can commune with Yggdrasil's roots and witness memories stored in those roots.
He's a moderately skilled smith.

Nerfed abilities: I've removed his teleport spells, as they seem OP. I think there's good reason his resurrection spell would never work, without the will of Life/the Goddess from his world. He also won't have access to his Luminary powers, though more due to his current canon pull-point, thus the strike-throughs. If canon updates are ever a thing, I would likely update him to regain those Luminary abilities at some point.

PERSONALITY: Eleven is above all, a kind soul that enjoys the warm rush of satisfaction that comes from helping others. He's willing to do most anything within his power from rescuing a lost cat to traipsing across the desert for a rare flower, and he's dutiful in the tasks set before him.

But as eager as he'd been to follow in his adoptive grandfather's footsteps on a globe-trotting adventure, there's no hiding the fact he grew up in a small village in the mountains and the naivety with which he still sometimes operates with- always thinking the best of people first. It doesn't help his case that he runs on the shy side, given easily to fluster by a sudden rush of nerves.

The title of Luminary came to cost more than he was willing to lose. Branded the Darkspawn by the King of Heliodor and forced into life on the run when his hometown was burned down for raising and sheltering him, doubt about his role has since plagued him at every turn.

'Save the world from darkness' is a rather grand and vague concept with no easily visible enemy or force, and given no clear instruction, Eleven flounders under expectation. He isn't terribly focused at times, and in moments of self-doubt, worries that he's a burden on his companions. Because he isn't much of a leader (yet), relying on others for guidance and preferring the role of peacekeeper to adding his voice and make a decision. The weight of his title is still too new and too heavy to have such confidence.

But all of that doubt comes to a head when in the end, he fails to stop the darkness from overtaking Erdrea. He's too weak and unprepared, his power stolen, and when he wakes after months spent in recovery beneath the sea, it's to a deteriorating world he couldn't protect.

Guilt drags at him, but along with the hardships he comes to face, his compassion for others remains, and Eleven finally begins to find his resolve to build his strength upon.

SAMPLES:

1. Eleven came to with a soft grunt, blinking blearily as rattling sounded next to his ear and the pressure on his wrists eased. Frozen fingers curled clumsily around something small and hard, and words he both did and didn't recognize threaded between his ears like liquid.

Rescue. A warning. The crack of bone beneath his boot.

Eleven's heart slammed into his throat, and that first spike of adrenaline cleared some of the grogginess from his mind. They were human bones.

Fires burned. Eleven whipped around and crashed right into someone quicker to task than he'd been. He was given a shove as they rushed past and down into the mines, and Eleven barely kept his feet enough to follow.

Questions arose as memories began to resurface under the biting cold and sharp, salty scent of the mine. Questions that would have to wait, but nonetheless rippled beneath the fear guiding his steps down through the mines.

What happened? He felt strongly that the Void should have been more... well, empty.

More pressingly, he couldn't bring his magic to the fore- not to help light the way for the other captive souls, nor tend any wounds. It was all he could do to remaster his own mind and limbs enough to try and aid in their escape.

2.

"I can work," Eleven breathed on the third day, finally feeling like he could do more than just clean and mend clothes to earn his stay.

But the words fell on foreign ears. The stone that had been allowing him to communicate had lost its power. He'd forgotten it would only last two days.

Cold fell through his throat and settled into his stomach. He'd finally regained his strength and a clear mind, and now he couldn't communicate. Eleven dragged a hand through his hair, then pointed to the rose quartz he wore in an attempt to ask where to acquire another one.

After a session of miming, an aggrieved servant drew him a crude map with arrows and circles. Eleven took it and tried his best to communicate gratitude before he left.

Cold. This place- Sa-hareth, if he recalled right- matched Sniflehiem for freezing temperatures. Eleven shivered in place and rubbed at his arms, then started walking.

But his interest drew him away from the square, toward a stretch of cooling forges. A tiny hope flared in his chest as he walked them and tried to absorb some of their remaining heat. This was work he could do- if only he had materials.

Which really, just led back to his original problem. Eleven sighed a breath into his hands to warm them and eyed the distance back to the merchant arena. For now, he would hope to find a soul nice enough to loan him a rose quartz, with a vow to repay them back twice as much it was worth for their kindness.

3. A PSL, just in case

INVENTORY:
Equipment:
• 2x Falcon Blades
• A full set of metal armor
• Musty bumpkin style coat, bag, and boots
• Traveller's hood
• A dragon scale
• A mildly restorative bracelet
• Jeweled necklace

Pockets/Item Bag:
• Assorted (now-dried) herbs
• A few lumps of metal ore
• A half dozen useless pink pine twigs
• Other weird, assorted junk: a few gem-like eyeballs; a perfect, magically cryogenic snowflake; crushed butterfly wing; a seashell; slip of dried seaweed; a feather; bits of mysterious fluff; a couple seeds, and scattered crumbles of cat litter

NOTES: N/A

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-21 14:23 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ACCEPTED

bearshermark - 2021-03-21 17:02 (UTC) - Expand

CANON POINT UPDATE

groundrules - 2021-12-25 13:39 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: rakel
CONTACT: no personal journal, but i get all PMs to

weifinder!

CHARACTER: Wei Wuxian
CANON: The Untamed (Television Series)
CANON POINT: End of series, prior to returning to Gusu Lan.

BACKGROUND:

Wei Ying (birth name) was orphaned at a young age, and later adopted by his father's close friend Jiang Fengmian, the leader of Yunmeng Jiang Sect (both a martial arts sect and a clan bloodline of martial artists). Wei Wuxian (courtesy name, in theory for show canon generally starts being used in teen years) was thus raised as an adopted son but also a martial sect disciple for the Jiangs. Between Jiang Yanli, his elder (martial) sister, and Jiang Cheng, his younger (martial) brother, Wei Wuxian was raised in the Jiang Sect and produced excellent results in both swordwork and with a bow, known not only for his martial skills but also for his frequent punishment at Madam Yu's (Jiang Fengmian's wife) behest.

A brief history of Wei Wuxian's life prior to his "death" deals with a young man who believed with enough skill and depending on your own abilities, near anything could be overcome. He learned, very painfully, this was not the case, from the time where acting to help friends had exposed his adoptive clan to an opening that an enemy clan exploited in order to massacre all but three of them, to where his sacrifice of his cultivation ability (by golden core surgical extraction and implanting, more on golden core to follow) to his martial-brother Jiang Cheng left him vulnerable and tossed into a land where no living person survives (Yiling Burial Grounds--a physical location so steeped in resentful energies from the murdered that no cultivators had been able to cleanse the area in over 100 years), to where surviving the Yiling Burial Mounts was a matter of him learning a new (at least to him) style of cultivation using ghosts and resentful energies instead of his absent golden core (a golden core is a physical part of the body which stores and generates the spiritual energy that a cultivator uses, and the top cultivators have a golden core), to the participation in the Sunshot Campaign (when the rest of the cultivation clans went to war against the Wen clan, which was self-styled as the 'head' of them all and had been engaging in various war crimes, such as the Jiang Clan massacre) war efforts where his contributions led the clans combined against the Wens to victory... and set him up for a fall when political machinations ultimately made him a target of suspicion and jealousy over the power he crafted. He threw himself onto what he believed was the right and just path, even if not the political one, and didn't really listen to the people who cared for him when they asked him to slow down or find another way. It was how he ended up freeing and running with the remainder of the Wens in the year after the war ended, people who weren't cultivators for the most part and who were all innocent of the main Wen Clan Branch's crimes, and how he ended up becoming known as the Yiling Patriarch, moving the Wen remnants to the Yiling Burial Grounds he'd survived prior to the Sunshot Campaign.

Wei Wuxian ended up "leaving" the Jiang Sect by agreement with Jiang Cheng so that Jiang Cheng was no longer pressured by the other righteous clans over accounting for Wei Wuxian's actions. He was thus ostracised for the next year, not allowed to be at his martial-sister's wedding, and only invited back into the social circle of the cultivation world at the time of his martial-nephew's one-month celebration after his birth... to be set up for killing said nephew's father, the heir to the Jin Clan, and his father's cousin. The Wens who he'd been protecting then turned themselves in on the request of the Jin Clan, who stated they'd let Wei Wuxian live if the Wens gave themselves up. To no surprise, the Jins killed most the remaining Wens, and locked Wen Ning away for Reasons (of wanting to learn to control his abilities/his unique condition, which Wei Wuxian had been able to do). Wei Wuxian came too late to do more than see the bodies or hear the clans talk about how the Wens were finally eradicated, and how he was next; he then engaged in another fight he didn't start, had the control of spirits he'd been holding and directing taken away by someone playing disruptive control music in the background, and had his martial-sister murdered protecting him from being stabbed through the back. He proceeded into a full breakdown, laughed and sobbed his way to absorbing all the resentful energy darkening the skies over Nightless City, and then broke the his Stygian Tiger Amulet (a device of power he forged from a portion of another device of power, as you do) which most the 'righteous' clans went scrambling after... and decided to die by falling off a cliff.

Lan Wangji (at this point, both friend and soulmate/heartmate, noting this is not a romantic coded assessment, it's both separate and deeper) tried to save him. Jiang Cheng angrily stabbed at rock over where Lan Zhan held onto Wei Wuxian while trying to process the loss of his sister, Jiang Yanli, and Wei Wuxian pulled his arm away from Lan Wangji when the rock started to give under Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng and fell to his "death".

His body was never found. Sixteen years later, he's summoned from wherever his body had been held in suspended animation by unknown forces to appear instead where Mo Xuanyu has exchanged physical places with him, a young man and bastard of the Jin Clan from the prior generation's liberal sowing of wild oats.

After his resurrection, Wei Wuxian's pulled back into the world he'd left and re-meets Lan Wangji, who proceeds to shepherd him around without explanation of anything that's happened in the last sixteen years as they solve the mysteries of his "resurrection" and subsequent cursing, the sword spirit touched by Stygian Tiger/Yin Iron energy that appeared in the manor where he "resurrected" after being Body Switch Summoned by Mo Xuanyu (and also cursed by Mo Xuanyu to destroy all those who'd tormented Mo Xuanyu), and unravelling the political shadows for at least one of the major players in the cultivation world. This ultimately culminates in the revealing of Jin Guangyao (Meng Yao)'s (one of the Jin clan bastards who had been taken into the Jin clan after his spy efforts in the war against the Wens) ruthless misdeeds over the course of the last eighteen plus years, his role in the deaths of various sect leaders, and in Wei Wuxian's ultimate ostracising and active framing of events into full villification. By series end, Wei Wuxian knows his once friend, Nie Huaisang, was responsible for his "resurrection" and the events that revealed Jin Guangyao's actions, with his motivation centring around the murder of Nie Huaisang's elder half brother, Nie Mingjue.

Wei Wuxian is left on his own and sets out to wander the world, parting ways with his rediscovered adopted son (Wen Yuan, now Lan Yuan, courtesy name Sizhui) who is working with Wen Ning to build a cenotaph to their deceased clan, and his soulmate Lan Wangji who, being the new chief cultivator of the clans, needs to handle those responsibilities for the sake of the oath they'd made way back when they were in Gusu Lan's (the home of the Lan clan) finishing school together.

After some unknown amount of time traveling, Wei Wuxian returns to Gusu Lan, playing the as far as he knows unnamed song that Lan Wangji wrote, to be greeted by Lan Wangji calling out his name. His canon point is from on the road back to Gusu Lan.

More in depth by reading the episode summaries on Wikipedia, as the wiki for Mo Dao Zu Shi focusses on other media sources.

ABILITIES | POWERS:

Bear with me here, Untamed is legitimately the worst about this/contradicts itself/forgets aspects/reinvents them, as you do.

Cultivation: The basics behind here seem to involve manipulation of spiritual qi (energy), advanced qigong (explained further below), the ability to use spiritual blades, the ability to freely work magics and talismans, and the ability to heal faster than normal humans. Possessing a golden core is what allows one to learn cultivation, and practice most of its physical enhancements or abilities requiring large reserves of spiritual qi. Unfortunately, Wei Wuxian no longer has a golden core. He cannot use his spiritual sword for long periods of time as a consequence, as it drains his small reserves too fast. Thus he cannot sword fly, but he can for periods of time make his sword fly around under his direction. He also cannot withstand a golden core cultivator's full strength taken directly on for anything beyond brief encounters, and goes out of his way to avoid these conflicts.

Sword arts: Wei Wuxian is an excellent swordsman who no longer fights with a spiritual sword for long periods of time as he cannot bear up on the demands of using an unsheathed spiritual blade. Given a normal blade, he can be an effective fighter until his natural stamina runs out. On this, he's like any other trained swordsperson, nothing noted beyond his style favouring the straight two edged blade (jian).

Archery: Wei Wuxian is a notably accomplished archer, and once showed off shooting five arrows at once, blindfolded, over the heads of prisoners of war being used as live target blocks, to hit dead centre in every target set up behind said prisoners of war. This all when he had no golden core, aka no cultivation was used to achieve this feat.

Qigong: This is increased speed and agility and strength, such as the ability to leap great distances (it looks like floating and flying in Untamed), and in other words being capable of greater physical feats than seem sensible or possible for a normal human. He can jump on top of buildings, off buildings, jump between dramatic cliffs, spin really fast and pretty, leap through the air, float... through the air... I have no explanation for how they can pause or spin dramatically around each other in air but they definitely do this. Wei Wuxian does still have this to varying degrees after the loss of his golden core, but I'd say it takes more out of him/relies on just his natural qi amount so he can't do this ongoing without using resentful energies to basically fuel himself.

Demonic Cultivation/Necromancy: Based on series limitations, this focusses on using outside of himself resentful energy from ghosts/demons and directing it to attack, defend, or to possess. He can soothe or inflame these spirits, and can seal them as well as stop them with seals drawn before him for some period of time.

In greater detail, Wei Wuxian is, technically, a necromancer. Who has dealt with possessed living people. Or been able to manipulate... possessed... barely alive people. Ghosts and spirits were freer game, but the theory of him manipulating zombies should be sound, given he's a necromancer, but he wouldn't assume he could because canon didn't allow him to do so. Wen Ning, who in other media sources was fully killed them resurrected as a Fierce Corpse/Zombie, was "mostly dead" in series, barely alive enough and inundated with resentful energies that Wei Wuxian was eventually able to call his consciousness back through to the top. What we see him outright manipulating are ghosts/masses of resentful energy and other negatively charged energy he can then instruct to act in certain ways, as controlled by his music, or he can instruct to possess living persons and then attack.

He generally avoids this latter situation, particularly after his "resurrection." Notable in this sense is he does use these energies/ghosts to fight on his behalf, making up for what he lacks as a golden core, but also that he's primarily settling and sealing these energies, or getting them to pull back from full frenzy. He can go the other direction, and stir ghosts/resentful energies/people inflicted with resentful energies into a frenzy, but it is not generally to his benefit, and he's cautious these days. Guiding resentful energies to go their natural course and then give up their resentment on their own was once his theory of thought.

Talismans: Wei Wuxian has a tendency to invent and use a lot of talismans, including, but not limited to: weighted talismans that pin a target down, talismans that cause a person to go still, command talismans to make people more suggestible, sealing talismans to keep an energy or creature sealed in place (or person), talismans for fire, talismans for locating, talismans for clearing fog and dispelling illusions, talismans for attracting evil spirits, talismans for repelling evil spirits, talismans that turn into fire butterflies and sparkle attack a target for no physical damage but great at barrier breaking or causing distractions, talismans to dampen sound, talismans to generate light, talismans to break through barriers, talismans to establish barriers... there's not a lot of limitation in at least some kind of talismans being invented to try and handle a situation. He's particularly known for inventing new ones. Talismans can be drawn on anything, though traditionally are easiest on slips of paper. Wei Wuxian uses paper, his own hands, the ground (with his blood as the ink), his own clothing, and notes that he could do the same with flags or other fabric. He can also make paper people talismans that he controls from a distance, to various degrees.

Paper Doll Talismans: He can place his full consciousness into a paper doll that he manipulates remotely, but he can also place just a fraction of his consciousness into a paper doll in order to communicate (telepathically or verbally) or otherwise look around or interact with the world around him as a paper doll. Placing his full consciousness to go beyond his direct line of sight means leaving his body vulnerable and seemingly comatose.

Music: Untamed has spiritual creature influencing based on music, and Wei Wuxian manages to both perform this by flute and through the act of whistling. Basically, the melodies he produces are capable of agitating or soothing spirits/resentful energies/puppets (think possessed living persons or persons still alive rendered into a zombie-like state), manipulating them with that sound to some purpose. That purpose may be to seal or settle those energies, or to direct those energies to attack, or anything else that occurs to him. Again noting he can simply whistle to do this, though he prefers the use of a bamboo flute. He can also play on a blade of grass. He can also send energy/ghosts/demons/etc on, settle them, or destroy them through music. His work is primarily aimed at the dead, in some form or another, or those possessed by the dead or the energies of the dead (human or animal).

Inventions: He invented a compass that points toward evil creatures/demons/ghosts/the kinds of things the cultivators went after on night hunts. We see less of his golden qi nets in the present, and probably he can't make something that large with his energy anymore, but back when he had a golden core he could make giant nets of qi either across an area or around a group of people to act as protection. He used to be able to use his binding/bonding invented technique, which generates a single string of qi that can be directed to attach to a target of his choice.

Empathy: Empathy is a memory sharing technique which allow him to enter the consciousness or memory of a ghost, or a living person, witnessing the things they saw and lived through without being able to influence what he sees. Empathy can be mad-making, however, if he can't be pulled back out, and it's more dangerous with another living mind than with the already deceased (presumably, since he had more trouble coming back out with the living A-Jing/A-Qing than he did with the dead Nie Mingjue).

Energy Sensitivity: He's sensitive to different energies in the world, particularly resentful/evil ones and spiritual ones, as he's worked with those extensively. It doesn't mean being able to identify what any energy he comes across means, but areas which have seen death, particularly unrestful death, will resonate. Even stronger resentful or bloodthirsty energies will be headache inducing. He can manipulate these energies in many cases, but not all.

Curses and Purification: Curses are a thing he does not do but something he recognises in series, as curses have a kickback that falls on the one who laid the curse. He's been shown to transfer a curse from someone else onto himself, and was also cursed by his form of summoning to track down those who wronged Mo Xuanyu and cause them to be undone, directly or indirectly. On the flipside, purifying areas or gathering lingering negative energies into specific targets to slowly cleanse an area and allow healthy things to grow is part of what he can do, or else the entirety of trying to farm in the Yiling Burial Mounds would have led to starvation instead of its thin success.

PERSONALITY:

Self-Sacrificing. Often part of what his heroics are involved over, Wei Wuxian even now is a man who sacrifices himself for the sake of those he cares about, and has only just started learning he can ask for help and not tackle every issue on his own. The reflecting over what the cost of his self-sacrificing actions have been over the years is in progress by series end, but by no means finished. He still has low self-value, and believing he's worth caring for is difficult, but not impossible. He cares for people even when they've hurt him and even when he's hurt them, and has been learning how to offer apologies and say thank you for the things given to or done for him in the past or present. He doesn't enjoy watching innocents suffer, and this does tend to learn toward women, children, and normal folks who aren't cultivators. He will intercede when he sees a need, just less thoughtlessly than he once did.

Forward Looking. Wei Wuxian wants to look forward and move forward instead of linger over the past. He's still processing the past, but it's a matter of understanding it and coming to terms with it, then letting it go. While he by no means has the truly terrible recollection that his novel counterpart has, he does have a tendency to want to forget what he considers unimportant to focus on what's worth remembering: the good, the kindness, the love. It's where his younger reputation for being always smiling and shaking off all bad things comes from, and while he's less blithe about it now, he still wants to keep moving forward, and not hold grudges for the past even if he's quieter and more melancholic about the past these days. Seen also with how he tells Lan Zhan, why ask Nie Huaisang about the things he knows/suspects his friend did in order to set up the scene Wei Wuxian walked into, sixteen years late with Cultivationbucks? They don't matter anymore. It's also where his mentality to move forward finding himself in a world that outpaced him, even alone, can be a hopeful move, and one that ultimately brings him back to Gusu Lan and Lan Zhan.

Curious, inventive, intelligent. His sense of curiosity gets him in and out of trouble, because he is perhaps too intelligent (but not wise enough) for his own good. Wei Wuxian shows off less after his "resurrection," but still possesses a keen wit and quick mind, breaking down situations and connections between events to dig at the truth behind them. He's an inventor, inventing new seals, new talismans, energy-sensitive compasses (evil! tracking! it's great), and a whole way of cultivation that relied on redirecting resentful and malign energies instead of relying on spiritual qi from a golden core. This allowed him to manipulate these energies in the living (... because again, zombies weren't allowed, so they're all "puppets" who were maybe alive maybe dead it really is a Question, isn't it) and in the incorporeal dead (he's allowed to manipulate ghosts, at least). He was continuously inventing new talismans and tricks from his teen years up to the point of his "death", and presumably returns to these things now that he's "alive" again.

Emotionally thick. He can have a better grasp on other people's emotions for others, as a general thing, but his sensitivity with regards to himself and others is very low. Part of it is self worth issues and doubt of if he deserves people caring for him again when he managed to hurt everyone he cared about (including getting them killed) sixteen years ago, as a consequence of his actions. That it wasn't wholly his fault or causing doesn't undo the impact those losses had on him, or in (the frankly needed) shaking of his belief and his arrogance over his ability to control and handle resentful energies as he thought he could.

Resigned is more a trait he's working on overcoming, because coming back from "dying" left him resigned to how people perceived him as the Yiling Patriarch, and that he was going to be blamed for all bad things regardless of his ever being involved. By series end he's less resigned and more hopeful again, allowing him to look forward as he prefers to do, and most of that is the support of Lan Wangji and then the younger generation that chose to believe in him from what they knew, and not from what others had said about him. He cannot make up for what happened in the past, but he can do better now, and not repeat mistakes, and that resignation he felt for how things had happened before can now start changing into hope.

Sad but becoming hopeful. He's getting better about this but this man is constantly tearing up, he feels a lot of emotions and has been coping with coming to terms with the truth of events that destroyed him and those he loved 16 years ago, as well as the difficulties he's been working through in present. Sad as a note here is not that his personality is A Big Sad Person, but that he's got a lot of underlying sadness he's still working on based on everything that's happened in his life. He's working through it, has learned to forgive himself for some things, and truly set others in the past, but it comes up for various reasons, and is part of his drinking habits...

Alcohol as a coping mechanism? Yeah. That's Wei Wuxian. He drinks to soothe his thoughts and try to cope with reality, and is not as bad right now as he was in the past, but it's still something he both enjoys, and enjoys socially, and also can turn into a crutch when he just doesn't want to keep thinking about a subject.

There's a big gap between the kind of social he was when younger and the kind of social he is now! He talks with people easily enough, cuts in verbally to conversations, defends people with words, and can be sassy when he wants, but he's not the social leaning butterfly he once was. He's still mouthy, particularly when he wants to get something over with, and still can drive people to annoyance when he aims to, but it's much more deliberate and less frequent as a whole. He's dry, sarcastic, and matter of fact... and then depending on what kind of mood he's in, and how much he's trying to deflect a person, dramatic and playacting toward pouting or laughter or playful accusation to keep a conversation turned away from a topic he doesn't want to speak on. He's more capable of talking about things that were hard for him in the past now than he was before, but he's overall still learning how to do that naturally. He's also less gregarious in crowds, but can fall back into those habits when necessary for actions or a role he's temporarily taking on.

Noting that unlike in other media sources, Untamed Wei Wuxian does not appear to have explicit memory issues. He's got PTSD, he has things he prefers not to remember, but he never personally claims to forget things which don't make sense to forget; instead he deflects by saying, "Don't others say I have a bad memory? Let it be that." Him not recalling where he heard the song Lan Wangji authored and hummed to him in the fake xuanwu's cave has everything to do with him being feverish and passing out at the time, rather than a chronically bad memory. Jiang Yanli summed up his tendency to smile and "forget" the bad to look forward and focus on the good, making it all come down to someone who is more inclined to let go of things than hold grudges, and try to forget what's not worth remembering. Much like what a younger him said to a drunk Lan Wangji: let us forget what's not worth remembering, and remember everything that shouldn't be forgotten. This means he also forgets people he doesn't find worth remembering because why waste brain space on them; coming back around to him not holding grudges without a very good and personal reason, and even then, not being one to fester over them and instead respond and take action. Goodbye, Wen Chao and sidepiece, you died horribly, Wei Wuxian does not apologise.

SAMPLE:

PSL action thread with Jiang Cheng set in canon universe;

Network Sample, from Liburutegia, where Wei Wuxian addresses the network as a whole.

INVENTORY:

Chenqing, his bamboo dizi flute, with attached jade lotus ornament + tassel. Whatever clothes he had on. Probably his travel sack, with silver chunks in a small purse (lol he's never finding that again), edibles (probably also not finding again lbr if anyone was curious enough), a jar of wine (can someone drink this so he just finds a sad empty jar and is like WHY, WORLD), an extra set of robes and socks, an extra hair ribbon, can he have a porn book stashed in there with artful art, asking for science and what I figured he could have been pulling off good ol' Lil' Apple at night. Probably one of his compasses the locals would think is totally broken if they have the concept, some talismans no one local's going to understand I bet, oh! Water container of some kind.

NOTES: N/A

APPLICATION RECEIVED

groundrules - 2021-03-21 13:12 (UTC) - Expand

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-21 15:00 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: ruxi
CONTACT: PM @ character journal or

sobranie, please.

CHARACTER: Lan Wangji
CANON: Untamed
CANON POINT: after Jin Guangyao's defeat | post-series

BACKGROUND: All you never needed to know about this character can be found here and here, but to cut the tl;dr short: Lan Wangji is the spare noble scion of one of four leading ‘cultivator’ magical clans in a fantasy version of ancient China, the ascetic Gusu Lan sect. His strict, duty-led personality makes Lan Wangji briefly a foil, then the closest ally of chaotic but magically brilliant protagonist Wei Ying (Wuxian), over the course of two large-scale multi-clan wars and Wei Wuxian’s revolutionary and profane (re)introduction of demonic cultivation — a broadly lethal corruption of existing magical practices, not unlike necromancy. Critically, the Gusu Lan and Yunmeng Jiang are accused of insurgency and nearly extinguished by then-leading tyrants Qishan Wen, before the latter sect is overthrown.

As the Yiling Patriarch, Wei Wuxian’s descent into demonic cultivation, disrepute, death and a manipulated resurrection repeatedly put Lan Wangji at odds between fealty to his sect, his battling moral convictions and his ultimately triumphant loyalties to Wei Wuxian. Throughout everything, he’s typically short-changed with bearing the repercussions of rebellion against clan mores: defending Wei Wuxian costs him severe disciplinary action comprising lashing, a three-year seclusion, and a temporary fall from grace that he compensates through exemplary behaviour for roughly a decade, while the Gusu Lan recover.

Once Wei Wuxian is ‘summoned’ back 16 years after his death, Lan Wangji accompanies him for a series of investigations into the recent re-emergence of demonic cultivation and into the political machinations that falsely accused Wei Wuxian in his first life. This results in the second of the aforementioned cross-clan conflicts, which Lan Wangji survives to assume leadership of the sects.

ABILITIES | POWERS:

In the interest of doing itself a solid, the show canon is efficiently vague about the parameters of its magical system. Overall, we see the average Joe cultivator benefit from improved health, stamina and anti-age cream, as well as resort to paper or word talismans, wards and very minor elemental spells. Lan Wangji checks that list and seems to add a high spiritual awareness, lowkey healing abilities and musical qin — a Gusu Lan party trick favourite that lets the user connect with, interrogate, agitate or calm the spirits of the living/dead by playing music on a guqin. It can also coalesce and direct spiritual force as attack waves.

Lan Wangji’s spiritual awareness and capacity to liaise with spirits to some extent are fairly entrenched in his mentality and upbringing.

Silence spell: a beloved and frequently abused spell that effectively mutes targets for the time it takes to burn half of an incense stick ( around 30-35min). It can also be dispelled by the caster.

Riding, martial arts and acrobatics, as well as sword and (likely guqin, but could be transferrable to diamond-powdered) string weapon mastery.

The often underestimated abilities to suffer fools everywhere and walk in robes clearly unfit for travel purpose.

Base healing, which expresses itself more through readings of the living pulse and in/outflows of qi energy, rather than sophisticated medical knowledge.

PERSONALITY: Lan Wangji does what Lan Wangji wants. This is the 50-episode takeaway that poets, sycophants, swooning court ladies and clan groupies who never got the memo about white after Labour day try to dress up as nobility, honour, wisdom and pride.

