applications

[groundrules]

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

<b><Small>PLAYER NAME</small>:</b> <b><small>CONTACT</small>:</b> <b><small>CHARACTER</small>:</b> <b><small>CANON</small>:</b> <b><small>CANON POINT</small>:</b> <b><small>BACKGROUND</small>:</b> link out or write no more than two-three paragraphs...! <b><small>PERSONALITY</small>:</b> bullet points a-okay, or written out. You can also link out to it, if you agree to what's on your wikia. <b><small>SAMPLE</small>:</b> a written sample or one or more threads to show your character's personality. <b><small>NOTES</small>:</b> you know the ropes, jot down if your character has any world-breaking powers or accommodations you need for them!

NEW PLAYERS

<b><Small>PLAYER NAME</small>:</b> <b><small>CONTACT</small>:</b> <b><small>REFERRED BY</small>:</b> Who invited you, please? c: <b><small>CHARACTER</small>:</b> <b><small>CANON</small>:</b> <b><small>CANON POINT</small>:</b> <b><small>BACKGROUND</small>:</b> written or linked history both fine. Bullet points also a-okay. If no information is available in English, please write this out in short. <b><small>ABILITIES | POWERS</small>:</b> Include any relevant power restrictions, so you don’t break our playground. <b><small>PERSONALITY</small>:</b> make sure this ties back to the character’s time point and background. <b><small>SAMPLE</small>:</b> 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. <b><small>INVENTORY</small>:</b> No world-breaking items. For living or magical beings, or anything colossal (think... Gundams...) please let's talk beforehand! <b><small>SUITABILITY</small>:</b> 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)? <b><small>NOTES</small>:</b> Are there any particular accommodations your character will need? How do you propose to handle that?

APPLICATIONS CLOSED


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Sylvain Jose Gautier | Fire Emblem: Three Houses

[gautiheir]

PLAYER NAME: Sam
CONTACT: atkascha
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Current player, but I'm always here for calling Morgan out in this blank because BLAME MUST BE ASSIGNED

CHARACTER: Sylvain Jose Gautier
CANON: Fire Emblem: Three Houses/Three Hopes
CANON POINT: Just after his paralogue in Hopes.

BACKGROUND:
♞ Sylvain is the second son of House Gautier, one of the major noble houses in the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. Because of its position on the northern border, House Gautier is traditionally charged with defending the kingdom against incursions by the Sreng tribes - and because their holy relic, the Lance of Ruin, has always played a big role in their defense, House Gautier absolutely requires that its heir possess the Crest that will allow them to use the lance.
♞ Crest phenotypes are hilariously unpredictable and the rules of inheritance are unclear (read: what the plot demands). As such, Sylvain's older brother Miklan doesn't have the Crest, and as soon as Sylvain is born and found to have one, Miklan is swept to the side and the inheritance is ceded to Sylvain. Miklan, being kind of a volatile little shithead, makes multiple attempts to kill his brother throughout their childhoods, eventually leading to him being disowned completely.
♞ Sylvain, despite the murder attempts, grows up okay and eventually is sent to Garreg Mach to attend the military academy, in the same year as several childhood friends from other noble families of Faerghus - Felix, Ingrid, and Prince Dimitri. The academy winds up shutting down early, as unrest in all three of the nations involved sends their students scrambling home - in the case of Faerghus, Dimitri's uncle launches a rebellion, and the kids all go home and team up to apprehend him so Dimitri can behead him publicly. As you do.
♞ The Adrestian Empire, under their former classmate Edelgard, declares war on the Central Church of Seiros and also launches invasions on Faerghus and the Leicester Alliance. Dimitri offers sanctuary to Archbishop Rhea, pretty much solidifying their position as Edelgard's preferred punching bag, and the resulting war is a clusterfuck of both Imperial incursion, and various acts of rebellion from the lords of western Faerghus, some of whom (our heroes learn) were involved in the massacre that killed Dimitri's father, and whom are also tied in up some weird dark magic shenanigans with a mysteeeerious faction called Those Who Slither in the Dark.
♞ Months pass, war continues, Faerghus starts talking to Leicester about how they can team up and get Adrestia to settle the fuck down, and amidst all of this, a large invasion force from Sreng starts pushing at the border, so Sylvain heads home and helps his father repel it - and is given full-time possession of the Lance of Ruin.
♞ This is where we are now!



ABILITIES | POWERS:
Magic! Magic is not really explained in Three Houses; it's just there, and people use it, so there. Everyone is capable of learning it, although some fare much better than others.

Sylvain, being a decent all-arounder, has a middle of the road spell list; better than you'd expect for a physically oriented character, not as good as the dedicated casters. He gets all three levels of fire magic (Fire, Bolganone, Ragnarok), as well as Sagittae, a spell that hits with arrows of light and has a bit better chance for critical hits. For his white magic, he gets the basic Heal and Nosferatu (a weak draining spell that heals the caster for half the damage it inflicts), a ranged heal in Physic, and an attack spell called Seraphim that does extra damage to monsters and demons.

He also has a Minor Crest of Gautier, which is basically magic dragon blood that makes him stronger (the gameplay effect is to sometimes increase damage when he uses special attacks) and allows him to safely wield the Lance of Ruin without turning into a mindless monster (it's not pretty!). There's dialogue at one point comparing having the Lance to adding the strength of a thousand-ish more men to their army, which sounds like some anime-flavored bullshit to me, but it is enough of a dealbreaker to be critical to the border defenses. It gives him a special attack called Ruined Sky, which does massive damage to flying and dragon enemies. It also glows creepy red in battle, as ominous relics crafted from the bones of dead dragons apparently do.

PERSONALITY: Sylvain gives the impression of a caring, if carefree, big brother type. He's supportive of his friends, which largely takes the form of him lightly prodding them to lighten up, since they're all rather serious, and he can be quite helpful when asked - despite the fact that he puts little effort into his studies and training, and puts entirely too much effort into his rather complicated love life. He has a reputation among the students at Garreg Mach as being that guy who'll flirt with absolutely anyone, but won't call any of them back the next day.

The truth is that Sylvain's outlook on life has been drastically shaped by the fact that he has a Crest, which is extremely desirable in his society. He's the heir who will inherit House Gautier, because of his Crest. Marrying him is a fast way for a woman who would otherwise have no notable prospects to climb the social ladder, because he has a Crest. Having seen his older brother pushed into complete irrelevance due to lacking a Crest, Sylvain has thus internalized the idea that the only thing anybody really wants from him is his bloodline, and for the first half of canon he seems determined to prove the world right by showing people no other reason to want his company. He tells Annette in one scene that he hates people having high expectations and thinking they know what he's capable of, so instead he prefers to coast through life and let people think he's worthless. He doesn't say as much outright, but the implication seems to be that when people still try to get close to him, even with his behavior, then he doesn't have to worry (or hope) that they're honestly interested in him - he already knows the only possible reason they could have for trying, and he can easily write them off.

He's a lot more bitter about everything than he shows, really. There are only a few scenes where his mask cracks; he's very good at keeping his composure and seeming like the cheerful joker who isn't bothered by anything, but in his support conversations with Mercedes, he shows an angry streak about the women who try to get close to him, and he tells Byleth at one point that he hates women - except he's self-aware enough to realize that he probably really doesn't, and that's just an easy answer. As much as he hates the system, Sylvain isn't ignorant of the fact that it's playing all of them, not just him, and he doesn't condemn his brother for having tried to kill him on multiple occasions - he mostly just pities him.

If you get past the fronts he's put him to cope with his place in a system he hates, there's a sincere, smart young man underneath. Sylvain values his friends highly, and ultimately wants to do the right thing by everyone - in his supports with Ashe, where Ashe is trying so very hard to be the ideal knight, Sylvain waves off all of Ashe's struggles and tells him: you just have to help people, regardless of who they are. That's all he really needs to worry about. Ashe observes that Sylvain would be a really amazing person, if he could just stop with all the scandal and skirt-chasing. Sylvain shows an impressive intellect in supports with Annette, but also tells her that he knows guys like him who can coast by on their wits eventually hit a wall, and he really admires people like her who have a great work ethic and push themselves for everything they achieve. He doesn't take it personally when his friends criticize his habits (because he knows that honestly, they're right) and as he tells Felix at one point, when has he ever let Felix's constant verbal abuse get in the way of their friendship? He's there when people need him, regardless of what anyone says about him.

His current canon point, in Three Hopes, notably goes much lighter on his issues, and the flirtation has mostly disappeared - the war kicks into full gear earlier in this version of the timeline, necessitating his growing up a bit faster, and he seems to look on his youthful indiscretions with the same kind of cringe most of us reserve for our high school fanfiction. He's putting his best foot forward, even if the issues are still lurking beneath the surface.

His endings show him growing past his issues; the endings that mention his family make it clear that he's a devoted husband and a good father, who places no importance on whether his children have Crests. When he takes over Gautier territory, he focuses his life on negotiating peace with Sreng, breaking the cycle of border disputes and the importance of Crests and martial skill for the lords of his territory. Sylvain's a great lord and a devoted friend underneath it all; he just needs to be put in a position where he has no choice but to show his true colors, and then he'll step up to the plate.

SAMPLE: ** These threads are old, but I include them for the sake of offering a slightly more serious perspective than the travesty this sample turned out being. But for something more recent, behold the toplevel I didn't get around to making on the test drive....


How it started:

Sylvain is not used to the nautical life, to put it gently. The port nearest his domain is iced over more often than not, there's always a border in need of defending, if he'd tried to go sailing as a child he probably would've had to watch his back lest Miklan push him overboard anyway... Well, there are always reasons. Excuses. But excuses don't do much to earn one's keep, and with nobody here who even realizes he has a reputation to preserve, he's more than happy to pitch in for the sake of having something to do.

He's a quick study, so picking up on most of the tasks isn't much trouble. Cleaning is easy (and he hates a mess, anyway). Chasing off seagulls? Sure. Mending ropes, torn sails, and what have you? Bring it on. But one idly made comment letting slip to the crew that he has a noble education means they're all too happy to take advantage and put him to work in other ways.

How it's going:

"'It's time I showed you...what a real man looks like.' He took his hands from her breasts -"

Some scattered hoots and whistles come from the sailors working in the vicinity, and Sylvain lowers the book for a moment, using the interruption to grab a bite from the orange in his other hand. "Hey now," he says, his usual easygoing lilt coming back. "Don't make me repeat myself, okay? Reginald's growl does a real number on my throat!"

Someone calls out from the back. "Not the only thing he has that'll do a -"

"'Oh, please!' she whispered," Sylvain cuts in, raising his voice an octave. "'I've dreamed of this for - so long...' His gnarled, masculine fingers fumbled with the laces of his breeches -" He pauses a moment, again, to wait for his audience to simmer down. "- and they slid down, revealing the full glory of his quivering member..."

This would, needless to say, be a superbly awkward moment for someone to walk in on this performance.


INVENTORY: The armor he's wearing, the Lance of Ruin. He's not traveling heavy.

...although if he can keep his horse, I'm all for it, but it's nbd if not.

NOTES: kanyeshrug

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? I will take whatever's convenient!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

eleventh doctor | doctor who

[thedreamer]

PLAYER NAME: CJ
CONTACT:
PM this account or geekorthodox
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Spoke with mod!

CHARACTER: The Eleventh Doctor
CANON: Doctor Who
CANON POINT: 7.7, The Rings of Akhaten, just after the Doctor has dropped off Clara back at her flat.

BACKGROUND: Wiki link!
That history page is quite massive/long, so just to condense it a bit: The Doctor is what’s known as a Time Lord, a humanoid species hailing from the planet Gallifrey. This species has the very unique ability to regenerate upon death, and this is the Doctor’s final regeneration, the end of the line for him. He is also quite old, over a thousand years.

ABILITIES | POWERS:
Time Lord ability/physiology: The Doctor has two hearts, a much larger brain than a human, the ability to withstand extreme heat and cold longer than humans, the ability to regenerate. Time Lords only need to sleep for an hour at a time and can go quite a long time without needing sleep. He could induce a healing coma to focus on healing himself in the event of serious but non-fatal injuries. He would not be able to regenerate because this is his last life/he has no regeneration cycles left.
Telepathy: He has the ability to communicate with other Time Lords and non-telepaths through telepathy. He can touch someone and convey thoughts through the mind. He can manipulate and block memories, put people to sleep, and hypnotize someone. He rarely employs these abilities, but if allowed, I think it would make sense for much of these abilities to be muted except that he could still have the ability to resist mind control and to break any mind control that might be used on a friend by someone else without their consent.
Intelligence: Very good at all things science-y, technology, he can build things from scraps, etc.

PERSONALITY:
Despite this being the Doctor’s very last regeneration (as far as he knows up to this point in his canon), he is known for being outwardly childish and with a youthful exuberance befitting someone far younger. It’s the knowledge that this is his very last life that makes him so excited about literally everything. He’s amused by and enjoys even the simplest things and he always finds ways to entertain himself. The Doctor gets bored quite easily, hates being idle and comfortable, and so even in “quiet” moments, he’s always finding ways to occupy his time. When he’s not traveling through time and space - which is rare indeed - he will tinker around, invent new gadgets, and even do the mundane sorts of things like yardwork, chores, and errands if he happens to be on Earth with a companion for any length of time. His complete and utter joy at all things is infectious and it’s what draws people to him so easily; he can charm anyone with his easy grin, jokes, meandering nonsense as he rattles off factoids. Despite his many other traits and the streak of darkness inherent in the Doctor no matter the incarnation, when everything is going right, when he’s happy, when no one is being hurt or threatened and life is just good, he is the very best of the best to be around. He wants everyone around him to know how wonderful the universe is, how wonderful they are, how very much there always is to see and do. He has seen the very best and the very worst and in spite of the darkest, most terrible pockets of the universe out there, the Doctor would show everyone in the universe all the good things all the time if he could. It’s why he never stops traveling, never stops wanting to meet people and bring them with him, even when he knows he shouldn’t, when he knows he can be dangerous to anyone who just happens to be around him. He can’t really help himself in that regard, he believes that joy should be shared. Though he's not always the best at it verbally, he tries to be conscious of making sure that people always know their worth, value, importance.

This version of the Doctor, more than any other before him, truly feels his age. Every second that he’s lived these thousand years is heavy in his bones. It’s a wonder the universe hasn’t collapsed with the weight of everything he carries with him as he gallivants across the stars. Though he’s been called the Doctor who “forgets,” it’s not that he truly forgets anything at all. It wouldn’t be possible, not for him. This Doctor hasn’t forgotten a single thing, and that’s precisely why he’s so joyful, why he has to bury all the darkest and worst memories down deep inside of him, crushing it all with silliness and laughter and a beguiling attempt to never take anything seriously. The part of his past he loathes the most, when he destroyed his own planet and people to save the rest of the universe, is something that he’s openly stated he has “moved on” from. This would have been a coping mechanism to survive. There is no universe without the Doctor and he knows that, so of course he “forgets” and “moves on” from the horrors of what he’s done. The Doctor has many, many rules, but he tries to live by one code: never cruel or cowardly, never give up and never give in. When he couldn’t save Gallifrey, he broke those rules and he broke the promise of the name he chose for himself; Doctor, a healer, a bringer of hope. He never gives up, but he did. And if he didn’t force himself to “forget” that, he wouldn’t have been any use to anyone at all.

There is no one, not a single other being or creature in the universe, who could ever hate the Doctor more than he hates himself. Despite that, however, he is fully aware of his brilliance, his capabilities, the many victories and battles he’s won, the stories that are told of him, good and bad. So, he keeps going, even when times are at their worst. When he lost Amy and Rory, he shut down completely, he didn’t want to help anymore. He avoided other people, he broke the promise of himself again until he could no longer ignore people in need. In the end, that is what will always pull the Doctor back from the brink, the knowledge that he can and must help.

This is not to say that the Doctor is a perfect or even good man, by any means. He is very flawed, inherently selfish, and he would be the first to admit to that, even while extolling his virtues, like his supreme intelligence, cleverness, charm. He is not a good man, nor a bad man. He’s a mad man in a box, a traveler, an explorer, someone who seeks out danger to eliminate the threat, someone who helps others in need. He will always do what he feels is the right thing, the thing that will protect the greater good and what will be best for everyone in the end. This sounds reasonable in theory, but this can lead to very dark and even cruel moments from the Doctor. A good example of this is when the Doctor had to save a ship filled with 4,003 people that was going to burn up in the atmosphere of a planet. In order to save the ship, he ultimately had to convince a very cruel man in control of the atmosphere that every one on that ship was worth saving. When the man refused, the Doctor took it upon himself to travel back in time in this man’s life, to manipulate events and to change everything he knew, to make him kinder, to ultimately take him back to the present when he would make the right choice to save others. On the outside, it would be easy to judge this as the end justifying the means, but it’s an example of how manipulative the Doctor can be in his pursuit of saving others.