To know Lan Wangji is to understand the ideological wheel this sad hamster has trotted for the formative part of his life: the ascetic ‘magical’ cultivator sect Gusu Lan. They’ve got the warrior monk gig down pat, from mandates against pleasure, titles, luxury or gain, to a time-honoured disciplinarian streak that, in a Footloose twist, still abides music. The Lan are praised for their elegance, while privately begrudged their aloofness, rigidity and intolerance of failure — traits that Boy Scout Lan Wangji goes to great pains to embody round the (curfew-bound) clock.

All in all, his arc is about Minecrafting a bridge between his sect’s literal approach to ethic as (3,000) rules and ripple effects, and his own spiritually led understanding of morality. The Lan sect start with a lofty advantage: a top-notch graduate of Trauma 101, Lan Wangji witnessed young the repercussions of his father’s romantic indulgence, his mother’s homicidal madness, and the shameful seclusion that divorced her from the waiting world. The proof was in closed doors and parental neglect: there is a price for breaking norms, and Lan Wangji learned early that the offenders are not always those who pay it.

As the series progresses, he proves himself increasingly prone to dropping the mic and dismissing Lan austerity when it no longer aligns with his worldview. Outside of the sect’s headquarters at Cloud Recesses, he allows himself, gasp, alcohol, unorthodox magical adventures, unadvisable loyalties and even a best-suppressed sense of humour. He goes out of his way to troll Wei Wuxian by pouring out his wine in passing, because, why not? At his most critically insurgent, Lan Wangji even questions the philosophical premises that have underpinned his uncle and father figure Lan Qiren’s moral code for decades.

It helps that he takes the most divisive events and influences in his life as a fatalistic given. Lan Wangji seems largely unconcerned with this own descent into Wei Wuxian’s gravity pull, because: 1. he exists; 2. his fate is tied with that of a tone-deaf walking disaster; 3. such is life, inevitable and ever-flowing. This anchors him more than it excuses or lessens his agony, as he strays from clan codes: once he’s given his loyalty to Wei Wuxian, it becomes inevitable that he’ll snowball into covering his friend’s traces at the Burial Mounds, defending him against slander, and sacrificing his body to 300 lashes and his reputation to the dogs.

Lan Wangji might not see the world in black and white, but he seems to reduce his actions to a ‘loyal’/ ‘disloyal’ binary. At some point, Lan Wangji learned to take a good hard look in the mirror, evaluate his life and its terrible choices, then keep calm, Kanye-shrug and carry on. Nine times out of ten, he hits jackpot — but he wears his rare failures as scars rather than bruises, and he never forgets that he didn’t fully support Wei Wuxian during his downfall, or that the Yunmeng Jiang sect was slaughtered because of offence given to the Wen in his name.

On the daily, Lan Wangji’s no stranger to weaponizing etiquette as a posh blanket for disapproval, indifference, shyness or inertia. He’s silent, but physically expressive, typically in twitches of posture. He values personal space and is sufficiently socially reticent that his beloved brother Lan Xichen politely mentions he might wanna make some friends. For all he’s one of Untamed’s most literate nerds, Lan Wangji abbreviates his speech to the point of what must be deliberate obfuscation — a style that helps him preserve decorum, conceal lies by omission, annoy the living hell out of other characters, and presumably doesn’t extensively tax his robot circuitry.

Scratch the veneer, tilt your head and squint, and it becomes obvious that Lan Wangji hides a light temper. He’s impatient, easily outraged by improper or demonic cultivation, and goes full entitled helicopter mom when he unilaterally decrees ‘recovery’ for Wei Wuxian at Cloud Recesses. His single-mindedness can border cruelty: he barely remembers the affronted Su She, aims double-edged polite reminders at Jiang Cheng, abuses the Silence Spell on those who irritate him and obliterates the Qishan Indoctrination Bureau with neither sympathy, nor enlightenment, for their massacre of the Lan sect.

Competition’s thin on the ground, but Lan Wangji is easily one of the show’s more pragmatic token pretty boys. He suffers the indignity of surrendering his sword — a soul companion and the mark of a gentleman — to enemies when held captive, and he embraces the necessity of ruthless techniques like chord assassination, which should contrast the largely diplomatic approach of his sect. His hand seems constantly on his sword sheath to defend someone’s honour, and he’s efficiently quick to make blood work of enemies.

Inescapably, a man styled Hanguag Jun (‘Lightbearer’) will have a bright side: he’s exhaustively faithful, resilient before hardship and unquestionably heroic. For all his evolving ethics, he’s steadfast in defending what he thinks to be right and just, often at personal risk. He’s fast to raise his bat sleeve so his friends can take sanctuary, and he’s unquestioningly filial to the uncle who raised him and respectful of ancestors — his own, or those of other clans. Despite being a noble gentleman, he’s unconcerned with rank and takes the cause of ‘commoners’ and the maligned, even adopting Wen Yuan into his sect after his unfair persecution. He’s responsible within the clan, keeping Constant Vigilance over the welfare of Lan disciples. Lastly, he even bleeds pretty — and there’s something to be said for the equally bleeding heart of a man who nurtures bunnies and devolves into playful childishness once drunk.

SAMPLE: A tl;dr thread appears!

INVENTORY: The clothes on his back, a Gusu Lan forehead band, his sword Bichen, and the guqin musical instrument he seems to keep fastened on at all times, like every dedicated weirdo should.

NOTES: N/A

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-21 15:27 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Rose
CONTACT:

LadyotRings

CHARACTER: Xiao Xingchen
CANON: Mo Dao Zu Shi
CANON POINT: Chapter 40, before Song Lan shows up to Yi City and things fall to shit

BACKGROUND: Wiki

ABILITIES | POWERS:

Xingchen is a cultivator, basically a fantasy Chinese exorcist. So he has a Golden Core he’s trained up which supplies him with spiritual energy to do cool, fancy martial arts stuff like swordfighting and sick flips, but he’s also able to release, suppress, or banish spirits and ghosts and other such things that go bump in the night. He can also take part in inedia, or fast for long periods of time without food or water and wounds he receives tend to heal faster than a normal human thanks to the Core’s power. He uses a sword, Shuanghua, but can also utilize talismans for certain tasks, from making fire to binding or sealing a monster. Or, well, he used to. Being blind now makes this drastically more difficult, but if he focuses hard enough to draw up a talisman, he probably could still manage something, though its power would be understandably lowered. He was also trained as a young boy up to his teens by an immortal cultivator, so the source material was top notch. He had a good base to go off until he decided to leave.

Shuanghua itself is a fancy sword. Not only is it famous – if swords could be listed as eligible bachelors, then Shuanghua would be high up on the list – but it has a nifty ability of seeking out corpse energy. This is very helpful for Xingchen in his current state as it ensures he can still go night hunting (monster hunting and ghostbusting, basically) even without sight. However, Shuanghua can’t tell the difference between a dead corpse (your standard zombie friend) or a living corpse (someone who’s been subjected to corpse poisoning, but still can breathe and appear to be “living”) which means it can be tricked.

Because he’s lost his eyes, some of Xingchen’s other senses have naturally enhanced, as is to be expected. So hearing, smell, and touch have all stepped up their game. In canon, he can smell someone bleeding on the side of the road. He’s also never seen using a cane, so his spatial awareness is pretty good. It’s reasonable to say that once he’s familiar with a location, he can walk around it with no problems, unless someone puts an obstacle in his footpath.

PERSONALITY:

Within the text of the novel, Xingchen is described as having “a soft personality but a solid heart, gentle on the outside but determined on the inside” and that pretty much nails it on the head. This is made concrete by his leaving Baoshan Sanren’s mountain with the desire to save the world. His kindness made real by his desire to help and his inner strength proven by leaving his home with the knowledge he would never be welcomed back. His attitude was also popular with the non-cultivators when he could still see, because he is not only kind and approachable, but always answered their cries for help, especially when the larger sects would ignore such pleas. He went on to earn the moniker of the “bright moon and gentle breeze” because of his nature. Even now as a blind man, he is still good, even if he cannot help as he once did, though he will go night-hunting on his own (or with a certain companion) without being asked.

Of course, he is blind now and the events leading to his decision to give his eyes to Song Lan seem to have left Xingchen a little more subdued. Once an extremely popular rogue cultivator, he’s since fallen more to the fringes, though he never complains about it. People who didn’t know him before may not even realize anything is wrong – besides the whole being blind thing – but Xingchen clamps down when the topic of Song Lan comes up, only sharing if he deeply trusts someone. There is definitely guilt still hanging over him, that Xue Yang never would have targeted Song Lan had Xingchen never hunted Xue Yang for his criminal acts. It’s evident he misses Song Lan a great deal, too, but since his friend asked to part ways, Xingchen complied. In his mind, he has no reason to argue since it was his fault this all happened.

Xingchen probably should argue more often. People take advantage of his blindness, whether it’s to sell him more undesirable food or to simply look down on him for his disability. He ignores this, knowing he’s being treated badly, but he’s also embarrassed to try and stand up for himself in his state. Eating a bruised vegetable doesn’t bother him as much as it would someone else, anyway, so he just carries on. But this attitude also plays into what is perhaps his greatest flaw. Xingchen believes in the goodness of the world, that it’s worth saving, but he also has a tendency to trust too quickly or be lenient toward people who might be better off reprimanded. One of the people who lives with him in Yi City is Xue Yang himself, using Xingchen’s blindness to his advantage and pitching his voice so as not to be recognized. But even though Xingchen found the young man bleeding on the side of the road, he never asks for his name or why he was left to die in the first place, despite such suspicious flags. He reasons his companion will explain himself if he wishes, but Xingchen won’t force him to speak if he doesn’t.

Perhaps being raised on a secluded mountain plays into his naivete about the world, even if Baoshan Sanren holds the opinion that people in general are not worth any of their time. She is immortal and has spent an unknown time separated from society, seeming to only leave her mountain to take in orphaned or abandoned children to teach. While it is unknown how old he was when she probably picked him up, Xingchen left the mountain when he was seventeen years old, so it’s reasonable to say he spent at least a decade shut off from the rest of the world and the time during which he would have begun really figuring himself out as a young teen.

Although he may be blind (I’m sorry) to people’s true intentions, he can still pick out certain traits. He recognizes that Jin Guangyao tends to flatter others to gain their support, which is one of the man’s most reliable assets. And Xingchen is certainly intelligent in the ways of cultivation, having grown as strong as he is. When he entered the cultivation world at seventeen, he immediately garnered attention, not just from those he helped, but from the sects themselves and was invited to join multiple sects, all of which he refused.

He would have flourished anywhere, if given the freedom, but sects – especially the Great Sects, such as the Lanling Jin and the Gusu Lan – fall victim to their own politics and tend to care more about blood and name. While Xingchen was highly regarded despite having no family connections, he always wanted more for the people than for himself. Fame didn’t go to his head or deter him from his original goal of saving the world. And after he befriended Song Lan and learned they have similar ideals, he dreamed of starting a new sect together, one that didn’t value blood or money, just raw talent. And then Xue Yang happened, and those dreams were shattered.

What is right remains important to Xingchen and while his amicable nature might make one think he is a pacifist, he definitely subscribes to the idea of “an eye for an eye.” Later on in canon, Xue Yang explains why he murdered a whole sect in retaliation to losing just one pinky finger and Xingchen questions why he couldn’t have settled for taking the perpetrator’s pinky instead. The punishment must fit the severity of the crime, in his mind. Earlier, when Xingchen had caught Xue Yang for murdering said clan, he doesn’t speak up against the idea of executing the younger man. After all, he initially suggested he be punished severely for the act, anyway.

While the past two or three years have certainly humbled Xingchen, he doesn’t lie around all “woe is me.” His life could be easier, of course, but he still manages to get by with relatively little problem. Having two wards in Yi City helps, even if one is blind – spoilers, A-Qing isn’t – as not only their companionship keeps the loneliness at bay, but it forces him to look after them, giving him a new purpose outside of his random night-hunts. The three of them have become a found family of sorts and Xingchen truly cares for them and would consider Xue Yang’s unnamed character a real friend. He still has a sense of humor and the two of them make him laugh regularly, though Xingchen is also easy to entertain, and even makes himself laugh before getting to the punchline of a joke. He’s not a great entertainer himself, though. Never ask him for a story because it won’t be exciting or embellished at all.

SAMPLE:

One
Two

INVENTORY:

- Shuanghua
- Horsetail whisk
- His clothes (plus blindfold for courtesy)
- Two (2) pieces of hard candy
- A (woefully light) coin purse

NOTES: Even though he has exactly zero eyeballs, Xingchen can trudge his way through life with a fair amount of ease these days. But he does still have exactly zero eyeballs.

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-22 20:00 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Dùlin
CONTACT: lomelinde on plurk

CHARACTER: Beitang Moran
CANON: Oh! My Emperor
CANON POINT: Post-canon/after episode 42

BACKGROUND:

Zodiac Land is a country governed by 13 Star Masters, each of them in control of one Constellation and possessing a specific superpower linked to that Constellation. The power rotates between the Constellations every thousand of years. The country is at odds with the neighboring country, Orion Land, and has been in an on again, off again conflict with them for years. The current Emperor of Zodiac Land is Beitang Yi, Master of the Capricorn constellation. Beitang Moran, Master of the Aquarius constellation, is his uncle. The Empress Dowager, who is Beitang Moran’s mother and Beitang Yi’s grandmother, is originally from Orion Land and married into the Zodiac Land Imperial family for diplomatic purposes. Ten years prior to the beginning story, the previous Emperor Beitang Jing, who was Moran’s older brother, was assassinated by one of the Star Masters, the Master of the Ophiuchus constellation. As a result and because his nephew Beitang Yi was too young to govern on his own, Moran was assigned as a regent and the head of the military power to assist him even though he was only a few years older himself. The Ophiuchus Star Master was executed and his followers are now rejected from society and discriminated against.

One day, Luo Feifei, a girl from the 21st century, is transported to Zodiac Land following a freak accident. Upon her arrival, Beitang Moran’s power activates and he has a vision that indicates this girl will be very important to Zodiac Land in the future, and thus decides to protect her. When the Emperor tries to have her arrested, believing her to be an assassin, he claims that she is a dancer from his palace and brings her back to his place.

Luo Feifei’s arrival exacerbates the tension between The Emperor and his uncle, as Beitang Yi is chafing at having Moran control the military power in his stead. Beitang Yi ends up challenging his uncle to get the military power back and Moran accepts on the condition that his nephew overcomes several challenges, including getting the signatures of 10,000 people in three days and then participating in and winning a mock battle between all the Star Masters. As the challenge progresses, the political division is identified between the Fire and Air signs, who support Beitang Moran, and the Water and Earth signs, who are on the Emperor’s side

Luo Feifei ends up helping the Emperor because she initially confused him with her favorite idol singer Jia Cheng (he looks identical to him) until she finally understood she was in another world. While she is being protected by Moran on several occasions, she ends up falling in love with Emperor Beitang Yi, while Moran falls in love with her (although she does not reciprocate his feelings). The love triangle once more creates tension between Beitang Yi and Moran, as both of them vie for Feifei’s affections.

As the challenges unfold, several things come to light. Luo Feifei is in fact the new Ophiuchus Star Master, and she and the Ophiuchus people possess a unique healing ability. Also, the previous Emperor’s murder was not cold-blood assassination from the previous Ophiuchus Star Master, but a plot from Orion Land who used a special poison to infect the Emperor and drive him crazy, forcing the Ophiuchus Master to kill him to protect Zodiac Land. The goal was to drive a wedge between the Ophiuchus people and the other Star Masters to weaken Zodiac Land and then allow Orion Land to invade and take over down the line. The plot is still being monitored by Orion Land spies who have infiltrated the palace in the guise of the Empress Dowager’s followers and servants. It also becomes apparent that Moran’s challenges to the Emperor’s authority are actually carefully designed for Beitang Yi to make a grab for power, and that Moran’s goal all along has been to assist his nephew and make him worthy of holding the full political and military power.

In the final stage of the challenge, the mock battle, Orion Land attacks and forces both sides to unite against them. Moran acknowledges his nephew’s abilities and relinquishes the military power to him, only for Beitang Yi to be shot through with an arrow by an Orion Land assassin. Feifei saves him thanks to her power, but reveals her identity as the new Ophiuchus Master and the Emperor rejects her and sends her away. As she flees, she is captured by Orion Land and fed their poison so they can use her power against the other Star Masters. She is only stopped when Beitang Yi stabs her, and then imprisoned for treason.

Once the Empress Dowager learns of Feifei’s identity, she attempts to have her executed and Moran only manages to save Feifei by claiming she is his fiancée and he will die too if his mother wants to kill her. Moran and Feifei have to maintain the charade of being engaged for a while, which is hard for Moran because he is aware that Feifei is not in love with him, but he is still committed to protecting her no matter what. However, he is unwilling to force her into a marriage she does not want, and in the end manages to use his mother’s animosity towards Feifei to get the wedding ceremony postponed indefinitely. After that, he ends up watching the relationship between Feifei and his nephew develop, and tries to keep a little distance while still helping Feifei regain her status as a Star Master, and working to get the Ophiuchus name cleared of wrongdoing in his brother’s death. Afterwards, Moran leaves Zodiac Land for a solitary trip to sort out his feelings and make peace with his unrequited love.

After the plan to drive a wedge between the Ophiuchus and the rest of the Star Master fails, Orion Land sets another plot in place and asks for another diplomatic marriage, sending their princess Xia Bing as a bride. As the Empress Dowager has now outwardly become accepting of the Emperor’s and Feifei’s relationship, the Emperor’s younger brother Beitang Tang, Master of the Pisces Constellation, volunteers to marry Xia Bing, whom he has met and fallen in love with before while investigating Orion Land and a double wedding is organized for the imperial brothers.

However, Orion Land ends up attacking during the wedding ceremony, poisoning and killing the people assembled to celebrate. Some Star Masters are poisoned during the banquet, while others are gravely injured or killed while fighting back. Beitang Yi, Beitang Tang and Beitang Moran are among the Masters who are killed in battle. Feifei was originally poisoned, but her healing power saved her. Once she sees what happened, she and her people immediately start healing the people of Zodiac Land, but they use too much of their powers bringing everyone back from the dead, and all of them end up fading away from existence while saving Zodiac Land from ruin. Feifei is sent back to her own 21st century life (where she ends up meeting the reincarnated forms of the Star Masters), and Zodiac Land can now begin rebuilding itself.

ABILITIES | POWERS:

- Moran’s Star Master’s superpower is precognition. He gets visions of the future. However, his ability is entirely passive, as in he cannot willingly activate it himself. As such, any visions involving other characters’ canon future or important game future events will be subject to player/mod permission. Smaller visions like making someone move out of the way of a falling object might happen at random. Like all Star Masters, using his powers too much can result in his life force/energy being drained.
When Moran’s power activates, his constellation symbol starts glowing on his forehead and his eyes glow silver as well.
- He can play the guqin with excellent proficiency.
- He can ride horses and sword fight at a good level, and his abilities are slightly above normal human ability since he can defy gravity slightly when fighting (this is, however, considered normal in his world and not a superhuman feat).
- He is an extremely good chess player.

PERSONALITY:

Beitang Moran is the Master of the Aquarius Constellation, and as such shares many personal quirks of the associated star sign.

While he can outwardly appear cold, aloof, obstinate and slightly sarcastic, he is very focused on the greater good, especially where his country is concerned. All of his actions towards Beitang Yi are taken with the goal of making him a good Emperor whose power is uncontested, even if that must make Moran himself appear like the villain. He does not mind taking on that role as long as it will benefit Zodiac Land in the long run. Even when the tension was high between himself and his nephew due to their love triangle and he had personal rivalry with Beitang Yi up to verbal fights, he did not let that cloud his assessment that his nephew was ready to be a good Emperor and take full control of the country.

In love, he is loyal and committed but not at all possessive, ready to give independence to his partner and consider them as equals. While he fell in love with Luo Feifei and saw the Emperor as his rival in love, he was always aware that she did not return his feelings. He held some hope after he saved her life and pretended that she was his fiancee that she might fall in love with him, but she ended up shutting him down very directly, at which point he admitted that he knew she did not love him. The unrequited love takes a toll on him, and he continues to act to protect Feifei even after she has rejected him, including opposing plans that might put her in more danger. At one point, he admits that he still loves Feifei even if he knows she does not love him back.

In contrast, he is unaware of the Cancer Star Master’s Xie Yanran's feelings towards him. Although she has been in love with him for ten years, he never noticed and sees her mostly as a little sister rather than a love interest. He is likewise outwardly unaware of the feelings of Su Xunxian, who has been by his side as a loyal subordinate for years and obeys his every order and even lends him money whenever needed, even though Xunxian is the one who understands him the best. He can be blind to things that are very close to him as he is more focused on the big picture, and can lose himself in single-minded pursuits to the exclusion of everything else. He can also be pretty obstinate and certain that he is correct, but he can be convinced to change his mind if the opposing viewpoint is demonstrated properly.

Intellectual stimulation is important to him. He is a keen reader and has an avid interest in many things, including literature, history and science. He is extremely intelligent and smart with words, able to quickly adapt to a situation and use words to turn it to his advantage. He is an accomplished strategist capable of thinking several steps ahead as demonstrated by his mastery of the game of chess that he often plays with both Su Xunxian and his nephew (they have never beaten him at it).

He can be biting and cold when he is irritated, but he is however capable of being very giving and warm to people to whom he has given his affection. He gave Feifei many gifts and affectionately referred to her as his ‘little money grubber’ while hosting her in his mansion. While he couldn’t return Yanran’s feelings, he still holds affection for her. Once his nephew Beitang Yi assumes the full power, he supports him every step of the way, and he is visibly proud of his achievements and good judgement in leading the country.

When he needs to regroup emotionally, he tends to isolate himself even from his closest friends, requiring time and space on his own to process. To get over his unrequited love, he went on a trip on his own and rejected his best friend Su XunXian who offered to come with him. In the same way, he coldly rejected Su XunXian’s offers to help distract him when he was pining, going as far as scolding him for being too considerate and all but ordering him to leave him alone.

SAMPLE: here

INVENTORY:
a set of grey silk robes
a guqin
a writing set containing two brushes, an ink stone and an inkwell
A dark green silk fan with a white lotus and cloud motif
a sword

NOTES: N/A

Edited 2021-03-22 20:05 (UTC)

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-22 22:17 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Kiki
CONTACT:

kikibug13

CHARACTER: Su Xunxian
CANON: Oh! My Emperor
CANON POINT: End of canon (before people end up in the future since we have no idea how that works)

BACKGROUND:
- Zodiac Land
Su Xunxian comes from a country in a fantasy past China. The country is called Zodiac Land (or Zodiacland, because translations), and it's ruled by an Emperor who is one of the Star Masters, currently Capricorn. On the whole, it a prosperous land and relatively harmonious. The common people seem to trust the government and be fond of those with power, rather than resenting them. The details of government are vague, though it is known that there are at least two bodies that are involved in the government under the Emperor:

The Council of Star Masters (more or less the focus of the series)
A set of Ministers under a Prime Minister (we do not see them, but one of the Star Masters is the daughter of the Prime Minister, so there are mentions here and there, including that he's getting on with age and is coming close to retirement)

The civil strife that is portrayed is externally introduced and on its way of being mended - a division between those under the zodiac sign of Ophiuchus and everyone else. The Ophiuchus are outcasts and feared, generally keeping to themselves, until their new Master is found, their name is cleared, and their Master makes the effort to begin reintegrating them into society.

At the end of the story, each of the Ophiuchus sacrifice their lives to resurrect everyone else in Zodiac Land, so it is unknown if they will be gone forever or more children under the sign will be born eventually. In the present day framework of the story, Ophiuchus does exist and is paid attention to as a constellation, but since the entire setting of Star Masters is gone, that doesn't bring much information.

- Star Masters
The power / might of Zodiac Land is derived from, not unexpectedly, the signs of the Zodiac. They are embodied by the thirteen Star Masters, who both focus the power and represent their star signs. The Star Masters have specific powers (Capricorn can petrify people, Aquarius has visions of the future, Pisces can create duplicates of himself, Aries has super speed, etc.) Ophiuchus is a slightly different kind, in terms of that the Ophiuchus Star Master can annul the powers of the other twelve signs... but also, they can heal. Not everyone other than the Star Masters have powers, and some are strong and some are weak, but at least a majority of the Ophiuchus can heal, and they can absorb and use the powers of others. And yes, that does put them as the most powerful sign of the Zodiac.

Politically, the twelve signs tend to gravitate closely together by element (air, water, fire, and earth), with those of the same elements referring to each other as 'star cousins'. Currently, Fire and Air seem to be allied, as well as Earth and Water, but the focus of all of them is the good of Zodiac Land, rather than personal gain or power. (The fact that Star Mastership is not hereditary, other than as far as one can tell the Emperor's up to an extent, may be of help with that.)

- Neighboring lands
Wuxian Land (like the constellation Hercules)
Yingxian Land (like the constellation Perseus)
Orion Land
Each of them have their own powers, with what is known: Orion Land specializes in poisons and mind-altering substances and mind control. Which they turn against Zodiac Land after the events of a decade earlier.

- Ten years ago
Ten years ago, Zodiac Land decisively defeated Orion Land on the battlefield. As a result, a plan that was set in place earlier was put into action. The then-Emperor was poisoned in a way that would cause him to enter a murderous rage. The only one who could tell that was the then Ophiuchus Master, but he couldn't heal him. He tried to tell the other Star Masters but they did not believe him. Before the madness broke out, the Ophiuchus Star Master killed the Emperor and was executed on the spot, leaving the Ophiuchus without a Master, the Emperor's heir rather too young, and the Ophiuchus people outcasts. Since then, most if not all Star Masters have changed (arguably, the Aquarius Star Master may have been the same), indicating a fair bit of internal upheaval in the aftermath, probably again steered by Orion Land behind the curtains.

- Current royal family and Su Xunxian's position near it
After the previous Emperor's death, his two sons (Beitang Yi and Beitang Tang) were rather young, and though Beitang Yi did become Emperor, the previous Emperor's younger brother, Beitang Moran, who had been taken with the Emperor for training and was at the time probably in his mid teens, only a few years older than his nephews, was given power over the military as a sort of regency. In due course, when Beitang Yi becomes 30 - or if he completes a certain set of challenges - the military power would revert to him.

In the beginning of the story, Beitang Moran does agree to be challenged. In the end, as the final confrontation gets beset by actual enemies, Beitang Yi yields the challenge so that the two of them unite against the danger, thereby passing Beitang Moran's judgment that he is ready. For the second season, Beitang Yi wields the Emperor's full power.

More or less. Beitang Yi's decrees still sometimes get subjected to (occasionally immediate and public) corrections by the Empress Dowager, Beitang Yi's grandmother and Beitang Moran's mother. She has her own command on people, and her seniority and confidence makes it difficult to act directly counter to her wishes - not only for Beitang Yi but for Beitang Moran, as well. (Moran is just a little better at maneuvering her so she eventually complies with his suggestions.)

Su Xunxian himself became part of this entire setting somewhat early, probably because it was known that he would be the next Gemini Star Master. He grew up with Beitang Moran and the two know each other very well. By the time the story rolls in, Su Xunxian is Beitang Moran's right-hand man, understanding him better than the rest of his allied Star Masters and certainly better than his nephews.

- Businessman
For all his involvement with the politics of Zodiac Land, it is in several ways seen that Su Xunxian is good at making money by means of business, and that he enjoys it. Presumably, he has at least learned from (or has inherited, it is uncertain) his mother's timber business; there are probably others, as well, but it is known that he owns a pleasure house in the capital which is rather popular.

ABILITIES | POWERS:
Su Xunxian's special power is knowledge of languages, specifically non-human languages. He can communicate with birds, insects, you name it.
His skills include playing the guqin, extensive knowledge of his own world, extensive knowledge of poetry and business, some knowledge of strategy. He is not great at physical fighting but he's not entirely helpless against not high-level enemies either. In mindspaces, he can do battle quite successfully.

PERSONALITY:
Like many Gemini, Su Xunxian is a mix of traits that sometimes might feel like they should belong to at least two different people. He's a practical businessman and an intellectual; a nouveau riche who grew up beside a member of the royal family; selfish and petty and generous; a political figure and a courtesan; extremely efficient and indolent and idle.

At first sight, Su Xunxian leaves the impression of someone who cares about and flaunts his good looks. His skin is cared about (he at one point claims to have an entire team of people attending to it). His robes are beautiful, though usually outrageous - if a large expanse of it isn't sheer, then they tend to be widely open in the front, showing off his toned chest. The fan that is usually in his hands is also of high quality, and he uses it with ease and grace, both as an intellectual's prop and, when necessary, as a weapon.

It is a very carefully crafted facade, not so much a lie (because he does care about his appearance - and he does care to be attractive to certain people, whether or not he believes there is a chance for it to matter) as tricking people who don't care to look more carefully into thinking there is little more to him than that. It makes it easier for him to observe - and accomplish Moran's or, secondarily, his own goals, depending on the situation. But, most of all, it is his own peculiar way to handle the situation in which he lives - he is a merchant's son, stepping up toe to toe with aristocrats and scholars. He would never have fit in, so he's standing out on his own terms, owning the circumstances rather than being subjected to them.

A lot of what shaped Su Xunxian can be traced to growing up with Beitang Moran. Growing up with would imply that he was close to the then-prince before Moran's older brother was killed. A commoner next to royalty, probably partly because Su Xunxian was known to be the next Star Master, and probably, after a little while, because his own quick wit and loyalty won Moran's quicksilver mind to Xunxian's company. And Xunxian learned next to Moran - though he did not learn fighting, he learned music, and book study, and poetry, and politics, and even the art of war. Then Moran was in his mid teens, possibly around sixteen, and from the Emperor's younger brother, he became the Emperor's Uncle and regent, and Su Xunxian's role also changed. From playmate to right-hand man, the one person who could hear Moran's orders and understand what he means by then, the one person who could needle Moran and challenge him to do better, rather than either trying to bring him down or unconditionally accepting Moran's choices.

Another aspect of their dynamic that defines Su Xunxian is that he is very, very much in love with Beitang Moran. So much so that a teenager calls him out on it on-screen. It's not a sentiment that he could ever voice or act on, not explicitly, but it is always there. In his commitment, in his choices, in the bitterness with which he takes some things (like watching Moran fall in love with Luo Feifei and be rejected and hurt by it) to the gentleness with which he handles others (like the younger Star Masters under their command, or even trying to get to know Luo Feifei in the beginning, when she was making Moran smile). He silences his own hurting heart by throwing himself into drinking, or music, or sex, or making money; then when he can see Moran in need, he holds back nothing in order to support him. When Beitang Moran challenges his nephew to protect Luo Feifei from imprisonment, Su Xunxian is the champion who fights - and wins - in his name. When Luo Feifei is suffering from poisoning from Orion Land, later, it is Su Xunxian who hires medics and finances the search for treatment for her. Because Moran wants it done. Then he promptly flouts what he has done, because while he knows the limits of what he can and can't have, he still wants to be noticed and appreciated.

Su Xunxian is also very sarcastic, or rather, more blatantly so than any single other character. Despite that, he doesn't seem disliked or hostile with anyone, which sort of lends credence to his claim that the top oiran - top courtesan - in the pleasure house he owns is himself. (Later, when drunk, he claims that was a trick played on Shang Yu, but there is no conclusive evidence either way. Going by the reaction of the Madame at the pleasure house, it was probably not a trick.) Also, even if he pettily points out his achievements and his wealth, he also on several occasions shows utter, effortless generosity, such as giving out food he has stored at a time of crisis, or buying out all the necessary herbs in the entire country so enough antidote for everyone in need of it is made, or covering the price of half of the royal wedding when the treasurer keeps insisting that the treasury is empty.

Generally, his decision making tends to go through the following stages: Will Moran want it done/approve of it? Is it right? Will I profit from it? Will I enjoy it? In that order. The result is a somewhat eccentric, not unkind, and definitely striking man.

SAMPLE: Sample.

INVENTORY:
* A set of sheer-front robes
* His blood-stained fan
* A jar of wine
* A box of tea
* His guqin

NOTES: N/A

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-23 21:16 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Livvy
CONTACT:

undecipher

CHARACTER: Bai Mingyu // Gabriel Bai
CANON: OC - Impetus universe
CANON POINT: May 2018 - One year post the (2017) disappearance of his then-boyfriend, Emmet "Fox" Martin
BACKGROUND: Mingyu's setting is a real world urban fantasy AU, based in a reality where magic has always existed and has been cultivated/developed right alongside technology. He's a second generation Chinese immigrant to Toronto, Canada, one of the major international hubs of magic society.

In Impetus, magic is traditionally passed down generationally through established bloodlines. It's its own kind of aristocracy, with each family specializing in a few select schools of magic which they improve on and build upon in their lifetimes before passing on to their children. Mingyu comes from a particularly prestigious pedigree, the Bai family, at times referred to by the media as the Bai Dynasty. His is one of the longest surviving magic families, with roots dating back to the 1300s.

Once a sprawling empire of hundreds of distant relatives, their numbers began to dwindle in the late 1800s and by the end of WWII, only two brothers remained. Of those brothers, only one married and they had a single son, Mingyu's father, who later married Mingyu's mother and had him. Once Mingyu's grandparents passed, the three of them were all that remained.

When Mingyu was 16, both his parents were killed in what, as far as Toronto police could tell, was a robbery gone wrong. This left just him, a sweet, doe-eyed teenager, newly orphaned, as the sole inheritor of the entire Bai legacy. Seven centuries of papercraft and puppetry from his father alongside a little over four centuries of divination and warding magic from his mother fell upon the shoulders of a teenage boy.

Overnight, he became a media sensation.

Mingyu took that pity and turned it into fame. He built his own empire out of the tragedy, and leveraged his mass adoration as a shield. He sold his childhood home, hired an accountant and a public relations manager, and never once looked back. He spent the next four years nurturing a sanitized blank slate of a public image, selling an idealized version of himself to maintain both his popularity and place in the public eye while holding the world at a professional distance.

For all of his followers, for all of his TV interviews and product endorsements, Mingyu led a solitary life. The media greedily consumed all he fed it, but none of it was any real part of himself. It was all a smokescreen. The charming personality, the claims to his parents' legacy, all of it. Off camera, he lived alone in an upscale loft he bought the year his parents died, practiced nothing but his mother's warding magic in an effort to safeguard all they left in his care, and whiled away the days collecting creature comforts and cooking for himself, some pale mimicry of what he lost. He took no risks and suffered no losses, a bystander in his own life. His only companion was a familiar his parents helped him create when he started high school, a little turtle made out of silk cord he named Wugui.

Then, he met Emmet Martin, better known as Fox.

In a night that would transform the rest of his life, Mingyu found him wounded in the stairwell of his apartment and did the only thing he could. He let Fox into his apartment, into his life, and nothing was ever the same again. Though Fox fled halfway through the night, they continued to run into each other in their day to day lives. First, by accident, then by design. Fox would leave him secret messages graffitied onto properties near his house, put on performance art through magic and dedicate it to Mingyu in everything but name. Mingyu, thinking himself clever, would quote poetry that alluded to foxes during interviews, grinning into the camera.

They finally caught up to each other again at the Toronto International Film Festival in fall of 2011. From there, they were fast friends, and though it took some time and shenanigans (including each of them pretending to date a female friend), the following year they exchanged heartfelt confessions on a snowy rooftop, kissed, and truly became inseparable.

For the next five years, they planned and built a life together. They brought out the best in each other, Mingyu balancing out Fox's restlessness, giving his life badly needed structure. Fox taught Mingyu a passion for magic that he'd never possessed before, slowly unearthing his parents' journals and taking up the family traditions.

By mid 2017, Mingyu was considering marriage. Would have brought it up already, were it not for the complications of his public life at direct odds with Fox's notoriety and love for slipping under the radar. But he planned to bring it up, had gone over what he would ask, what he would say a hundred times, planned a thousand different proposals to surprise Fox with. (Because it was Fox, Mingyu knew it was possible to both ask him about a marriage and still catch him off guard with a proposal all the same.)

And then Fox started acting cagey. He had somewhere he had to be and wouldn't tell Mingyu where, or what it was about, or how long he would be gone. They had a fight over this, Fox left, and Mingyu never saw him again.

Putting together the pieces after the fact, Mingyu found out that Fox had been blackmailed, taken by parties interested in creating a large magic array capable of unheard of destruction. Fox was one of the only people alive that was talented enough and versed in enough schools of magic to even attempt such a thing, and some of the world's most powerful, influential people were directly behind his disappearance.

To get Fox back, Mingyu would have to do the one thing he'd avoided all these years.

He'd have to play the game.

Since Fox's disappearance almost a year ago, Mingyu has done nothing but entrench himself in the upper echelons of magic society. He debuted himself on the world's stage, stepping fully into the mantle of heir to the Bai Dynasty. He schmoozed, he courted, he manipulated, he schemed.

He obsessed.

Finding Fox is all he has lived and breathed, to the point of creating his own dark, destructive magic, because his mother's traps and wards no longer serve their purpose to keep him safe. He is not safe, will never be safe so long as Fox is not with him. So Mingyu's immaculate defense has slowly warped into a twisted offense. Hope staved off the worst of his darkness for the first four, five months, but as despair set in so too did madness.

Mingyu as he is now believes Fox is dead, and yet he still keeps going.

It's all he can do.

Because if he can't save Fox, then he's sending every last person even tangentially involved to accompany Fox to the next life.

ABILITIES | POWERS: Specializing in trap and warding magic from a young age, Mingyu has since branched out into several other magic disciplines.

Currently, he is skilled at

creating protective wards and area based traps through papercrafts and talismans
offensive/defensive/regenerative magic through use of paper talismans
transfiguration of silk cord into exact replicas of any item he's familiar with the properties of
divination through incense and meditation
ability to read an object/location's past through touch via a tattoo enchantment on his wrist
enchanting physical objects
memory alteration
physical puppetry of a single subject he has line of sight of

He also has several tattoos imbued with magic. Two are currently dormant/useless as they are two halves of one tracking spell; a magpie on the back of his left hand and a fox on his left wrist. A small crescent moon tattoo on his left temple prevents him from remembering his dreams. Last but most notably, he has a blue lotus blossom on his inner right wrist. When activated, its petals unfurl to reveal a bright green eye which will show both Mingyu and his target any memory Mingyu asks for as though they are living it. He cannot prevent the subject from also seeing what he sees, and if any injuries are sustained by the subject in the memory, both parties will sustain a facsimile of that injury. Minor wounds are mirrored exactly, while major trauma such as amputation manifests as pain and a deep laceration at the amputation site. Mingyu is not a tattoo artist, but is able to assist in the creation of magically enhanced tattoos through the creation of magic inks.

PERSONALITY: Mingyu's public facing persona is polished and sanitized for public consumption. He has a smile he's learned to weaponize, never met a question he couldn't dodge, and maintains a carefully maintained blank slate of a personality for onlookers to project their own fantasies upon to maximize his popularity. The world knows him as a charming, composed young man who is kind and generous, thoughtful and gentle. At the same time, there are presumptions of his talent and capabilities. By all accounts, Bai Mingyu is the ideal heir, studious and dedicated, tragic and beyond reproach.

In private, he is far less ambitious. Before meeting Fox, he had an inherent dislike of magic. He associated it with his parents and everything they were involved in, leading up to their death. He practiced only what made him feel safe, what could be used to keep himself and his inheritance secure. Up to the age of sixteen, Mingyu was a bubbly, outgoing, happy boy who thrived under the care of his loving parents, and after sixteen he became a shut-in, a recluse who spent all his time and energy simply trying to survive. Depression and anxiety dogged his every step, weighed him down so heavily he couldn't imagine and didn't want anything more than the careful life he eked out for himself in the shadow of his family's legacy.

He changed when he met Fox. He found joy again, learned to take risks again. Fox gave him hope, balanced him out, put him back on track of being the responsible, promising young man he'd been prior to his parents' deaths. Allowed to stay on this track, he may have been able to join his public persona with his true self, bridging the gap between the two by gaining a real appreciation of his family's magic, properly taking up the mantle of Bai family heir, and slowly offering up real, substantial parts of himself with the world instead of his usual bland, inoffensive non-answers.

But that didn't happen.

Losing Fox, losing his family a second time in his young life, changed him again, this change far more drastic than anything that came before. Some light in Mingyu went out, and his increasing desperation and despair came to color everything he did, everything he saw, everything he felt about the world.

Mingyu as he is now, rapidly coming up on the one year anniversary of Fox's disappearance, is more wounded animal than man. He remains an impeccable actor, able to summon a too-polished smile at a moment's notice. Years of practice in front of the camera makes him capable of projecting whatever image he feels will benefit him most in the moment. Behind that shining princely demeanor, however, is something far darker.

Depression has turned to a deep self-loathing, anxiety turned to bitterness and resentment. He blamed magic for the loss of his parents, but he blames himself for the loss of Fox. He's crossed lines in his search for Fox he knows he can't come back from. He's burned bridges, sacrificed morals, opened a pandora's box of magic as it should never be used. Though finally utilizing the full extent of his talents, the divide between who he presents himself to be and who he truly is has grown more stark than ever, and he has no hope and no intention of reversing this. Mingyu as he is now has only one singular goal, and he will do whatever it takes to reach it.

Outside of the high stakes of his setting, Mingyu is a fairly bitter, sarcastic, and somewhat scathing person, unable to resist the ability to let loose and tell people what he really thinks. He's rude and apologetic, unafraid and in fact largely unconcerned about the hurt he may cause because he's had to get very comfortable with the idea of collateral damage. At the core of it, however, he remains a lonely young man, lost somewhere inside himself. His callousness comes primarily from the fact he's given up on himself. It doesn't matter what he does or says, who likes him and who doesn't (provided of course that they are of no real use to him), or what happens in his day to day because he doesn't matter. Where he ends up doesn't matter.

There is only one thing that matters, and that's Fox's rescue or revenge.

SAMPLE:
link 1
link 2

INVENTORY:

jade bangle with cloaking properties
antique lacquered chest, enchanted with extra compartments
a cursed knife that inflicts wounds that fester
samsung smartphone glamoured to look like a pack of chewing gum with contactless magic charging
set of basic spell components (spell paper, silk cord)
a photograph enchanted to move and look like they are talking, faded and worn

NOTES:

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-23 21:56 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

descendency - 2021-03-24 14:04 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

groundrules - 2021-03-24 14:19 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Kalyn
CONTACT:

ovals

CHARACTER: Winnifred Prismall
CANON: Original Character
CANON POINT: Shortly before her meeting to finalize raid plans.

BACKGROUND: Winnie's world was the same as the real world, up until 1860. Around 1860, souls, it was found, could be extracted from people and placed into someone else; that someone could then absorb the soul. The absorbed soul enabled a person to live longer and cured many of the diseases scientists were struggling to find cures for. What followed was two things:

1. Scientists, now mostly freed from the constant pursuit for cures, took to discovering and advancing technology through steam power.

2. Souls were growing in demand.

Everyone wanted to live longer and be healthier. It started out innocently enough, with taking the souls of convicts and those already doomed to die. Soon, however, it wasn’t enough for the highest in society, who began to realize this and suffer the consequences -- they had to have a steady “diet” of souls, consuming/absorbing them at least once or twice a month. The older you grew the more souls you had to absorb to stay alive.

As demand grew, people found new ways to get the souls, namely by preying on the poor. Schools were set up to house, teach, and most importantly find Extractors, those rare individuals who could remove and implant the souls. The Extractors would then be taken out with handlers to seek out those who were poor and unaware to steal their souls, storing the souls within their own bodies. Extractors had no souls of their own and could not absorb them, thus posing no threats to taking any for their own. Each Extractor had a handler, and everything was provided to them by the governments of each country. Though everyone handled it differently, England kept a tight hold over their Extractors, letting them have little contact with the outside world and essentially making their lives revolve around what the government said and did.

Some other important rules to note are that souls begin going crazy after 24 hours away from their body, and one soul can last a person 20-25 days. The act of removing and implanting a soul are painless, and is done so orally-- the Extractor taps the other person’s mouth and pulls the soul out from there, then swallows the soul. Prolonged contact is not needed, just the quick touch and drawing the soul out will happen unless, obviously, the Extractor doesn’t wish to do that.

More on how souls work can be found here!

Winnie's personal backstory: Winnie was born in 1864 to very wealthy parents and is one of these Extractors, though she was one of the lucky ones to not be sent away to the schools. The death of her mother is to thank for that, for her father, unwilling to part with the girl who looked so much like her mother and unwilling to be left alone, refused to give her up and kept the fact she was an Extractor a secret from everyone. She grew up fairly normal and her life wasn’t a very exciting one. It was mostly filled with lessons--how to play piano and violin, manners, how to have a polite conversation, how to read, write, and do basic maths, and everything else she’d need to know to be the best pick when it came to courting and marriage. However, she’s had no interest in it and considers herself a spinster and “too old” to marry now. Her father used the excuse that she was sickly to keep her confined in her home, where she would read fairy tales and adventure books.

When she was young her father took in another young girl named Agnes, and the two quickly grew close. Agnes knew more about the ‘real world’ than Winnie did and spent her time telling Winnie of the outside world and all the things she never had a chance to see for herself. And the more Winnie learned, the more she became at what her friends and neighbors were doing aware of how unfair it all was.

So, she and Agnes devised a plan to become like ‘modern’ Robin Hoods. They would attend the numerous parties and sleepovers that Winnie’s status granted them access to. The parties of the rich were usually characterized by an after-dinner “treat” in the form of each guest being gifted with a collected soul by the host or hostess. Winnie would simply take the soul, though not absorb it, and the next day she and Agnes would search for the original body, assuming it hadn’t been moved or destroyed already since souls are almost always transported and absorbed within a day of their capture. Souls have a short shelf life like that. In the event of the body being unable to be found, the soul was released. If lucky, the soul would become a ghost, but if not then the soul would be forced to wither away and ‘die’.

In order to make this happen, however, Winnie had to convince her father that his careful and loving care had overcome her soulless nature. Winnie spent hours practicing her smile and making expressions, studying Agnes, her father, and the servants, trying to understand emotions and expressions. She practiced over and over until she could produce natural-looking expressions and body movements and convince her father that she was 'normal' enough to be undetected among the masses as anything more than an eccentric noble.

Thus, the two began their plan, struggling through it via trial and error, until the pair met a ghost who haunted the lighthouse in the port town only a few hours away from the city. It was a complete accident-- they'd heard the talk of the townspeople and Winnie had decided it sounded interesting, and so had dragged Agnes to it. The first meeting had been a disaster as Winnie's over enthusiasm didn't mesh well with Mortimer's grumpy personality, but Winnie was not deterred. She made a point to visit every day they were in town and eventually he grudgingly accepted her and Agnes's presence. After some consideration they realized that Mortimer, being a ghost, would possibly know what to do with the souls whose bodies they couldn't find. Although he pretends that it's a bother every time, he enjoys helping the souls either move on, or become and adjust to being a ghost; through him Winnie was able to find both another confidant and a way around what she had seen to be a failure to help the souls.

As Winnie interacted more with the outside world and the people in it, the more she felt moved to help them. Inspired by the heroic tales of her books, Winnie became more involved with the people of the slums, forging her own networks and connections to prepare for a revolution--a coup against the corrupt government and a chance to change the country for the better. Or, maybe, even the world.

ABILITIES | POWERS: Winnie has the ability to remove a soul from a person’s body and ‘eat’ it to store it within her own body without absorbing the soul. She can control this, so it's not like touching someone's mouth is going to automatically pull their soul from their body, but this is also a way for her to exorcise spirits or possessed people. Speaking of spirits, she CAN see and communicate with them.

She has no soul of her own and is essentially an empty shell for storage. This also makes her more susceptible to illness, her lifespan is much shorter than other humans, and she gets sick more easily.

Being soulless means most animals either actively hate her/are scared of her, or run away/freak out on sight. The exceptions are animals that are "evil" in some way, feral, and/or carnivorous/dangerous predator types. At worst they ignore her entirely like she doesn't exist, and at best they're attracted to her and will follow her or stay by her side.

Aside from that she has a rudimentary knowledge in self-defense with a blade and a pistol that she’s learned from Agnes, along with what she's learned from fencing lessons.

Winnie also possesses a photographic memory, allowing her to memorize and recall most things she reads with ease.

PERSONALITY: Eccentric, dotty, and oblivious are the three words that could best described Winnie. Being an Extractor means being able to mentally hear and speak with the souls 'housed' in her, and talking to voices in ones’ head never bodes well for one’s mental health--it’s one of the drawbacks of being a Extractor, though the well-trained are able to put up mental walls to block the voices. Still, Winnie is not well-trained and quite prone to talking aloud to thin air or getting to absorbed in the soul speaking to her. This causes her to run into things or miss entire chunks of conversation.

Winnie is also characterized by an unflappably calm and cheery disposition. When dropped into a new situation, she greets it with an excited smile and a declaration that it will be a "terribly interesting adventure."

Her curiosity can sometimes get her in trouble, as she doesn't often think everything through and tries to rush ahead to explore something further. Thankfully that's where Agnes steps in to make sure Winnie doesn't get herself into hotter waters.

Seeming loyal and kind, Winnifred loathes to lie outright, even though it’s a deemed necessity with what she and Agnes do. To make up for that, she tries to tell the truth and be honest with just about everything else and lie by omission rather than outright. Her father, being a very doting and loving father, is often the unwitting pawn in Agnes and Winnie’s adventures, in case they need money to silence someone or need to use his influence. For the most part he remains oblivious to what the two are doing with the souls, but Winnie feels a vague sense of guilt having to lie and use him.

The concept of fear is also largely lost on Winnie. It’s not that she doesn’t experience feeling scared or worried or anything like that, it’s more that it doesn’t apply to situations most people would be more wary of. For example, she’s very quick to trust someone and think them a nice person for any minor details, and is the kind of person who would walk down a dark alley without a second thought, because the idea that something bad might happen to her doesn’t even register. This is largely due to not having a soul, and therefore her emotional reactions to things are muted or otherwise nonexistent. If she had been raised in the dormitories with the other Extractors, it would be easy for her to have been changed like them-- Emotionless machines driven only by their one goal to collect as many souls as possible. Because Winnie was raised more-or-less normally, however, she's been able to grasp more emotions. The positive ones just come easier, but it's this soullessness that allows her to shrug off things that might emotionally cripple a 'normal' person and allows her to bounce back so easily.

Because of this lack of a soul, it's more accurate to say that Winnie's emotions are, for the most part, faked. It's not that she doesn't feel all emotions, but emotions such as curiosity and joy come much easier to her than any others. It's incredibly hard for her to actually feel things like anger or hatred, and she describes it as being like trying to cup water in your hands. While the water might last a little while, eventually in can all trickle out and leave her empty once more, with only the vaguest impression of it behind. It's not uncommon for Winnie to feel a flash of an emotion, and then get excited enough that that overrides the other feeling she had and make it disappear completely, leaving her a bit exasperated.

She sees herself as a savior to others and will keep on trying to help them; if they adamantly refuse her help it'll take quite a few tries of being told off for her to understand. Winnie has, in her adult life, grown aware of other people who fight for a similar cause to her, but she's grown so used to relying on her friends--and still has a wariness to admitting she's an Extractor not for her own life, but because she doesn't want to see her father in trouble-- that she prefers to stick with them and do what she can from her side. Essentially, Winnie wants to be like the heroes from the books she reads, the hero of her own story, and firmly drives towards that goal. This is less because she has genuine feelings about it though, and more because Winnie has molded herself around the concept of 'justice' and 'fairness.' She can understand these concepts clearly, more so than she can emotions, and knows because of this that what's happening to soulless like herself is "Unfair," so she's fixated on, well, fixing it. In the stories, the "good guys always win," so Winnie figures that so long as she's a "good person" she'll also always win. This allows her to justify almost everything she does with the idea that "but my intentions are good/it's for a good cause, so it's not actually evil or bad."

It should be noted, however, that Winnie is anything but stupid. She has a keen awareness she keeps hidden, largely because she's self-aware enough to know it's better that way. She plays up her sillier side, pretending to be airheaded and dotty far more than she actually is in order to get people to let their guards down around her. If people underestimate her, it's better for her in the long run if and when she can catch them by surprise, so you could say that she's also quite manipulative.

SAMPLE: hopefully this all works. finger guns.

INVENTORY: x1 Daywear gown in off-white with a flower pattern. Includes drawers, slip, corset, petticoat, camisole, small wire bustle, skirting, and jacket.
x1 pair of white, heeled shoes
x1 fancy hat in green, with an array of flowers and ribbons
x1 A silk-lace parasol, white and green. The handle can be detached to reveal a stiletto blade.

NOTES: n/a

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groundrules - 2021-03-24 00:51 (UTC) - Expand

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soulsrob - 2021-03-24 01:37 (UTC) - Expand

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groundrules - 2021-03-24 02:02 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Loren
CONTACT: sky#9326 on Discord

CHARACTER: Sith Inquisitor (Darth Imperius). Customizable first name: Archeval
CANON: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMORPG)
CANON POINT: Immediately after the end of Shadow of Revan, before the events of Ziost

BACKGROUND:

The power of the dark side grows. The SITH EMPIRE has won a major victory against the Galactic Republic and its Jedi guardians, conquering and enslaving many new worlds.

With a fragile peace in place, the Empire sends its slaves to the ancient Sith stronghold of KORRIBAN, hoping to unearth relics of vast power that can be used to dominate the galaxy.

One slave, powerful with the Force, has been released from servitude and forced to master the dark arts of the Sith or die trying....

3000 years before the events of the Star Wars movies, the Galactic Republic and Sith Empire are in an era of uneasy cold war. With its numbers of powerful Sith Force-users depleted from previous years of fighting, the Empire is desperate for recruits. Becoming Sith is essentially becoming nobility in the Empire, but with Force-sensitives thin on the ground, Imperial authorities are forced to trawl for new Sith potentials anywhere they can find them -- including in places that would have been unthinkable before, such as out of the ranks of the Empire's expansive slave underclass. One such recruit is Archeval, who will go on to rise from obscurity to the high rank of Darth.

chapter 1: legacies of old

Not much is canonically known about Arche's pre-Sith life, save that he was born into slavery and experienced a great deal of hardship, leading him to have little love for the Empire that oppressed him. His story truly begins when he's plucked from the slave pens and sent to the Sith Academy on the desolate planet of Korriban; there he endures brutal and deadly training that often pits him against the dangers of ancient Sith tombs or even his fellow trainees, with acolytes encouraged to turn on each other and thus weed out the weak ("On Korriban, we held little parties each time a fellow student died," he can remark at one point in canon). Despite being under the thumb of an instructor prejudiced against "slave scum", Arche's talent draws the eye of a high-ranking Sith, Darth Zash, who ends up taking him under her wing. Along the way making dubious friends with Khem Val, an ancient monster from one of the Sith tombs, Arche becomes Zash's official apprentice; he helps her with her machinations against her rivals in exchange for the promise of power and learning. While on a mission for her into the ruins of an ancient temple, he discovers that although he grew up enslaved, he's actually the descendant of a famous Sith bloodline -- that of one Lord Kallig -- a man who in centuries past was betrayed and killed by another Sith Lord, with his family sold away into the slave trade. The ghost of Kallig himself appears in person to warn the young apprentice to be wary of his master...

Zash is a generous patron to her apprentice, however, providing Archeval with supplies and contacts and even his own starship as she sends him on missions across the galaxy, continually promising to build him up with further power and influence. During one such mission Arche befriends a rowdy space pirate named Andronikos Revel, who joins his crew and becomes the main pilot for Arche's ship. Partly through Zash's manipulations and partly through his own contributions working for the Empire on planets like Balmorra and Nar Shaddaa, Arche begins to build a significant power base of civilians and Sith acolytes who answer to his beck and call, and even mostly-accidentally stumbles into owning his very own cult. But Sith kindness always has a catch, and Zash's is a big one: she's provided her new apprentice with all this only because her current body is aging and withering, and she plans to literally kick out Arche to take his body for her own, thus inheriting it all. Tricked into walking right into the middle of her necromantic ritual, Arche only survives thanks to the quick intervention of Khem Val, the monstrous ancient alien whose loyalty he earned back as a student. Zash accidentally sends herself into Khem's body instead, and unable to fully override his strong will, she remains trapped there for the moment... but not without making periodic efforts to take the monster's body for her own.

chapter 2: sith hierarchy

To the outside world, for all intents and purposes it appears that Zash has been killed by her apprentice, and as is the Sith way this leaves her position open for the taking: Arche ascends to the title of Sith Lord as he inherits his master's old power base and the rest of her old servants. He also finds himself now answering to Zash's old boss -- Darth Thanaton, a prominent lord who quickly rises into the Dark Council, the ultimate ruling authority of the Empire just under the Emperor himself. Thanaton doesn't think much of this young ex-slave upstart, accusing him at every turn of spitting on Sith tradition; perhaps sensing a potential future rival to be disposed of, Thanaton orders Arche out on a mission he's clearly not meant to come back from. Only the intervention of his ghostly ancestor Kallig prevents Archeval from dying at the hands of a different angry ghost in the tomb where Thanaton sends him. Kallig advises his descendant that to protect himself against Thanaton, Arche will need to accumulate a lot more power and do it fast: the method he suggests is to learn the ritual of Forcewalking, a rare technique that allows a Force-user to bind Sith ghosts to themselves and borrow their strength. Archeval manages to learn the technique and challenges Thanaton again with the power of two ghosts behind him, but the Dark Council member still wipes the floor with the young upstart, seemingly killing him; however, the power of the bound ghosts returns Arche to life. It's then he decides that the only way to survive against Thanaton is to become a true Forcewalking master.