The Doctor is very protective, most especially of the people he loves/his friends, but even of perfect strangers, even non-sentient beings. The thought of anyone or anything dying because of him or for him absolutely haunts him. As such, it’s the threat of impending doom and death that often brings out the sharp, callous, and sometimes harsh tongue in him. If he has to think and act quickly, he can be very dismissive and come across as almost cruel in the moment. When River sends out a distress call to the universe for his sake when it seems certain that he’ll die, he snaps at her, “You embarrass me.” He snaps this because he can’t bear the thought of anyone being hurt for his sake, and he truly doesn’t believe he’s worth all that fuss. He doesn’t like being worried over, fussed over; it’s him who’s supposed to do that with the people around him.

For his faults, though, the most dominant and prominent trait in the Eleventh Doctor is kindness, and the facets within. He can be short-tempered at times, but he is exceedingly soft, gentle, even tender. He is very tactile, someone who will easily reach for the hand of a friend, who thrives on hugs, and who even enjoys a platonic kiss or two. He’s the Doctor who has “never met anyone who isn’t important” and who will sit with a dying woman and comfort her with the kindest of lies, telling her that he remembers her, that he would never forget her, even though that wasn’t true; it brought her comfort and hope and that’s what matters most to him.

He loathes goodbyes and hates being alone so he will avoid both at all cost. He has lost so much through the years, he’s always losing the people he loves most, but he can also never stop latching on to people. He’s clingy and desperate for company, always, even knowing the inevitable heartbreak that awaits him.

SAMPLE:
Sample #1
Sample #2
Sample #3

INVENTORY:
▶ His sonic screwdriver, though because this can do basically everything, it would make sense if the power in it was completely removed and he could basically only use it as an actual screwdriver
▶ Clothes he’s currently wearing
▶ TARDIS key
▶ Random strings of yarn
▶ Baseball signed by Babe Ruth
▶ A carrot
▶ Pair of scissors
▶ Caramel apple

NOTES:
No special accommodations needed! He will always find a way to carry on in any situation.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Slight preference for plot-heavy, but really happy either way!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

red | original character

[growlies]

PLAYER NAME: Rizzy
CONTACT: snowed @ plurk, or pm.
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: I'm already here as Wrath (inferus)

CHARACTER: Red
CANON: original character - > played her in a one-shot of Monsterhearts - a Powered By the Apocalypse tabletop rpg - the specific setting of a purgatory-high school was created by Katie (aka our Diego player), and I've gone on to further develop the character and setting since then
CANON POINT: from the end of the one shot

BACKGROUND: Red wasn't born- not really. She was made. As the afterlife changes, the pieces of it change too. Once upon a time, she was Cerberus (an ancient three headed dog, guarding the gates of the afterlife). In the future, there are different version of purgatory, and one of those versions becomes High School to deal with all the souls of teens in the afterlife. Hades wanted a more appropriate vessel for his guard dog in a setting like this one especially since this Purgatory is different than the rest. He made Red out of the soul of a teenager and Cerberus itself (Red was never told about the soul thing). She's a typical teenager except for the fact she has no parents, has never experienced childhood, and is Hades, the god of the Underworld's, lackey. All at once, she's both supposed to fit in by being a teenager who goes to high school classes and she's supposed to be an outcast by being the one and only 'hall monitor' of Purgatory High.

It's her job to keep all of the souls in Purgatory High in line and to help some cross the River Styx which borders the high school once they've graduated. Graduating requires more than simply attending classes for these souls, they have to go on a journey of discovery inside of themselves to really understand why they're here, the choices they made in life, and all the rest. She even gets one of those hall monitor vests to signal her position and how different she is from the rest of the students. Given her 'role' within the high school, most of the teens are intimidated by or even scared of her, and she doesn't make many friends.

However, eventually she does manage to achieve some version of friendships with a couple of the others, because she's human enough to have a heart beneath the rough exterior. These friends are looking for a way out. Some souls in the high school are going missing, and they hear of a way to get out of the afterlife, but they're going to need the help of Cerberus if they've any chance. She's sick and tired of being stuck in high school (being human but not really), and they're the only friends she has. She agrees to help without any hesitation. It's not like she thinks she'll actually be able to get out of this place, but there's something so freeing about making a choice of her own and saying 'fuck you' to Hades in the process.

Turns out escaping involves going to the big dance as a cover, saving Persephone from where she had been trapped and chained in the basement of the high school, and making it past a chimera (her friend beat it relentlessly in a hail of holy-fuck-rage). They narrowly avoid Hades' detection, and they make it to the River Styx. Because Persephone goes with them, she uses her powers to protect them and help them through to the other side, to the living side. Granted, this surprises the fuck out of Red who definitely thought she'd do whatever an immortal being's version of dying is, but now she is alive in a world she's never actually lived in herself, despite all her secondhand knowledge of it. Falling into the actual living world means she's not so immortal any longer, and her Cerberus form can't be as big as it can be in the afterlife.

She doesn't know what it actually means to live, to make connections, to be a part of the real world but she's not alone at least as her friends offer to take her in - cue falling into Eastbound.

ABILITIES | POWERS:

-Can sense if someone has died before/undead/etc as she got a connection to death like that. On that note, she also reeks of death-touched to those sensitive to that. She can also sense if someone is god-like given her whole Hades thing. (Permissions based)

-Can sense people's souls (when I had her in a game previously, this was entirely permissions based, and I let people describe what she would see about the ~color~ of their soul and the insight she'd get about 'em cause of it or just say she'd see nothing at all since she's out of the Underworld).

-Can help spirits move on given her role as a Cerberus, but would need training/to work on it since she's never dealt with souls in the mortal realm. It'd be something for her to work toward being able to do.

-When she's upset or angry, she sometimes unintentionally channels the ancient power inside of her, and it will show up in a psychic kind of growl in their heads where you get the sense you're tangling with something ancient. She used to do this on teens in Purgatory to get information from them or to get them in line. This would be permissions based. She can also channel it to get a temporary boost to her strength or speed.

-Investigative abilities: She has super-intense senses (hearing, scent, sight including being able to see in the dark), and she is exceptionally good at tracking people or objects down if she has a previous scent of them.

-Transformation: Can transform into a three headed dog/Cerberus.
-> For the most part, she will transform into medium sized Cerberus aka about the size of a wolf. Cerberus has enhanced strength, enhanced speed, fierce bite, and breathes a bit of blue fire. She is fully in control of herself.
-> She is limited to how long/how much she can transform before becoming exhausted.
-> Can also transform into v large Cerberus or very small Cerberus but has less control over this and can't hold the form as long.
-> If her Cerberus form dies, she transforms back into herself and is knocked near unconscious, but it doesn't kill her. In her human form, she can die though as she's very mortal now.
-> She is new to having this mortal body and being outside of the Underworld so it will likely take her time to control this transformation really well. Might accidentally transform/transform back when she doesn't mean to, etc.

PERSONALITY:

-Human but not: Red has never really had the human experience, and so she's not used to making connections at all but a certain part of her craves it and always has. She's in a confusing place where she has never lived but still exists within this form that is very teenager, that has insecurities and emotions and anger. Her experience with the living world is so limited in many ways, and she wants more than anything to interact with it and experience that for herself while worrying she'll never really fit in. Cause y'know, ancient three-headed dog.

-Nonchalant/sarcastic: Red treats most situations with a certain level of nonchalance or sarcasm. She has a kind of dry humor that she approaches most situations with, because she's ancient despite being in a teenage body, and it's difficult to surprise her. She tends to give most people she meets nicknames of some kind, and she curses like... a lot.

-Biting: Because she's good at reading people, she's also good at finding the perfect insult to use, the cutting painful remark, or the exact phrase that will really twist the knife in further (to get those teenage souls in line). Monsterhearts has a move called 'Shut someone down', and she's damn good at it.

-Impulsive: Being a teenager with emotions, feeling powerful for most of her existence, she tends to be impulsive. There's not always a lot of strategy that goes into things. She just jumps in head first without warning, without looking.

-Loyal: This might be surprising given she left Hades high and dry, but he never earned her loyalty. When someone does earn her loyalty, she'll fight tooth and nail for them. It's why she crossed the River Styx when her friends did even if she thought doing so might kill her or drag her right back to Hades' feet where he'd remake her again into something that couldn't disobey him. The stakes were high, but her friends were going and so was she.

-Morally Gray: When you've seen all that Red has, right and wrong gets skewed. She doesn't have a strong moral compass. She goes with what she feels is right in her gut/heart. Sometimes people have to be murdered so other people can be protected. Sometimes you have to disobey orders so you can do what's right.

-She talks like Natasha Lyonne in Russian Doll tho I'm not always good at emulating that. You should have heard my real life impression of her.

SAMPLE:

Network + Log sample

INVENTORY:

- Picture of her and her friends from the dance

- Pack of cigarettes

- Her lucky flask

- Her hall monitor vest

NOTES: None!

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Open for anything

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

kamala khan (ms. marvel) | Marvel Cinematic Universe

[cosplayqueen]

PLAYER NAME: Rose
CONTACT: plurk: milanobutterfly
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Emily referred me!

CHARACTER: Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel)
CANON: Marvel Cinematic Universe
CANON POINT: Ms. Marvel, Episode 6 post-credit scene where she disappears and Carol Danvers appears in her place.

BACKGROUND:
Ms. Marvel

ABILITIES | POWERS: powers and abilities

*Please note this Wiki exaggerates how good she is at things. She’s pretty clever, but not an expert by any means.

PERSONALITY:
Kamala is a dreamer. She spends her days fantasizing about superheroes. She loves to draw and turn her ordinary life into a colorful adventure. She turns taking the bus to go to a convention into an epic adventure with daring escapes, perfect timing, and plans to get around her loving, protective parents’ care. This comes in handy when the real danger comes into her life in the form of Damage Control, a government agency that apparently really likes to fire on teenagers for having superpowers. Her creative thinking skills are what allowed her to outwit a shady government agency with only her friends, big brother, and whatever they can find in a high school after hours. They can also make it hard for her to focus on the day to day life. It’s hard to romanticize doing your homework! It causes her to be forgetful and clumsy as well. She’s always losing something or falling into a river. (Seriously she has a code for it - Black Sloth Down...)

Kamala is a very caring and loving girl. She loves her friends and family. She may be obsessed with superheroes, but they are her world. That big love that she has for those in her circles goes infinitely outwards. She cares so much about everyone she meets. After meeting Najima a total of once, she has her best friend working on the best way to get her and her family home. She stands up for Kamran even after his family betrays her and tries to kill her family against shady government forces. She’s devastated when one of the Red Daggers dies trying to keep herself and Kareem safe. She even pleads for Najima to save herself after finding out that the woman had killed her great-grandmother and caused even more trauma to her family in the past.

This is a double-edged sword since that big heart leads her to trust too easily. In some cases it works out. Kamran betrays his family because it’s plain to see how wrong they are when compared to Kamala who is desperately trying to help strangers. It clearly does not with Najima who nearly kills her family just to force Kamala to do what she wants even faster. Tellingly she never stops trusting so easily after that. She trusts the Red Daggers next with zero hesitation despite how things with Najima turn out.

While she is loving and trusting, like any teenager she is prone to selfishness. She doesn’t always appreciate her family’s attempts to protect her from the outside world. She even drives her father to tears once after insisting he can’t go to a convention with her because it’s embarrassing. Kamala gets so wrapped up in her time as Night Girl/Ms. Marvel that she never tells her other best friend about it and damages their relationship for a time. She absolutely takes her best friend Bruno for granted by always asking for his help on her crazy schemes without really doing much for him in return.

She also can be impulsive and jump into things too quickly like helping a strange woman and her family return to their home dimension. Overall, she’s a good girl at the start of a big adventure in her life. She makes mistakes, but truly means well. Time will tell if she really can save the world like she dreams of doing.

SAMPLE:
sample one - Kamala and Red

sample two - Kamala and Carol

sample three - Kamala and Zari

sample four - Kamala and Peter Parker

Note: Only one of these threads is past five at this point. I am out of time and hoping this will give you a decent idea of how I play Kamala Khan. If this doesn’t work, I’ll write an original sample for you.

INVENTORY:
-Ms. Marvel costume
-bangle
-cell phone
*Please note she’ll be wearing these items at her canon point.

Not on her: family photo, night light, and her giant sloth plushie so she can sleep at night.

NOTES: Kamala does come off as super childish, but I swear she can take care of herself. The plushie will really help though.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? This is a fun question. Let’s do plot-heavy!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

[spoilers]

PLAYER NAME: Ashley
CONTACT: formallyintroduced
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Plurk timeline. Mod approval to apply!

CHARACTER: River Song
CANON: Doctor Who
CANON POINT: Post Name of the Doctor

BACKGROUND: History | I do play her as audio compliant!

ABILITIES | POWERS: River is what she, herself, calls a proto-time lord. Whether this is actually a product of being conceived in the time vortex or more due to Kovarian and the Order of the Silence meddling with her DNA is still, perhaps, a matter for debate. As such, she shares many abilities with time lords, such as the Doctor.

Physiology – River is, physiologically speaking, more like a time lord than a human. She's more durable, faster, better reflexes, binary vascular system (two hearts!), enhanced senses, augmented lifespan. At one time, she even had the ability to regenerate.

Respiratory Bypass – Technically speaking, this accompanies the previous, but I felt it deserved its own bullet point. This allows her to go longer periods of time without breathing than the average human.

Time Sense – Much like the Doctor, River has a certain innate awareness of time, the nature of time, how timelines interact, and the like. It isn’t, however, quite as honed as the Doctor's, perhaps. But she could tell you, say, if you were wandering around in an altered timeline. Usually, in games, this betrays her a bit.

Telepathic Ability – This is a tricky one because she isn’t as skilled as the Doctor for certain. But she has significant mental defenses and has demonstrated the ability to plant an idea that became a waking nightmare into someone's mind and amplify the effect using other proto-time lords without them even being aware she was doing so. She's also particularly attuned to not just the Doctor's TARDIS, but any TARDIS she seems to walk into.

TARDIS Skills– River has certain skills I tend to attribute to being a “child of the TARDIS.” She has an instinctive ability to fly the timeship. While she has claimed that the TARDIS showed her how, she's also stated when piloting others that she likes to feel her way around and that she pilots more by instinct. She was also able to navigate within the matrix, detecting both the Doctor and his TARDIS because they were so familiar to her, as well as project herself out of the matrix to communicate with Liv and Helen. This was something she, herself, attributed to being a child of a TARDIS, saying the data strands inside the matrix were like mother's milk. And no matter how they protest, she is a much better driver than the Doctor.

Child Assassin – River was trained and conditioned from birth for the sole purpose of killing a time lord, a god. She was using weapons as a toddler. Combined with her time lord reflexes and senses? She’s a fierce opponent. And she isn’t afraid to play dirty either. She'll lie and she'll cheat, and she'll flirt with you and then poison you with her lipstick. She's skilled with a variety of weapons, as well as hand-to-hand, and she's got the will and determination to use both.

Escape Artist – River is excellent at breaking into and out of places. This is partly because she’s a thief/archaeologist and partly because she’s spent the majority of her life in prison for a crime she didn’t actually commit. Either way, it’s quite the party trick.

I don't believe she has any abilities that should need nerfed (though let me know if you feel otherwise!) but there's always an opt-out for her telepathy on my permissions post and, regardless, it isn't something I'd spring on anyone without prior discussion.

PERSONALITY: River Song is a woman with a reputation to keep. She typically comes out of the gate with a lot of flirtatious energy and confidence to spare. Unless, of course, you've given her reason to be angry and she wants you to know it.

One might find it hard to guess what's going on in River's mind because she's an expert at hiding what she's really thinking. Her entire life has been wrapped in lies and carefully told truths. Half of what she says doesn’t make sense and the other half should probably concern a reasonable person. But that’s how she likes it, and that much is obvious. It’s almost as though life is a game she’s playing and just maybe she’s in on a secret no one else seems to know about.

She has a natural tendency to take charge of a situation, as if she’s seen and done it all before. Maybe she has. Who can say which stories are true and which aren’t? Her energy draws people in, regardless.

While at times she can seem distant or detached, it isn’t difficult to notice she’s rarely cruel or even truly unkind. She is often practical and plain-spoken, intelligent and always curious.

River loves a good adventure, easily runs straight into trouble, probably with what most would consider an unhealthy amount of enthusiasm. Like a moth to a flame. But keep watching, because River doesn’t only rush toward danger, she’s dangerous herself. It's always there, shimmering under the surface in the quiet moments. When she stops flirting, pauses long enough to take a breath. There's a darkness, and the strength and determination to act on it.

She's put in her time, lived a life that was written before she was born and saw it through to its end. There's still a confidence and assurance about her, still a sense of recklessness (though it might have dimmed slightly), but there's an openness that's new. No more timelines to keep on track or secrets she has to keep for the sake of the universe. She finally has the freedom to live her life, as she chooses, even if she is technically dead and should by rights still either be lines of code in a database or faded into memory.

SAMPLE: ONE | TWO | THREE

INVENTORY: Her diary & tardis key. (She had a copy of her diary in the database, and I like to think she kept a copy of the tardis key as well. They were items she tended to keep on her person.)

If she could also have her sonic screwdriver, but say maybe it has a mind of its own (only works when it chooses, does a less helpful thing, does something different than it should, etc.), I think that would give her something interesting to consider given her reconstitution from the Library database since the Doctor used said sonic to save and upload her.

NOTES: She should be good. Very surprised to be not a data ghost and not inside a computer and wow what is actual sensation again, but good.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? I'm leaning more plot-heavy, just jump right into it. But either is good.

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Yuki Montgomery | Original

[sunnydaymonic]

PLAYER NAME: Kathrine
CONTACT: chocolateisbrainfood
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: From exar on plurk.

CHARACTER: Yuki Montgomery
CANON: Original Character
CANON POINT: Walking to the train station after his orientation for his residency.

BACKGROUND: History/Backstory

ABILITIES | POWERS:
Light Elemental - Yuki is capable of drawing magical energy from sources of light/electricity around him to perform magic. He believed due to misinformation as a child that he needed a conduit crystal he wears to channel his magic but knows now that isn’t necessary. He is rather rusty at it due to using it as minimally as possible for the last 8 years, but refreshing and retraining is more like relearning knitting than quantum physics, the muscle memory is easily regained.

Spiritual Sensory - Souls are a visible thing to Yuki, as he can see them as an aural projection around the person and/or living object. Everything has some kind of aural resonance for him, which causes a great deal of stress from the sensory overload. Through the soul/aura he can see a being’s general state, the kind of person they are (or sense corruption), their magical resonance, and if he comes into close contact he can feel surface emotions (or deeper ones if he seeks them out intentionally). He knows how to shield himself to some extent, but to avoid the strain he uses a Blinding Spell that must be re-cast yearly (it is strongest when first done and weakest right before the “year” ends and the spell breaks) to block this extrasensory perception. Some souls/energy are so strong as to overwhelm the spell despite this.

Martial Arts - Yuki had 14 years of martial arts training and training with a sword (traditional katana) before he gave that up.

Prism Sword - By funneling his magic into the conduit crystal he uses, he can transform it into (a larger/broader katana that is extremely sharp and nigh unbreakable when his energy is channeled through it. It reflects light like a prism due to being crystal-based and allows him to funnel greater energy through it and stronger spells.

Demonic Heritage - Yuki's demonic heritage is very prominent in him, which is why his abilities are naturally stronger than typical light mages. He is the descendant of an Elemental Demon, one that derived their power from the sun and lightning. He is always stronger and healthier in the sunnier months, especially summer, and his demonic heritage is also why he can use solar energy to heal others through touch alone. He heals very quickly and can even heal from extremely serious wounds with strong sunlight as a booster. This ability does not work if he's been cut off from the sun for an extended period of time, but he has also found that synthetic sunlight (like from a solar lamp) works as a substitute, although at a 75% level of efficiency in comparison to natural solar energy. With enough focus and energy, he can even heal lethal wounds or bring someone from the brink of death. He has naturally enhanced senses such as sight, hearing, and smell. This heritage also gives him a spiritual bond to Taiyotori, his demonic ancestor, and he would be the natural host for them if they were to ever come back to Earth. The assumption in game is that the bond will either remain in its current state (halved as Taiyotori can talk to him in his dreams but nothing else) or dormant entirely, completely shut off, whichever works best for the game setting. The drawback of his heritage is that the more cut off from sunlight he is (days to weeks to months in terms of severity), the weaker he becomes, to the point it can have a very negative impact on his health.

PERSONALITY:
The first thing someone might think when they see Yuki is “Boy does he need a nap,” and they would be right. Even when Yuki is at his most optimally “charged” so to speak, the perfect weather giving him all the solar energy he needs, he is running on barely any hours of sleep and too busy to take breaks six out of seven days a week. He exudes a very calm but weary kind of presence and has what people may call Resting Tired Face. He can also be a bit of an asshole at times with his overly blunt and honest nature. Most people would think he doesn’t know how to lie, for how direct he comes across, even with his “polite” wording of things (they would be wrong).

Yuki is a quiet person who can be a bit intense because he often won't look people in the eye, but when he does, he stares and stares and doesn't realize just how much staring he's doing. He's very socially awkward, but also adaptable. He rolls with whatever happens, used to people judging him, thinking he's strange, and telling himself to push past all of that. His entire life has been him pushing down negative feelings and meditating to work through his anger and hurt. No one was going to fix these things for him so the only thing he could do was change how he felt and how he reacted to the unfair circumstances. Some would also be surprised to find he does have a temper, due to how well-composed he can be, but it’s more that he has a very long fuse. When it goes off, it can be rather explosive and he isn’t always discerning of who gets caught in it.

Because he grew up dealing with illness, he spent a lot of time around hospitals, and came to really respect doctors, nurses, and the entire hospital staff. He wanted to help people out the same way and that's why he's so dedicated to becoming a doctor, even though it's an extremely stressful job. He's good at dealing with stress...mostly, and intends to use that to help others in stressful situations. He wants to heal people without magic, because magic can be such a double-edged sword.

But Yuki is also someone who is very afraid to trust. He trusts his parents and his mother's side of the family (the Montgomerys) because they have always stood with him, but he doesn't try to make friends. Not after Hiro betrayed him for the cult he was raised in, not after everything he went through. He also is very cautious, a bit paranoid, never walks into dark areas, keeps a flashlight with him when he walks to his car from the hospital at night and has trouble with people touching him without his permission. He also has anxiety about scalpels but has managed to mitigate it because he refuses to allow what happened to him to hold him back from the dream he's had since he was a kid. He wants to be a doctor, he is going to be a doctor, no matter what mental hang-ups he might have.

Sure, he is still hiding how much he hates himself and blames himself for everything wrong around him, but he knows these feelings are irrational, could even mention all the ways these intrusive thoughts are false. Doesn't stop them. So, he keeps them locked down tight, not even mentioning them to the few close confidantes he has. He tells himself he should just get over it and move on, and tells himself he HAS moved on, but those thoughts and feelings are always there. But one of the effects of what he’s been through has been his near-total rejection of magic. He knows that magic can be good, knows he needs it what with his hypersensitive spiritual sensory, but he has such a kneejerk reaction to wanting to avoid using it. Especially when the Voice (which he won’t acknowledge is Taiyotori) becomes louder and more influential in his dreams when he does. As obvious, Yuki is not someone who is good at using healthy coping mechanisms.

SAMPLE:
Sample #1

Sample #2
There was a fatigued sort of fear when Yuki woke up to find himself stranded on a deserted patch of land in the middle of what looked to be a vast ocean. Because the dream he'd been having had been the Voice again, that garbled lilting sound that was like a sigh on a breeze but somehow, he could feel the words it was saying more than hear them. He hated those dreams and the call they gave, the pulling and longing in them toward the glowing warmth in the distance. Where he doubted himself and his life and thought however briefly of the “more” he could have if he gave into it.

Waking up here only made him wonder if he'd finally done it. If he'd finally given in and answered the Voice back, dragging him through time and space to leave him in the Mystlands. It felt like perhaps he had finally accepted the inevitable. Only for him to be rescued by pirates of all people.

Being aboard the Queen Zarya has been a unique experience. He had never been on a ship before. At least his medical skills had some use with basic injuries on the ship and he found a place for himself here. The Captain, Caladan Kreil, at least seamed to be more discerned and level-headed than the captain of the Pariah. Whatever fate he’s pulling them towards, it’s obvious by the way the crews act that nothing good will be coming from it. The undead invading and trying to kill them have been more than warning enough.

As he stitches the wound on a crew member’s shoulder, a lucky hit the old curmudgeon swore, he can sense the tension. Something will have to happen soon. Whether they meet their destination on this journey, or the crews begin to crumble under the stress, it’s obvious something will have to give.

“Done,” he says, finishing covering the stitch with a protective gauze and medical tape. The pirate is still looking at him in bemusement. He laughs calling the work excessive for something so small. Of course, a pirate would think a six-inch bleeding gash filled with dirty salt water was small.

“Keep it dry for now, come back to get it cleaned in two days, and maybe you won’t die of infection,” he tells him. All that gets is another laugh and a sudden heavy slap on the back from his uninjured arm. Yuki grits his teeth and lets it go. He’s become resigned to how physical a few of the crew members are, even if he still doesn’t like it. He can’t show that it bothers him, because that’s an advantage he can’t give them. He may need them for now, but he hasn’t come to trust them. Not yet.


INVENTORY:
-- Conduit Crystal/Prism Sword (a spherical crystal kept on a braided rope necklace that turns into a large crystal katana).
-- Set of clothing
-- Flashlight
-- medium-sized Medical bag he tends to carry around with first aid items (band-aids, burn cream, antibiotic ointment, small jar of Vaseline, gauze, tape, ace bandage, pads, stitch kit, gloves, disinfectant spray, scissors, etc). None of this is in great quantities, just standard amounts for travel.

NOTES:
-- Yuki has a delicate physiology in that he is very healthy and strong when it is sunny/bright, but weaker, more fatigued, and prone to illness when kept from the sun (or decent facsimiles), such as in weeks’ long overcast/trapped underground. He does not need special accommodations beyond having access to sunlight or the ability develop an alternative. Part of his arc in the game will be developing this or seeking out help, which he would typically avoid so he’ll have to open himself up a bit.
-- His blinding spell to dampen his spiritual sensory is nearing the time for it to be re-cast and thus his senses will be more attuned to others and have more awareness of their souls/auras or emotions when in close contact. I will be putting up a permissions post so people can opt-in to this rather than opt-out. Without the opting in, I will assume his shielding is still in effect for those around him.
-- Yuki deals with Taiyotori trying to contact him through his dreams (usually causing him to have Very Strange Dreams) and I am okay with his bond to Taiyotori being cut off if necessary for the sake of the game’s setting. Although if it could be permissible for him to still have the dreams assuming it is Taiyotori when it could be caused by something else (his trauma he refuses to go to therapy for, for example, or something game-related) I would appreciate it.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Either but a plot-heavy option sounds fun, so let’s go for it.

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

vanessa ives ☓ penny dreadful (1/2)

[matermali]

PLAYER NAME: Jesse
CONTACT: Pactoris#0587 on Discord
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Returning player.

CHARACTER: Vanessa Ives
CANON: Penny Dreadful
CANON POINT: 2.10, "And They Were Enemies".

BACKGROUND: ( Edited from the wiki, since what they did or didn't include was janky at best. )

► BEFORE...

Growing up in Victorian England, Vanessa was best friends with Mina Murray. The two girls were inseparable, doing everything together from sharing a bed (probably not like that but also maybe kinda like that) to practicing taxidermy (like young girls do). One evening, Vanessa spotted Mina's father Sir Malcolm Murray having an affair with her own mother. It awakened something within her, and a part of her enjoyed watching the sexual deviance. Years later, Vanessa’s repression over her conflicting feelings for Mina and against Sir Malcolm finally boiled over. She grew more sexually reckless, beginning by kissing Mina’s brother and culminating in Vanessa seducing Mina's fiancé right in front of her. The families were forever torn apart. She prayed for her sins, but instead of God, “another answered”.

Not long after, Vanessa fell ill. Unbeknownst to her family, she had been possessed by the Devil. At a mental asylum, she underwent hydrotherapy (torture), and befriended an orderly. At one point, Vanessa was visited by visions of Lucifer and Dracula using the orderly’s guise, but she used her own powers through Verbis Diablo to scare them away (“You think you know evil? Here it stands”). This reveals that even though later on she is taught the language of Verbis Diablo, she already innately knew it. She nearly succeeded in convincing the doctor she was normal afterwards, but failed when he asked her about religion. After a trepanning, she was released back into her mother's care, and the memories surrounding the orderly became repressed. Vanessa was partially catatonic for awhile, but in the end the surgery was unsuccessful, and her mother died of a heart attack after seeing Vanessa possessed and having sex with Lucifer.

Some time after, Vanessa had a vision of Mina, who begged her former friend to find and save her. Determined to find Mina and understand her own powers, Vanessa sought out Joan Clayton, the Cut-Wife of Ballantree Moor, an infamous abortionist and hedgewitch (self-labeled a Daywalker) living in the moors of England. Under her tutelage, Vanessa learned more about her powers and others who would desire them; she also learned herbalism and other Daywalker skills such as blood totems. Joan taught her more about the Verbis Diablo, but cautioned her on its use or it could consume her soul. Joan told her that her magic was innate rather than learned, but it still needed to be honed; Vanessa had more raw power than Joan had ever seen, but she needed to learn to protect herself. ("I knew it the first time I felt you, this danger. I wanted to scream and bolt the door, curl up in my little bed and sleep and sleep. But you came closer. I felt you every step across the moor. ... I felt you walking to my door. Felt you standing there. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.")

Witches in service to Lucifer (Nightcomers), led by a woman named Evelyn Poole, schemed to separate Vanessa from Joan and deliver the former to Lucifer. Evelyn helped convince a mob to execute Joan by burning her alive before they branded Vanessa's back with a cross and left her traumatized and alone. Joan had left the land to Vanessa in her deed, but Vanessa was too broken-hearted and bitter to stay. She also had a newfound purpose from the knowledge that Joan had bestowed upon her.

She left the moors soon after, eventually taking her new knowledge and seeking out Sir Malcolm to make amends for her past sins. The two agreed to work together to find Mina, despite old animosities towards one another.

► SEASON 1

Vanessa offers a man from America named Ethan Chandler a job as a hired gun. Initially he’s hesitant, but Vanessa is able to draw him in with mystique and a promise of danger. Together, they are unable to find Mina, but enlist Dr. Victor Frankenstein into their cause. Vanessa and Malcolm attend a party with Dorian Gray and participate in a seance, where Vanessa is possessed; at first it seems to be the spirits of the dead to taunt partygoers, but is also suggested to be someone older than Amunet (who is after revealed to already reside within Vanessa—rather, IS Vanessa).

As they continue their search for Mina, Vanessa pursues a romantic relationship with the enigmatic Dorian Gray. During a sexual encounter with Dorian, Vanessa becomes possessed by Lucifer once more. She begins by taunting Malcolm and Victor with their former sins before the demon completely takes over her actions. She becomes feral and violent, and needs to be restrained. For a month, she battles the Devil inside of her, and he appears to her under many different guises. Malcolm implores Vanessa to reach out to Mina while her connection to the demimonde is heightened, but she is unsuccessful. Eventually, a priest comes to give a dying Vanessa her last rites, but she attacks him. In a moment of clarity, she begs Ethan to kill her. Instead, he holds a pendant of St. Jude to her forehead and chants a prayer in Latin, begging for divine intervention. The exorcism is somehow successful, perhaps through their combined wills, and Vanessa collapses. When she wakes up, she claims to know where Mina is.