Mastering the Forcewalking technique and finding more ghosts to bind in order to protect himself against Thanaton leads the young Sith Lord on a galaxy-spanning quest, during which time he visits a number of planets and befriends more people who become crewmates on his ship, including Imperial archaeologist Talos Drellik and even a Jedi Padawan called Ashara Zavros. Arche and Ashara become particularly close as they share a desire to reform the Empire into a place of less prejudice and oppression, and eventually Ashara comes to consider herself Lord Archeval's apprentice. Arche later takes one other official apprentice from the Korriban Academy as well, an ex-slave like himself named Xalek. Together with Andronikos and Khem Val (and by extension, sort of Zash), this group of minions are the closest thing Arche has to real friends, crewing his personal starship and helping him in his day-to-day affairs. Arche also makes the acquaintance of a fellow up-and-coming young Sith Lord, apprentice to the powerful Darth Baras, and the pair strike up an unlikely friendship as they find that they work well together.

After binding the power of several Force ghosts to himself, Arche decides he's accumulated enough power to remove Darth Thanaton as a threat for good, and goes to confront him on the Imperial homeworld; while the battle goes in Arche's favor at first, he quickly finds himself overwhelmed by the amount of power coursing through his body, the ghosts mocking him as he unleashes a Force storm entirely out of his control. He has to flee the area with the help of his crew members, who note that he's looking terrible -- the excess of power inside him is causing his body to start to deteriorate, and the ghosts, sensing his weakness, have decided to turn their combined efforts toward spitefully driving him mad. Before he can deal with the threat of Thanaton, Arche is forced to seek out a cure for his rapidly declining health.

chapter 3: power and duty

Thanaton, finding out about Arche's difficulties, manages to hide some relevant information in hopes of thwarting his quest, but Arche sneaks into the Darth's personal library to do research and determines that he needs to investigate on the worlds of Belsavis and Voss. On Belsavis, a dangerous journey down into the heart of the ancient prison world reveals a long-lost machine developed by the Rakata, a vicious and warlike people who once conquered most of the galaxy in millennia past. Their creation, called the Mother Machine, was responsible for genetically engineering a great many of the alien species that populate the modern galaxy, whom the Rakata considered to be "slave peoples" right alongside Arche's own human species. In exchange for a DNA sample to continue their many centuries of research, one of the few remaining Rakata allows Arche to use the machine to rebuild himself -- the semi-sentient machine, named Ashaa, reconstructs his entire body into a structure capable of handling the physical strain of all his bound ghosts.

While Archeval's body is now safe, however, his mind is still vulnerable to the ravages of the ghosts, who've discovered great entertainment in mentally tormenting him. After a detour to help some of his Imperial subordinates and further secure his power base through helping construct some powerful superweapons, Arche and his crew head to the planet of Voss, where research suggests the local Mystics might have a ritual that could heal his mind and spirit. The Voss prove to be a standoffish and unwelcoming people who are not interested in helping heal an outsider; however, Arche is directed to a group of heretical "dream-walker" cultists who might be able to help him. Eventually he is able to contact a dream-walking shaman from the Gormak people, rivals to the Voss, who is willing to help him in exchange for offworld passage; through dream-walking Arche confronts the ghosts of his own regrets in a mind-healing ritual that breaks the Force ghosts' power over him for good.

With his well-being now fully protected and having secured new allies in the Imperial military, Lord Archeval has become an even more serious threat, and Darth Thanaton is no longer prepared to ignore this walking affront to Sith tradition. Hoping to remove the upstart thorn in his side once and for all, Thanaton declares a Kaggath against Archeval -- an ancient Sith game of cat-and-mouse using all power and influence at each lord's disposal, which ends only when one Sith Lord has ground down the other into total humiliation. The battlefield Thanaton chooses is the planet of Corellia, one of the Republic's most important homeworlds, currently an active war zone where the Empire has just openly broken the peace treaty to launch an all-out assault and conquer the planet. Arche is called upon to take the proper place of a Sith helping lead the Corellian ground assault even as he scrambles to assemble his chess pieces against Thanaton, the Darth attempting to shut down Archeval's resources and contacts and sending minions to try and kill him at every turn. With the help of his Imperial allies, however, Arche is able to outmaneuver Thanaton. In a last-ditch effort, once again Thanaton appears before Arche in person to challenge him to a duel, but this time Arche is well-prepared: he beats the Darth back with the combined power of his Sith ghosts and his own considerable strength, much more practiced and improved than their last meeting; as the fight turns against him Thanaton escapes to flee the planet entirely.

Darth Thanaton's very last desperate gambit finds him running to the planet Korriban, the stronghold of the Academy where Arche's journey started. The Dark Council are assembled there holding a meeting, and a wounded Thanaton demands that they're obligated by Sith tradition to kill this ex-slave upstart, apprentice to the treacherous snake Zash. Arche, however, is hot on Thanaton's heels. He bursts into the chamber uninvited to finally settle the feud once and for all: surrounded by the cold gazes of the uncaring Darths, whose only concern is that the strong should triumph over the weak, Thanaton finds no allies as Lord Archeval beats down the man who simply wouldn't leave him alone to live his life. In the end Thanaton crawls to the feet of the other Dark Councilors begging for their aid, but in doing this he's broken the rules of the Kaggath, which state that outright asking for help from another Sith Lord is forbidden. The traditional penalty for breaking the rules of Kaggath is instant death, and one of the Darths reaches out with the Force to snap the man's neck right there on the Council floor. Darth Thanaton's threat is over.

Having proven himself powerful enough to duel a Dark Councilor and win, and with Thanaton's seat on the Council now open, Arche is judged a worthy successor and the assembled council offers him the seat then and there. One Councilor protests that a mere Lord is not of rank to join such a prestigious body, and in response senior member Darth Marr names Archeval a new Darth in turn: as Arche's work has continually led to the betterment of the Empire during his short career, Marr dubs him Darth Imperius. Suddenly catapulted into the rank of one of the most powerful people in the Empire, Archeval assumes the position of head of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge, in charge of documenting Sith history and seeking out ancient sites and artifacts to preserve the powerful secrets they hold. With his loyal crew at his side and now thousands of subordinates standing behind him, few would dare to challenge the new Darth Imperius; for this once-slave the future is looking very bright... or dark, as the case may be.

chapter 3 epilogue: the false emperor

The Gang Has to Kill One of Their Old Evil Bosses Which is Too Bad Really Because at Least He Wasn't a Space Racist^TM

chapter 4: rise of the hutt cartel

The Gang Tries Not to Accidentally Blow Up a Planet^TM

chapter 5: prelude & shadow of revan

By now a firmly established Darth of Imperial high command and trusted ally of senior Dark Councilor Darth Marr, it comes as no surprise to Arche to be tapped by one Darth Arkous to help lead his raid on the Jedi homeworld of Tython, in order to obtain information from the Jedi Temple. Archeval has no personal quarrel with the Jedi, but a job is a job; coordinating with Arkous's servant Lana Beniko, Arche and Arkous's forces devastate the temple grounds to fulfill the other Darth's mission. It's discovered almost immediately, however, that the Republic has launched a preternaturally fast counterattack against the Sith stronghold world of Korriban, and Lana sends Arche there in a rush to prevent the total takeover of the Academy. By the time Imperial forces retake Korriban, the Republic has also secured Tython, leaving the warring powers at a stalemate once more.

Those involved in the two conflicts, however, can only wonder: wasn't that all a bit overly convenient? Arche, unable to shake the feeling he's been played somehow, is unsurprised when he's contacted once again by Lord Lana Beniko with new information. She's been digging up dirt on her master Arkous and in the process acquired a very unlikely ally, a Republic SIS spy named Theron Shan, who's also been investigating the incident from the opposite direction. Lana invites Arche to come meet this new contact with her in person, and after some dangerous investigating the trio of Darth Imperius, Lana, and Theron eventually come to an inevitable conclusion: the whole operation was a setup, and Darth Arkous was working in concert with his Republic opposite number Colonel Darok the whole time. But what would convince a Republic soldier and a Sith to work together?

With the added help of the Wookiee smuggler Jakarro and his protocol droid, the trio manage to thwart Arkous and Darok's plan to use ancient Rakata technology to manufacture a vast army, one which it turns out was meant to be turned toward the cause of... Revan. An ancient Force-user who once followed the ways of both Sith and Jedi (and was the player character of the original Knights of the Old Republic game), still revered by many into the present day for his sheer power and charisma, Revan had always had a secret cult following called the Revanites who kept his teachings alive over the centuries -- but Revan himself, of course, had been believed long gone. The whole galaxy learns differently when Revan broadcasts a message declaring that he needs no infinite army to carry out his plans, and that neither Republic nor Empire will be able to stop him from achieving his ultimate goal with the help of the newly-bolstered, militant Order of Revanites, whose secret adherents are embedded throughout both nations. The Revanites quickly prove their effectiveness when an order for Lana's arrest goes out in connection with the murder of Darth Arkous, and Theron is dismissed from his SIS post and branded a Republic traitor in connection with Darok's death. The pair of them go underground to try to save their own skins, while following what leads remain on the Revanites and what Revan himself might be planning.

Archeval himself, shielded by his high political position in the Dark Council, avoids any major repercussions for his involvement; but is worried and hesitant to simply cut contact with Lana who has increasingly proven a loyal friend, and particularly Theron, who he's started to have some confusing feelings for. At last he reluctantly accepts that the best thing he can do for their safety is to step back for now, and after some months of no word, this next leads to the receipt of an unexplained, unsigned message: apparently someone wants him to visit the planet Rishi. There he naturally discovers that Lana and Theron sent him the undercover message, hoping to garner his help in investigating a group of pirates called the Nova Blades who have significant Revanite involvement. While less than thrilled about some of the shenanigans he's put through in order to keep up his friends' cover, particularly pretending to be a space pirate himself, Arche is only too happy to lay waste to the Blades who are known prolific slave traders. Through investigating the Blades and acquiring information from local Mandalorians, the group discovers the presence of a large Revanite hideout gathered directly on Rishi; but no sooner do they locate it than Lana sends word to Darth Imperius that Theron has been captured while trying to sneak inside the hideout.

Arche frantically seeks the place out to storm inside and rescue Theron, discovering that Theron is being held there and tortured by Revan himself; Revan appears over holo to inform Arche that Arche's own group, the Republic, and the Empire are all simply getting in the way of Revan's ultimate mission to save millions of lives. Theron, having managed to free himself without Arche's assistance, bursts in at this point and Sith and spy both flee the scene with Theron possessing vital new info about Revan's mysterious plans. It turns out that infiltrating the base wasn't Theron's idea at all, though -- he's very short with Lana on his return, and it's eventually revealed that Lana found it appropriate to leak his location to the Revanites so they could take him by surprise, thus allowing him access to the Revanite base as a prisoner. The move demonstrates great trust in Theron's abilities, but Arche insists that she never try something so callous and risky again. There's little time to dwell, however, as Revan has set up a battle between the Republic and Imperial fleets in which his own traps will devastate them both, thereby removing the obstacles to his ultimate goal: reviving the dormant Sith Emperor Vitiate in order to destroy his very essence once and for all, removing his threat from the galaxy forever.

Thanks to Theron's intel, word is able to reach the fleets in time for disaster to be averted, and the two sides of the fleet battle -- led by Jedi Master Satele Shan of the Republic and Arche's ally Darth Marr of the Empire -- call a complete ceasefire. Satele and Marr come together to meet with Arche, Lana, and Theron; the group decides that the Revanites and the potential threat of a revived Sith Emperor are a far greater concern than their own galactic war, and Satele and Marr agree to form a combined Republic-Imperial force to take down Revan and his cult once and for all.

The coalition tracks Revan and his forces to the moon of Yavin 4, and both Imperial and Republic troops set down in the area to prepare for assault on the Revanites, with Darth Imperius among the commanders on the ground leading the Empire's forces. This is Arche's first time having an in-person meeting with the famous Jedi Satele Shan, who it turns out is Theron's estranged mother. Arche and Theron grow closer through discussing Theron's fraught history with Satele, the Jedi, and the Republic; and Theron becomes one of the few people ever to make it fully past Arche's prickly exterior as, in between hurried coalition strategy meetings and relentless jungle missions, they find time to share a few stolen romantic moments together.

It's eventually discovered that Revan himself is hiding out in a monument called the Temple of Sacrifice, where he's in possession of an ancient device that truly can revive the dormant Emperor Vitiate, putting him back into a physical body for Revan to kill. Darth Imperius leads a strike team into the temple including Theron, Marr, Satele, Lana and more, hoping to stop Revan before he can activate the machine. At the end of a pitched battle they take Revan down, but not completely in time: the Emperor, while not returned to a body, is most definitely now awake. His voice taunts the assembled operatives that they will never be able to prevent his domination over the galaxy; and that, in fact, every death in the Imperial-Republic war will only make him stronger -- and with that he vanishes to parts unknown, a weakened but still uncontrolled threat whose ultimate plans remain to be seen.

With the Revanite forces broken under coalition might and currently no sign of the absconded Emperor, the role of the joint Imperial-Republic task force is at present seemingly over. The two sides vow that they will come together again to destroy Vitiate if necessary, but for now prepare to pack up from Yavin 4 and return to the war that still dominates the galaxy. For Archeval, this means his return to a job that he still only does essentially for the paycheck, and separation from one Theron Shan. Theron explains that after his performance in the Revanite campaign he's been reinstated as an SIS agent, and awkwardly tries to point out that as members of two opposing sides, after they leave Yavin he and Arche will probably never speak a word to one another again.

Archeval's response:

"Who needs words?"

The pair share one last kiss before Theron is gone for good, and once again Darth Imperius, Dark Lord of the Sith, is left to somehow get on with the rest of his life.

Sith Inquisitor | Star Wars: The Old Republic (3/3)

darkeststars - 2021-03-24 03:17 (UTC) - Expand

APPLICATION RECEIVED

groundrules - 2021-03-24 11:22 (UTC) - Expand

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-24 21:07 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Britt
CONTACT: daestwen @ plurk and @ gmail

CHARACTER: Crown Prince Lee Chang
CANON: Kingdom
CANON POINT: Season 2, Episode Six, after he declares that between him and the newborn Prince, the baby should be the one to rule.

BACKGROUND: Lee Chang is the Crown Prince of Joseon, approximately around 1600 (as guessed by the proximity to “japanese invasions” in the series which probably line up with the Imjin Wars, where firearms were used extensively). The only son of the king, his inheritance (and his life) lay in a precarious position due to the fact that his mother was a concubine rather than the queen. A summary for the events in the show can be found here.

At his canon point, he has just come to the realisation and then decision that he cannot be the King of Joeson - that if their country has any hope of a peaceful future, it does not rest with a man who beheaded his father, a “bastard son who committed high treason”. Instead, his ‘brother’ - the baby that the queen abducted from Mu-yeong’s wife to masquerade as his own - must rule. He tells the councillor he trusts most to write that he, his father, and the queen were all killed in the war. This means that he - effectively - must die. He does not know what happens after this point. (He goes into exile to find the source of the plague.)

It is important to note that he has been bitten, at this point, and though the ice lake ‘killed’ the parasites, it is shown at the very end of the show that the parasites seem to be able to resurrect sometime later, so it is possible he is still infected.

ABILITIES | POWERS: He is a normal human dude, though he may or may not have latent Zombie issues, we will see next season…

PERSONALITY:

Born a crown prince, Lee Chang was both deeply spoiled his entire childhood, but spent most of it in grave peril due to his status. At a young age, his father the King told him that he had to do anything he could to survive, that his survival was the most important thing. The prince took the warning to heart, and when his father fell ill, his immediate concern was ensuring that the royal line continue through him, rather than his unborn baby brother. At this point in the series, Lee Chang is most concerned for himself and his survival, as is made clear when he does not come forward as part of a mutinous plot, even when dozens of the men who signed up with him are being tortured and killed for their participation.

The only people he trusts are his bodyguard, Mu-yeong, and his childhood Mentor, Lord Ahn. Despite Mu-yeong being of a much lower class than him, Lee Chang has a genuine love for the man, and often teases him or speaks crassly and unbecoming of a Prince to him, both to fluster the man and bond with him. Over the course of their journey, Mu-yeong becomes the person he relies on and trusts the most - and refuses to believe it when it is suggested that Mu-yeong is a spy. Even after the man’s betrayal is revealed, the Prince holds nothing but grief for him, and weeps bitterly over his body as the man dies trying to apologize to him. No one else through the series - before or after - holds as close a relationship with him, and Mu-yeong’s death is the moment where we see the most emotion from the Prince, even compared to when he was forced to behead his father.

At the beginning of the series he has barely stepped outside of the palace, and is openly disgusted by the food that the lower classes eat, and the squalor that they live in. He is rude about it, both to their faces and in private to Mu-yeong, as he is too accustomed to living in the palace and does not understand life outside of it very well. However, after the discovery of the plague, and a harrowing night attempting to save villagers from a zombie-ravaged town after corrupt and inept officials refused to look after their people and instead only saved themselves, he came to have a much deeper understanding of his position and his responsibility to the people who he was born to rule. His disgust turned from them to the rest of the ruling elite, who could have saved far more lives and refused to do so, out of their own self-interest. This is where Lee Chang begins to shed his own self-interest, and realise his place in filial piety: not just commanding the respect of those below him, but also being responsible for their livelihood and well being. He begins to develop a deep righteous indignation for those in high positions who do not work on behalf of the people, whereas before this indignation was more for his own self interest. This culminates in the end of the series where he declares that he must be the one to ‘die’ and leave his life behind, because he knows it would serve the people better than him attempting to continue to rule.

Over the series Lee Chang grows more capable, both as a man and as a commander, as he is faced with increasing responsibility and hardship in the face of a growing plague, political corruption and plots against his life. He becomes a decisive commander, who takes in all of the information he can regardless of the source (the doctor Seo-bi is one of his closest advisors during the plague, as well as a fugitive ex-soldier who refuses to even give his own name). He trusts people who do the right thing, regardless of their status. To his people, he is careful not to waver or doubt himself, as then they would waver and doubt as well. He only voices his doubts to Mu-yeong, and after he dies, to no one else.

In a relaxed state (a very rarely seen condition for him in this series), Lee Chang has a dry, dark sense of humour, and a tendency to slip into informality. When he isn’t seen, he slouches. He has less and less opportunity to do this as time goes on.

By the end of the series he is exhausted by a long campaign against the plague, heart broken at the death of his father, and grief-stricken at his own necessary political ‘death’. He can no longer directly help the Joseon that he has come to deeply love and feel responsible for, so he throws himself into ways to continue helping in the shadows.

SAMPLE: sample one, sample two

INVENTORY:
1. Very very tattered and bloody set of clothes (mourning, so ramie fabric and undyed).
2. One black headband that survived surprisingly well considering the rest of him.
3. One hair piece, black.
4. One set of shoes.
5. A sword.

NOTES: I don’t think there’s any specific accommodations he needs - still just a normal human dude over here. Mostly.

Edited 2021-03-25 17:10 (UTC)

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-25 20:54 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Sam
CONTACT:

verities

CHARACTER: Ery
CANON: Original
CANON POINT: During their own death

BACKGROUND:

WORLD SETTING

Avania is a general high fantasy world. It was a very lush world with lots of greenery and vast oceans, divided into many kingdoms and different political groups. The world relied heavily on the magic of witches, belonging only to women who were treated as near saints for the works they did to support their various kingdoms. The world developed through magic, rather than technology. At the outskirts of the universe, Avania was near the border of the known realm. Beyond that border of space and stars lives a creature known as the Eryfel. The Eryfel inhabits all that is beyond the universe, a darkness unlike any other with only mild sentience. However, with it's little awareness it invaded the quickly developing Avania to try to fight the expansion of the universe. After it's invasion, Avania has become a desolate wasteland. Whole kingdoms have been destroyed, the greenery killed to dead trees, and monsters now roam the desert landscape. However, some bastions of humanity still persevere. These societies tend to be smaller, built within protective runs left by the last witches before their defeat at the hands of the Eryfel. Realizing the folly in leaving everything witches, technology has begun to develop in the absence of witches, mixing ruins with technology where possible.

PERSONAL HISTORY

One day, Ery simply existed. A piece of the Eryfel, split and put inside a bodyguard named Ovia, Ery woke one day with their own separate sentience from the Eryfel. This separation allowed Ery to remain connected to their original self, communicating back what they learned on Avania, but the biggest effect was that Ery began to develop separately from the Eryfel.

Ovia was chosen for her proximity to a royal family in one of Avania's largest kingdoms. El-Farel was at the forefront of development and one of the largest nations in the world, making the royal family an essential target in the Eryfel's plans to invade Avania. Ery became the bodyguard, Ovia, of one Princess Minelle, also called Mina. During this time, Ovia/Ery worked closely with the young princess to prepare her for her duties one day. Ery accompanied Mina to many of her training lessons and even to meetings involving her ruling mother, giving Ery insight into the kingdom's deeper functionings.

While working with the family, Ery slowly began to grow close to Mina. The longer Ery was away from the Eryfel, the more her own individuality began to develop. This allowed Ery to develop affection and relationship with Mina through the guise of Ovia. Believing her feelings to be leftovers of Ovia's own feeling for Mina, Ery began to bury her feelings as heavily as possible. They threw themselves into her mission, and one day enacted the Eryfel's plans to invade Avania.

Acting as a door of sorts, Ery brought darkness to Avania. They infected trade routes with monsters that spread the darkness across the land. They infiltrated the military through her bodyguard connections, putting more people under Eryfel control, or infecting them with disease that would eventually kill them. Worst of all, Ery infiltrated the systems that governed and tracked witches in Avania. These were her largest targets, often involving Ery's personal touch to find and kill as many witches as possible. Slowly, Ery dismantled the country of El-Farel. And her infection spread across the world as it did. Ultimately, Ery become a monster herself to destroy the last remnants of the royal family. This included facing Mina down before the Eryfel drove Ery to finish the job and kill the young princess. Outside of El-Farel, few countries had little warning of the impending destruction devastating the nation of El-Farel. These countries used their time to prepare wards to protect cities. These wards required many witches and a vast amount of strength and power to make runes powerful enough to defend against the Eryfel. These runes typically killed the witches who prepared them, and even then several did not hold up. Thus, only a handful of cities across Avania still remain to this day.

In a manner of months, the Eryfel had invaded and taken over a large portion of Avania.

While the Eryfel had possessed others, it took the lives of those it had possessed until only Ery remained. Ery was different in that they held a larger portion of the Eryfel than the soldiers once had held. Considered a "reward," Ery was allowed to live in the chaos and destruction they had created. A sort of test of individuality surviving in the world of the Eryfel. As if the Eryfel might one day make more like Ery.

For years, Ery travelled the desolation of Avania. At first, they had felt they'd fulfilled her duties in full. But the gnawing feeling of regret and sorrow began to grow stronger. Slowly, Ery found it harder to reach the Eryfel. With time, they lost her connection to the Eryfel entirely. This left Ery alone, and worse it left her with her own thoughts. Ery had time to reflect and witness the destruction they had had a personal hand in. They were haunted by the memory of Mina's death directly at her hands. Ery's "reward" became her torture, and Ery regularly wondered about why they continued on. However, Ery wasn't positive they could die without the aid of the Eryfel, a being they lost contact with.

During her travels, Ery discovered a baby in the wilds. Not far from a human bastion known as Elimin, Ery realized the baby had been left in the wilds intentionally. They took the baby for herself, and brought her to the ruins of a small house on her own. Ery slowly cared for the child as best they could in the wilds. They discovered that the child was a witch herself, hence her abandonment in the wilds. Realizing this, Ery knew they had to protect the child with all her being.

Ery braved the travel to Elimin, and when they passed the boundaries they were surprised to see they weren't stopped. This further contributed to her identity crisis.

Still, Ery raised Baby in a small off-village at the outskirts of Elimin. They gathered knowledge they'd collected in books during her travels and reconnaissance before the fall of civilization, and used it to teach Baby how to be a witch herself. Ery used her knowledge of the Eryfel to train Baby how to fight the darkness, teaching her its weaknesses and giving Baby every advantage they could give her. Their relationship was strained through these years, as Ery made certain Baby would be strong. After all, Elimin feared the trouble witches brought with them and the Eryfel simply feared witches. Baby would need to be stronger than all of them to survive. And even to flourish.

After years of training, the first runes of Elimin fell to time and constant beating from the Eryfel. When baby was twenty, Ery was forced to send her out to war. Ery watched over her daughter, fighting the beast they'd been raised to, only to see her daughter nearly fail.

This forced Ery to step forward, revealing her true self to Baby in the process. Ery sacrificed herself to the Eryfel to buy time for Baby, naming her daughter Sola, for the light that would destroy the Eryfel.

ABILITIES | POWERS:

Ery is at her heart a shadow monster.

This means Ery has the ability to manipulate the shadows within herself. They can use them to form weapons they can wield, including things like blades and whips. They can also create long, tendril-like appendages (tentacles sure whatever). These appendages can act independently of each other, moving in any direction Ery wills. They can also sharpen to points to slash and stab. They have the ability to grab things, cover, etc. Ery can use these or her shadows purely to summon darkness to blind as well.

Beyond the ability to manipulate shadows, Ery can call the full darkness out of her. This involves engulfing herself in the darkness. When they do this, they become a wolf of the shadows, with her ability to still manipulate her shadows. Her appearance looks similarly, though large and independent. Her tendrils can still slash and pierce, but her teeth and claws can as well. They are stronger than most any human in this form, but it exhausts her and leaves her nearly entirely passed out after.

Because they are all shadow, Ery technically is "soulless". They are an entity that is infinite and will likely return to the Eryfel at the time of death, but they also has no ability to die. If her body is destroyed and the Eryfel cannot recall Ery, they will find another body to possess.

Ery also has decent survival skills from living outside Elimin after the destruction of El-Farel. This includes hunting, skinning and cooking her own food, setting up camp, and other similar type survival techniques.

PERSONALITY:

Lost is the word Ery would use to describe themselves.

Ery has always felt abandoned by the Eryfel. Despite their individuality being a "reward," Ery has always felt it was more of a curse than a reward. Separated from humanity, who would fear them as the monster they are, and the Eryfel, who was a true monster, Ery had always been down the middle lane of the whole situation.

This has led to Ery feeling very isolated in themselves at a time of extreme vulnerability. Gaining a consciousness and the feelings along with it has been hard on Ery. Individuality has not ever set well with the woman. And Ery has often gone back and forth between debating their need to live, and their own fear of death and what that might bring. They recognizes that fear in general is a strong emotion for a supposedly emotionless being, but They also can't help themselves.

Because of the confusion in themselves, Ery has retreated inside. They do theirbest not to let themselves feel too many feelings, as that's not what they're supposed to feel. Ery can come off as aloof, even cold and uncompassionate, to people they meet. Especially for the first time. They try to show as little emotion as they can to others. This can also lead them to be easily annoyed with people. Particularly people who try to engage them overly much. They don't enjoy being forced to show emotion, so their coldness can double down and they can almost become cruel if pushed too hard.

However, in recent years their patience has been extended some.

Raising a child has changed Ery significantly. On the surface, they still try to display the same woman. Someone who's too removed from live to be bothered. However, small things have changed more evidently. Their cruelty is less sharp, Their annoyance longer to come. They seems to have more patience, or their annoyance can seem mild at times. They're a little easier to get along.

Deeper down, Baby has made Ery more sympathetic to humans. This sympathy had slowly developed over years as they witnessed the horrors the Eryfel inflicted on the world. Individuality brought with it fear and pain. And Ery felt that fear and pain humans felt. Baby only deepened those feelings. Ery experienced fear of the world they might leave behind to their child. Of the danger that might come for her. And when Baby suffered, Ery truly learned what it was to suffer herself.