The group wade through a horde of vampires until Mina reveals herself, eventually attempting to bite Vanessa so that she can deliver her to Dracula. Malcolm shoots Mina, claiming Vanessa is his only daughter. The two are distraught over Mina's death, but bond over their grief. Vanessa tells Dorian Gray that she can’t be with him, too afraid of what happens to her when she loses control. She seeks out a priest and asks for a formal exorcism, but once the priest asks her if it’s what she really wants, she accepts that some part of her doesn’t want to expel the evil within. ( “If you have been touched by the Demon, it's like being touched by the backhand of God. Makes you sacred in a way, doesn't it? Makes you unique, with a kind of glory. The glory of suffering, even. ... Do you really want to be normal?” )

► SEASON 2

Vanessa and Ethan are beset upon by Nightcomers who are only repelled when Vanessa overpowers them with Verbis Diablo. Vanessa becomes paranoid and despondent, and the group goes to great lengths to protect her. During this time, she also befriends John Clare, a homeless man who she does not recognize as the reanimated orderly from her imprisonment in the Banning Clinic, because that memory has been repressed along with others related to her time 'before'. At the same time, Sir Malcolm is bedeviled by Evelyn Poole and Vanessa notices his oddities but thinks it to be the fog of love, given that she doesn’t recognize Evelyn as the Nightcomer from years past on the Moor.

When she attends a ball thrown by Dorian Gray, the Nightcomers' presence overwhelms her, and she has a bloody vision before fainting. Determined to seek more power in the book of the Poetry of Death left to her by Joan Clayton, and believing she can’t trust those who attended the party with her, she flees back to Ballentree Moor. Ethan Chandler follows, and during their shared solitude, they become much closer. The only thing keeping them from being lost to a moment of physical passion is Vanessa’s acknowledgment that the two of them together ‘are dangerous’. During this time, she is given the opportunity to exact vengeance on one of the perpetrators of the mob that murdered the Cut-Wife and branded Vanessa, and against Ethan’s warning, she uses the Poetry of Death and Verbis Diablo to possess the man’s dogs from across the Moor. Ethan watches with a bullet still in the chamber as the man is mauled to death by his own dogs. He tells Vanessa that she’ll never get her soul back. ( “Welcome to the night, Vanessa.” ) At least the second time she takes a life, when a bounty hunter attacks the both of them in the night, Ethan joins her in the kill, subduing him while Vanessa stabs him to death.

Vanessa and Ethan are called back to London when the leader of the Nightcomers, Evelyn Poole, takes Malcolm captive in her manor. Understanding that her friends would only be bedeviled and captured if they join her, like Sir Malcolm, Vanessa takes the knowledge she’s re-acquainted herself with on the Moor and steals away to face the witch alone, only to be confronted by a fetish doll made in her own likeness. The doll, controlled by Lucifer, tries to compel Vanessa to join him, momentarily transporting her to what should be a fantasy of what he thinks to be her perfect life, but instead she’ll open her eyes to find herself...here. Whether or not it’s more than a hallucination sent by the Devil is yet to be discovered.

vanessa ives ☓ penny dreadful (2/2)

[matermali]

ABILITIES | POWERS: Some borrowed from the wiki.

☓ it is thee and me ☓

✺ medium; While she is a perceptive individual on her own, her clairvoyance is a deep part of her. She can divine someone's past, present, or future. Much of what she takes in is subconscious, understanding it on an innate level before she absorbs and translates. Sometimes she has trouble translating this ‘input’; it can be situational. Touch strengthens it. The closer someone is linked to the forces of the dark or the light (middle ground is boring), the more she’ll be able to understand. (Player discretion; permissions post) Her visions can also come unbidden, and often do. She can have trouble telling them from reality. Her ability to channel spirits means that she can easily be possessed by ghosts or demons, but it also means her will is strong enough to overcome them, in theory... If her fragile body can survive the torture.
✺ daywalker; As a hedgewitch, or Daywalker, she's learned much about divination methods like the Tarot or tea leaves. She's well versed in herbalism, though she doesn't advertise this to just anyone. Her occult knowledge is vast given the time she's from, and she knows about tools like fetish dolls and blood totems (her own being that of a scorpion).
✺ verbis diablo; The No-No Latin, Words of the Devil, or Devil's Tongue. She's used this to to expel a pack of ancient witches, to overpower Lucifer and Dracula, and to turn a pack of dogs on their owner and maul him to death. She's quite fluent by now, especially having memorized a lot from the Poetry of Death.
✺ book smarts; Vanessa has a keen aptitude for literature and high learning that was born from solitude, but fed by her need for knowledge. She loves books and poems. Her memory is keen enough that she can easily quote entire passages of poetry from memory that are apt for the situation, like a nerd.
✺ marksmanship; Technically she has a natural skill for firearms, able to shoot moving targets on her first try. She doesn't particularly like guns, though, so she won't be looking for one to carry.

☓ babalon, o mother of abominations ☓

✺ by the pricking of my thumbs; As an incarnation of the Mother of Evil who is prophesied to usher in the end of days, Vanessa's dark powers are...loud to certain types. Throughout the series, she's shown to attract night creatures of all kinds (at times they are mesmerized by her; other times they want to lovingly nom on her). Any who don't serve Lucifer or Dracula may not consciously understand who/what she is, but may still be attracted to her at the player's discretion. Demons, witches, or anyone who is supernatural-adjacent may have the ability to sense her even if she's far away, and it may be unpleasant but their mileage may vary (night creatures may love the feeling, but an old and powerful witch called it terrifying). At the player's discretion. I'll put up a permissions post.
✺ something wicked this way comes; Vanessa's body is completely mortal and can be injured or killed as easily as anyone. Her spirit, or part of it, is the reincarnation of the primordial goddess Amunet, and it is heavily implied that her incarnation has also existed in different cultures (just as Dracula and Lucifer were once one, they were also Amun-Ra). The Egyptian and Biblical connections are the most blatant references (Amunet and Lilith), and she may also be representative of other dark Goddesses in various mythologies (Mara, Hella/Hel, etc.). Whatever the incarnation, she carries creation and death. Characters who may have reason to be connected to any of these myths/incarnations or rely on ancient magic are welcome to sense something ancient or evil in her, or make specific connections to the goddesses themselves. Also at the player's discretion, will include a permissions post.

PERSONALITY:

Even as a child, Vanessa struggled with her own contradictions, and it's gotten no easier as an adult. She was afraid of the dolls she had to play with ( “Those eyes staring at you, just waiting to come to life. Who thinks that's healthy for a child?” ), and yet grew to appreciate taxidermy as an older girl and young woman ( “I put mirrors behind the glass eyes, so they would spark.” ). Such attempts to turn her fears into a strength are common for Vanessa, but they rarely pan out the way she intends. Her inner conflict runs too deeply, down to her soul.

It would be difficult for the average passerby to notice any such conflict, however. Vanessa carries herself with a very specific poise, controlling everything in her life that she can: fashion, posture, diction, and who she allows to get close (the latter is often a failure). She uses this control over herself to an intentionally obscure degree, knowing that the mystery she can present will draw certain types in. When necessary, she can use this to manipulate them to her own ends, as with Ethan Chandler and Dorian Gray both. ( Dorian: You have exceptional composure. [...] Poise, I mean. | Vanessa: Control. | Dorian: Yes. What if you were to abandon it? | Vanessa: I couldn't. ) The illusion of control also helps her cope with her inner demons, both psychological and real.

She knows the dangers of losing control, that she risks her soul whenever she gives in to her primal, often sexual urges. It keeps her afraid enough to place most people at a distance, but she still wants. For all her perfect fashion and poise, Vanessa desires touch; to be loved and known and accepted. She'll go so far as to not wear gloves at parties (scandalous!), hinting at the desires beneath. She denies herself the sexual urges as much as she can, but she still seeks out stimuli. Exciting ventures, yes. Friendship...risky, but yes, how she wants that, too. She can love deeply, and wants love in return, but she doesn’t know if she can trust what love does to her. Her love lingers with her guilt, as she continues to write letters to Mina that she will never see. She will hold her friends, kiss and comfort them; she will tease them with a twinkle in her eye as they blush and both laugh together, but no matter how dear her friends are, there will always be just a sliver of distance between their spirits. It’s a trace of enigma that she's reluctant to let go of, save eventually around Sir Malcolm or Ethan Chandler. With others, she uses the mystery innate to her presence, enforcing an illusion of control over people as much as herself.

Once someone has her love, though, she will do anything for them. She will risk her life for them, she will kill for them, and she will kill them if it's the kindness that they need. As much guilt as she feels over betraying Mina and sending her down her path of unholy torment, Vanessa doesn't seek her forgiveness; she's ready to kill her beloved Mina to free her from Dracula's embrace. As much as she resents Sir Malcolm for being the one to trigger the darkness within the young Vanessa, she loves him with a ferocity that sends her with murderous intent into an ancient witch cult. Her love can consume her, it never truly leaves her, and so she's reluctant to hand it to just anyone.

Raised as a Roman Catholic, she’s well acquainted with religion and believes that God has a plan. Unfortunately, she also believes that darkness will never stop following her, because it’s in her very soul now. She’s sinned to the point of murder, her essence tainted by Verbis Diablo, and part of her resents that despite all of her prayers, God never seemed to listen. Outwardly, she will preach God’s word and openly defy the Devil even while acknowledging her dark path, but within there is turmoil. She knows herself, claims not to fear it, but fear it she does. She wants God, but some part of her wants the Devil more.

That part of her manifests in selfish or even vengeful behavior at times, especially when she has a goal in mind that she deems far more important than anything else. Others haven’t suffered like her; they don’t know and so they can’t begin to understand. She doesn’t think herself a martyr, because she has not yet been taken, but she does believe that her suffering is solitary, and that when it manifests in its full force, these resentments towards others are unleashed. When possessed, it isn’t all Lucifer or Amunet; it’s also Vanessa unleashing a pain that she buries too deeply. When the others engage in torturing a young vampire for information on Mina, Vanessa does nothing to stop it. She will do what needs to be done to achieve her own ends. ( “We here have been brutalized with loss. It has made us brutal in return.” )

At her best, she can show incredible empathy towards those who suffer or seem lost, in part because she can see herself in them. On her own, she doesn’t seek out good deeds, but when guided towards them she will feel glad for any kindness offered to others. Part of that is selfish, too, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t kind; just that her kindness is difficult to shake from an ever present melancholy. She is forever in her own world─in the demimonde─and she often doesn't have any room left in her thoughts for the every-day concerns of most people.

Vanessa claims that her soul belongs to God, but at the same time admits that her soul is lost to the night. Which is it? This is her need as a human versus her want as an old god, and she’s unable to separate them or understand from which soul these desires come from. It's both her shame and her desire manifest. The truth is that she doesn't want a normal life, even while she envies those who revel in normalcy. She wants to want it, she knows it's what she should want, but in certain moments she can’t deny the Demon within. Just as a priest reminds her, the glory of suffering is uniquely hers. She’s not so quick to let go of her twisted divinity.

SAMPLE: ONE (prose) | TWO (network to action)

INVENTORY: Dress; coat; cross pendant; rosary. Dressed to the nines.

NOTES: She smokes weed for her anxiety and such. Would she be able to source more cannabis plants, or discover something like it, so she can continue to roll her own joints? It's the safest release she permits herself.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Dealer's choice, I've got the time and energy for either! If her vibe sparks any plotty ideas I'm super down for that. Perfectly happy with plot-light, as well. Trouble will find her, regardless~

Kim Wexler | Better Call Saul

[saintclaire]

PLAYER NAME: Jenn
CONTACT: victoryfanfare on plurk, victoryfanfare#4736 on discord
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: A friend and I were talking about finding a new game and she had praise for the mod's writing. And so: TDM thread (Friend is Carolyn.)

CHARACTER: Kimberly "Kim" Wexler
CANON: Better Call Saul
CANON POINT: S6 E7: Plan & Execution, after Kim and her husband have gotten home from a long day where they pulled their biggest scam yet.

BACKGROUND: Kim Wexler @ Breaking Bad Wiki

ABILITIES | POWERS: Kim is a baseline normal human being with no particular experience or interest in combat, use of weapons, survival, etc. In fact, those things are alarming to her. Basically the only thing she has approaching a figurative superpower is her resilience, often deployed in tandem with her workaholic tendencies. She is a skilled negotiator and convincing actress with an intense aptitude for con-artist shenanigans.

PERSONALITY:

Kim had a tricky childhood, raised by a mother who took a particular glee in defrauding people for her own gain, and a father who was in and out of her life (and prison.) They cared for her but had a skewed idea of what her needs were: it was easier to acquire petty material things than reliably have dinner on the table, a roof over her head, and a ride home from school, those sorts of things. She never starved or slept on the streets, but there was a sense that she had minimal stability at best, and at worst was actively helping her mother shoplift. How do you learn what's right or wrong in that situation? Kim's approach was to watch To Kill A Mockingbird until the tape wore out and start shutting herself off from her mother, saying "no" even when it left her walking in the cold. She did the thing no kid should have to do and pulled herself up by her bootstraps and left as soon as she could, leaving her small-town upbringing in (figurative) flames behind her and putting herself through law school to pursue the noble cause she craved.

She's been that person ever since, in some ways. I save me, she tells her then-boyfriend-now-husband when he tries the fix the havoc he's caused in her professional life. Her rigid discipline allowed her to pursue a successful career, accolades, a partner track at a respected law firm, and a banking client that most young lawyers would dream of landing. She's got a new but modest one-bedroom condo, a decent car, and a husband she'd kill for. What's more, people generally admire Kim. People at the courthouse see her as hard-working, dutiful, polite, and fair. Her colleagues know her as a brilliant legal mind and really fun to do bourbon shots with. Even the people who don't like her still acknowledge her presence in a negotiation, the tenacity that sometimes veers into temerity. None of them are wrong, either. Kim is those things, and she is that way sincerely, but it is also what she wants them to see. The professionalism, honesty and respectability that she shows to others is both an ideal self she strives for and an armor to protect her.

The truth is this: Kim Wexler will help you out of a tough spot, even if it works her to the bone or comes at great personal cost. She'll just draw a hard, hard line between anyone who claims to know her because of it.

Kim doesn't want anyone to know what she's thinking. She feels no compulsion to fill the silences in conversations, no need to ease the tension in a room. Holding people at an arm's length like that is an easy way to protect her more vulnerable self, the parts of her that are embarrassing and uncool and a little bit misanthropic. Who at work knows her interests, her taste in movies? Would they even recognize her at a grocery store on a random Sunday, without the crisply pressed pantsuits and immaculately curled ponytail? Do they understand her silence when they comment on how sleazy that Saul Goodman is, not realizing he's her husband, Jimmy, the man who can tease out laughter that no other human on earth gets to hear? If they don't, they've lost their chance the second she notices. Kim packs up and leaves, emotionally. These are not her people. She's not really sure who her people are, other than Jimmy. She has a simmering resentment for her wealthy and privileged colleagues, but she knows the people she defends don't see her as one of them, either –– poor people who aren't sure if they'll be evicted in a week, young people with budding criminal backgrounds who just need a chance to get back on the right track. Kim fights for them anyway. She doesn't dream of wealth for the sake of a big house; she wants to open a pro bono law firm to bring world-class defense to vulnerable people. Fame has never been a priority, either, she knows Bonnie & Clyde is a movie, not a fantasy. She has an extremely solid idea of who she is, and isn't hard on herself when other people don't understand her. If she wanted them to know more, she could just muster up the courage to tell them.

Unfortunately, the "maturity" Kim took pride in as a child dealing with a capricious and irresponsible mother is now more often than not a sense that she knows better than anyone who challenges her. Her unwillingness to be party to situations she considers out of step with her personal code has her scuttling the jobs that gave her the stability she wanted. Recently, she's jumped headlong into scamming, pulling increasingly audacious con with her con-artist husband, sometimes even on her own clients –– and that's fine, as long as no one gets hurt long-term, right? It's what's good for them, and "there is no other way." A crippling fear of being caught and the resulting consequences used to keep her toeing the line, but in recent years she's realized that there are often no consequences to bad behaviour, or at least not ones that can't be overcome. Truthfully, she doesn't even realize how far this has gone. She's fully settled into the thrill of being this way, and scamming people is both a power rush and a turn-on, a bizarre form of intimacy between her and Jimmy, and an opportunity to get back at people she feels owe her a win, and "do good" –– whatever that means anymore.

Mirror mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all, you know?

SAMPLE:
TDM –– in which Kim is unwinding.
Thread 1 –– Kim and her husband reunite in a bar in Hell.
Thread 2 –– law advice for a volatile teenaged gangster.
Thread 3 –– an argument for not rushing into a desert wasteland on a half-baked rescue mission.

INVENTORY: A charcoal pantsuit with silver blouse, black stiletto high heels, gold geometric earrings and a matching necklace, and a leather legal briefcase containing a coffee mug, five pens, one black Sharpie, two mini tapes, a recorder, two legal pads, a notebook, a record book, two papers, a calculator, five post-it note pads, several business cards, a flip phone (circa 2003), a pack of cigarettes and a flimsy plastic lighter.

NOTES: I am applying alongside a friend's application for Jimmy McGill, Kim's husband. We know you guys have a player cap; if for whatever reason there isn't enough available space for both of us, please let someone else enjoy that role. No matter how much we love the ethos and tone you've set here and are interested in trying, we are looking for a place where we can explore this messy-ass scammer duo together :)

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? I'm into plot-heavy!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Clara Oswald | Doctor Who

[makemeasong]

PLAYER NAME: Cloude
CONTACT: lifewasawillow#5524
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: TDM, but I also know CJ :D

CHARACTER: Clara Oswald
CANON: Doctor Who
CANON POINT: Mid episode 1 season 8, Deep Breath.

BACKGROUND: Clara's Wiki

ABILITIES | POWERS: No powers or abilities other than speaking fluent Doctor.

PERSONALITY:

✾ Control Freak: A classic good/bad situation. When Clara is in control, she feels her most confident, particularly if she's in charge of bossing the people around her. Even if the going is rough and she isn't actively helping to save the day, having control over a part of the situation helps her feel like she can keep others from panicking. For example, she might lead a small group to set up defensive perimeters, or tend to people who need help; if it's a seriously dire situation and the Doctor can't be there to soothe, Clara will be that person. Feeling in control is what keeps her from having to admit she's just as vulnerable as everyone else.

If the Doctor absolutely has to be elsewhere and needs someone to lead a group effort, he never hesitates to make Clara the boss. She isn't bad at it either; she thinks critically to try and make the best decisions for all, she uses weapons and violence as a last resort, and she will listen to others' ideas and even implement them if they're sound. When her control is threatened by someone she thinks has no business being in charge, she'll get aggressive and in that person's face until they back down. When control is stripped away and nothing is left, her decisions become rash, she gets agitated before getting angry, and it takes a long while for her to cool down. If it turns out that giving up control was the better option and resulted in a win, it could take hours or days, but eventually, she'll apologize.

Just before she gets pulled into this world, the Doctor has regenerated and now he's a completely different man. She has absolutely no control over what he's doing or where they're going. There is literally nothing she can do to make him the way he used to be, and she has to decide if she wants to walk away from the situation. Walk away, or give up enough control to stick around and figure out how this new Doctor operates. She's leaning toward the former because she isn't sure she's strong enough to let herself be vulnerable to his new attitude.

✾ Compassionate: Clara's big heart is one of the best parts of her. The way she cares for people, and most especially kids, is why she can be a teacher during one of the most chaotic periods of a pre-teen's life and go on adventures with the Doctor that never go as planned. Because for as much as she's a control freak, there are parts of her heart that override it. Children will always be a given. Whether she knows them personally or not, if a kid is in trouble or otherwise needs help, she'll be there if she can. If she can't help, she'll find someone who's capable. The TARDIS always takes Clara and the Doctor where they're urgently needed, and at times, that has translated to landing in a place where the people simply need someone to hear them.

Her compassion doesn't begin and end with children and others in need of immediate aid. She has a good ear and tries to give sound advice when it's asked for; she'll do that for anyone, including a stranger. But if she knows and loves someone even a little, whether that's as a close friend, a part of her family (which includes found), or someone she's intimate with, she'll do everything in her power to help. Whatever it is, big or small. If she cares for you and you need a kind heart on your side, Clara's your girl. She's never needed to be needed to thrive, but it means something to her when others trust a part of their burden with her. It's the opposite of what the Doctor is doing now; as he goes through the regeneration process she finds herself being pushed away. She can't help him, not in any way, because he refuses to let her in. That's killing her inside. Every part of her wants to try and soothe his mind, but her compassion isn't wanted, and it's left her floundering. It makes her feel hurt that she's being rejected in a way that pushes back against a quality she thought he loved in her.

✾ Brave: It's been mentioned, but to reiterate, Clara will run into danger. About 95% of the time, if she thinks she might hurt more than help, she'll back off. But if it's a choice between someone dying if she doesn't act right away and her own life? All bets are off, she'll go for the rescue. It's what will be her undoing eventually, but for now, she's only literally died once - for the Doctor. Brave can mean bossy in this case specifically. He knew he was dying and told her not to do anything for him. But did she listen? Oh no. She did (what she believed to be) the brave thing because the universe needs the Doctor more than it needed her. She thinks a lot about whether or not she could have saved her mum when the attack in London happened, and that drives so much of her strength. Down to her core, Clara believes that if she could, her mum would have been brave and helped until she couldn't. The ghost of her mother drives so much of her courage.

At this point in her life, after traveling for so long with The Doctor, Clara is bolder with her bravery and it's paid off well. She's exhilarated by 'saving the day' with him, so to speak. All of this isn't to say she doesn't get scared, but that's all part of it to her. Being scared is being brave, and she's learned that from The Doctor. Everything mentioned before this point will play into how she reacts to being pulled into a place against her will. There's little-to-no control over anything, and there are others with less experience involving chaos. These reasons will make her want to be brave for those around her once she has her bearings. Even without the Doctor, her main goal would be to help as much as she's physically able to, in any way she can.

SAMPLE: sample one | sample two

INVENTORY: Clara arrives with almost nothing save for the clothes on her back. In her limited pocket space she also has:

• TARDIS key
• her mum's gold ring
• mobile
• a note in Clara's handwriting that says 'check his internal organs somehow. ask Strax.'

NOTES: Clara doesn't need anything special, and both the River and the Doctor players are on board.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? If it works to do something plot heavy, I'm totally into it, but with the TDM having been awesomely interactive, no problemo if that's not an option.

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Kahl-175 | Warframe

[kahl_175]

PLAYER NAME: Spider
CONTACT: CellarSpider#9984
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Already here, and hankering to throw a different clone into this game.

CHARACTER: Kahl-175
CANON: Warframe
CANON POINT: post-Veilbreaker

BACKGROUND: Warframe lore is a twisty-turny labyrinth, and the wiki is deliberately vague to avoid spoiling new players, so I'll provide a background here. As is fandom tradition, I'll also avoid spoilers where possible, but Kahl was introduced in a major storyline mission, so some spoilers are inevitable.

Kahl-175 is a Grineer, one of a race of near-human clones inhabiting the solar system in the far future. Once a genetically hobbled caste of heavy laborers and disposable soldiers, the Grineer rose up centuries ago and killed their masters, establishing a new empire under their Twin Queens. Instead of granting freedom, the Queens subjugated their followers and turned the Grineer to conquest. Mentally conditioned while still in their cloning tubes, a Grineer comes into the world fully-formed, and fully indoctrinated.

That's where Kahl comes in. A soldier stationed on Earth, he was deployed to a desperate battle against an alien and technologically superior force he had no understanding of. When his squad was killed, he offered up a last-ditch plan: he would carry a bomb to the foot of the enemy's forward base and detonate it, to give the Grineer a chance to win. While he attempted to steady his resolve with the knowledge he was doing this for the Queens, something had started to change in Kahl. When he at last reached his target, wounded and exhausted, he admitted he was truly doing this for [his] brothers.

The plan failed--the bomb was deactivated by the invaders, and Kahl was captured, placed in a mind-controlling Veil, and forgotten about by everyone. The war was fought, the invaders won, establishing the Narmer empire. A resistance rose and freed the system, but no one came to free those already enslaved. Kahl's Veil eventually malfunctioned, allowing him to break free. Underestimated by everyone, his canny problem-solving abilities led him to cobble together an emergency beacon, and then solve a more intractable problem: the prejudice of the person who eventually responded.

Kaelli Entrati was one of the few surviving members of the immortal race that first created the Grineer as slaves. Not bothering to give her name to Kahl, he dubbed her 'Blue Girl'. He proceeded to extort his rich and privileged 'savior', dangling the promise of valuable intelligence in exchange for aid in freeing everyone enslaved along with him. Grineer or otherwise, it didn't matter anymore. All the enslaved are his brothers now. By the end of the escape, he'd not only saved everyone, but also gained an ally--'Blue Girl' had grown invested in this strange, exciting new project.

Kahl created a home for himself and a core group of escaped slaves. The group stayed small, moving quick and avoiding detection, forming a tight-knit family along the way. Blue Girl's family refused to provide them shelter, however, and her own thoughtless expressions of prejudice forced Kahl to establish ground rules and ground truths for their continued collaboration. But it also became clear that she envied the easy way that Kahl formed strong connections with others, realizing that genuine affection was something her own family lacked. Kahl was sympathetic and tried to include her in his family, a work in progress as he strives to free his brothers.

ABILITIES | POWERS: Kahl's genetic template was designed for hard labor or wielding heavy weapons with ferocious kickback. Combined with his prostheses, his strength surpasses a human in peak condition--at one point he manages to lift a crashed vehicle that probably weighs at least half a ton. In his heavy armor he won't be out-sprinting anyone, but he can run at a good clip when called for.

While Grineer are often considered brutish and uncreative, they have a rarely acknowledged flair for improvisation, especially in modifying existing tech. This stems in part from their need to maintain their prostheses under harsh conditions. Kahl has shown aptitude for modifying tech, once he understands how it can be pushed. More details below in Inventory.

As a cyborg, Kahl has a few assistive technologies that help him compensate for his disabilities. Most obviously, he has prostheses that replace everything below his elbows and knees. These can be detached and repaired as necessary. He receives a certain amount of targeting information from his implants, allowing him to gauge depth and track targets despite having lost one eye. If something comes at him from his blind side, though, he'll still be caught off-guard.

He also... well, he basically has his in-game HUD, including an objective list he can make for himself. Once he's been in a space, he can keep a map of its floorplan available for a while, but it will eventually get automatically purged. He can pin coordinates within his line of sight, for his own reference and for anyone who's also looped into his systems. Other people can set coordinates for him, if they have the technological capacity to do so.

While it's unlikely to happen, any other Grineer he encounters will show up on his HUD with their genestamp ID and present status.

PERSONALITY: Kahl at first seems like a purely blunt instrument--his solutions to problems are often brute force or violent, he's uneducated outside of what his conditioning has taught him, and he speaks in slow, simple, grammatically broken sentences. And to top it all off, he looks homely at best, marked by injuries, amputations, genetic conditions that prematurely age his skin. To people from the Warframe canon, this is precisely the stereotype of the Grineer: big, dumb, short-lived brutes with identical faces, only differentiated by their deformities.

But all this is deceptive. Kahl is a quick improviser within the world he understands, and the language he speaks so brokenly is actually his second language, using a dialect that reflects Grineer syntax and culture. As a prosthesis-wearing disabled man who's spent much of his life in rough conditions, Kahl is also very adept at making tweaks, adjustments, and even complex modifications to tech and machinery he's familiar with.

This is not to say that he is neurotypical, however. From their inception, the Grineer were deliberately designed to think differently than the average human, in an attempt to make them more controllable. The Grineer Empire kept that template unaltered, both out of defiant pride in what they were, but also so that their Twin Queens could try and keep them enslaved, as long as they were promised honor, duty, and glory in the name of their people.

Kahl rejects this, but he often doesn't have the words to fully express what he thinks, or can't summon them immediately. He sometimes needs a long time to think about charged topics like this, dropping a conversation for an extended period before suddenly coming back to say his piece. Kahl knows Grineer were built different, but that does not excuse the way people speak about or treat them.

Kahl is also supportive of disabilities and illnesses in his found family, regardless of their severity. One of his brothers, a Grineer woman named Jarka, has terrifying PTSD flashbacks that once led her to shoot Kahl, an act he's forgiven her for. However, he has had to kill at least one veiled grineer, a man so thoroughly destroyed by Narmer that recovery was impossible.

Kahl isn't content with the limits of his current existence, however. He wants to be "smarter", and is interested and insistent on "talking science with Blue Girl", despite her belief that the attempt won't succeed. This is also a prime example of his general approach to socializing: Kahl will do his best to include people in social activities, out of a genuine desire to connect with others.

Family is the most important thing to Kahl. His brothers are a part of him. He has no reservations in saying that he loves them, and he'll do everything to protect them. Occasionally that means following stereotypes of how people see Grineer--acting as someone who exists solely to work, fight, and die. But that bond between Kahl and his fellow Grineer, or even with anyone who was veiled, that's his higher purpose. (Side note--as seen above with Jarka, "brother" is a gender neutral term for Kahl. Due to the matriarchal slant of the grineer, a male speaker using "sister" would imply someone above him in a hierarchy, rather than a peer.)

Kahl has no problem killing anything and everything that stands in the way of his goals, but since he's left the army, he's grown more appreciative of animal life. He apparently used to shoot animals that got in the way--now he watches others in his camp feed local animals, and stares in fascination at bugs that land on him. If the bug stings him? It's not the bug's fault. It's little, and he's big. It doesn't know any better.

Also, Kahl likes fishing. He's not great at it, but he's brought home at least one boot. Plus, Blue Girl sent him a fish from her homeland. It was very ugly. He loved it.

SAMPLE: I've yeeted him all over the TDM, with a good sample thread available here.

INVENTORY: Kahl carries with him...
Greerlance Rekk armor- The standard combat armor for most Grineer soldiers. It's a mix of old and new plates, made of a blast-resistant material that provides heavy protection to his organic parts. It's decorated with a unique teal blue abstract pattern that marks him as receiving some past recognition for notable service. you can customize Kahl's look and he's happy to own more than one set of armor, but I'll spare everybody the fashion abominations that can result from this
A Grakata assault rifle- A standard Grineer assault rifle. Thanks to Space Magic(tm), its magazine is essentially infinite. (Infinite ammo for Kahl is a purely game mechanic thing, which can be scrapped as appropriate.)
Five incendiary grenades- Fire!!
A reusable, collapsible barricade- This inflates on deployment into a low bulletproof wall, approximately 1.75m wide, 1.5 m tall, and 30 cm thick.
A basic Grineer trauma kit- charge it up, apply to the wounded, and there's a fair chance they'll be back on their feet with some life back in them, but not happily. Also includes basic tools for adjusting and maintaining Grineer prostheses.
the Veilbreaker- A forearm-mounted device personally created by Kahl. A former EMP ram, the Veilbreaker can lob an energetic projectile at a target, creating a localized blast of electricity that stuns people or creatures within range. The Veilbreaker can also create a close-range, sustained charge that can short out electronics or deliver a powerful shock. Kahl has adjusted it to avoid causing lethal damage, and it has been further modified to be less traumatic by his ally Chipper, after An Incident involving much swearing.
standard Grineer prostheses- These neurally-linked prostheses are armored to the same standard as the rest of his equipment. With their connection to his nervous system, he feels sensory feedback through them. As noted above, they help enhance his strength to some degree.
an eyepatch- Poor boy lost his left eye during that one big battle, but on the plus side, the game devs are absolute nerds, and gave him an off-brand version of Snake's eyepatch from MGS4.

NOTES: Kahl's prosthetics make him pretty able-bodied, but it's still worth noting that his disability stems from a genetic condition that can impact Grineer health. I have no plans to explore this at this time, however.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? If you feel like it, sure!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Boss, which is it, plot-light or plot-heavy? :))))

Kumoi Yuuri | Zettai Karen Children

[wantshappiness]

PLAYER NAME: Orange Crates
CONTACT: dreamingcellardoor
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Already in game with Chu Wanning

CHARACTER: Kumoi Yuuri
CANON: Zettai Karen Children
CANON POINT: Middle School Arc, right after she disappears from school.

BACKGROUND: The tragedy of Yuuri's life began before she was born. Her parents had no sooner been married before her mother fell into a coma. She had been an esper that hadn't realized it and accidentally put herself into a feedback loop (where an esp user reads themselves or uses hypnosis on themselves) which resulted in a coma that she'd never wake up from.

This tragedy made Yuuri's father hate espers. As a result, using his wife and his own genetic material, he created two children: Gilliam and Yuuri (though it seems when they talk to her her name seems to be "Julie").

Gilliam had psychic powers but he was sickly as a child and so was sent to one of the other houses and essentially discarded when Yuuri came into the picture later.

Unlike Gilliam, Yuuri was the perfect picture of health and, not only that, her psychic powers were incredibly strong, clocking in at Level 7 (which means it's stronger than current modern equiment can read).

She became the center of Black Phantom's mind control network, taking control of the minds of numerous espers in the world and turning them into mindless tools that obeyed her every order. These espers were then sold as mercenaries to the highest bidder.

All the while, Yuuri was praised for all this and told she was a "good girl". She ate up this praise, mistaking it for love and, having known nothing else all her life, started to believe that treating people as tools and toys was a valid form of love.