Ery has learned more compassion towards others. Despite her visible annoyance, Ery can feel deeply for people under it all. She might resist helping, but ultimately will always try to do what they can to help. Especially humans. Ery feels guilt over her part in the destruction of humanity. And that guilt leads Ery to train Baby to become the potential savior.

SAMPLE:
ONE
TWO

Ery watched as the sun set. Night was soon to come. They hated the night.

The caravan was slowly setting up camp for the evening. Ery did her best to pretend they couldn't notice what was going on, but a man approached her. He asked them for their help, and Ery rolled their eyes. The man waited, a little more awkwardly, then quietly disappeared back to his work.

Ery sighed as she sat on the tree stump. She kicked off her shoe and ran her toes through grass. It had been years since she'd seen grass. It was strange, but she never expected to miss something so nice. This world didn't know how lucky it was for even this patch of it. They dug into it for spikes to keep the caravan still and stable. And Ery felt herself ache at the thought of ruining the earth.

But that was just sentiment. A feeling Ery also hated in themselves.

With another sigh, Ery slipped wiped the dirt from their foot against their other leg, then slid their shoe back on. They rose from the stump and turned to join the crew in their work.

INVENTORY: The clothes on her back, a dagger, a bow and arrow, and a grimoire of spells she currently can't use.

NOTES: Ery's pronouns are they/them and she/her, so I do fluctuate between the two sometimes but they wouldn't mind being identified either way.

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-03-30 21:14 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

groundrules - 2021-04-06 12:13 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Rin
CONTACT:

chatvert

CHARACTER: Rachel "Honey Badger" Silva
CANON: Original Character
CANON POINT: After stabbing her friend/co-hero Umbra (at her request) with an obsidian knife to rid her of the Curse of Tiamat and running away to avoid the blowback

BACKGROUND: Rachel Silva looks like any other down-and-dirty delinquent teen you could find smoking behind the school between classes in Halcyon High, and you'd almost be right.

People have always said Rach has a hard head, metaphorically and literally, and well, wasn't her doctor surprised during a checkup to find her having developed bones so thick and dense that they had to recalibrate the x-ray five times to be sure that they were seeing them correctly. (They were.) So it's probably a little unfair that she does roller derby. She'd always been rowdy, a bullied child before this little mutation kicked in, and once she realized that there were essentially no physical consequences for her actions aside from bumps and bruises, instead of getting revenge on her bullies she went out and started fighting crime after school as a vigilante. Who was going to stop her? Hence, Honey Badger - because she just did not care.

This mutation of the pituitary gland wasn't just by chance, however. Her father, a scientist for HexaDyne, had taken some military-grade serum home and started putting some of it in his little girl's food, day by day, for years, using her as a guinea pig for repeated long-term exposure. And she got slowly bigger, slowly stronger, and slowly harder to hurt. One morning, she saw her dad putting something in her orange juice. He hemmed and hawed and hedged and said it was a vitamin supplement. But it was too late; she was big, but she wasn't dumb, and suddenly a lot of things that had never added up - like all of those doctor visits when she'd been perfectly healthy - made painful sense. And she clocked her dad hard enough to send him flying into the kitchen cabinets and breaking the dishes.

After that, Rachel didn't stay for long in one place aside from being with the little ragtag team of heroes she allied with, until she ran away from them, too, thinking she was a monster and that the team would agree. School was out of the question. The team had given her at least a little bit of stability, even if it had been a weird kind of stability, but now that's over and done with, and she's accepted her lonely existence, even though she doesn't like it. She doesn't know if her dad is alive and she pretends not to care, but she knows HexaDyne's not going to let their lab rat escape that easy. She also doesn't know that her former teammates and friends are looking for her, because they care about her and are worried she's going to get hurt...or worse, fall into HexaDyne's clutches.

ABILITIES | POWERS: Rachel is extremely strong and extremely sturdy. She heals at about three times the speed of a normal human being. She also taught herself parkour, how to pick locks, and whatever an eleventh-grade education and a quarter'll get ya these days. Her best class was always physics.

PERSONALITY: Rachel pretends that she doesn't care about things, but she cares about one thing: sticking up for the little guy. So she'll get in a knock-down drag-out fight with a villain just to be sure that someone who can't take the lumps like she can might get hurt. She acts tough, and for the most part, she is. She doesn't let little things bother her, but she's always more than ready to fight, especially if there's something in it for her. (Is it cheating to get in a fight for money if you have super-strength and super-durability? Probably. Does she care? No.)

She's contrary and rebellious, often for no reason. Sometimes, she just likes arguing. Catch her on a good day, and you'll get puns. Catch her on a bad day, and you'll get acid-tongued sarcasm. It's not only her bones that are hard to break. Much of it is a shell built up to keep herself from getting hurt. If you manage to get close to her, you'll find someone who's fiercely loyal and will fight for you and protect you until she can't fight anymore.

Rachel is like a wandering ronin, but with fists instead of a sword. She considers herself to be noble, while also thinking of herself as a monster. Her life is a constant battle between who she thinks she is and who she knows she is - the super-soldier and the superhero. She never wanted to be what her dad tried to turn her into.

But for all of that, she's still a teenager. She wants to do dumb things with friends and turn in her homework late and skip school, and she'll never forgive her father for taking that away from her. She wants friends, even though she decided to keep herself away from most people because she hates what she was turned into and the decision she was forced to make to save her friend Umbra from the Curse of Tiamat. Umbra had trusted her to do what needed to be done, so she's worried that her friend may have correctly identified her as a killer. She's desperately lonely, but she'd never, ever, ever admit it.

SAMPLE: Meme from Dec 2020

INVENTORY: A backpack containing a pack of cigarettes, a Leatherman multi-tool, a lighter, a pair of quad roller skates, a small journal with pen, a plush honey badger (a gift from her hero team), and a small, well-loved stuffed unicorn.

NOTES: None!

(no subject)

groundrules - 2021-03-31 20:23 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

thehoneybadger - 2021-04-01 01:46 (UTC) - Expand

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-04-01 12:07 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Juu
CONTACT: vilani@plurk

CHARACTER: Mina Ashido
CANON: My hero Academia
CANON POINT: End of season 4

BACKGROUND: Wikia

ABILITIES | POWERS: Mina comes from a world where most humans are born with superhuman abilities - Quirks - and she too has one! She is able to produce acid from her skin, and she can control it's viscosity as well corrosiveness; the more she uses it, more her skin loses its natural resistance to it. The reason why she has pink skin is due to it being resistant to the acid. Surprisingly, she is one of the best girls in her class when it comes to technique and power, due to her athleticism, reflexes, physical abilities a well as confidence, and she is able to apply her quirk to many diverse situations.

Apart from that, Mina is an excellent dancer, and seems to be specially good at break-dancing. She is also a very good dance teacher. Due to her rigorous training, her physical abilities are better what would be normal. She also has basic knowledge on first aid.

PERSONALITY:
Mina Ashido is a girl that hails from a world where humans are born with superpowers ("Quirks") and heroes exist everywhere. People wish to be Superheroes, for it brings a lot of nice perks, but they are also raised to believe being a Hero and defending people is the best thing you can be. Mina too was born with a Quirk, and she too wishes to be a Hero to protect and help others. Just like it happens with other characters from this canon, Mina's quirk sort of shaped her personality a bit. She's able to produce acid and that, not only it's a strong power, but also very flashy, thus Mina is too the flashy sort of person.

She is very outgoing, optimistic, friendly and extrovert, and since always she has been a straight-forward and confident person, which made her very popular among other people her age. She is incredibly cheerful and most of the time seen with a smile, and she is very excitable and hardly holds back showing her emotions. Mina is an extremely positive person, which is considered a very good trait for a future hero.

It's no wonder people like her. She is very caring towards her friends, often displaying a very laid-back way of dealing with them, but keeping in mind things they enjoy too; when Mineta was distraught he wouldn't be able to participate in the class' musical number, Mina immediately suggested a way to give him some spotlight. This type of personality even allows her to turn foes into friends, but also gives her a certain confidence not many would have. She is courageous, and will stand up against bullies and for others without much of a thought, stepping in to protect those who need it even when she might be scared or even when her life might be on the line. In the end, she is a natural hero.

A girl her age (with this type of personality) will be excited about more girly things too. She loves romance and even though she might not always be right (or she might be a bit too curious about other people's romantic lives), she doesn't hold back when it comes to making assumptions and talking about them out loud. She enjoys cute things and naturally love is cute too. She will get very excited about the things she likes and enjoys, and sometimes she must be reminded to tone it down a little. However, Mina tries not to be too pushy and will apologize if she's in the wrong or when she goes too far, willing to accept those situations without feeling like her pride was hurt. In fact, she is capable of apologizing for her mistakes regardless of the situation, as long she is made aware of them (or she realizes them herself).

Sadly, she isn't great at her studies, being one with the worst grades in her class (the is at the bottom two, yeah); she goofily laughs about it, which she does simply because she is no good at this sort of thing and she knows that. But deep down, it does make her anxious and frustrated, which is why she readily accepted help from Momo. If Mina has the proper tutoring, she will show dedication and will even manage to pass her exams (though she will never be the best). Still, Mina is often viewed as an airhead and may get too excited or too distracted by less important things; she is a bit too impulsive in all of her excitement and doesn't take a moment to think harder about what is happening as shown during her exam.

However, where she is lacking in intelligence, Mina makes up for with her physical capabilities and is one of the most athletic girls in her class. She is also efficient when using her quirk despite still learning to fully control it, and her technique is pretty good; that means she knows how to use her quirk effectively within its limits, and she knows how to work around those limits without going beyond them. In other words, she is very natural with her powers and knows them very well, which is hard for people who are still learning.

To aid her, she is also an amazing dancer, which shows she has great control over her body. And those dance skills came to her aid more than once! Mina is the type of person who would rather not be too confrontational, and if needed, she will try to solve situations with some "out of the box" reasoning, such as getting everyone to breakdance, for example. Still related to her dancing skills, Mina is also a very good teacher, capable of turning even the most awkward person into a skillful dancer. She can be a bit bossy when taking the role of the teacher, but it comes to show how seriously Mina takes that hobby of hers, as it makes her so happy.

And finally, Mina is flashy. Her appearance, not just due to her quirk, but also the way she physically shows herself to others: Mina uses bright colors, unafraid to be seen, she stands proudly, unafraid to be noticed, and she speaks loud and clear, unfair to be heard.

SAMPLE: I play a dumbass ; Such a cute dumbass tho )=

INVENTORY: n/a
NOTES: n/a

(no subject)

groundrules - 2021-03-31 23:17 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

pinkxeno - 2021-03-31 23:32 (UTC) - Expand

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-04-01 00:07 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

pinkxeno - 2021-04-01 10:32 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

groundrules - 2021-04-01 10:41 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: jesse
CONTACT:

cherto

CHARACTER: Merrill
CANON: Dragon Age/Dragon Age 2
CANON POINT: Dragon Age 2: (Act 3 - after A Talking To)

BACKGROUND: "The past is important, to you and to all of us. We must know it to move forward."

A lot has happened. In summary:

Merrill started out in a different Elven clan, but was given to the Sabrae clan in order to be Keeper Marethari's First, which is a very honored, though somewhat solitary position that could eventually lead to her being Keeper. She was raised with a different education than others in the clan, and so was not overly socialized even before she began blood magic. She did have two friends, however: Mahariel and Tamlen. But the discovery of an Eluvian mirror was their undoing, causing Tamlen to disappear and a dying Mahariel taken by the Grey Wardens (eventually becoming the Hero of Ferelden). After the incident, Merrill's world view shifted a little, focusing completely on what she saw as a symbol of hope for her clan rather than a dark taint. She decided to devote herself to repairing the mirror, believing it's ancient secrets could be the key to her people's heritage.

It's in trying to repair it that she finds help from a Pride demon trapped atop Sundermount, and learns the secrets of blood magic. Already having been isolated from those of her clan, this only made them actively shun her, especially with Marethari's open disapproval. It isn't long after that Merrill decides to leave and join Hawke (The Champion of Kirkwall) and his party in the hopes that their travels will also line up with hers.

After three years, she tells Hawke that she needs a special dagger from Marethari that will help repair the mirror, and goes to retrieve it from her. She sends the party on quest, and there Pol, a member of the clan, runs when he sees Merrill and right into the jaws of the monster they were sent to kill. They're too late, and after that Merrill learns that Marethari herself had been warning the entire clan that Merrill was a danger to them. Shocked and hurt, she still demands the dagger, but it's given to Hawke to make the call, who decides not to give it to Merrill. Betrayed by those she thought closest to her, Merrill locks herself away in her house for a short time, arguing with Hawke whenever he comes near, though eventually they make some amends.

Three years after that, it's just as Merrill is realizing she needs to talk once more to the demon who taught her blood magic, that she's brought here.

ABILITIES | POWERS: "Magic can't be made safe and it can't be destroyed. Fear makes men more dangerous than magic ever could."

Merrill is a blood mage, meaning she can use her own blood or that of others as a resource pool instead of mana. While her blood magic is activated, she isn't able to be healed by conventional means, but she causes serious damage. She's able to corrupt or rend the blood from within others, no matter what armor they're wearing, and she can even enslave someone to fight at her side. Enemies without blood are immune, of course.

Because of her special case, Merrill also has access to the Dalish Pariah specialization, which uses both her blood magic and nature magic, with Outcast activated. Her other talent trees include: Elemental, Primal, with only a few skills in Spirit, Arcane, and Entropy. She's also an herbalist, meaning she can create poultices, balms and potions if she can access the right ingredients.

PERSONALITY: When Hawke first meets Merrill, she appears as a naive and perhaps overly talkative elf, and this isn't generally off. But she's also later seen to be wise and wary; a paradox. She's seen as odd even by her own clan, but that may have to do with her being First to the Keeper, or most likely with her dangerous "hobbies" - blood magic and restoring an ancient, evil mirror called the Eluvian. For these reasons, Merrill decides to follow Hawke and temporarily leave her clan. At least she wants it to be temporary.

"My clan is all I ever cared about! Everything I did, I did for them!"

First and foremost, Merrill's priority is her clan, even if they don't necessarily see it that way. She is devoted to them, despite admitting she's been close to very few of them; maybe less than a handful. But her love is unique, and encompasses not just the clan and its Keeper, but her ancestors and the heritage they carried. Her love is that of a dreamer's - hope for what could be and obsession with what once was. She isn't fond of ignorance or the bigotry that stems from it, and knowing of Tevinter and the state of Kirkwall's alienage only fuels her desire further for knowledge and power.

"Isabela said the next time we came here she would teach me to do something called 'body shots'."

While Merrill might know everything when it comes to elvhen history and myth, she starts out as utterly clueless when it comes to humans and their customs. It's her first time ever away from her clans, and she's eager to know everything. She's excitable at the drop of a hat, and isn't shy when it comes to asking questions or voicing ridiculous assumptions or comments regarding everything she sees, hears, feels, or even smells. Likewise, Merrill's always been more than happy to answer questions about herself, even by people who judge her choices. After six years in the city, Merrill does begin to understand sarcasm and joking a little better, even sharing her own (sometimes dark) sense of humor as she's grown more comfortable with the group - at least, most of them. Though she'll jest at Fenris or Anders occasionally, and even Hawke, their constant judgments and hypocrisy still leave her feeling wary and scared at times.

"May the Creators have mercy on you! I certainly won't!"

Over time with life in the city and among her friends, she also grows a backbone, much more willing to defend herself and less willing to apologize, even to Hawke, as she has been constantly spurned by his reluctance to help mages, and much more willing to verbally bitchslap or even try to shun those who openly oppose her way of life (see: everyone). She has always been stubborn, however, openly defying the wishes of Keeper Marethari and her entire clan for what she thought best for them. She's always been quite willing to physically smack down anyone who attacks her or friends, as well, not reluctant to kill in a world where it's kill-or-be-killed.

"My clan didn't believe in me. If you don't believe in me either, I won't mind."

In her own way, though, Merrill still remains somewhat dense and bumbly when it comes to innuendo and social interaction, as she never really stops isolating herself from strangers whether she's with her clan or in Kirkwall. She rambles, talks about griffons and wishing to fly, and then asks if she 'missed something' when returning to the original topic at hand. Sometimes it might make her seem flighty or out of focus, but it can actually lead to her tunnel vision. As she is so good at dreaming (at least in the beginning), that's why all her real attention is on the Eluvian and what it could lead to for her and the clan. Maybe she would be loved, and the elvhen could be proud of their heritage once again, and maybe even find a place in the world. She doesn't dream small, that's for certain, and because she dreams so high and pushes her curiosities to the next level again and again, this aspect helps doom her clan rather than help them.

"All spirits are dangerous. I understood that. I'm sorry that you didn't."

And despite time and constant defeat and tragedy eventually shattering Merrill's rose-colored glasses, she has always been aware of the dangers. When Merrill made a deal with a demon (spirit) to learn blood magic and of how to repair the mirror, she was more than aware that the demon could likely turn on her at any given moment if she wasn't extremely careful. Every time she uses blood magic she's aware of the danger to herself and others, but always claims to be in control and aware, and in her opinion this is enough. Everyone telling her that her fight is a lost cause only angers her, and she is quick to point out their own hypocrisies or simply end it with saying she knows what she's doing. She thinks Anders is the naïve one to separate spirits and demons like they're book titles to be organized; to think a 'Justice spirit' is any more trustworthy than a 'Pride demon'. She is sad when he learns his harsh lesson, though, not wanting him to suffer despite his treatment of her. Though Merrill slowly grows more bitter and unsure of her place in the world, and now understands how tragic things can go no matter the intent, she still cares deeply for the few friends she's made; even the ones who don't call her friend back and treat her poorly. She may not feel like any of them will have her back, but she'll still have theirs.

"It's not all bad Varric, think of the stories you'll be able to tell later."

That isn't the only thing that endures, but also Merrill's attempt to appear cheerful and giddy whenever there's opportunity. When her nerves are so jumbled that her stomach is in knots and her feet feel like jelly, Merrill tries even harder to remember why she fights and channels some level of encouragement for her friends. She hates for them to worry after her, not wanting to feel like a burden, and she doesn't want to be thought of as someone who drags the party down. She wants to lift them up, and in doing so she can feel useful and thus like she has a place to belong. Other times, it really is her curiosity or fantasies getting the best of her, and these thoughts have no filter, much to her companion's amusement or irritation (and oftentimes confusion).

SAMPLE: [ Merrill has had a bit of time to absorb most of what she's been told and witnessed, but she's still wary and confused to the point of uncharacteristic silence for the first stretch of the journey. The thick cloud of sedation slows down her movements as she gazes across the water in the direction of the prison she had just been freed from. She could have sworn that some kind of spirit had tried communicating with her during the escape, but she had been chained to somebody else and they had no time or allowance for her drugged curiosities whilst they stumbled their way out and to the bridge. It's a long walk, and she often forgets she's still attached to someone, the clink a jerking reminder any time she tries to wander a bit too far off towards something or someone interesting looking. That counts as just about everything.

Any native she had seen until now looked very different from her, which shouldn't be unusual even in Thedas, but many here seem to be re-animated via Blood Magic. Other than that, it's not that different from Kirkwall's slums, right...? All right, it's incredibly different, but to them she must seem the strange one. She does indeed stand out in her own awkward way: a petite elf with elaborate tattoos on a face holding large green eyes that glint in shadows like a cat's. She really does seem to be trying to stay out of everybody's way, but a proper cloak might do her some good. If only she was any good at thinking in terms of stealth, but even stone-cold sober it's her worst skill. She certainly wasn't like the hunters of her clan.

It isn't until she's nearly knocked over by bumping into her chained partner again when some form of alertness draws out a yelp from Merrill. Nearly twisting an ankle is enough to make her actually remember she's still attached to somebody, and they don't seem altogether pleased with her continued derailment of their goal to get the chain broken. ]

I'm so sorry! I just— [ Her free hand grasps for the magical charm she was given, dimly wondering even in this fog that she might be able to re-purpose it... ] Where are we going, again? Actually, where are we, again? I still don't...really understand what that person was going on about. I mean, I understood them, because of this! [ A pendant wriggle. ] But I don't...understand. Is this...Tevinter? What he said didn't really sound like Tevinter. This is nothing like what I've heard. Well, except for the blood magic and slavery. I suppose it might be like what I've heard, but I thought it would look...fancier?

[ Already forgetting (again) that she's still attached to the very person she's talking to, Merrill turns to head back towards the bridge that leads to the prison (and what she's sure was a Spirit), the clink once again yanking her backwards and this time right onto her tiny bum...likely taking her unwitting accomplice with her. Another apology erupts from the mess of limbs. ]

Sorry! So sorry!

INVENTORY:
→ dirty clothes + chainmail bits
→ a mostly depleted ball of twine
→ herbal satchel with healing herbs
→ a few lyrium potions
→ some dried/salted meat and a stale honey cake
→ a seashell
→ a small journal filled with her notes and sketches
→ her big honkin' staff (magic)
→ a dagger (not magic)

NOTES: She might become mildly obsessed with any unfamiliar source of magic, especially if there are amulets/symbols or distinctly mirror-looking objects in the world. Good thing she's no rogue.

Edited 2021-04-02 02:37 (UTC)

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-04-02 17:03 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Lone Sheep (aka Sheep)
CONTACT: PM this account or via plurk

lonesheep

CHARACTER: Number Five Hargreeves
CANON: The Umbrella Academy (Netflix version)
CANON POINT: Near the end of Season 2, just before their last time jump

BACKGROUND:

The premise:
Five comes from a fun universe where 40-some-odd children were born all over the world at the exact same moment with a variety of special abilities. One eccentric billionaire named Sir Reginald Hargreeves decided to adopt seven of them to assemble his own superhero group: the Umbrella Academy. Theoretically, he assembled them to save the world, and he trained them relentlessly for that one purpose. Instead of giving the children names, they were given numbers, thus Number Five.

Mishaps of time travel:
Just at the start of their fame as a superhero crime-fighting family, Five's ambitions got the best of him. Being overconfident that he could push his abilities and travel through time, he soon found that he only knew how to go one way. That first test led him to be trapped in a post-apocalyptic future with a handful of dead siblings and no human contact for 45 years. He lived like a scavenger to survive in the wasteland, with his only company developing into a longstanding romance with a mannequin that he named Dolores. Convinced he was the last living person on earth, he had nothing else to occupy him except finding a way back—the answer buried in complicated mental equations he could never quite solve. While it might have driven him mad, he miraculously never gave up or stopped trying. Which is the definition of insanity anyway, so that checks out.

Career Assassin:
Eventually his existence in this desolate timeline caught the attention of the Temps Commission, an organization that helps to maintain order in the timeline and eliminates any threats that would keep what's supposed to happen from happening. They do this specifically through the use of time traveling briefcases and monitoring the timeline, then sending agents to kill off any outliers. Rather than eliminate Five, presumably they saw potential and offered him a job.

Originally he took the line of work out of desperation, but as he honed his natural abilities it wasn't long until they turned him into a cold-blooded killer. He was their most lethal assassin, and quickly became deeply admired in the organization. But his old obsession never died. He couldn't give up his desire to get back to his original timeline to prevent the apocalypse and save his family, and once he thought he finally worked out a solution, he immediately defected. Of course in doing so he broke some major rules, not to mention his contract, and not long after a hit went out for his life. (They get over it eventually. Sort of.)

The man in a boy's body:
When Five managed his breakthrough of how to go backwards in time, his calculations were slightly off. He succeeded, but when he met his living siblings in 2019, the now-58 year old man regressed physically to his 13 year old body. For added hilarity, becoming roughly the age he was when he first disappeared from the Umbrella Academy. He retained his memories and mental age, but it eluded him how to return to his fully-grown self. Even more awkward was that in 2019 he was physically 17 years younger than his brothers and sisters, who were equally shocked to see him alive.

All that became secondary to the news he brought. In what turns into a routine for him, Five had to break the prophecy of the end of the world. And in another common theme, he had apparently only given himself eight days before it was supposed to happen. Perhaps it was intentional that it happened to coincide with the sudden death of their father, which had the siblings gathered for the first time in years. Five then needed to force his estranged siblings to help find what caused the apocalypse so they could do what they were always supposed to and save the world. (Which should have been super easy, barely an inconvenience.)

Why have one Apocalypse when you can have two?:
Long story sort, they fail to stop the world from ending. A series of events leads to one of their own siblings shattering the moon and sending craters hurtling towards earth and wiping it out. Minutes before their untimely deaths, Five gathers his siblings and uses his power once more to attempt to go back in time. And once more his calculations are off. They wind up scattered years apart from each other in the 1960's, and what's more, their disruption in the timeline triggers yet another apocalypse. Since Five has a knack for timing these things, he travels to moments before a nuclear bomb goes off.

Five manages to be saved by his friendly ex-agent, who is killed shortly after sending him back mere days earlier. Yet again he has to find his siblings, make some unfortunate connections with the Commission he really wanted to avoid, and save the world. It's all pretty stressful for the guy.

A continued history (to sidestep one or two spoilers) can be found on the TUA wiki. I didn't even get into the fact that his mother is a Stepford robot and was also partially raised by a talking chimpanzee, but I'm keeping this to relevant history only.

ABILITIES | POWERS: Five has the ability to manipulate time and space... no really, stay with me.

Spacial Jumping/Teleportation: This is the ability you'll see Five use most often, to do everything from stealth and murder to mundane things like reaching for something on a high shelf. (He is in a much shorter body than he's used to.) According to him, that skill is the primary reason he was the best assassin the Commission ever had. The act of teleporting usually is tied to movement, as Five has to work up momentum to do a spacial jump, and continues that movement when he reappears.

Of course it has limits. He usually teleports relatively short distances, but he's also seen going through walls and buildings with relative ease. For any longer destination, cars are a more useful mode of transportation for him. And though his ego may say otherwise, doing too many jumps in a row is physically exhausting for him, and he can be worn down to the point where his powers fail him.

Time Travel: It seems logical that someone who could manipulate space could also manipulate time, but this ability is a lot more volatile. It's far easier to move forward in time, but he has little control as to how far he would jump. It took decades for him to learn how to undo his mistake of taking too great of a leap (and even when he managed to go back, there was that pesky age-miscalculation). By the end of the second season, Five has begun to attempt going back in shorter jumps. 'Seconds instead of decades.' As it stands, he hasn't mastered time travel and the rumors of its negative effects on his mind might be warranted.

In both spacial and time travel, Five is able to take others with him. Teleporting just one or two people short distances seems to take no more effort than doing it himself. Actual attempts to take others back in time has proven to be extremely unpredictable with mostly devastating consequences. Even if this ability is limited for him in the game, he wouldn't think to use it for more than a few seconds out of fear of what he could trigger.

Non-Super Abilities: Five is an aforementioned master assassin and has been trained in combat since childhood. Combined with his spacial jumping, he can be unfair in a fight. He's highly intelligent and speaks several languages, quick thinking in tense situations, and he's an excellent tactician. He is also very aware of these things and likes to remind people. Add to that the ability to be kind of a jerk.

PERSONALITY: Since Five was young, the first time, he's always had a healthy ego. Not one of the Hargreeves children weren't somewhat traumatized from their abusive adoptive father, and Five got a share of his issues from him. While they received most of their parental love from a robot (oh hey I am going to bring her up after all), their father only saw them for their powers and how far he could push them. Throughout his early years, the Hargreeves children were conditioned to be perfect superhuman soldiers and became relative celebrities in their time. Five never had a chance. He did, and does, think he's better than the rest of his siblings and he seemed to be the one who really wanted to reach the limits of his extraordinary abilities, even beyond what his father was comfortable with. His arrogance is often his downfall, but because he's had some successes to counter the massive failures, he never quite shakes it.

It should be mentioned that Sir Reginald himself was never particularly impressed with Five. While there have been some major changes from the comics to the series, his notes on his children in the original fits with what we've seen, and included the line: '(Five) disappeared several days ago. No great loss.' Though perhaps he was simply annoyed that he disobeyed him in his pursuit of time travel and believed he got what was coming to him. Five himself mentions to his brother that he would think of his father daily and imagine what he would say. "I told you so."

Surprisingly, Five seems to have become the most similar of the children to his father, possibly growing even more like him after the decades he spent in isolation. If anything, Five grew to be even less tolerant and more disassociated with humanity over time. Not to mention having dealt with his share of PTSD from finding all of his family dead, among other things. As mentioned, his longest relationship was with a mannequin, so it's fair to say his social skills are stunted with just an edge of insanity.

Holding any long conversation shows that he doesn't play at a very convincing 13 year old. Five often feels like the old man who is far more wise and mature than most he encounters. No one else knows him well enough, or has seen the things he's seen and done, so of course none of them could really understand the big picture. Considering the extreme pressure he puts on himself to literally save all of humanity, he's almost always wound so tight that he can snap at any moment. He struggles to empathize with people who aren't outwardly useful and he's deeply untrusting to the point of paranoia. He's sarcastic and dismissive, and endlessly frustrated when he isn't taken completely seriously because of how he looks.

At the same time, he's fiercely loyal to his family, and would give up anything to spare their lives even if it meant dooming his. Despite all outward appearances—his constant mocking, occasional threats, and seeming to have no qualms with hurting them or seeing them hurt—they're all that's left in the world that matters to him. The reoccurring storyline of having to stop various apocalypses is driven by his desire to keep his family alive. Or reverse time to bring them back from the dead, as the case may be. (Which is a little ironic, considering that he and his siblings are the exact reason the world keeps ending in spectacular fashion. But that's besides the point.) Without his family around, he's likely to spiral further into his psychopathic tendencies. He was so close to fixing... everything.

As an assassin, he didn't have any remorse for taking sometimes innocent lives, even when confronted afterwards. To him it was just a job, and he mostly goes by a 'means to an end' philosophy. He doesn't particularly like killing, at one point saying he was done with it after he brutally assassinated a room of a dozen board members in another gamble to right the timeline, but that comes across as simply being tired of the monotony of the Commission rather than feeling any sort of guilt for what he did.

A side effect of his superiority complex, naturally, is that it's difficult for him to rely on others. He knows how ruthless he is to a point of pride, and he's aware that there's little he won't do to complete his mission. And while it would be easy to call him cynical, he has an obsessive mind that never quite accepts defeat. No matter the situation, he's going to find the solution, and be damned if anyone is going to stand in his way.

SAMPLE: Five is brand new, so these are fresh samples. Pseudo-S1-canon, pseudo-game.

First sample:
Five asked for so little. He really did. Enough silence to work out his next move, and then the backup plan for when some unforeseen event screwed that up, then another in case that one went to shit as it always seemed to do. Where would he be without last resorts? It's a wonder he doesn't start with them. 58 years of waiting, imagining how this would go, and now he found himself begging for solitude just so he could put the pieces back together.

So that was it, really. Silence and coffee. Coffee would help to tamp down any homicidal rage he was currently feeling the longer he had to listen to the noise outside while he was busy working on a particularly complex equation. But no, they're family. And yet everyone and everything is determined to work against him. Including, it seemed, a complete lack of caffeine in this entire mansion. Maybe the fact that his father hated it made the craving stronger. Somewhere inside him was still that rebellious youth after all. As much as he'd like to come back after he'd satisfied his urge, he wasn't done taking inventory.

Heaving an irritated sigh, he blinked into his father's old office. He'd already been through here, but with so little to go on, he thought it was worth a second look. Not that he even knew what he was looking for, but there was something satisfying about pacing around somewhere they were always forbidden to go. Five paced the length of it until he came to a well-worn book sitting among some other dusty volumes scattered around a table. He recognized it instantly. Homer's Odyssey. On a whim, he pulled it out and traced his hand over the cover. Why his father still kept it handy all these years later is the mystery he might never solve. He already knew it by heart, but he flipped through the pages anyway, for nostalgia's sake.

To be honest, Five didn't resent their education as much as some of siblings. Reading the Ancient Greek brought back the rare fond memories of their rigorous upbringing. He had a fleeting thought to share this with the others, maybe ask if they still know it as well as he did. But the thought was just that, fleeting. He'd been too long removed to think he still knew them as well as he used to. And besides that, they really didn't have the time to go down memory lane.

Just before he shrugged off the notion and continued on to more productive matters at hand, a passage caught his eye. “τέτλαθι δή, κραδίη: καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο ποτ᾽ ἔτλης. [ Be patient, my heart: for you have endured things worse than this before.” ]

He scoffed and looked down at the empty office chair. Even now he could imagine the expression on the old man's face. Perfectly mocking, unimpressed that he was still wasting his time. "You've got some nerve asking me to be patient."

The noise he'd heard before got closer, and he rolled his eyes as the door opened. So little, and yet, it was always too much.

"Five, is that-", but he was already gone in a glimmer of blue light. The book left pointedly in the waste bin.

--
Second sample:
[ Five taps his foot on the ground, counting the seconds as tried again to come to terms with one simple fact: he had time. Wherever he is trapped now, and he is most definitely trapped, there's no looming doomsday hanging over his head. Which gives him the luxury of finding out exactly what went wrong. Who was left to betray him one final time. And when he found them he'd have to consider how much restraint he was willing to give before he cut them in half. Considering who he already knows has a stubborn penchant for skirting the grave, he half expects this to be another elaborate plan to hire him to murder... whoever. Herb, probably. Which he's really not in the mood for; he liked the guy.

When a shadow passes over him, he jerks his head up, not quite hiding the malice in his smile. ]

A cup of coffee, thanks. [ The other person just blinked, as if he'd been speaking a language he didn't understand. Or maybe he wondered if Five wasn't aware that he wasn't currently sitting at a diner waiting to be served, given that he even knows what a diner is in whatever time he's in. His mouth twitches and his eyes narrow by degrees as he studies the other and tries to decide just how much of a hand he had to play in his kidnapping. While he doesn't recognize the face, he's fully aware that it could have been any one of them.

Switching tactics, he swallows his pride and puts on the best 'lost little boy' act he can muster while his blood is still boiling. ] I'm afraid I can't find my family. Will you help me?

INVENTORY:
- Academy School Uniform (/whispers that's all he needs)
- One (1) defunct Temps Commission Briefcase™ (only thing inside is a broken portable time travel machine that can do nothing, but he was holding it at his canon point so this is just to rub it in Five's face... because I'm a super nice person)

NOTES: No accommodations will be necessary. (I mean, beyond the obvious 'looks like he's 13' thing that might make him less welcome at some establishments. I'm sure he'll find ways to work around it.)

APPLICATION RECEIVED

groundrules - 2021-04-02 12:01 (UTC) - Expand

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-04-02 17:23 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

somebadnews - 2021-04-02 19:56 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Val
CONTACT:

honeyfoot

CHARACTER: Catra
CANON: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
CANON POINT: Season 3, episode 3 Once Upon A Time in the Waste

BACKGROUND: hey hey wiki

ABILITIES | POWERS: Being a catgirl. This includes heightened strength (seriously she’s kind of absurdly strong), speed, agility and reflexes. She’s a formidable climber and basically one step below a gecko. Her sense of smell and hearing are very strong as well. Also, kitty’s got claws. Claws that can cut through steel if needed. Will occasionally walk/run on all fours.

When it comes to intellectual skills, Catra is an adept strategist, said to have increased the Horde’s productivity by a whopping 400% one time.

PERSONALITY: So, you know this meme? Yeah, that’s Catra. Okay, personality section done, everybody go home – I’m kidding, I’m kidding.

Catra is the enfant terrible of the show. She’s rude, she’s mean, and she’s not afraid to fight dirty. Why yes, she will absolutely pretend to be hurt so you underestimate her just to strike at the most opportune moment, and you’ll be like, damn you Catra. She will do anything to obtain power. For most of her life, she’s felt extremely powerless and now she’s of the opinion it’s her time to shine. Which means that she’s also a bit of a petty bully who enjoys beating others into submission, either verbally or physically, and likes to blame everyone else for her problems and take out her frustrations on the people or objects around her. On the flipside, she is an adept manipulator and not above even using someone’s affection for her to her advantage.

But it’s never quite so easy, is it? As you may perhaps have guessed, beneath the rough exterior, Catra hides a very tender heart. She’s been hurt many times in her life, having received her first death threat from her caregiver, Shadow Weaver, when she was but a small child; and it is safe to assume that that wasn’t the last time she received such treatment. Much of her behavior can also be explained by her dynamic with Adora, her best friend since early childhood (and also protagonist of the series, wouldn’t you know). Both of them were raised as child soldiers in the Horde, though it seems they have been given special attention by Shadow Weaver specifically. And, well, Adora was clearly the favorite, receiving preferential treatment and much less harsh punishment even when they were in trouble together. Naturally, this built resentment, as well as a kind of codependency with Adora. See, Adora, good-natured as she is, tried her best to stand up for Catra, though of course that didn’t exactly spare Catra from Shadow Weaver’s abuse. This means Catra grew up feeling incredibly powerless and dependent on Adora’s goodwill for survival. Add to that that the same dynamic replicated in their cadet group and you’ve got a storm coming.

Despite all this, Catra’s always retained a bit of a rebellious streak. She likes getting into all kinds of mischief if she feels she can at all get away with it – or, you know, she will just straight-up backtalk to and insult her superiors. She’s impulsive and mercurial, yet does not always voice her problems clearly, especially when it requires actual vulnerability of some sort. Because, oh, if there’s anything she hates, it’s being vulnerable. Y’know, showing her actual, real emotions. The squishy ones. Those are under lock and key, if she can at all help it. Which she cannot always, for she is, in a way, quite sensitive and actually quite desperate for connection, affection and approval. As the series goes on, she’s seen going to great lengths just to hear something even vaguely in the vicinity of “nice” from Shadow Weaver or Hordak, her parental figure and superior, respectively.

It’s not all negatives, though! For one thing, if Catra considers you a friend, she will be very loyal in her own way; such as when Adora wanted to go back to the Whispering Woods and Catra was immediately ready to go with her, no questions asked. Of course, Adora went alone and things backfired quite a bit. There are some moments where she does what she can to protect others without asking for anything in return, or even acknowledging it.

So the trouble is, Catra doesn’t want any friends. After losing her only friend to the other side of the war, she’s pretty much sworn off friendship altogether. Scorpia, who is first her superior officer but quickly becomes her loyal henchwoman, tries very hard, but Catra never quite lets her in. It becomes a strange dynamic, wherein Catra mostly uses Scorpia and her affection, but also sometimes seems like she wants to try being more genuine. Alas, those attempts are generally quickly squashed, because there’s always something to set Catra back and make her regress into her worst behaviors.

At the point I’m taking her from, she hasn’t quite hit rock bottom yet, but is steadily careening toward it. She’s been sent to the Crimson Waste, a place purported to mean certain death, but instead turned around and overtook the criminal gangs of the place. In a way, she’s having a great time! This will be short-lived, but for now, I’m deciding to have her enter the game on a high note.

And for added cuteness, she’s a catgirl with an unusually broad array of feline traits, such as purring, hissing and growling, grooming herself when upset, curling up at a loved person’s feet in bed, and absolutely loathing water.

SAMPLE: some choice meme threads for you~

INVENTORY:
- the clothes on her back (including a Cool Leather Jacket™)
- a snazzy whip

Edited (welp did not close the link tag properly) 2021-04-02 12:57 (UTC)

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-04-02 18:31 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Fyre
CONTACT:
[plurk]

muffyre
[discord] FFFyre[#]4083

CHARACTER: Schwarz Bruder
CANON: G Gundam
CANON POINT: Ep. 44, post-death

BACKGROUND: Gundam Wiki-chan is good civ.

ABILITIES | POWERS: I. I guess I should note that a lot of his abilities carry over to his Gundam because I don't know. G Gundam is just This Way........

• Physique: First off, I should note that he is literally an android made from the ridiculously versatile cells of a rogue evil Gundam, though apparently his cells aren't evil...? It's a mystery why he isn't evil but we're going to go with it. As such, his cells, outer shell and inner workings more or less inherited the properties of the Devil Gundam (yes, it's called that literally, see below for these properties). But also, he's like the amalgamation of these cells, a soul copy and an entirely different person, so certain parts of him still bleed and look human (most notably his head). It might be the outer layer and there's a layer of android cells under that, perhaps. Lots of guesswork here.

• Self-Regeneration, Self-Multiplication, Self-Evolution: All DG Cells (Devil Gundam cells, because we're creative here) are capable of these three properties -- essentially, he's able to self-heal to an extent, and presumably he could maybe make android copies of himself or something considering the actual Devil Gundam keeps making new heads and tails and whatnot... but he hasn't tried it. It's just one of those things. Self-evolution, or the ability to shounen digivolve into a stronger Gundam, is also an untapped resource for this guy as far as I can tell.

• German Ninja Skills: I'm serious, apparently it's German ninjutsu?? It's unconfirmed what the German fighter whose body he took over fought like, exacty, just that he was conveniently a masked fighter. Either way, Schwarz himself has demonstrated such abilities as disguising himself as an entirely different person or an inanimate object, substitution (i.e. substituting himself with an object when attacked), illusory shadow clones (you know Kage Bunshin no Jutsu? basically that), randomly standing on top of water geysers, phasing through steel walls, camouflaging himself into the landscape, throwing shuriken and kunai-equivalents, appearing out of people's shadows literally... It just keeps going. Apparently a lot of these carry over to his Gundam. I guess.

• Gundam Fighter & Martial Arts Skills: Schwarz is also capable of ridiculous martial arts things much like the rest of the Gundam Fighter cast -- powerful hits, jumping around on buildings, casually breaking through walls, moving faster than the eye can see if you're not a ridiculous Gundam martial artist, and so on and so forth. In other words, he's just as capable of taking opponents head-on as he is of subterfuge and sneaking around; his strength and force is likely helped by the fact that he's a literal android, but martial arts in G Gundam is just on a whole other level. Also he can use a state of mental serenity to make his attacks exponentially more powerful -- a big plot point was passing on this technique by demonstrating the cutting down of whole-ass trees with a rusty katana.

PERSONALITY: Schwarz is an exercise in hilarious contradictions: he's a ninja wearing a jester mask (and sometimes whole entire costume), he's a Gundam Fighter whose focus is on helping other people in the Gundam Fight, and he somehow manages to be an expert stoic and a professional circus showman at the same time. Many of these are born out of the necessity of his very specific circumstances, but also sometimes you've just gotta be a big damn ham while the world is trying to end.

The most important thing to know about Schwarz is that he's a clone. A copy! Maybe even... a shadow copy? He was created by the original Kyouji Kasshu to replace him using the body of the original German Gundam Fighter combined with cells of the Devil Gundam that was in the process of devouring OG Kyouji's free will; Kyouji wanted to rely on his double to protect his little brother Domon and the world where he couldn't, because he was kind of busy being biofuel for an evil mecha that wanted to destroy the world. As such, those two prongs make up Schwarz's primary operating motivations: protect and guide Domon through the Gundam Fight, and also ensure the Devil Gundam is thwarted and destroyed by any means necessary.

Who, then, is Schwarz Bruder? Is he simply a copy of Kyouji with the trappings of Germany's Gundam Fighter? Is he a person of his own? Or some strange mixture of all of the above? He specifies that while he is not Kyouji, he is his shadow, a complete copy of his soul in a sense. Those around him who knew Kyouji Kasshu experience an almost instinctive sense of familiarity with him. Perhaps Schwarz is indeed the essence of Kyouji -- with a few twists and tricks of his own.

For a good majority of the series, Schwarz's M.O. consists of popping up wherever Domon is and handing him advice that may be more or less cryptic, tools to train himself, actual teaching spars, or some combination of the above. He in fact supports the people around Domon as a sort of come-and-go mentor figure as well -- the Shuffle Alliance and Rain, for example -- but his main concern is with his little brother. He's one of those strict mentors who isn't afraid to call out their protégé for being ridiculous, or throw them into the fire if they really won't take advice, but at the end of the day he's still always there watching over them and willing to bail them out at the cost of his own life if necessary. He did this in the Guiana Highlands, risked his life again to reunite Domon and Rain during their final match, and finally sacrificed himself to ensure the destruction of the original Kyouji and Devil Gundam. Generally, he comes across as a wise and enlightened figure who can use such ridiculous techniques as total mental serenity AKA the clearest focus of the soul before imminent death and other such high-level tricks, and he forcefully passes all of these to Domon in order to equip him to take down the Gundam Fight and Devil Gundam both. This guardian role is all Kyouji; in fact, the lesson that finally made Domon recognize him -- something Schwarz himself initiated at the eleventh hour -- was a callback to the lesson Kyouji gave once upon a time: believe in others, and you've got nothing to fear.

Funnily enough, although he extols the virtues of teamwork and connection with others, Schwarz himself has a tendency to lone wolf it. Much of his time onscreen is spent as a masked fighter -- no one, not even his Gundam support crew or the nation whose Gundam Fighter he was impersonating, had any inkling that he wasn't who he seemed. He also apparently either inherited or expanded upon the concept of 'German ninjutsu' from his predecessor -- the pilot whose body he took over -- making him even more elusive and mysterious in all his dealings. A lot of this was out of necessity: he needed to help Domon, but because those running the Japanese Gundam Fighter program were all involved in the conspiracy and cover-up that had created the Devil Gundam and also destroyed the Kasshu family, Schwarz was forced to stay undercover for most of the Gundam Fight. He was also running his own clandestine investigation into the Devil Gundam on the side, refusing to stay passive for even a moment in his pursuit of his and Kyouji's goals. In his own words, it was extremely difficult for him to stand apart from his family, friends and fellow Gundam Fighters in some very real ways -- had it been his choice, he probably wouldn't have removed himself quite so much.

That being said, there were plentiful moments where he leaned into it. There are almost no instances of him entering a scene in a normal manner, whether it's just the pilot or also his Gundam: he disguises himself as other people, pops out of shadows and camouflage, appears suddenly in the middle of the road, stands on top of a ship mast in a lightning storm, you name it. This showmanship is both a strange contrast to his ninja status and a signature of the Gundam Fighter Schwarz; most Gundam Fighters are not subtle in the least, and in this sense he is no exception. It also has the bonus effect of making it challenging for anyone to track him or observe him in daily life, which meant it was easier for him to keep up his charade until such a time as he could start revealing his true identity.

At his core, Schwarz is a pretty benevolent person who devotes his all to his family and what he sees as his duty to guard the planet from the wrath of the Devil Gundam he helped create. He doesn't appear to hold any resentment or regret for the path he took or his own bizarre existence; he's a pragmatic guy who knows what he wants, and can sometimes be downright reckless in pursuit of his goals, because he also has very little to lose. He has a strong sense of justice to go with his sense of duty -- during the Gundam Fight he would keep an eye on opponents trying shady tricks (although the shadiest ones usually came from the people in charge, unfortunately) and do his best to either expose or forestall them. Most of these were still related to his own objectives, but a masked man can't be everywhere at once.

On the other side of the coin, although he spends a lot of time onscreen being serious in a silly costume, he also has moments of levity and moments where he's just the biggest ham known to mankind, on top of the fact that Kyouji is known to be both a warm person and someone who willingly teases those close to him -- but especially his little brother. Due to his role and the fact that he's only allowed to show his eyeballs and eyebrows to the world most of the time, Schwarz comes across as the more stoic of the two -- but post-Gundam Fight, post-the defeat of the Devil Gundam (he thinks) and post-having to completely conceal his identity for a long period of time, he has a little more room to quite possibly be his own person and expand more on life as an android clone. He might still spend some time in costume, and he certainly isn't retiring from the Gundam life here, but it sure will be a journey of some kind going forward.

SAMPLE:

[There are two things unusual about Schwarz Bruder's existence in this strange space between a freezing rock and a hard salt place:

1. It's entirely possible to track his trajectory from being a not-so-piping legionnary hot water bottle replacement, to a drunk-staggering rebel maybe-potato-sack piping up in an attempt to defend everyone's literal skin, to the current state of affairs. He isn't loud, but he sure is there, in the probably flesh. Terrible.

2. It's somehow impossible for him to account for himself, which hasn't happened since the last time he and Kyouji had too much quality time together, and he hadn't been looking to repeat that experience. In fact, it should have been entirely impossible to repeat anything, but the Devil Gundam throws a wrench in things even when you've entirely waltzed off the mortal coil, apparently.

None of that manages to show up in his demeanor, except for the most undignified drunk-staggering portion, because for the most part Schwarz always has the brilliant idea of showing up in a jester mask no matter the occasion -- and in this case it's a double protection against the cold, so who says these things can't be practical??

Granted, he's still reduced to the somehow muffled and downgraded use of his senses and skills otherwise; it's like suddenly being moved to a colony with much harsher gravity or perhaps being trapped underwater in subzero temperatures. Despite all this, Schwarz takes it upon himself to scout -- the existence of the undead is old-hat in some ways, although here they aren't made of the same cells and don't clink and clank their ponderous way through the caves. They still go down all the same if you take their head, and accordingly he spends much of his time flitting among the stalagmites, breaking some off to try to use as weapons, sniffing at the salt to see if it's safe for use, and seeing if he can balance on one this time or fall off again like an upturned turtle instead of the respectable ninja he is. Nobody saw that.]

Ahem. It'll be to our advantage to stay between the salt formations -- they'll act as a natural guard. I'll watch the rear if needed. Move as fast and quiet as you can, and don't talk to anyone you don't know.

[The echoes of the cave and the convenient inconvenience of his mask make it hard to suss whether the timbre on that last bit is in jest or not. But hey, what else is a jester ninja to do in these trying times?]

INVENTORY:

• GF13-021NG Gundam Spiegel: The page explains everything better than I can but there's basically the Gundam, the Core Lander which is like a hovercar and a Gundam cockpit all in one wombo-combo, and all its armaments and so on. It runs on fusion energy, which appears to be self-sustaining by the time G Gundam takes place, but let me know if we want to poke at this more. Gundam Spiegel itself shares many of Schwarz's ninja skills, because... why not. Its ultimate attack is Sturm und Drang, which is when Schwarz spins his arms really fast and the Gundam itself spins like a top. Super lethal. Lots of literal Beyblade action! ☆

Armaments: 2 Spiegel Blades, 1 Iron Net that's basically like an electrified net that can capture a whole Gundam, and an unknown number of Messergranz throwing knives (which I'm going to assume are the kunai-looking things, and which can also explode)

• Jester Masks: He's a masked fighter, after all. These have a tail that ends in a pompom thing. They look really ridiculous but are great for hiding your identity and getting a terrible case of hat hair. Also, the pointy thing on the forehead? That can be detached and used as a throwing weapon. Yeah. Let me know if he can bring these and how may he can bring because he goes through them like tissue paper in canon. He doesn't really need 'em long-term I just think having a wardrobe full of jester masks is hilarious. Maybe he'll gift them to people.

• Disguises: He disguised himself as an old man one time. Also a tree. Let me know what I can bring because these are just ridiculous bonus outfits (or, idk, wallpapers in the case of the tree impersonation). I'm sure he can make or acquire more at some point, I'm just struggling to think of mundane items that might be mildly amusing to have along but he's literally a robot piloting a robot.

NOTES: I think we are mostly good unless we need to figure out Gundam power sources or other logistics.

Edited 2021-04-04 18:22 (UTC)

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PLAYER NAME: Lynn
CONTACT: PM this journal, Plurk:

raistlynn
INVITE STATUS: Mentioned to me by Solar (player of Eleven/The Luminary from DragonQuest XI here)

CHARACTER: Hendrik
CANON: Dragon Quest XI Definitive edition
CANON POINT: Post act 2, defeat of Mordegon dropping everyone off with Cetacea, before time is turned back.

BACKGROUND: Written out here. This is another reference, as is this.

ABILITIES | POWERS: - He's a tank, 6'6 and built like one. He's a warrior and a knight first and foremost, able to wield axes and shields. He does have the ability to use swords as well.

Spells -

Midheal - Restores hp

Buff - Significantly raises the defense of a single party member -

Kabuff - Slightly raises defense of all party members -

Magic Barrier - Raises the magic resistance of the whole party.

More heal - Mid level healing spell

PERSONALITY: Hendrik was born a son of a knight in the kingdom of Zwaardsrust. But an attack leaves him the lone survivor of the attack, losing his family, friends, home and everything. So he brought out of there to be raised as a knight of Heliodor which instills his loyalty because of being rescued. This childhood attachment is seen as he has a painting of the windmill there.

As a knight of Heliodor, he is given orders to capture the Luminary who at that time is referred to as the Darkspawn. So no matter what happens or what obstacles get in his way, since he was told to capture the Luminary that is what he'll do no matter what it takes to succeed. Hendrik dauntlessly and steadfastly follows orders and will carry them out no matter what since he is a sworn knight to the King of Heliodor. In his duty, Hendrik is both serious and unfailing and it's been said that he doesn't know when to give up, being called both pig headed and stone headed due to this.

As a boy Hendrik won most of his fights with Jasper through 'brute strength'. But even in victory there was mercy because Hendrik always offered a hand to help the other boy up off of the ground. So when the two separated, with Jasper learning military strategy and Hendrik had gone off to Puerto Valor to train to be a knight, when he'd come back, the two sparred again with the same results of the blonde falling and Hendrik offering a hand up.

Hendrik himself said that he always followed in Jasper's wake and that Jasper was the one who spurred him on and was the light that guided him. If it wasn't for his friend, Hendrik wouldn't have become who he did. And of the two in a race, he would definitely be the 'tortoise' and Jasper would be the 'hare'. And even after they find themselves on opposing sides, he still has kind words for his friend, marveling at his old friend's brilliant tactics at one point and says that the day Dundrasil fell, Jasper was brave and valorous. Then he takes on all of the blame and responsibility once he's had plenty of time to reflect and the self recriminations begin. He stands wondering why he didn't see what the King of Heliodor had become, and why he didn't see the darkness consuming Jasper's soul.

Though Hendrik has suffered the loss of his home and family when he was a boy, he rose up through the ranks and earned his knighthood through dedication and hard work. Sylvando later remarked that it took the man quite a bit of work but eventually he became what he had worked so hard for. Don Rodrigo who trained Hendrik called the man 'a lump of meat' when he'd first met the knight as a young boy. And this man has been known to be the type of person to 'train' in his down time when he's supposed to be resting up at camp.

Hendrik simply takes others at their word if he respects them so in this he can be blind and ignorant. There is no doubt, question or even hesitation, because Hendrik will accept it as law. If he is told something, then that is the way that it is and he expects others to keep their word as he does. The night Dundrasil fell and unbeknownst to him, King Carnelian had been possessed by Mordegon. The king accused the Darkspawn's father of being mad and just suddenly attacking him, and the knight took it as the absolute truth. For reasons like this, he is referred to as a 'simple boy'.

And once Hendrik gives his word, he won't go back on it so he's loyal to a fault. He has sworn his fealty to the King of Heliodor and to the people therein. He even faces off against Princess Jade of Heliodor, not realizing it's her at first but even when he does, he doesn't let her get away (though she does) just because she's the Princess. He coldly informs her that he's a sworn knight and that she's been away from home too long if she thinks he'll let her go due to that fact. He will also show respect such as bowing to Princess Jade when he realizes it's her, bowing or kneeling before the king as well as Don Rodrigo who trained him as a boy.

Gemma tells the Luminary the story that instead of facing death after being rounded up by Hendrik's childhood friend and fellow knight Jasper, (though she didn't know the man's name) their lives were spared. The only thing she recalled about him was that 'his eyes were cold.' However, Hendrik had intervened, sparing the lives of the villagers of Cobblestone and locking them up in the dungeons below the castle in Heliodor instead of outright killing them as would've been their fate otherwise. Death would have been their 'punishment' for raising the 'Darkspawn'.

After Yggdrasil fell, Hendrik went around the world and collected the survivors that he could find to bring them to the Last Bastion, a safe haven against the darkness. People called him the 'hero' and even a child in the Last Bastion tried to emulate him. He had found a dying child in a church in the foothills of Heliodor and rescued her, carrying her all of the way to the safe place without one complaint. And as Queen Marina of Nautica said 'he was a spark' that the Luminary needed to turn into a flame in order to rid the world of the darkness that plagued the land. The darkness was brought about by Mordegon defeating the Luminary and those that survived were in a sorry state. Without being asked, Hendrik sold his prized black knight armor for funds for the kingdom and its people. This is why you find him in the yellow shirt and blue tabard when you meet him after the Tree falling. And true to form, he never complained or even mentioned his unsung act of heroism.

Finding a wounded little girl in a church full of dead, Hendrik wordlessly rescues her carrying her the entire way to safety. And he takes this task upon himself without any fanfare or praise to collect survivors to bring them back to the Last Bastion safely. He doesn't believe himself to be the 'hero' he's referred to, and thinks himself too weak and powerless to protect them, having lost his faith and purpose.

If Hendrik gives his oath, he will stick to it no matter what so he is honour bound. He did this as a knight of Heliodor and did it when he gave his oath to stand beside the Luminary. Hendrik disagreed with the king, worrying that his absence would mean failure for the Heliodor king and the people of both that kingdom and Cobblestone. The king assured the knight that it wouldn't come to that though.