At some point, Yuuri came to resent her father and what she did. Unable to reconcile this resentment and her need to be loved by her father, she developed a second personality known in the series as Phantom.

She might have gone on living like this if one of their espers hadn't been removed from the mind-control network without being killed (the until now only way to escape Black Phantom's control). They lost him while he was on a mission that was interrupted by the arrival of Japan's only team of Level 7 espers, the Children. Yuuri, while not physically present, was able to sense the moment the mind control that had sunk its claws into the boy's brain had been removed.

Wanting more information on the power that had been used to free the esper under their control, Yuuri's father sent her to go undercover at the school where the Children went to school and befriend them to get closer to Akashi Kaoru, the future Queen of Espers.

However the plan backfires because as Yuuri got closer to the Children, the more she started to break away from Black Phantom. But she may never have had the courage to betray them if the leader of the esper criminal organization PANDRA hadn't put her under hypno, putting her two other personalities, Mirage and Phantom to sleep, leaving the fake personality of "Yuuri" to pilot the ship (but this only worked because Mirage and Phantom wanted a normal life, if only for a little while).

For some time, Yuuri got to live her life like a normal child, without any awareness of her powers or her past (or the fact that Black Phantom had been sending people to retrieve her while members of Pandra helped protect her from them).

But Hyoubu Kyousuke had meant to give her a chance to choose her future; this was never meant to last. Eventually she began to remember her real past and what she had done but she still clung to the illusion until the moment she realized that people were not things that could be owned or bought or sold, that friends were not toys and what her father had shown her wasn't love. When she realized that, her three personality combined and for the first time in a while she was a whole person.

Having realized the error of her ways, she couldn't just sit around idly and wait for someone else to solve the problem of Black Phantom. Knowing they'd follow her (and believing they'd hate her), she erased herself from the memories of all her friends before she left to confront Black Phantom with the resolution to kill her brother and father.

ABILITIES | POWERS:
Yuuri is an esper, meaning she has psychic powers. In Zettai Karen Children, psychic powers are ranked from Level 1 to Level 7, with Level 1 being so weak and underdevelopped the user can barely control it or do anything with it. They may as well be a normal person. Level 6 is the highest level at which their powers can be measured. Anything beyond that is considered Level 7 and they are incredibly rare (and also varies a lot in power levels).

Yuuri is a Level 7 Hypno user.

1: Hypno: Basically the ability to manipulate chemicals in the mind to make a person see illusions. What someone can do with hypno depends on the user's level. At Yuuri's level, she can:
- create realistic illusions. In Zettai Karen Children, hypno is dangerous because even if you know it's fake a strong hypno user can make your body believe it is going through the illusions. So if the hypno makes someone's mind believe it is bleeding to death, the body will react as if it is going into shock even if there's nothing physically wrong with it. Or if a character is made to believe their legs have turned into gelatin they will not be able to stand even if there's nothing physically wrong with their legs.
- Yuuri can create an illusion, but she can also use hypno to make someone see something they think of. The difference being that in the first case she creates an image and in the second she leaves it to the person she's using hypno on to create an image. In the second case even she cannot see what the illusion is.
- If she is near someone with psychic powers she can force them to activate it.
- Using hypno she can manipulate other people's memory and personalities. This is hard to do. Even Yuuri, who is arguably the series' strongest hypno user in terms of raw power, has to take advantage of weaknesses in a person's psyche to do this. If a person has had a memory or moment in time where they were on the verge of despair, she can take advantage of this weakness to get a foothold in their mind. Similarly, if someone gives her permission to change their memories around then she can do it without much trouble.

2: Telepathy: The ability to read people's thoughts. Higher level espers (which Yuuri counts as) can perform something called a Psycho Dive where they go deep into a person's psyche. Going into the mind of an esper always comes with certain dangers because their minds tend to fight back and could potentially drag the esper doing the dive into their minds and they will never wake up again.

Telepathy, no matter how high a level, is limited by certain factors such as how deeply buried the thoughts are and whether there is something else someone is thinking. of. For example, one tactic characters in canon have developed for preventing a telepath from reading their minds is to think about one thing very strongly so it interferes in the reading and it's shown to be extremely effective. Hypnosis is technically a Synthetic power (a power that works by combining a number of other psychic powers) so it can't work without telepathy. Which means if telepathy is blocked or isn't working her hypno automatically also doesn't work.


While Yuuri's power may seem too strong, there are a lot of limits beyond the ones listed. Yuuri always has a harder time using her power on anyone who has psychic powers, and the stronger they are the more they can resist. Also some people are naturally resistent to psychic powers even without psychic powers themselves (strong will, etc.). Psychic powers can also be cancelled out by machines that broadcast signals at a certain frequency.

Also, the further someone is from being a regular human the harder it is for her to take control of their mind or read it. In this case, zombies and monsters would count...and also a lot of the things that are threats in the game setting. Also while using hypno on others it also creates an opening for others to get into her head. Which, given some of her own insecurities is potentially very dangerous for her.

On the more mundane end of things, any head injuries or serious fevers will cause her to lose control of her powers or lose the ability to use them depending on the severity.


PERSONALITY:
Big Heart
Yuuri is incredibly kind. Though for years she had had to kill this side of herself she has shown to be upset when she realizes people are hurt, even more so when they're hurt because of her. In her heart, Yuuri is the sort of person who only wants to make people happy. And Yuuri loves people deeply...sometimes to the point of not knowing what to do with herself. When she loves it's without reservation, without question and without hesitation. Her desire to love and be loved in return is a driving force of a lot of what she does. Because she was starved of affection growing up, she's also able to understand the difference between genuine affections and fake ones. Yuuri's big heart leads her to want to protect people she cares about, but her protectiveness of them can also push her to do things that are completely against her nature. For the sake of those she wants to protect, she can become ruthless.

Sentimental
Yuuri isn't a very ambitious person. She is happy with little things and doesn't actually ask for much from people. She treasures the little things in her life, like school festivasls and time spent with her friend. She understands, better than most, the value of simple things and happy memories.

Easy Going
In some ways, Yuuri is a bit of a doormat around people she likes, but she has the sort of personality that is generally inoffensive and doesn't really argue with others, making her easy to get along with for the most part. She's easy to befriend in general and eager to please. Even if she acts like a complete weirdo sometimes, it's not in a creepy way but rather just socially awkward. In more serious/combat contexts, it makes people under-estimate her and gives her an edge in a fight.

Guilt
This is the biggest contradiction of Yuuri's character: wanting happiness and yet being afraid of having it. She wants love, wants friendship and she wants redemption. However, her belief that she doesn't deserve such things make her afraid of being rejected or, worse yet, to achieve them because someone like her cannot have them and she'd certainly lose them or destroy them in the end. Her guilt consumes her and it is the greatest weakness in her psyche.

Fear
Yuuri is deeply afraid of being abandoned and being hated. She is so scared of this that she'd rather erase her friends' memories of her than risk them hating her for what she did. But her fear isn't limited to that. She's afraid to accept love though she craves it because she fears losing it or not being worthy of it. She fears that she doesn't deserve any happiness and that by clinging to even a scrap of it will ruin the people she loves.


SAMPLE:
TDM Threads: 1 | 2

INVENTORY:
Her helmet that's made of a metal that has been tuned to her psychic wave's frequency. Basically it channels her hypno well and can retain it afterwards albeit weakly. Basically it makes it hard for people to see her face while she's wearing it and makes it difficult to pick out any traits.

NOTES: Nope!

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot heavy would be interesting if it can be managed on the mod end!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Jimmy McGill | Better Call Saul

[slippin]

PLAYER NAME: Carolyn
CONTACT: kavalier#7118 @ disco
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: TDM (+ a couple tag ins to show I'm not just here to tag my char's wife...)

CHARACTER: Jimmy McGill (he practices law under the name Saul Goodman—in game he'll probably play it by ear)
CANON: Better Call Saul
CANON POINT: 6x7, Plan and Execution

BACKGROUND: ye olde wiki

SORRY IT'S SO LONG, brief summary: young two-bit con artist gets a reality check when his brother, an upstanding attorney, helps him narrowly avoid a prison sentence. He follows said brother across the country to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and from there continues following in his brother's footsteps—working in the mail room at his law firm, getting a law degree (from a less-than-reputable institution), and (eventually) passing the bar exam. Only it turns out his brother isn't entirely pleased with these developments! One might even say he's furious! He sees Jimmy's status as a lawyer as nothing more than a sick joke, a stain on the legal system he reveres above all else. Maneuvering behind the scenes, he ensures Jimmy never works at his firm as a lawyer and routinely undercuts his brother's self-confidence, all in the guise of being supportive.

From there things escalate—almost all of Jimmy's bullshit (and it is Jimmy's bullshit, he's certainly not blameless) can be traced back to his brother's barely concealed contempt for him and conviction that he's incapable of change. Even when offered a cushy job at an established law firm, Jimmy first turns it down and later actively sabotages himself, alienating almost everyone there and getting himself fired. Sure, corporate culture rubs him the wrong way—he bristles at the litany of rules he has to follow in the name of maintaining the firm's image—but in the end, he tanks the job because he can't drown out the little voice that whispers he doesn't deserve it.

ABILITIES | POWERS: Jimmy has no superhuman powers or abilities and zero inclination toward physical combat. What skills he has honed were mainly developed in service of cons: he is very accomplished at faking slip-and-fall accidents, has some experience forging or otherwise fucking with documents (though I wouldn’t put him at the level of an expert) and knowledge of rare coins, and has written and directed several commercials.

Also he has been to bartending school.

As far as legal areas of expertise, he worked as a public defender for some time and had a brief but flourishing solo practice specializing in elder law—the man knows how to draft a will.

PERSONALITY: Jimmy's a con artist. It's instinctive, how his brain works—if a rule can be skirted, a mark manipulated, or a situation turned to his advantage, he's the first to sniff it out. He thinks in shortcuts and dramatic convolutions. Given the opportunity, he'll improvise endlessly, shifting his story and even his identity until he gets what he wants (and ideally, the other party thinks they're getting what they want as well). Growing up, Jimmy watched his father—a man who genuinely thought the best of everyone he met—sacrifice his livelihood for the sake of good intentions. Charles McGill, Sr. was widely beloved, his little corner store a neighborhood fixture, but he never heard a sob story he didn't believe, and in the end his habit of extending everyone the benefit of the doubt proved so costly he went out of business. Jimmy's takeaway from this was that you had to screw people over before they could screw over you—the classic "if you look around the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." Jimmy can grin and bear humiliation, ridicule, even outright contempt, but he's determined never to be the sucker.

It's a straightforward philosophy; unfortunately Jimmy isn't quite the cynical bastard it requires him to be. He cares for the people around him—even as a full-on scammer wringing money out of Chicago's barflies and tourists, he chose a childhood friend as his partner in crime and stuck by him until he (Jimmy) was arrested. When his brother develops a hypersensitivity to electricity that essentially leaves him housebound, Jimmy brings him fresh groceries and supplies (including his favorite newspapers) day in and day out, doing his best to keep his spirits up. When a couple of would-be conmen he enlists to win over some clients runs afoul of a cartel member hellbent on murdering them, Jimmy puts himself at risk to talk the guy out of it. (This comes with quite a few caveats: Jimmy was shoved into a van and taken to the desert to die along with the unfortunate duo, and came close to just saving his own ass and walking away before his conscience started acting up—but that's kind of how it goes when you're Jimmy. Even managing to do the right thing comes with an asterisk.) Jimmy may be shrewd, able to see all the angles—or at least a lot of them—but he's also emotional, apt to be dragged in less-than-advantageous directions out of loyalty or just plain sympathy. He needs people, cares about them, and wants them to like him.

The people Jimmy loves hold a lot of sway over him, for good and ill. His brother, Chuck, drummed into him that he was shortsighted and selfish, doomed to repeat the same mistakes and hurt the people around him. Unsurprising, then, that most of Jimmy's attempts to change involve remaking himself—first in Chuck's image as an upstanding (which is to say, broke) lawyer, then as the man he thought Kim Wexler (former mailroom coworker, co-law-office-renter, love of his life, etc.) wanted him to be, and finally as Saul Goodman, world-class dirtbag and the embodiment of every shortcoming Chuck liked to throw in his face. (The flip side to all these contortions to fit other people's expectations: when Jimmy sarcastically grouses about the lack of glamour elder law—the field he's shaping up to specialize in—has to offer, Kim cuts through his bullshit, telling him that the elderly need legal support and are often taken advantage of. Because Kim takes what he's doing seriously and sees it as important, Jimmy does too, even parroting some of her talking points later.) By his canon point, however, reinvention isn't the cure-all it once was: Jimmy's made some spectacularly bad choices with lasting, bloody consequences, and doesn't see a way forward that allows him to be himself. With Kim's help, he's fine-tuning the persona that will serve as a buffer between the real Jimmy McGill and the rest of the world—as well as the guilt he can't bring himself to face.

SAMPLE: reunion sans knives
"what would you die for?"

INVENTORY: Other than his clothes (suit, tie, pocket square, loafers, sock garters—the usual):

- pinky ring
- Rolex (fake) (like you had to ask)
- old-school flip phone
- wallet (containing: credit cards, business cards touting the services of Saul Goodman, like $40 cash, a couple restaurant punch cards)

NOTES: A friend is apping ~his wife~ Kim Wexler—I know you guys have limited slots, so if you wind up not having room for both of them, I'd prefer to wait for another app round! Save everyone from having to deal with dramatic pining.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot-heavy if you got it!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Saul isn't stuck in here with the undead.

The undead are stuck with Saul.

bai mingyu | oc

[descendency]

PLAYER NAME: Morgan
CONTACT: undecipher
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: YOU KNOW

CHARACTER: Gabriel Bai // Bai Mingyu
CANON: OC
CANON POINT: May 2018 - One year post the (2017) disappearance of his then-boyfriend, Emmet "Fox" Martin (and change)

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 was 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: Mingyu had surgery once, as a child. They put him under for it. He'd been nervous and all the nurses and doctors reassured him it wasn't scary at all. That it would be like having a nap, just a quick little sleep, and then he'd wake up all better again. Oversimplifications and platitudes age-appropriate for the child he'd been. It'd worked, too. He'd relaxed, let them wheel him in.

But it wasn't like sleeping at all.

It was like blinking.

One second there and the next somewhere else, disoriented and aching, awareness rushing in that incalculable time had passed in the space of a breath.

This, here, now, is that exact sensation. He remembers chaos, remembers fighting, remembers frantic attempts to hold all the piece of his life here in volatile, tumultuous place. Then he blinked and opened his eyes to dim lamps and creaking floorboards, busy, scurried footsteps and cramped, narrow walls.

This is not where he was. These people are not who he was with. His head pounds, blood rushing thunderously in his ears.

What happened? He held on too tight. He held on too tight and let it all go.

He sits up and does not move, though he can feel the ghost of him tearing through the unfamiliar space, through every room, down every hall. Searching for things, for people he knows will not be there. Pulling in a tight breath through clenched teeth, Mingyu squeezes his eyes shut as though to will himself to disappear again. For this to be a dream, or to leap forward somewhere else.

The taste of the sour air upon his tongue remains the same. The lights, the sounds, all unchanging.

Mingyu takes in another slow breath, releases it, and then his eyes snap open once more. He stands, sending some child's makeshift straw-and-string horse toy skid across the well-scuffed floors. He doesn't bother to retrieve it, leaving it to its lonely demise as he smooths out his clothes, striding purposefully towards where he hears voices coming from.

As always, as ever, there is work to do.

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
  
• set of basic spell components (spell paper, silk cord)
  
• a photograph enchanted to move and look like they are talking, faded and worn

NOTES: Just need someone to keep a choke hold on the remaining tatters of his sanity, but we're reasonably sure we can get a player volunteer for that.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Slap me with the big plot we're thirsty for drama.

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Charles Xavier | XMCU

[perceptive]

PLAYER NAME: Kiera
CONTACT: existential
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Returning player!

CHARACTER: Charles Xavier
CANON: X-Men Cinematic Universe (XMCU)
CANON POINT: X-Men: First Class, right before he gets paralyzed.

BACKGROUND: Here

ABILITIES | POWERS: Charles is a mutant telepath. His abilities include cloaking, mental detection, mind control, sleep inducement, paralyzation, mental link, mnemokinesis, illusion projection, pain inducement and psionic resistance. None of which will be used without player permission in-game.