Later once a hermit has been said to have gone missing on Mount Pang Lai, he immediately offers aid even though he's a guest, going by the knight's code that a knight of Heliodor doesn't abandon an innocent in need. Since the monks of the mountains have shown kindness, he believes it's the right thing to do to return it.

King Carnelian calls Hendrik his 'ever faithful knight' because he's so dependable. Hendrik does what he is asked, even if he may initially disagree. In the end he will still be there to do what is required to follow and do his King's will regardless of anything else. And as a boy both he and his childhood friend Jasper swore fealty to Heliodor and to protect the kingdom together. The boys also received matching gold fealty token pendants from the king which are replicas of the Shield of Heliodor and they were the only two to receive them. So it's a shock and surprise when Hendrik escaped Krystalinda in Sniflheim and finds that she knows of the twin pendant to the one he always wears.

He never saw Jasper's sudden yet inevitable betrayal when the two were supposed to be on the same page and path and had met as enemies in the ruined throne room. He doesn't stop to think why Jasper did what he did, he just dealt with the outcome that the blonde knight had given himself to the darkness and demanded to know 'what of their pact' - the one they'd made as children to defend the kingdom of Heliodor together. Hendrik sentenced his friend to death and labelling the other knight a 'traitor' once he realized which side was the correct side. He also took a devastating magical hit that knocked him to his knees which had been fully intended for the Luminary, which in that act of self sacrifice could've been deadly. But the knight never seemed to give it a moment's thought as to what the outcome of taking that blow would've been. He had a job to do and that was to protect the Luminary.

As he goes around gathering the Luminary's previous companions, he is apologetic to Rab (Lord Robert) and is very protective of the Luminary. He also tells the Luminary that he was very loyal and it had cost him dearly once he learned of the events that transpired at Dundrasil the night of the Colloquy of Kings had taken place. But he insists that he will no longer be that way and will think for himself and question things.

So in battle, will take hits meant for others and will stand and fight beside them, even using himself as a shield if that's what it takes to accomplish fulfilling his oath. He also can have resting 'frowny face' due to having such a serious outlook. In battle, he becomes passionate, and his sword deals swift justice to those who oppose him. So whenever he needs to do something (such as follow Jasper's black spirit) he asks only the Luminary and seeks only his approval or forgiveness for indulgence of things or actions.

And when the party faces Jasper as a black spirit later, Hendrik says that he helped create that very darkness and he had to destroy it alone. And after there's a reconciliation of sorts, he says he should've spoken and listened to Jasper and maybe he could've saved his old friend. So in the end there is friendship and peace between them as their boyhood pact is honoured.

He takes a parental sort of role to the boy who thinks his father prizes his mother's necklace over him in Phnom Nohn and at the children in Hotto, calling them foolish for taking such a risk to try and scare people away. And he harbors a deep anger for himself when he learns of Veronica's sacrifice at Arboria, angered he hadn't been able to protect her and had been on the wrong side of things.

He does state to the Luminary after their battle with Mordegon that he knows what he must do when they defeat Mordegon and that's to stand at Princess Jade's side and restore the former glory that was Heliodor.

SAMPLE: here, others can be provided if necessary.

INVENTORY: 2 phials of magic water, a few Antidotal herbs, Sleeping Hibiscus, Medicinal herb, Strong medicine, book

Wearing:

King's axe (carved with runes)
Oath pendant/token of fealty
Full set of black armour & cloak
Shield of Heliodor -

NOTES: Hendrik harbours an intense dislike for insects and he rarely speaks in contractions.

Edited 2021-05-02 23:36 (UTC)

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PLAYER NAME: Sam
CONTACT:

verities
INVITE STATUS: modly green light <3

CHARACTER: Alina Starkov
CANON: Grisha Series
CANON POINT: End of Book 2, just before her fight with the Darkling

BACKGROUND:

| ALINA STARKOV WIKIA
| SHADOW AND BONE (novel) WIKIA
| SIEGE AND STORM WIKIA

ABILITIES | POWERS:

GRISHA⇢ Grisha practice the 'Small Science' as it's called in their world. This means that they manipulate matter at its most fundamental matter. They cannot create matter, but only manipulate what exists to their advantage (note: they haven't fully explained how Alina's summoning works at a fundamental level so I'm not for sure on the logistics there myself). Alina is an Etherealki, a summoner. She summons fundamental elements that exist naturally and produces sunlight as a result. Using powers can exhaust a Grisha, even if in the long run the power extends their life. Alina feels more healthy when not suppressing her power, but using it in large bursts can also exhaust her and even make her pass out.

LIGHT : Alina produces sunlight from herself. Usually, she focuses it from her palms, but it can burst from any part of her. This light can produce heat, but she doesn't have the power to make enough heat to be damaging. She has used the heat to help keep herself as warm as possible while sleeping outside in a snowstorm. Alina uses this light in fighting to blind her enemies by bouncing it off reflective surfaces into the eyes of her opponent. She can manipulate the brightness of the light, how large out it goes, etc.

CUT : Recently, Alina has learned how to use her light to cut through matter. She's cut a ship entirely in half with her light and can cut a person cleanly in half as well. She summons and concentrates her light and uses it like a whip or a blade to cut. It's a quick attack to use. This is the only way that she's able to physically harm someone with her sunlight that's been shown in the book.

AMPLIFIER : Generally, Grisha are not meant to have more than one amplifier. There is no standard for having more until Alina. Alina has two amplifiers at this time. Alina's amplifiers are made from two, previously thought to be mythical, animals - a stag and a dragon. The amplifiers come from mythical animals - the stag, the dragon, and a third firebird - that were said to be created by Ilya Morozova, a Saint and a rumored Grisha, and are, as rumor goes, meant for only one person and that person is meant to have all three. The rumor is only known to a small number of people, and Alina's second amplifier is not common knowledge, only trusted with the same small number of people who know the rumor. Alina's amplifiers cannot be removed at all, and the expectation is that removing them will create a natural disaster on par with the creation of the Fold.

The collar around her neck made from the antlers of a mythical stag acts as a way to boost her powers. She cannot physically remove the collar herself. It's unsure if there's a way to remove it, or if only the Darkling can (as he controls half the amplifier). The amplifier helps her to use the Cut and create wider berths for her light. Should the Darkling ever be apped to eastbound, he could also fight for control of her powers through the amplifier. However, it has been shown that the connection goes both ways and she could take control of his own powers as well. In addition to the collar, Alina has a fetter around her wrist made of the scales of a mythical dragon. This amplifier does not tie her to the Darkling, as she killed the dragon herself and chose to make the amplifier herself. Her power hasn't seemed to change as much, slightly brighter and wider berths (up to a mile or more in light expansion) but the Cut remains the same. The fetter has affected her personality more than anything.

PERSONALITY:

"The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak."

Alina's never really had a place she's felt like she belongs in. When she was in the army, she was small and weak and hardly worth her weight as a soldier. As a cartographer, she was mediocre at best. The person she loved in secret never wanted her back. And when she first entered the Grisha world, she couldn't summon her power on command. She never had many friends, no one ever loved her, and she was never good at anything. Alina pined for the day when she could have any one of those things, to the point where wanting consumed her.

Once upon a time, Alina had wanted Mal in a way that consumed her. Mal had been everything to Alina. He had been such a force in her life, that she hadn't even realized the extent of his influence over her. And that was before she had ever known love with him. Before Mal had ever loved her back, Alina had unknowingly sealed her powers away for fear of being taken from Mal at the orphanage. That unknowing suppression had caused her to be weak and sickly throughout the rest of her life, but it kept her near a man that had never been able to love her like she had loved him. She pined for him all her life and kept herself down just to be near him. And when she discovered her power, what she feared happened. She was taken from him. Eventually they found each other again and this time Mal loved her. Mal chased her. And that was always the way of them. One of them was always chasing the other. They tried to make it work, Mal is the most important person in Alina's life. He was there when she was young and he was there when she needed him most. At their cores, however, they are two different peoples with lives taking them down paths that lead them further from each other. And the further apart they grow, they more Alina desperately tries to cling to him for some semblance of her old life. The more Alina clings to him, the more bitter Mal becomes over the discrepancies between them. The two never truly find happiness in each other, and while they can never leave each other they're never really good for each other either. Yet she would rather die than give Mal up forever.

And then there was the Darkling.

The Darkling was a more dangerous force than Mal had ever been. Alina could weather Mal's indifference, but the Darkling's attention had been unknown. It had been intoxicating. Alina had fallen into a trap she hadn't even realized was laid out for her. The Darkling said all the right things, did all the right things, and when he touched her it was like something inside her burst at his calling. He was the darkness to her light. Alina wouldn't realize until much later how accurate that would be. They were always in opposition of each other, yet neither could live without the other. The realization of the Darkling's betrayal and terror taught Alina what the monster beneath the mask really looked like. But the damage had already been done. Alina had learned to need him. Ever after, her life was filled with a need inside her that was entirely unable to be ignored. Something inside her demanded him no matter how much she rejected it. She fought it and hated it and reviled all that he was, but when she stopped fighting it and answered his call nothing in Alina ever felt more right. There was something in her that she had no control of that answered his calling, because he had always been right. Like calls to like, and there was no one else like them in the world. Just each other. But Alina knows the terror of him and knows the danger of wanting him. And always she denies that wanting, fearing the weakness that it draws out of her.

That was how the Darkling got to her. He knew how she ached with wanting and he fed her lies and promises until she fell madly in love with him. She fell so fast and trusted so fully, that she never stopped to think about why he was obsessed with Morozova's stag and getting her that amplifier. Alina learned from Baghra the truth of the Darkling. He had created the Fold, he wanted to control Ravka, and he had used Alina's wanting to make her do whatever he wanted. Alina was crushed by the truth of this. She was crushed by the knowledge that her wanting had made her blind to everything, and the Darkling had nearly put a collar around her throat she could never escape from. He had tried to control her and the wanting of him had made her nearly allow it.

That was when Alina vowed never to be weak again. Alina had depended on Mal and lost herself in him until her power was literally consumed by her need to be with him. And when she lost Mal, she replaced him with a man that sought to control her and put a collar on her. Alina realized that she had been so lost in the wanting of a place to belong, that she had forgotten how to think for herself and exist for herself.

Alina has a natural tendency to become co-dependent on others. She feels loneliness constantly, and the slightest sign of affection can cause her to sway. But though the Darkling and his servant Genya. who had become Alina's best friend at the Darkling's behest, both taught Alina to distrust people, she finds herself falling into the same trap with Mal all over again. Mal serves as a safe haven for her, though. They grew up together, and therefore he exists before her distrust. However, Mal ends up breaking her heart and running off to be with Zoya. A fresh sort of betrayal. Then there's Nikolai Lantsov, whom she meets after the Darkling's betrayal and tells lies like he was born to it. But slowly, Nikolai makes himself worthy of someone she can trust, even allowing him to choose her bodyguards among the people he trusts. And thusfar, Nikolai hasn't proven himself to be worthy of that trust. But Tolya and Tamar, the bodyguards Nikolai gives to her, are people Alina believes in wholly, and in the end even they betray her as she realizes they always worshiped her as a Saint and bought into her religion and worked with the Apparat. These betrayals take their toll on Alina, and she strives to keep herself isolated for her own sake. But at the heart of it all, she will always be the girl left wanting.

The Second Army soon becomes a place that can fulfill some of that ache, though. Where once the Little Palace was a house of lies, Alina's made it into a better place without the Darkling. And in doing so, found a place for herself in leadership and her own power.

Power and duty are two things Alina cannot escape. Despite what the Darkling did to her, Alina's place was always in the Little Palace among the rest of the Grisha. She was a Grisha. It was where she was born to be. And she was the Sun Summoner. The only Sun Summoner to have ever been found. The Fold can't be defeated without her.

Alina struggles under the knowledge that she is such an important figure. While she feels like she was born to be Grisha, she fears the responsibility pushed on her. Ultimately, she has to be spirited away and taken back to Ravka mostly against her will. She struggles with the desire to be nothing but a normal girl, but power and leadership find her still. And when Alina lets herself stop fighting it, she takes to both like she was made for it.

Leadership was never something Alina intended to seek out, but when forced back to Ravka she decides it'll be on her terms there on. To keep herself from becoming too dependent on anyone else, and strengthen what remained of the Grisha army after the devastating loss of the Darkling, Alina took command of the Grisha. Alina is the most powerful of the Grisha, and she knows more about current events than them. She knows secrets about the Darkling, what they are all really up against, and what needs to be done to defeat him. She's never been a leader, and she's newer to being a Grisha than the others, but she knows she's the only one who can do the job. And, despite not wanting her power before, she wants to see an end to the terror that is the Darkling. She wants to save her country and take care of the people she's lived amongst.

The people of her country, though, seem to be confused with what she is to them. Alina seeks to save them from the Fold and the Darkling, the darkness that her powers were always meant to fight against for them. The people come to see her as a Saint, though, and the Apparat only further builds this up. While Alina slowly embraces her duty to save Ravka, she never accepts the way the people of Ravka view her as Saint. Not everyone shares this view, most of the higher classes seem to regard it as nothing more than religious propaganda nad frankly Alina is more inclined to agree with them, but a growing number of the population at large do see her as Saint. Alina never feels comfortable with the worship they give her or the refugees that camp outside Os Alta and paint their faces with the sun for her or the people who sell fake bones as 'genuine Sankta Alina.' No matter how much Alina comes to accept her power and duty, she never can accept that she's anything more than a girl at the heart of it all. Worship sits uneasily with her and is the one thing she's positive she will never embrace.

Despite a desire for a quiet and normal life and rejection of sanctity, Alina does take to leadership like she was made to it. There are struggles along the way, but Nikolai Lantsov has an interest in keeping Alina as leader and helps teach her ways to be a good leader while she learns other tricks herself. Alina takes away the things that kept the Grisha from becoming a whole and unifies her people to strengthen them. She finds a home among the remaining Grisha, and a duty to see to their survival and their strength. As they succeed, she finds pride in herself as a leader and a Grisha. And eventually, Alina realizes that even though part of her always yearns for a quiet life, a much stronger part of her will never relinquish her power for that life.

One of the lessons that Nikolai teaches Alina when he realizes that she tends to wear most of her emotions on her face is that weakness is a guise. He teaches her to hide her weakness and only use it when people need to see her as human. Alina uses this lesson to put on a stronger front to those in her command when necessary. Alina feels weak often, but she learns to keep weakness a secret from others and give them the Sun Summoner they need. Because of this, Alina struggles with a lot of pressure of being leader. The strain it puts on her relationship with Mal being one of those pressures. Alina knows she's losing her old life, but Mal desperately clings to who they once were. It's a major source of her confliction, and because of it there's a strain between them that becomes Alina's weakness. She hides the pain that this strain creates, never telling anyone what's really going on with her as it slowly eats at her. On top of this, the Darkling visits her constantly. He's in her room, at dinner, in the war room, on her walk home. Everywhere she goes, the Darkling is there. Except no one else can see him. When Alina realizes this, she doesn't tell anyone that she sees hm and feels him and talks to him sometimes too. She fears she's going mad, and the fear of becoming mad starts to drive her mad in itself. But it's a weakness she can't afford, and fears people calling her crazy. So she locks it away inside of her.

Because she hides her weakness, Alina hides the truth that while she loves her powers, she starts to fear them as well. Ever since she gained her second amplifier, an amplifier she was never meant to have and which seems as wild and untamed as the dragon she took it from, Alina has slowly started to become a more violent person that delights in the pain of others. These instances of anger and violence occur only a few times, but in between her temper can be short at times. At it's worse, she's wanted to kill a man who challenged her for leadership. She sought to cut him in half and make an example of him to the others who challenged her. The drive was so strong inside of her, that she already started the Cut when she realized her madness. She changed the Cut's direction at the last second, but already she came close to killing the boy just for challenging her. In addition to that, she makes Zoya talk about something painful and embarrassing to her, pressing the situation just to see Zoya squirm and delighting in her suffering. Alina catches herself in these moments, usually when she's the most angry with someone, and she fears that she's becoming like the Darkling and that power has driven her to a different kind of madness. Again, she keeps this to herself, not explaining to anyone what she's going through or what changes inside of her it's making. As time goes on, her anger and violence become less obvious and turn slowly into a girl who's more forthright and dangerous when she wants to be. But these subtle changes are worse, because even she doesn't see them and realize how much she's changing.

As madness, anger, violence, and worry plague Alina and Mal draws further from her, Alina fears the things she has to give up to realize who she is. She can't have everything, and she's losing things that are important to her. Alina grows weary of the games she has to play, the role she has to be, and the toll it takes on her life. She wants to save people, but the cost weighs heavily on her for it. To a point where she wonders about the purpose of her life, even tending to become suicidal towards the end of book two. She never actively harms herself, but she puts herself in two situations that nearly kill her willingly. If the world wants a Saint, after all, then she should give them a proper one. And Saints never live.

However, when Alina gets a moment to let go of leadership, power, anger, weakness, and all the other things that drive her to madness, she tends to be a light-hearted girl. She's fairly witty and enjoys bantering with people. She smiles easily and wants to trust just as easily. She used to trust as easily, and sometimes she gets close to falling into that trap again, but it's never quite the same. But when she's relaxed and herself, she gets a little closer to that girl she used to be sometimes. Alina has an ease about her that draws people to her, even when she doesn't mean to. When she's not busy hating the world or distrusting people, she can be a genuinely charming person who can be fun to be around. She likes to joke with others and likes to be around people generally. Even against better judgment at time. She is always the girl that wants to friends and a place to call her own and people she can love. And to those she does care for, she is fiercely loyal and will go to the ends of the world for. All of Ravka becomes this to her when she acknowledges who she is, and Alina will do anything to see it delivered to safety.

Alina is plagued by her past. She has done bad things, running from her country when she feared herself and feared responsibility. She has let people die for her freedom. She has dragged this war out and allowed herself to be used to hurt others. She has desired to hurt people and nearly hurt them. She is weak inside herself, aching always for a place to belong and never feeling like she has one. Feeling out of place wreaks havoc on her self-esteem and makes her wanting and weak and susceptible to more manipulation. She knows she's not the person that Ravka needs.

But she's what Ravka has. And she'll rise to the occasion. She will be everything that Ravka needs her to be for the good of her country and herself. Soldier, Summoner, and Saint.

SAMPLE:

+ LOG - TDM SAMPLE
+ NETWORK - VENEFICI
+ LOG - MULTIPLE
+ TFLN - MULTIPLE
+ NETWORK - RAVKAS
+ NETWORK - SHADOWFOLDS
+ NETWORK - MEWNIFESTOS

INVENTORY:

- Clothes on her back
+ 1 blue kefta shot with gold mixed into the blue stitching (Materialki stitching) and embroidered with gold hems
+ 1 pair of thick gloves
+ 1 pair of fur-trimmed boots
+ 1 white undershirt
+ 1 pair of tan pants
( all as pictured here in the center image - close-up here)

- 1 antler bone collar (power amplifier, cannot be removed)
- 1 dragon scale fetter (power amplifier, cannot be removed)

NOTES: n/a

APPLICATION RECEIVED

groundrules - 2021-05-03 12:34 (UTC) - Expand

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-05-03 14:06 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

sankta - 2021-05-04 08:59 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

groundrules - 2021-05-04 09:53 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Dùlin
CONTACT: lomelinde

plurk
INVITE STATUS: Existing player

CHARACTER: Xie Lian
CANON: Tian Guan Ci Fu / Heaven Officials’ Blessing novel
CANON POINT: Post-canon

BACKGROUND:

[CW : contains reference to torture and suicide. May also have a few spoilers.]

° Xie Lian was born as the only son to the Emperor and Empress of the prosperous Xianle Kingdom in the Central Plains. When he was a teen, he saved Hua Cheng’s life and interrupted an important religious ritual he was taking part in to do so. Thus he gained his most devoted believer. At age 17, he defeated the demon ghost of Yi Nian Bridge and ascended to Heaven as a Martial God. He was greatly admired by his people and they built many temples for him.

° After his ascension, the Xianle Kingdom was struck by calamities, war and epidemics. Xie Lian broke the laws of Heaven and descended to the human realm to help his country, but because he was going against fate, every action he took to help his people turned out to make the situation much worse. He started being called a god of misfortune and being blamed for bringing catastrophes to the kingdom.
Unknown to Xie Lian, most of these events were being orchestrated by one of the Four Ghost Kings, a Calamity-level Ghost called Bai Wuxiang who seemed to be targeting him specifically and to want him to fall into despair.
Because he had disobeyed the laws of Heaven by intervening in human affairs, Xie Lian’s punishment was to be banished to the human world. His cultivation was destroyed and his spiritual power bridled with a curse shackle around his neck.

° Xie Lian was forced to live in the mortal realm where his kingdom had been overtaken by Yong'an Kingdom. He lived in a simple shack with his mother, father, Mu Qing, and Feng Xin. Life was hard and work was so difficult to come by that Xie Lian was forced to sell his prized legendary swords and later resorted to street performance and even attempted robbery.
Bai Wuxiang kept orchestrating events to pile up hardships and humiliations on Xie Lian, which culminated in Bai Wuxiang tricking the people of Xianle into torturing Xie Lian by ‘killing him’ repeatedly so they might be cured of the deadly disease ravaging their lands. Following this event, Xie Lian’s last servant left his side and his parents killed themselves. Xie Lian tried to join them but his immortality prevented him from doing so. Overcome by despair, Xie Lian vowed revenge on the Yong’an Kingdom who had destroyed Xianle and rose as the Second White Clothed Calamity.

° Before destroying Yong’an Kingdom while urged on by Bai Wuxian, Xie Lian decided to give them one last chance. He stabbed himself and laid down in the street for three days to see if anyone would try to help him. On the third day, a man gave him his bamboo hat to protect him from the rain and then helped him up and told him to go home. With this one act of kindness, all hatred for people left Xie Lian's heart, redirected towards Bai Wuxiang instead. Ultimately, Bai Wuxiang was defeated by the Heavenly Emperor Jun Wu and Xie Lian ascended for the second time. However, he did not want to live in the Heavens after this and asked Jun Wu to banish him to the mortal realm again with two cursed shackles : one as punishment for his wrongs and one to disperse all his luck. His second ascension took less than the time it took to burn an incense stick to end.

° Xie Lian lived humbly for years in the mortal realm, earning a living by gathering scraps and being a street performer. During the next centuries, he occasionally became embroiled in human politics again. He was at some point hired to be the Guoshi, or Royal Preceptor, of the Yong’an Royal family. He also was a soldier in the Banyue army, and got ‘killed’ when he stepped on a shoelace and was trampled while trying to stop a fight. He then just faked his death and left. He became known as the ‘Scrap Immortal’ because his bad luck prevented him from keeping any jobs but gathering scraps.

° 800 years after his birth, Xie Lian ascended to Heaven for the third time. The exact reason for his ascension is unknown, although it's likely due to his strict and continuous cultivation as the Scrap Immortal.
Following this, he was assigned to work on several cases of haunting and supernatural occurrences. In doing so, he started uncovering a web of deception and corruption within the Heavens, showing that many Heavenly Officials had dealings with ghosts and demons. He also met many people from his past, some of whom had ascended as gods and others who had become ghosts and demons themselves. He was also reunited with Hua Cheng, now become a Ghost King and the Great Calamity Crimson Rain Sought Flower, who seemed intent on protecting him at all costs. Xie Lian started developing feelings for him and was very confused and flustered by this.
During his travels, Xie Lian became aware that most of the misfortunes of his life had been orchestrated by Bai Wuxiang, who got interested in him because of their similar paths in life and who hoped to recreate a ‘Second Bai Wuxiang’ in Xie Lian. His failure to do so infuriated Bai Wuxiang and he now sought to eliminate Xie Lian. In the final showdown, the corruption of the Heavenly Court was laid bare and Xie Lian regained his honor and status as a god.

ABILITIES | POWERS:
° Immortality : As a god, Xie Lian is basically immortal, so no human-level characters can kill him for good. He can, however, appear dead, and has faked his own death several times, but wounds and injuries that would normally kill someone do not work on him. He cannot even kill himself.

° Swordsmanship : to put it simply, he’s a sword jock, and he’s an expert at using all kinds of weapons.

° Physical Strength : Xie Lian originally ascended as a Martial God, and he is extremely strong physically.

° High Pain Tolerance: Due to the amount of torture, battles, and pain he suffered, he has an extremely high tolerance for pain. He has mostly become unbothered by almost any kind of pain, although he does still feel it. He barely reacts to physical pain most of the time.

° Spiritual Power : Post-canon Xie Lian has regained his spiritual powers. As such, he can use most of the powers the gods have access to such as communication arrays, spirit detection, bursts of spiritual power, barriers, talismans and charms.

° Bad Luck : although this is mostly due to his curse shackle, his luck is so bad it’s almost a superpower. He’s basically a walking example of Murphy’s law. If something can go wrong for him, it will. Being around Hua Cheng seems to negate this.

° Bad Housekeeping skills : While he is skilled at craft work and combat, he is horrible at household chores like sewing or cooking. His cooking, in particular, is so bad that no one can stomach his food except Hua Cheng. In fact, some people eating his food have been known to be grievously injured by it, including certain gods.

To avoid any world-breaking stuff, I would propose the reactivation of his curse shackles which greatly limit his access to spiritual powers and some of his physical strength.

PERSONALITY:

Xie Lian is a kind, gentle and down-to-earth person. He does not use his status to tower over other people, and in fact often seems reluctant to disclose his actual identity (for many reasons). He is more likely than not to try and go for the pacifist option first and stop the fighting, and try to hear out everyone’s explanations. When faced with a ghost or a bad spirit, he is very likely to try and talk them down first, even if he ends up having to fight afterwards.

He does not hold grudges, and cares little about what other people’s opinions of him are. He embraced the title of Scrap Immortal, which was given to him mockingly at first, and usually responds to sarcasm with smiles. He will protect even people who have done horrible things to him in the past, and while he was at one point consumed with thoughts of revenge, he has now completely let go of that mindset. he has seen the worst of both humanity and gods, but prefers to see the best in people and try to understand them. He is very loyal to his friends.

He is unfailingly courteous and polite. While he does occasionally get angry, it takes a lot for him to actually get to that level. Even when he is angry, he doesn’t use rude words or derogatory language.

Having lived for a long time, he has wisened up a bit from his younger years where he didn’t have an interest in politics. He is smart, calm and collected and usually able to discern people’s motives, and in a fight, he doesn’t lose his cool and can think up strategies on the fly.

Xie Lian is a little more stunted emotionally. His cultivation path required him to abstain from both sex and alcohol, and while he is not completely innocent, he did remain a virgin for 800+ years. He is usually flustered by flirting attempts, and has been known to deflect them by claiming impotence. In general, he is pretty uninterested in romance for himself, at least until Hua Cheng enters the picture. Even then it takes him quite a long time to realize that Hua Cheng’s feelings for him are not just those of a believer for his god and run much deeper than that, and that no, kissing is not just a way to ‘transfer spiritual power’. He battles with his body’s reactions to Hua Cheng for a while before he finally admits his own feelings to himself.

SAMPLE:

https://weifinder.dreamwidth.org/597.html?thread=116821#cmt116821
https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/6548084.html?thread=2879110516#cmt2879110516
https://scrapgege.dreamwidth.org/497.html?thread=6897#cmt6897 (somewhat NSFW)

INVENTORY:
Ruoye, his sentient silk bandage spiritual weapon
A crystal ring on a chain that he usually wears around his neck
A beat up bamboo hat
The white robes he’s wearing

and that’s it, he’s poor. Possibly at a later point, he might be able to regain his spiritual sword, Fang Xin?

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-05-03 17:47 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

scrapgege - 2021-05-04 20:18 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

groundrules - 2021-05-06 11:55 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

groundrules - 2021-05-06 15:36 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Kiki
CONTACT:

kikibug13
INVITE STATUS: Existing player

CHARACTER: Lan Sizhui
CANON: The Untamed
CANON POINT: Post-canon (we're not including the story of the Walking Dead.)

BACKGROUND:
(Wiki is for the novel AH WELL)
- Son of a cousin to Wen Ning and Wen Qing. Wen Yuan was a young child when the Wen clan made their bid for total control (Sizhui may or may not have been made a puppet temporarily along with his elders around this time) and then during the sunshot campaign.Wen Yuan, along with Grandma, Uncle Four, several others and Wen Ning and Wen Qing, ended up in a Lanling Jin sect labor camp.

- Wei Wuxian broke the whole group of them out of there to bring them to the (not safe and not nice but) safer and nicer settlement at the Burial Mound. They had about a year of peace during which time A-Yuan was exposed to demonic magic, the near impossible recovery of Wen Ning, mood swings, witnessing experimentation during Wei Wuxian's R&D, meeting and then parting with Lan Wangji, and sometimes questionable cooking. (Wen Ning can cook; Wei Wuxian mostly includes a lot of spice.)