I'm willing to nerf his abilities. His use of telepathy will be dependent on his state of mind and it can be greatly affected by lack of sleep, stress, sickness, injury, etc. At times, excessive use of his abilities will cause nose bleeds or severe headaches or migraines.

PERSONALITY:

When Charles was nine years old, his mutant powers emerged, but he was unaware of it. He started hearing voices in his head and thought that he was beginning to go mad. He was scared, but he never told anyone about it. He suffered on his own for years and it was only when he was twelve years old that he realized he was a telepath, and that the voices he had been hearing weren't his own. Charles' telepathic ability allows him to connect to the minds of those around him. He can not only read people's minds, hear every thought and desire, but he is also capable of feeling someone's pain and their suffering. Because of his ability to connect to people, he's someone who is incredibly empathetic and sympathetic. Finding out he's a mutant and being privy to people's thoughts, as well as being exposed to things he shouldn't have been ready to see or hear or feel at such a young age could have messed him up, but Charles has always been strong, independent and willful, and he is a good and responsible person at heart. Growing up, he never once misused his ability or caused any trouble for himself or his family.

Ever since he found out he was different; special, Charles always thought that other mutants, like him, exists in the world. He believed them to be the next step in evolution, and that together they would help make the world a better place. Meeting Moira MacTaggert allowed him the opportunity to meet other mutants like himself, who wanted to do good, and others who did not. Although he realized that not every mutant will use their powers for the betterment of mankind or the world, Charles is someone who is driven by compassion and hope, and believes that people are inherently good; that they simply need a guiding hand. When Sebastian Shaw attempts to rid the world of humans, Charles, with the help of another mutant named, Erik Lehnsherr, begins to recruit and train a group of mutants to fight back and defeat Shaw. This gives Charles the idea to start a school for young mutants to learn to use their powers, and it's also how the X-Men came to be.

Having a natural affinity for learning as well as teaching, Charles is someone who is intelligent; a genius. Graduating from Oxford, he is currently a Professor of Genetics. He loves writing and doing research on the the subject of evolution and mutation. Despite being studious, he doesn't lead a dreary life however as he does know how to have fun. While he was studying in Oxford, Charles would spend his free time at the local pub, drinking and socializing, and even flirting with the locals. He can definitely be a bit cheeky, and he has used his telepathic ability to read someone's mind in order to impress or charm someone by finding out what their favorite drink is, for example, but that sort of thing is only ever done in good fun, and Charles would never manipulate someone's feelings for him or do anything indecent, inappropriate, or irresponsible.

Incapable of hatred, Charles believes in peace and not war. He wants to be a force of good, not evil. He dislikes violence of all kind. He's not the type of person who will get into physical altercations with people, not if he can help it. He can't even stand it when someone's in pain. This is evident during a mission to hunt Shaw down, when a sentry guard gets hurt by Erik, Charles puts the man to sleep in order to stop his suffering. He also dislikes acts of revenge and will never agree to it as he thinks it will likely do more harm than good. He doesn't condone murder either, and tries to talk Erik out of that, letting him know that it won't bring him peace. Despite his dislike for violence, however, Charles is willing to get his hands dirty to protect others from getting hurt.

Charles is incredibly forgiving by nature. He believes everyone is deserving of a second chance, or a third, or a fourth even. He's certain people are capable of doing good and being good. That it's not just a choice, but a journey, and that for some, it could take a bit of time for them to get there, so patience is absolutely necessary. This doesn't mean that he won't get upset or angry if someone's hurt him or someone he cares about though. He can get pretty emotional about that. He is just not the type of person to condemn someone, or judge them too harshly, or hold a grudge even as he doesn't see the point of it. Even after Erik kills Shaw and attempts to kill thousands of innocent men after that, Charles doesn't feel hate for him, and for what he's done. Instead, he feels pity for the man, and he feels sad about it.

At times, Charles can be a bit too idealistic however, and he can also be incredibly stubborn. His refusal to think of humans as the enemy despite how mutants are treated has put him at odds with his sister, Raven, and his good friend, Erik. He is not someone who's selfish, however, and despite how much it hurt him to do it, he encouraged Raven to join Erik's Brotherhood of Mutants once he realized that she no longer believed in his cause for a peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants. Harboring no ill will towards either of them as they parted ways, Charles simply hopes that someday they'll be able to come together and work as a team again.

SAMPLE: TDM

INVENTORY: Just some spare clothes. Casual wear.

NOTES: N/A

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Either will be fine with me. Thank you!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Vi | Arcane (1/2)

[faceblocker]

PLAYER NAME: Jesse
CONTACT: PM (or) Pactoris#0587 @ disco
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: I play Vanessa Ives.

CHARACTER: Violet (Vi)
CANON: Arcane
CANON POINT: At the end of 1x09, "The Monster You Created". Everything is about to get even worse.

BACKGROUND: Episode recaps are a lot to read, and they occasionally mix in League of Legends canon that has been retconned for the show, so I'll try to summarize what seems relevant to Vi.

Vi grew up in the slums of Zaun, Piltover's undercity; most prominently in a quarter known colloquially as 'The Lanes'. Originally, she lived with her parents and sister (Powder) until her parents were killed in a rebellion; after which she and Powder were adopted by the man who helped create and run the Lanes (Vander). Along the way, Vander adopted a couple boys (Mylo and Claggor) who became brothers to the girls. Vi ended up becoming the leader of this little gang while Vander conducted his Lanes business and ran his bar, and she would lead the other kids on heists in order to help make ends meet.

There is a large economical divide between Piltover and Zaun, which were once one city, with Zaun housing all of the poor and rejected outliers of society. Zaun is rife with technological augmentation and other underworld fascinations. The air is denser than the air above because of the toxic fissures. It's bad enough that some Piltover citizens often choose to wear gas masks if they visit, and it leaves some unlucky undercity citizens with a shortened lifespan. By the time Vi grows into a young adult, the undercity becomes overrun with chemtech and a drug called shimmer.

Growing up, Vi learned how to brawl to survive (along with boxing from her adopted father), and parkour to move between the cities and steal from those who could spare the wealth.

It was during one of these heists that Powder got her hands on a magic gem (hextech) that ended up blowing up a building that was important enough to send the Piltover enforcers (military police) and their wrath down upon the undercity. A crime lord named Silco took advantage of this chaos and kidnapped Vander. Vi and her adopted brothers met opposition when trying to free him, but they were just about to succeed in their escape when Powder, who Vi had told to stay home, showed up to help. Her 'help' involved using the hextech gems to create a bomb, which resulted in the deaths of Mylo and Claggor. Vander's death quickly followed, though not before he managed to get Vi out of the burning building.

Upon learning that her own sister was the cause of the destruction and death of their adopted family, Vi lashed out at Powder and ran off to gain her bearings. She was abducted and arrested by a corrupt enforcer (presumably to save her, while also keeping her out of his way) before she could return to Powder to save her from Silco's approaching silhouette.

While in prison, her fighting tactics became more volatile, with new prisoners being warned to avoid her and prison guards having nightmares about her. She was often forced into solitary for escape attempts or instigating fights, and beatings from the guards became a regular occurrence. This went on for about seven years.

She was only released when an enforcer named Caitlyn decided she need her help in navigating the underground's criminal circuit to root out Silco. It was during this short time free, and a reunion with her sister, that she was knocked out and kidnapped by an outlying group of rebels called the Firelights. After coming to, she learned that a childhood friend named Ekko led the Firelights, and with his help, Vi and Caitlyn made it back to Piltover to try and convince the Council of just how dangerous Silco had become. When the Council decided against any real action, Vi took off to handle things her own way. 'Her own way' involved convincing a Council member named Jayce to attack one of Silco's factories, before she moved on to taking down Sevika for good.

Before Vi could make it all the way to Silco, however, her sister managed to kidnap both her and Caitlyn, and in a twist, Silco as well. While keeping them hostage, Powder (now called Jinx) demanded that Vi kill Caitlyn, saying she would go back to being Powder if she did. Vi refused, but tried to convince Powder that they could just run away together and leave everything behind. Silco capitalized on Powder's indecision and instead tried to convince her that Vi was the cause of all her trauma. When trying to murder Vi as soon as he got free, he forced Powder to make a decision, leaving yet another father figure dead by her hands. Pushed to the brink by this tragedy, Powder fully accepted herself as Jinx, understanding something that Vi never could. They could never go back to how things were. Set on her path of terrorism, Vi and Caitlyn could only watch as Jinx launched a hextech-powered rocket in the direction of the very Council that was, at that moment, voting on a motion that might lead to peace between Zaun and Piltover.

Vi | Arcane (2/2)

[faceblocker]

ABILITIES | POWERS:

─ Physical strength and fighting skills. Vi is a brawler, and she hits like a truck. Her style is a mix of street-fighting and boxing. She was trained by an experienced fighter when young, but tends to incorporate a scrappier style picked up from the streets along with more brutal brawling carried over from her time in prison. She can read body language and learn to adapt. She's quick and surprisingly spry at dodging a lot of hits for someone so tanky. As a teenager she was able to singularly fight off several adult goons armed only with a pair of giant metal gauntlets. In prison, she grew a reputation over time for being dangerous and not someone for other inmates to mess with; it was bad enough that the guards tried to get her transferred because they had nightmares about her. She's shown punching concrete until it cracks, and the extreme weight of the Atlas Gauntlets don't seem to slow her down, so she is strong, to say the least.

─ Acrobatics. She might be solid muscle, but that doesn't mean she's slow or clumsy. She can be fast in a fight or when fleeing danger, and parkour is something her and her fellow fissure kids grew up learning. It's something she has perfected in order to better traverse the mean streets of Zaun, and sometimes to help them get up to and around the upper city of Piltover. Once she's familiar with a territory, she's comfortable swinging from pipes and hopping around rooftops.

─ Stealth. Although she may prefer to punch or kick her way through a situation, Vi got by with thievery growing up, so she's capable of sneaking when she doesn't get carried away by emotions. She's good at finding alternate routes and open windows where necessary, and she is able to sneak into Jayce's workshop without raising any alarms. She can probably lift your wallet and be gone before you know what happened.

─ Hextech: She doesn't personally know magic, but her "borrowed" Atlas Gauntlets sport magical engineering dubbed 'hextech' that she can utilize in battle, increasing her strength to a ridiculous degree. They can resonate with her and so far can create a temporary force-field around her (she can't control it yet). They have the potential to grow stronger the more she uses them.

─ Inking. Files from her prison stay reveal that she inked her own tattoos while behind bars (though she would have had help for the ones on her back). Negligible compared to her other talents, but something fun to include.

PERSONALITY:

As someone who was raised in an oppressive underworld, Vi carries herself like a survivor. She’s angry at the world, but she wouldn’t be so angry if she didn’t care so much for those she loves. She wants them to have a better life than she has. She wants others to do more than survive; she wants the oppressed to thrive. She wants this for herself, too, but has trouble addressing it, as she learned from a young age to take care of others before herself. She also isn’t sure she deserves better. Although her anger is massive, it still manages to be outweighed by her guilt, and both are ultimately born out of grief.

Vander, her adoptive father, tried to encourage her fighting skills and leadership qualities. This included reminding her of the weight on her shoulders as the designated leader of her sister and adopted brothers. Vander had his own responsibilities to the undercity, and treated Vi as a protégé in that regard, leaving Vi to do most of the parenting when it came to the other kids. He delegated to her, and she delegated to others. As a teen, Vi was good at giving direction and keeping the peace. Acting as more of a parent than a sibling most of the time, she is quick to shut down Mylo’s bullying, and she is just as quick to check on Powder’s well-being. In her role as a caretaker to her sister, Vi exercises patience when asking her to talk, and shows affection while encouraging her that her unique skills make her useful to the group. She does everything she can to build Powder’s confidence, even if it means sharing some of the group’s past mistakes to remind her that everyone has a bad day. Vi may be a strong fighter, but she doesn’t expect everyone to be. She tells her sister, "What makes you different makes you strong," and she means it. She values different skill sets, and she has no patience for bullying. Her compassion for underdogs, or those seen as ‘misfits’, is almost limitless.

Some of these traits, such as being a team player and showing affection, have lessened from her time in prison. She has become more isolated and distrusting, both in others and herself. Although she never loses confidence in her physical abilities, Vi’s trust in herself as a leader has been shaken to its core after losing everyone she’s ever loved, except for her sister. She’s quick to distrust others just as much, because she assumes either they’ll let her down, or she’ll let them down. Her miscalculations made in trying to rescue Vander from Silco, and the failure to properly handle her sister in the fallout, still haunt her. Even though she had only been a teenager at the time, she’s never been able to forgive herself, and it only worsens when she sees where her sister has ended up. Vi’s been trapped with her regret between concrete walls for years, leaving Powder to the mercy of Silco’s manipulations. Though she is quick to blame the corruption of Piltover enforcers and Silco’s machinations for her and Powder’s lot in life, deep down she blames herself most of all. Often it’s for situations that were out of her control when she was young, but unfortunately, Vander’s reliance on her being a leader only cemented these responsibilities. Even just before he died, he told her to look after her sister, and she failed him and Powder in that regard. Her guilt has a life of its own, and it guides her steps down a path of self-sacrifice. She can’t trust herself like she used to, and she can’t risk believing in others, but she has to hold onto faith that her sister can be saved, or else she fears she’ll have nothing left.

To reach this goal of making a better life for her sister, Vi rarely hesitates. Her courage is reactive (like so many of her traits). It can be useful in a fight, but at times, this breeds impatience, especially when emotion clouds her judgment, or she gets too cocky (such as when she kicks in a door before Mylo has a chance to pick the lock). She isn’t shaken by much, and can remain remarkably cool-headed when under threat, which is shown when another teenager threatens her with a knife and she just stares him down, or when a thug tries to corner her in an alley and she just notes his slick duds (which she promptly steals for herself). She rarely fears for herself. When afraid for others or overcome with emotions she never learned to deal with, however, Vi can get temperamental and careless. She fails to notice how easy it is to break into Silco’s warehouse to rescue Vander, until it’s too late. When overcome with grief, and partially guilt at discovering Powder’s hand in killing their adopted family, Vi strikes her and calls her a ‘jinx’. She immediately regrets both reactions, but the damage is already done. Before she can try to fix either situation, everything is taken from her, and she’s left without a healthy way to cope or anyone to comfort her.

Unsurprisingly, this all culminates in her rage being one of her most visible traits, to the point where someone might dismiss her as nothing but a ‘rage against the machine’ type. Vi never really had someone teach her how to deal with her emotions, since Vander had his hands full running his bar, the Lanes, and trying to keep peace between Zaun and Piltover. He did his best, but what Vi learned from him was to put others first. Even her calls for rebellion as a teenager weren’t for herself as much as they were for Powder’s future. She was taught how to take care of others, not how to be taken care of. As such, many of her own desires have been suppressed since childhood, except for that anger. When she’s emotional, it’s easiest to let this resentment and bitterness take the lead, because she at least knows how to use that. She knows how to fight, and that she knows she can do well. After losing her family and being arrested, Vi buries her kindness because there’s nobody left to share it with. At least, not within the prison. She still wants to find her sister and make things right, so she exercises a frightening amount of violence against the guards and other inmates to try and free herself or get information on Silco. She would even keep trophies of the weapons that other inmates tried to use against her, revealing a pride in her physical prowess over others. It can be a great strength, like when she uses it to initially overpower Silco’s lieutenant (Sevika) in a fight, but her tendency to get carried away or too reactionary with her emotions can also be a great weakness, leading Silco’s lieutenant to seize the moment and overpower her. Sometimes, it gives her tunnel vision.

This doesn’t mean that Vi only thinks with her fists. Under pressure, Vi has been shown to assess and adapt to tough situations. After realizing that they’ve been trapped by Silco and his men, Vi analyzes their surroundings and delegates jobs for Mylo and Claggor while preparing to hold the line for them. Later, she is initially caught off-guard by Sevika’s chemtech arm, but after a couple missteps, she focuses her attacks on Sevika’s weak points and uses the environment against her bulky frame by luring her into a narrow space. When given the chance, she understands how to use social connections and stealth to get information. After an enforcer (Caitlyn) frees her from prison, Vi takes her to a local eatery so that she can not only enjoy a good meal for the first time in years, but also to figure out where to go next. From there, she reconnects with a brothel’s madam to find out information on Silco and his lieutenant. While there, she reminds Caitlyn that if she wants information, she can’t expect others to give her what she wants; instead, she should “let them think she has what they want.” Vi encourages deception if it’s necessary, though she would rather tell someone exactly what she thinks to their face. "You're hot, cupcake," is her bold answer when Caitlyn asks just what she has that she can use.