- After everyone else is gone, A-Yuan is found by Lan Wangji, alone and with fever, at the Burial Mound. He is taken in, raised as a Lan, and does not remember his life before that for the next sixteen years.

- Around the time when Wei Wuxian is brought back, Sizhui is of an age where he goes out to night hunts unsupervised, acting as a leader of the group of juniors, also known as ducklings. He seems very properly Lan, sometimes acting as Lan Wangji's voice when he does not bother to speak, though it is clear that he has some experience to gather before he can be a fully-fledged cultivator on his own.

- Along with other juniors, both of the Gusu Lan sect and others, he gets lured and later kidnapped into danger, but doesn't shy away from pulling his own weight. His memories start trickling back (with some assistance as Wen Ning recognizes him) and come back more or less fully around the time of the final showdown with the bad guy. He leaves with Wen Ning to attend to family matters.

ABILITIES | POWERS:
* Cultivation: Discipline for controlling and enhancing the inner / spiritual / qi energy, allowing various effects, both internal and external, to be possible (improved health, strength, and speed; higher resilience, quicker recovery. Later, maintaining youth. Abilities to produce bursts of energy, or imbue objects or processes - such as music - with spiritual energy. Ability to transfer spiritual energy to help another body recover from damage, poison, or illness. Ability to control weapons, especially spiritual weapons, from a distance, and fly on them.)
* Self-discipline: The Gusu Lan sect's path to cultivation has two foci - self-restraint and music. Sizhui has been learning to contain, control, and discipline himself since he came under their care.
* Six arts: Because all the cultivators in this canon know these.
* Sword fighting: Sizhui is fairly proficient within the Lan technique.
* Talismans creation and use: A lot of the magic effects are done via talismans - they can be used for protection as well as attack, to start fire or simply produce light, and various other actions that are necessary for night hunts. (An extension, of sorts, is that Sizhui is able to draw and use spirit-attracting flags, a technique that is somewhat dangerous but he can use it in a safe manner.)
* Lan music techniques: Lan cultivation is heavily based upon using music as the medium of power transfer. Spiritual-energy-imbued music can attack, protect, calm, agitate, query the (un)dead. Sizhui is still learning, but his skill with the guqin is deemed decent by his dad, who is an expert.
* Beginner healer knowledge: he can do basic diagnosis from the pulse (very basic), transfer energy, and apply medicine (probably field first aid as well) - he is the first to get to the aid of someone stumbling out with overload of dealing with resentful energy.

PERSONALITY:
The first impression Lan Sizhui gives off is 'almost too good to be real'. He is well-mannered, quick-thinking, gentle, considerate, clear-headed in a tight situation, respectful but not letting wrongs happen on his watch without taking action. He is competent and capable, yet also knows when a situation has gone beyond his limits and he needs help. Nobody among the junior questions his decisions, instructions, and even quiet beratings when they are breaking one of the many rules. He has earned the respect of his peers and they follow his instructions willingly, knowing that his choices are the best for them. With time, even (very stubborn) juniors from other sects and high standing accept his leadership.

And he is that good - with the provision that he is still rather young. Unlike the previous generation, who grew under the certainty of a coming war and so were pushed to their limits constantly, Sizhui is allowed to be young and inexperienced, to be sent off to and advised to do things according to his abilities, rather than expected to succeed always, at any cost. He is even (not often, but while he tries not to, he doesn't seem upset at the slip) allowed to be a little childish sometimes.

What is not easy to see in the beginning, and what he tends to keep under wraps, beneath a gentle smile and kind words (an attitude he probably learned from his adoptive uncle, Lan Xichen, the Sect Leader and Lan Wangji's older brother), is that the calm and restrained nurture that is the one thing he remembers helps, but doesn't quite bridge the gap between the serenity that he knows and the other aspects of his nature and earliest upbringing. Then, for a while, he was raised by Wei Wuxian, who was never known for his restraint. Sizhui only very recently remembers growing up among his close family as well as the intense resentful energy of the Burial Mound, the wildness and freedom of it have always been within him. More than likely not strictly subdued by Lan Wangji.

At best, the result is that he can interpret situations and make decisions that are more creative than the rule-following of the Lans would suggest. He also finds it easier to recognize and follow non-formulaic solutions, and less bothered for his own sake by behavior outside the lines of strict propriety. And he can tease Wei Wuxian just as hard as Wei Wuxian teases others. At worst, he might join in fights/squabbles among his peers when under pressure or even break some rules.

It is of note that while he has a relatively clear head regarding what he, or the group he is with, can handle, he doesn't seem to have much of a concept of fear, at least for himself. It's definitely something to work on.

Another trait of his is the utter admiration and trust he has for Lan Wangji, and how much his adoptive father's approval means to him. His chosen instrument is the guqin, like Wangji, and he has learned and been evaluated on its use for Lan techniques songs by Wangji himself.

Overall, Sizhui is a good, sweet, warm boy, mature, steady, and reliable and, after the complete loss of his blood family, growing up a little too sheltered.

SAMPLE:
With Wen Qing
With Wen Kexing

INVENTORY:
Sword
Guqin
Robes, a spare set of robes, forehead ribbon
Paper for talismans, brush and ink
Lan signal lights/fireworks

NOTES: N/A

ACCEPTED

groundrules - 2021-05-05 20:54 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

paperbutterflies - 2021-05-06 04:54 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

groundrules - 2021-05-06 11:41 (UTC) - Expand

PLAYER NAME: Livvy
CONTACT:

undecipher
INVITE STATUS: Existing player

CHARACTER: Jiang Cheng/Jiang Wanyin
CANON: The Untamed
CANON POINT: Post-timeskip, prior to learning of Mo Xuanyu's identity.

BACKGROUND: Born to Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan, Jiang Cheng lived a sheltered, privileged life in his home of Lotus Pier. As a child, he went from spoiled only son to youngest of three when his father took in Wei Wuxian whose parents had been killed on a night hunt and left him orphaned and destitute. The pair of them had a rocky start, with Jiang Cheng furious that his dogs had been given away ahead of Wei Wuxian's arrival due to the boy's fear of them. They got over it and became fast friends from there under the watchful eye of their sister Yanli, and together they grew up into more or less fine young lords of the Jiang sect.

There was always some trouble at home, the fact of Wei Wuxian being the son of someone Jiang Fengmian was allegedly in love with. This caused no end of conflict between Jiang Cheng's parents, resulting in their older sister Yanli having to do most of the emotional labor of raising the two boys.

All went well in his life aside from his parents' martial issues until the Wen clan grew greedy and ambitious, their leader Wen Ruohan more or less going off the deep end trying to collect pieces of an incredibly cursed object known as the Shadow Iron. Wei Wuxian got himself caught up in this mess, which meant Jiang Cheng by default had to get himself caught up in it too, going so far as to sneak out of Lotus Pier on his own to hunt down his brother and whatever mess he was getting into.

From there matters escalated, the Wen clan forcing all the heirs of the various rival sects to attend instructional lectures on the Wen clan territory of Qishan where Wei Wuxian's mouth got them into further trouble, up to the point they wound up left for dead in a cave inhabited by a centuries old monster.

They located an escape route but were separated, Jiang Cheng escaping ahead of Wei Wuxian with the promise of returning to with help to rescue him when the monster prevented Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji alone from making it out. Jiang Cheng made good on his word, and once his brother was retrieved the pair of them returned home to Lotus Pier.

Bringing the issue of the Wen clan to his father, Jiang Fengmian quickly set off to neighboring Lanling to consult the Jin sect. Unfortunately, while he was gone the Wen clan laid siege on Lotus Pier, citing retaliation against Wei Wuxian for humiliating Wen Chao. It was a massacre, and by the end of it the entire Jiang sect was slain to the last save for Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli. The three of them were able to get away, but the Wens were only ever one step ahead of them and when they stopped in a neighboring town to rest, Jiang Cheng was caught by their men and dragged back to Lotus Pier.

There, he was essentially stripped of his powers when Wen Zhuliu, a man notorious for his ability to destroy the spiritual cores fundamental to any practitioner's abilities, destroyed his core and left him helpless, a civilian in a time of war. Jiang Cheng took this development very poorly, and eevn after he was rescued by Wei Wuxian and taken to Yiling to recover, he sank into a deep depression. He did not eat or drink or sleep, merely dwelled on his own misery as Wei Wuxian poured himself into desperately trying to fix this.

Eventually, Wei Wuxian came up with a solution. All he could do was trade his core for Jiang Cheng's own, but for Jiang Cheng he was willing to do it. The exchange was made, entirely without Jiang Cheng's knowledge as Wei Wuxian presented the solution to him under false pretenses, and Jiang Cheng was happy, grateful, and none the wiser.

However, they were supposed to meet in town after and though Jiang Cheng waited in town for a week for Wei Wuxian to come back, he never did. Months passed with Jiang Cheng chasing only rumors, unable to accept any outcome other than finding his lifelong companion.

Without a core, however, Wei Wuxian was driven to increasingly desperate, dangerous methodology to defend himself and protect what was important to him.

By the time he was found again, he was different. Changed. Wrong. He would not speak of what happened, and though Jiang Cheng tried to go back to how things once were, Wei Wuxian strayed further and further.

War came. Violent backlash against the Wen clan, as the remaining sects would no longer stand for their aggressions. They called this the Sunshot Campaign, which ended with the death of Wen Ruohan at his fortress of Nightless City. In the aftermath, Wei Wuxian's politics split with the popular view of vilifying, even dehumanizing the Wen sect's members universally, with no regard to the innocent, to the children or the elderly. He stood for them when no one else would, when Jiang Cheng could not, and as a result was cast out of the Jiang sect entirely.

The rebuilt Jiang sect was too tenuous, too fragile to do anything but uphold the status quo, so that was exactly what Jiang Cheng did.

Officially, their relationship was severed but they still maintained contact behind closed doors, much at the behest of Jiang Yanli. Jiang Cheng brought her in her wedding finery for Wei Wuxian to see before her wedding, had Wei Wuxian choose their future nephew's courtesy name. Griping about it the whole while was just part of Jiang Cheng's love language.

For a time, it seemed as though things might yet turn out. Efforts were made by the Jin sect to welcome Wei Wuxian back into the fold. And then, as it were, things took an abrupt turn for the worse. Wei Wuxian lost control of Wen Ning, his resurrected Ghost General, and killed Jin Zixuan, heir to the Jin clan and Jiang Yanli's husband. The death was placed entirely on Wei Wuxian's shoulders, and all the doors that had cracked open for him slammed shut evermore.

The remaining Wens under Wei Wuxian's protection turned themselves in to try to spare Wei Wuxian any further tragedy and disgrace. They were summarily executed, or so went the public announcement from the Jins, and a celebratory gathering was made at Nightless City to scatter the ashes of Wen Qing and Wen Ning with all the sect leaders in attendance.

Deeply unwell by this point, Wei Wuxian stormed the gathering for revenge and somehow, in the fight, Jiang Yanli managed to get caught in the crossfire, taking a blow meant for Wei Wuxian and dying in his arms while Jiang Cheng watched. Reeling from this loss, having come so close to reconciliation and reuniting his remaining family, Jiang Cheng turned on Wei Wuxian completely. Upon witnessing Wei Wuxian attempting to jump off a ledge only to be caught by a desperate Lan Wangji, he followed after, struck out with his sword to try to finish the job. He missed, but Wei Wuxian released Lan Wangji's hand and fell all the same.

After that, Jiang Cheng was a man obsessed. He had a sect to run, an infant to raise, and still he searched the foot of the mountain for Wei Wuxian's body. He found only the flute, and spent the next sixteen years chasing the slightest rumor of Wei Wuxian's enduring existence.

This is, of course, a perfectly well-adjusted hobby for a young man to have, and he is meeting his late thirties as well as can be reasonably expected of him. He remains immaculately dressed, another clear sign of unshakable mental health.

ABILITIES | POWERS:
Training in swordplay, archery, and uh whips.
Comes with all your bog standard fantasy China magic such as sword-assisted flight, enhanced strength/speed, decelerated aging, and spirit-based exorcism skills.
The stunning ability to hold grudges for an incredibly long time.

PERSONALITY: Jiang Cheng is a man who possessive many layers, very few of them flattering. To most he is dour and impersonable, quick to violence with his volatile temper and inflexible (though by no means consistent) standards. He is rash and bullheaded, struggling to see any perspective outside his own. He does not listen to reason when it comes in any way that may put him on the defensive, more likely instead to simply dig his heels in and push back for the sake of pushing back, making him difficult to deal with for even seemingly straightforward tasks. He's the kind of person who will do something he has no interest or desire to do simply because someone he disliked told him he couldn't, who is prone to being contrary for the sake of being contrary.

There's a tense undercurrent of insecurity, too, borne of years of pressure and expectations from the dysfunctional parenting dynamic he was raised with which he's never felt able to live up to. This colors most of his moods and informs most of his actions, that leaves him despondent and discontent in his daily life. He remains hard on himself in the absence of his parents' scrutiny, compulsively competitive in things that have no need to be seen as such.

He's quick to judgement and quicker to retribution, often taking out his foul temper on whoever is closest at hand. This can vary from loud grousing to physical violence, Wei Wuxian bearing the greatest burden of this as both Jiang Cheng's sworn brother as well as the person most willing to put up with him. His relationship with Wei Wuxian is the most central and deeply meaningful connection in his life, especially now that his parents are gone. Though they are both close to their sister Yanli, the two boys grew up together and into each other, personalities opposite but complimentary, often butting heads but their love and loyalty stronger for it.

There is no one who can make Jiang Cheng angrier or more hurt than Wei Wuxian, and he would die for his brother and closest friend without question.

For that matter, Jiang Cheng is also easily made jealous of others' relationships with Wei Wuxian, as his looming (and now realized) future as leader to the Jiang sect feels insurmountable without him. Wei Wuxian has been his only comfort all these long years of never living up to expectation, his promises of support and solidarity carrying him through the worst of their various tumults and clashes with Jiang Cheng's parents.

Jiang Cheng is petty, is stubborn and terse and irate, but although his shortcomings are great and varied, at his core he is a good man struggling both to do his best for his family while trying to understand what that even means. Though he isn't fully cognizant of it, he is not the Jiang clan's voice of reason. In fact, he and Wei Wuxian are more or less the same amount of immature but in completely different ways. Wei Wuxian tends to look without leaping, likes to goof off and have a good time, but when push comes to shove he takes full accountability for his actions and looks after the whole of the group rather than just himself. Meanwhile Jiang Cheng maintains a persistently serious nature but lacks Wei Wuxian's sense of personal responsibility, choosing instead to blame others and make excuses, prone to tantrums and fits. But they're good for each other in that way, each shoring up the other's weaknesses,

That all said, Jiang Cheng is loyal and endlessly loving. Though clumsy to show it, he cares deeply for his family and is primarily driven by the urge to do the right thing, to bring a sense of fairness to a cruel and often senseless world. Wei Wuxian brings both the best and worst out of him, and though he is loathe to admit it, he would not trade that for the world. For all he complains about the trouble Wei Wuxian brings, despite deflecting his brother's pouty plead to be brothers again in the next life, Jiang Cheng wouldn't give Wei Wuxian up for the world. When life gets difficult Jiang Cheng tends to stray from this one absolute truth of his life, but he always comes back to Wei Wuxian in the end. If asked, right now, he would vehemently, violently disagree, but his rage would come from the truth of the fact of it.

Even if he can't see it right now, even if he can't begin to bear imagining it—

He comes back to his family in the end.

The years as sect leader, alone, with no family or even disciples who remember the Lotus Pier of his father's time, have hardened Jiang Cheng at least on surface. He's a tense, unyielding, unsmiling man, severe and steadfast in his leadership. He's vocal about his displeasure and quick to discipline, especially when it comes to the child he raised. His nephew, his sister's son, bears the unique burden of being Jiang Cheng's only surviving relative, both a symbol of his sister's enduring love and a testament to all that has been lost. Jin Ling with the same princess temper they once mocked his father for and his mother's tender heart, having met neither of them.

All of Jiang Cheng's life is strangely cut off in that way. He is all that connects the past and future of Lotus Pier. He alone remembers all the disciples they laid to rest, remembers his family as they truly were, imagines how life might have been different for A-Ling, for all of them, if only they'd lived. He alone is responsible for what comes next, for what becomes of the Yunmeng Jiang legacy. It makes him as tense and joyless as he has ever been, and still he cannot let go of the past.

He ever chases Wei Wuxian's ghost, as he did those months with Lan Wangji when he first went missing, mercilessly punishing those who dare to remind him of the man who failed him the most. Who Jiang Cheng failed in turn.

Jiang Cheng, at the heart of him, is a man who tries to do everything, to be everything, for everyone at all times. And, as a result, he is able to do nothing for anyone in the end.

SAMPLE: tdm sample

INVENTORY:
Sandu, extremely purple sword.
Zidian, electric whip with exorcism properties. Transforms into a bangle in the shape of a snake with an attached ring when not in use.
Chenqing, Wei Wuxian's extremely cursed demon flute he's been holding onto for him, a safe and healthy way to cope with the loss of your brother.
A small jar of liquor from Lotus Pier.
Silk purse with ancient Chinese currency.
Gold hair accessories for fixing his nephew's hair with.
Purple robe set, silver crown.
Cloth pouch of lotus seeds.

NOTES: Punish him for existing, he needs the help.

ACCEPTED

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PLAYER NAME: Kalyn
CONTACT:

ovals
INVITE STATUS: Existing player ypp

CHARACTER: Vanya Hargreeves
CANON:The Umbrella Academy
CANON POINT: Season 2, end of episode 10, right when Five is jumping them to the present

BACKGROUND: https://umbrellaacademy.fandom.com/wiki/Vanya_Hargreeves_(Netflix)#Biography

ABILITIES | POWERS: https://umbrellaacademy.fandom.com/wiki/Vanya_Hargreeves_(Netflix)#Powers_and_Abilities

Essentially Vanya can channel sound into a weapon, has telekinesis, and the weather tends to be tied to her emotions. She also has the ability to change her clothes into a sick white suit upon fully activating her powers, and it turns her violin white too.

Also able to 'gift' her abilities to others, though the method for how she does so is unknown.

As for nerfing, probably...Gonna make her ability just peter out once she gets to "destroy the moon and cause the apocalypses" levels of it. Just sudden cut off like pulling a power cord.

PERSONALITY: Vanya is someone who tries to keep putting one foot in front of the other to keep moving on, but ultimately always ends up stumbling somewhere down the line. Vanya's isolation from her family defines her at first. It's always The Umbrella Academy + 1, and that +1 just wasn't interesting or worth anyone's time. Being constantly pushed aside, the neglect of her father and lowgrade bullying from her siblings gave Vanya deep-seated issues with her own supposed 'averageness'.

While mild-mannered and almost bland at first, Vanya just drifts through life feeling like an outsider to everyone she meets, and it's because of her trauma that she falls so easily for others' manipulation. She wanted desperately to feel needed and special to someone, so when Leonard came along and gave her all the praise she'd missed, she latched onto it almost obsessively.

All of her anger and hurt that had been brimming under the surface and suppressed thanks in part to the pills her father put her on suddenly began to bubble up. The powers Vanya didn't know she had began to manifest again and Vanya, completely unprepared for it, began to lash out violently against perceived threats and the power she'd been denied so long.

It isn't until her siblings knock her out and she ends up losing her memory that she begins to heal. In a safer environment, feeling loved and happy, Vanya is able to cope better once Five shatters the bubble she'd enclosed herself in. Her siblings actually try to empathize with her and take responsibility for their own actions towards her, and she in turn takes responsibility for her destructive powers and they're able to forgive each other.

Vanya is loyal and hard-working, passionate about music and dedicated to her craft, to the point her violin is the main focal point for her sound-based abilities. While Vanya doesn't have the greatest control over it, she's quick to learn about it and has grown comfortable enough to joke with her siblings about it, or prank them.

However, in a lot of ways Vanya is still a ticking time bomb. Triggered the wrong way, or when she gets too emotional and overwhelmed, Vanya's powers begin to manifest without her input and can quickly go wildly out of control if someone isn't able to talk her down from the ledge. When in control of her powers, though, Vanya is deadly and protective, pushing her and her abilities beyond what she might normally in order to save those she cares about (such as pushing all the water out of the lake ala Moses to save Harlan).

SAMPLE: https://westwhere.dreamwidth.org/2035.html?thread=227827#cmt227827

INVENTORY: - A violin

NOTES: Vanya will try very, very hard not to start an apocalypse for the THIRD time.

APPROVED

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PLAYER NAME: Thea
CONTACT: discord: theasaurus#0842
INVITE STATUS: modly green light

CHARACTER: Wen Qing
CANON: The Untamed
CANON POINT: post episode 31, just after departing from the Burial Mounds after leaving Wei Wuxian incapacitated.

BACKGROUND: history although it's primarily novel-based. the bottom has additional differences between the novel and the live action drama.

° Orphaned at a young age, her younger brother left with issues after encountering a fairy statue, Wen Qing grew up in the fairly bleak castle at Nightless City under the care of Wen Ruohan, leader of the Qishan Wen cultivation sect and chief cultivator in what is essentially ancient fantasy China, just with spiritual powers instead of magic.

° Wen Ruohan frequently bullied Wen Ning, her brother, to get Wen Qing to do what he wants. He sends them off to Cloud Recesses to do some sneaking around and try to find the Yin Iron (a magical macguffin with demonic cultivation powers? It's not made entirely clear). Her cousin, Wen Chao, makes an ass of himself and she steps in to try to soothe ruffled feathers.

° During one of the major wars in the series, Wen Qing is appointed to the Supervisory Office in Yiling, and reluctantly agrees to take in Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng after her brother rescues them from Lotus Pier (which had been destroyed). She's vexed about it but agrees to help them eventually, curing Jiang Cheng's injuries and then letting Wei Wuxian talk her into doing a golden core transplant.

° Important to note: she impersonated a legendary immortal in order to do this. (okay it's not important, I just like this fact.)

° The war is won, and the remaining Wen's are deemed pariahs, most of them taken off to prison camps and treated horribly, used as targets, and generally abused. Wei Wuxian finds Wen Qing on the streets of Lanling, and she begs him to find her brother. He does and even takes her to him, but things can't be simple, and he's mostly dead when they find him. Which leads her to beg Wei Wuxian to fix him, which also leads to them (Wei Wuxian, Wen Qing, and the rest of the Wen's, including a very young child) giving the middle finger to the cultivation world and fleeing off to a literal graveyard (it's named the Burial Mounds).

° Things are rocky, as you know, living in a place called the Burial Mounds isn't easy, but they manage to make it work: Wei Wuxian finds a way to bring back Wen Ning as a fierce corpse, Wen Qing is eternally grateful, they argue over what to plant in the toxic soil, things are going just swimmingly until Wen Ning accidentally kills Wei Wuxian's brother-in-law and everything goes to hell. (Wen Ning was believed to be controlled by Wei Wuxian, so he's blamed for Jin Zixuan's death.)

° Wen Qing makes the ultimate decision that she and Wen Ning are going to take the fall for Wei Wuxian and march off to sacrifice themselves, along with the rest of the Wen remnants (minus A-Yuan, the child). She incapacitates Wei Wuxian in order to do this and says "I'm sorry and thank you" to him.

ABILITIES | POWERS: She's a cultivator, so, improved health, stamina, and senses, with magically perfect hair, glowing skin, and nails that always seem manicured, even when digging in the dirt. She has carried a sword, so presumably knows how to fight with it, is capable of flying on it, is familiar with talismans, and knows how to deal with demons/ghosts/monsters.

Specific to Wen Qing, a physician: ° Knowledge of acupuncture points and medicinal herbs, along with knowledge of anatomy and physiology, able to knock a man out. General healing skills.

° Silver needles: She's used her silver needles (a common part of the physician's bag in ancient China) as devices for seeking wards/barriers, pinning people, and knocking them out. They seem to function as a spiritual weapon for her, through which she can channel her qi.

° Impressive skills as a surgeon, able to do organ transplants (or rather, spiritual power core transplants) and stitch up wounds.

° Knowledge of the six arts/liberal arts.

PERSONALITY: The tl;dr: She's a bitch, she's a boss, she's not going to deal with your nonsense, and she'll look good doing it.

Perhaps not the most notable trait Wen Qing has, but a core component of her personality: Wen Qing is a proud individual. She's smart, capable, and competent, assured in the knowledge that she's highly skilled, well-trained, and educated, especially in the healing arts. While not egotistical, she knows her strengths and isn't afraid to use them. She's also well-versed in the polite societal rules that make up life in the cultivation world, having developed an ability to read situations and pacify people when necessary, thanks to growing up in her uncle's court and trying to watch out for her younger brother. She knows what roles to play when she needs to, soothing ruffled feathers when the Wen delegation causes a scene at Cloud Recesses, causing her own scene when she encounters Jiang Cheng at a teahouse and wants to impart information without anyone overhearing them.

She can come across as aloof or haughty to people, especially if they take her at a surface level. But it's mostly there to hide the big heart she has. Her pride makes it a significant blow when she is left to fend for herself in the streets and she ends up begging Wei Wuxian to save her brother.

Wen Qing is a dedicated, devoted elder sister and a filial daughter, ready to help her extended family however possible. When Wei Wuxian finds her, she doesn't beg for anything for herself, other than to find her brother, and then, when they find him close to death, she begs for further help, unable to sit by and watch him die. When Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng are hiding in the supervisory office in Yiling, her initial reaction is vexation because she doesn't want to bring trouble upon herself and her brother (knowing that it would mean imprisonment at the hands of her uncle). But she still lets them in, agrees to heal Jiang Cheng, and even goes along with Wei Wuxian's schemes to get his brother another golden core.

She's shown taking care of her family in the Burial Mounds. It's the first time in a very, very long time that she's had a chance to not be guarded, surrounded by family that isn't actively hostile, and it shows. She comforts a-Yuan when he cries, teases her grandmother, purchases lotus seeds for Wei Wuxian, among other things, and does what she to make the place a home, even though it's a pretty miserable place.

Even though she is capable of great kindness, she's gruff and doesn't take anyone's shit, cutting to the heart of situations when she can. She's no-nonsense herself, practical and efficient with everything she does. When she needs to play political games, she's adept and capable, but ultimately, she's happiest when she's doing her medical work, which requires attention to detail and seeing beneath the surface to understand the problems facing her patients.

She frequently nags her younger brother to watch what he's doing and not put himself in danger, doesn't buy into Wei Wuxian's teasing and flirting, and will tell him off and call him out when he's acting up — she tells him not to yell at a-Yuan at one point, as he's just a child— and isn't afraid tell her cousin, Wen Chao, to stop causing a scene because it's interfering with her work. (Was her work wrong? Perhaps, but she was obligated to be Wen Ruohan's spy, between filial duty to her uncle and a responsibility to watch out for her brother.)

In her final decision, Wen Qing is once again proud, refusing to be victimized by the world. While her decision to turn herself, Wen Ning, and the rest of the Wen's over to the Jin Clan was not all hers to make, it was a decision, and she went to her inevitable death with her head held high, assured she had done what she could to help her family.

SAMPLE: a tdm sample

INVENTORY:
Some classy red and black robes
Two silver needles, used by physicians for acupuncture (the third was left in Wei Wuxian)

NOTES: N/A

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Eleven | Dragon Quest XI S

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Wei Wuxian | The Untamed (1/2)

Wei Wuxian | The Untamed (2/2)

lan wangji | the untamed

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Xiao Xingchen | Mo Dao Zu Shi

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Beitang Moran | | Oh! My Emperor

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Su Xunxian | Oh! My Emperor

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bai mingyu // oc

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Winnifred Prismall | Original

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Sith Inquisitor | Star Wars: The Old Republic (1/2?)

Sith Inquisitor | Star Wars: The Old Republic (2/3 sweats)

Lee Chang | Kingdom | Please note there are a shit ton of spoilers

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Ery ( original character )

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Rachel "Honey Badger" Silva | Original Character

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Merrill || Dragon Age 2

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Number Five | The Umbrella Academy (1/2)

Number Five | The Umbrella Academy (2/2)

Catra | She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

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Schwarz Bruder (G Gundam)

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Hendrik | Dragon Quest XI

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Alina Starkov ( grisha series ) 1/2

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Xie Lian || Tian Guan Ci Fu/Heaven Officials' Blessing Novel

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Lan Sizhui | The Untamed

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jiang cheng | the untamed

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Vanya | The Umbrella Academy

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wen qing | the untamed

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