This is also a rare moment where Vi lets some of her flirtier nature peek through, though to take it further than that would lead to intimacy, and that is something Vi has become frightened of. This ties back to her fear of letting people down, of losing them because of it. As such, it’s much easier for her to put up walls and keep them at a distance. With Caitlyn, who she first assesses to be just another self-serving enforcer, this is easy at first. She brushes her off as “like all the others”, at least until she begins to see just how much empathy Caitlyn holds. Vi has lived all her life for her sister, so she doesn’t know how to fit someone else into that narrow focus, but her feelings for Caitlyn grow despite. She shares a personal story from her childhood when they’re alone, and when Caitlyn’s safety is threatened by Powder (now going by Jinx), Vi makes the heartbreaking decision to get Caitlyn to safety and let her old friend Ekko confront Powder instead. In the moment, she chooses Caitlyn, but she doesn’t see it that way. She still wants to save her sister, but she isn’t willing to sacrifice Caitlyn to do so. Vi eventually rejects Caitlyn’s attempt to get closer, putting her walls back up so that she can regain her focus again: saving Powder. This doesn’t go as planned, since she chooses Caitlyn yet again when Powder kidnaps them both, then asks Vi to kill Caitlyn for the sake of their sisterhood. In Vi’s mind, she would do anything for her sister, but not that. But she isn’t rejecting her sister, and is heartbroken that her sister sees it as a betrayal.

In the end, Vi is harder on herself than anyone, and to mirror this she makes too many excuses for Jinx’s terrorism. Vi sees her sister’s behavior as her own failure to be a better sister, mother, friend, leader. She will never stop blaming herself, nor stop seeking something that can never be recovered. Her sister is gone, but she can’t say goodbye, because she’s too frightened of knowing what comes after. To survive such a fallout, she would need to accept a reality she isn’t prepared for.

SAMPLES:

─ Eastbound!TDM. Oh the yearning, oh the guilt.
─ Eastbound!TDM. Lil cranky around the Twelfth Doctor.
─ Apocalypse How!TDM. Slaughtering some ocean zombies.
─ Abraxas!TDM. Bar fighting and makin friends.

INVENTORY:

─ Her grimy clothes.
─ Atlas Gauntlets (right one is busted).

NOTES: If she's separated from Caitlyn, she will probably ignore that and just go to wherever Cait is situated. She can be sneaky when she wants to avoid attention, but can also draw attention if her temper gets the better of her, so who knows how long it would last before she got into trouble.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? I can go either way, so whatever helps things flow! The Vi in me is stronk.

Christopher Pike | Star Trek

[failed_astrophysics]

PLAYER NAME: Sara
CONTACT: Plurk: margin_oferror
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: From Kerry and Emily

CHARACTER: Christopher Pike
CANON: Star Trek
CANON POINT: Post Episode 1x03 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds "The Ghosts of Illyria"

BACKGROUND: Christopher Pike at Memory Alpha
ABILITIES | POWERS: Chris is a regular human with no overly special abilities. He is of above average intelligence, is a tactical and strategic thinker. As a result of his starfleet education & training, he and can hold his own in combat situations and use a variety of weapons. There is also some basic medical knowledge, though he does excel in science and he has a talent for complicated languages.
Unrelated to his Starfleet experience, he's a good cook and can ride horses.

PERSONALITY:

Christopher Pike is inherently empathetic and kind. Two skills that serve him well as a starship captain. He tries to understand the all sides of any issue. This bleeds over into his command style. He treats his crew, whether it's the Enterprise or the Discovery, like family. To him, a person's rank on the ship is not as important as the ideas an knowledge he brings to the table. He believes that by understanding and truly knowing his crew gives him an advantage that they know he trusts them to do their jobs and do it well. He also tries to understand his crew and wants to treat them with respect and make sure their opinions are taken into consideration whenever he makes a decision.

Pike is the poster boy for "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." He sacrifices his future, in Star Trek: Discovery, by accepting the time crystal. His sacrifice saves the universe but he's going to be horribly disfigured in about a decade. He makes the decision again in the season finale of Strange New Worlds when he was given the opportunity to change his future, he doesn't take it so Spock can have his career.

He also has a temper that doesn't show itself often, especially in situations when he's in command. When he first arrives on Discovery, he blows up at Michael Burnham. It happens again in the last episode of Strange New Worlds season 1 when he does a similar thing to Ortegas. In "The Cage", it shows up when he's being held captive by the Talosians.

Pike holds on to a lot of guilt. He blames himself for the death of his crew. In "The Cage", three of his crew members died and two more were injured. That experience drove Pike to rethink his career choices. He and the crew of the Enterprise sat out the Klingon War, on orders from Starfleet. Pike continually volunteers for dangerous missions while in command of Discovery to prove that he can be a battle ready commander. Ash Tyler calls him out on it. The trend continues into Strange New Worlds when crew members die fighting the Gorn.

SAMPLE:
One
Two

INVENTORY:
His Starfleet Captain's Uniform (overshirt, undershirt, pants starfleet insignia)
His away mission jacket
A Starfleet Issue communicator
A Phaser and its holster
NOTES: None

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Lighter plot is good with me.

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Sarah Bishop || All Souls Trilogy

[spellsandcharms]

PLAYER NAME: Ashley
CONTACT: formallyintroduced
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Already in it! (River Song)

CHARACTER: Sarah Bishop
CANON: All Souls Trilogy
CANON POINT: Post Time's Convert

BACKGROUND: This wiki link isn't very good...

• Sarah's niece, Diana, calls up a manuscript for her research which turns out to be what Creatures call the Book of Life. It's enchanted, and in calling it, she breaks that enchantment, then she sends it back and the spell resets, drawing the attention of witches, vampires, and daemons from all over.
• Peter Knox, a powerful wizard, particularly wants to get his hands on it as he believes it will give witches, and more importantly him, greater power.
• 3 pages are missing from the manuscript, 1 has been left for Diana within her family home.
• Em, Sarah's long-time partner (essentially her wife) starts having dreams about the page when they're at Sept-Tours, while Diana and Matthew are time walking. She believes they're some kind of premonition but can't figure them out and wants to contact Rebecca, Diana's mother who died when Diana was 7. Rebecca had a powerful second sight.
• Ultimately, Em is killed while practicing higher magics, trying to contact Rebecca.
• Sarah goes through a period of grieving. Fernando, a vampire and mate to Matthew's late brother, offers comfort and support.
• Diana gives birth to twins. This helps to pull her out of her grief, injecting some joy back into her world.
• Diana and Matthew form a scion for their family to break away, putting them in a better position to go up against the Congregation (a ruling body for Creatures), and Marcus invites all of them, including Sarah, into the Knights of Lazarus.
• They do eventually put the Book of Life back together, learn its secrets, deal with Peter Knox, and quell any further resistance from the Congregation.
• Roughly a year later, Sarah has started to move on in a new relationship with a daemon, Agatha Wilson.
• A further year on, Marcus is ready to marry, and his fiance is undertaking the process of becoming a vampire. Sarah and Agatha join the family for the duration.

Obviously, there are many other things that happen, but Sarah is a background rather than main character, and I think I've pretty well hit all the big highlights. The show and the novels, at least with regard to Sarah, are fairly parallel up until the final season/third novel, at which point there are a couple of significant changes. But otherwise, the show would give a pretty solid idea of events and atmosphere!

ABILITIES | POWERS: Sarah is a powerful witch of the more traditional variety in her canon. Her skill lies in spells, charms, potions, and plants. She was born with ability, but her skill comes from study more than an innate talent as her sister, niece, and partner (Emily). She's a talented healer. Her spellcasting requires incantations, no pointing and thinking and the power of each spell is limited by the strength (and age) of the incantation. Magic is...a little oddly structured in her canon.

In the show, she does display one instance of quite forceful and violent magic. She kills a man. After, she expresses how much she disliked having that kind of power. Also, it's rather against her nature, despite her often-mentioned temper. She does not possess that particular spell in novel canon, regardless.

She does have some telepathic?? ability. Diana refers to it as her witch's radar, and it seems to primarily apply to people close to her (like Diana). She knows when something's wrong, maybe even sometimes knows what they're doing, etc. She was also said to run her fingers over the mail before she opened it in case there was a bill she didn't want to pay so she could plead ignorance when she owed money.

All witches in her canon instinctively know when other witches, specifically, are lying and also can tell when a daemon, witch, or vampire is looking at them. This is tied into their instincts and all based on certain feelings they experience.

She's also a midwife.

I'll for sure put up an opt-out with my permissions, and while I don't personally think anything would be deemed game-breaking (most of her skill is in healing and herbalism), you're welcome to temper her abilities some if you see fit.

PERSONALITY: Sarah Bishop is unvarnished and fierce, loyal and compassionate, guarded but not invulnerable. She's a classic example of a tough outer shell hiding a slightly warmer center. It isn’t an act, though, not a wall she's thrown up to protect herself. That's just who she is and don’t expect her to make any apologies for it.

If you want the cold, hard truth, Sarah is a good person to ask. She'll cut straight to the point, and there won’t be any sugarcoating, often even when you haven’t asked. She tells it like it is, or at least the way she sees it, but often she’s either speaking from experience or simply saying aloud what everyone else is thinking. This isn't out of a disregard for the feelings of others, though it certainly contributes to her abrasive outward personality. The truth is, she doesn't see any benefit in lying. And often, she utterly fails to read the mood of a situation.

Though she may not seem very friendly to outsiders, and certainly, she's had to do a lot of work to overcome her personal biases toward other creatures, Sarah has a huge heart. She's loyal and she loves deeply, and she protects the people she loves fiercely.

There's something to be said for setting aside a lifetime of dislike, distrust, and fear to fight for her niece's right to love whomever she chose. Even if she didn't initially approve of him, herself. He was a vampire. He was beneath them. He was an enemy. But her niece loved him, so despite knowing they were walking into a war, she supported her. Bishop women stick together, she said.

And despite everything it cost them, what it cost her personally, her focus remained on supporting and protecting Diana. Trying to teach her, encourage her.

Throughout it all, she became more open-minded, learning to accept other creatures aren't so different from witches. Even so far as to start a relationship with a deamon about a year after losing Emily. Still as frank as ever, though. Some things never change.

SAMPLE: Thread x2

INVENTORY: Basically just the clothes on her back, granted she layers. She also wears a number of rings, and will be wearing one of particular note that marks her as one of the Knights of Lazarus.

NOTES: Nothing that I can think of, at the moment.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot-light, please. I'm going to be busy this week/weekend.

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Lila Pitts ☂ The Umbrella Academy

[littlemimic]

PLAYER NAME: Xae
CONTACT: Tsukeru, Xae#7866
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Originally Kiki, then the Umbrella Academy cast

CHARACTER: Lila Pitts
CANON: The Umbrella Academy
CANON POINT: Season 3, Episode 10 - Before the reset button on the universe starts up

BACKGROUND: Wiki | Synopsis of season 3 (Spoilers)

ABILITIES | POWERS:

Power Mimicry: She can mimic the power of whoever she's next to, and knows how to use it well. Without ever practicing, Lila can use the power as well as the original user or sometimes better, regardless of how long it took them to learn. There are limitations to her powers, which is that she can only mimic one at a time, and must be within a certain distance of the original power owners. Throughout the seasons, she has been shown using Five's teleportation, Allison's mental manipulation, Luther's superstrength, Viktor's sound manipulation, Sloane's gravity manipulation, Fei's crow manifestation, and Diego's trajectory manipulation.
☂ Limits: Other than the limits of one power at a time, and must be in range of original user, she won't be able to mimic abilities that are more magic-based, deities, or things revolving around cultivation. They will have to be things that would count as a superpower.

Non-Super Abilities: Having been raised by The Handler since she was four, Lila is well-equipped in above-basic fighting ability. She has gone toe-to-toe with The Commission's best assassin, Number 5. While she hasn't won every single fight, she certainly gives him a run for his money. Lila even went up against most of the Umbrella Family and came out on top. Using an assortment of guns and sharp objects as weapons are easy for her to do. She has also an adept hand in assassination, often going on missions for her adopted mother while undercover. Though, Lila wasn't able to fool Number 5 when she infiltrated their family. However, she's a skilled liar, having tricked Diego into believing that they had a kid together when the kid was one she was babysitting for a friend. She speaks several languages, including Chinese and Japanese. Lila also rocks the drums.

PERSONALITY:

On the surface, Lila tends to show her carefree and upbeat self, often doing what she wants, when she wants. At first it seems as if it was all just in good fun that she latched on to Diego while they were in the asylum together, but this was actually part of her cover. While most of her actions don't always outwardly appear to have any deeper meaning, there is generally a reason behind it. Though whether this is a good thing or a bad one always remains to be seen. Mostly, there are generally layers to Lila, and there are a few that she shows them to willingly, while others are simply capable of seeing through it.

Under the surface, Lila is a traumatized woman who lost her parents in a young age. For years she believed that it was a regular home invasion and that her adopted mother had saved her from the life of an orphan that would have followed. This was never something she shared with anyone until meeting Diego, carrying the weight of having heard them die and being a witness to the aftermath. So when she learned that it was actually Number 5 who had assassinated her parents, that trauma only got worse and sent her into a rage that would pit her against all of the Umbrellas. When Lila learned that the woman who adopted her had killed her in an alternate timeline, that the Handler had been the one to put in the order for her parents in the first place, she spiraled. Resulting in killing a few Commission agents and leaving it entirely to join a band temporarily.

She also has a great deal of hate that often gets entirely placed on Five due to the fact that the Handler is now dead. Five is the last man standing where she can direct all of her negative feelings. Upon seeing him, Lila would try her hardest to kill him and even admitted that his pain was her therapy. However, she is capable of working with him in order to save the universe and can even appear chummy with him after they believed they were successful. Under it, there is still some resentment, hatred, and negativity that lingers, though Lila is aware that no one else would possibly understand all that she's been through. The end of the universe is actually a fairly good bonding experience and while Lila may harass him sometimes, there may be a time when she can fully forgive him for what he did.

Having grown up training to be an assassin, Lila is a touch warped, sometimes having little to no remorse for the dead around her. Needing to kill, or seeing the dead doesn't typically bother her, sometimes she was even eager to be the one sent out on a mission. Though, that was partially driven by her need to please her mother and not wanting to be outdone by a kid/old man. Even people that Lila kind of liked didn't get too much consideration from her, but attachment wasn't good in her line of work. All of that changed when she met a boy. Well, a man. While Lila had gotten close to him as part of a job, she wasn't interested in killing him and even brought him to the Commission to work under her. A lot of her words were a lie, but he was the first person she told about her parents and genuinely had feelings for.

These feelings developed into love, something she doesn't quite know how to deal with. The emotions brought out the obsessive and manipulative side of her, tricking him into drinking a concoction that would knock him out so she could kidnap him. Even later, Lila made him believe that they had a twelve-year-old kid together and that she no longer had feelings for Diego. Though this was due more to a fear of being rejected by him, as he did once leave her. What Lila wants more than anything is to be a family with Diego, but this causes so many fears to rise up in her and has her doing crazy things like manipulating him. It's because she doesn't always know better, having been raised by a manipulative mother. However, with Diego, Lila is beginning to see that this isn't actually a good thing. She wants to be a good mother to her kid, and knows that she shouldn't follow in the Handler's footsteps.

Lila is also a ball of sarcasm and sass, sometimes calling people names or insulting them in a playful manner. There is often a witty comeback to most things that are said to her and she's willing to tease and gently harass the people in her life. Some might say she's full of piss and vinegar, and honestly, that's true too. This woman is a ball of energy and has a need to put it somewhere, usually involving other people in some way. It makes her pretty lively and hard to miss even when standing next to someone taking center stage, though she does know how to fade into the background when necessary. She also enjoys watching family drama, because who wouldn't? Pull up a chair, grab some popcorn, and watch the show.

Slowly, but surely, Lila is coming to maybe care about people beyond the guy she loves. When it was clear Allison was spinning wildly, she went out of her way to try to help her. Since she has no experience in it, her approach is sometimes a little too blunt or honestly a tad weird, but it does seem to work a bit. Diego once told her that they could be her family, and at this point, it's something that Lila is willing to work towards, and she seems more comfortable with some of them after Luther's wedding, even going so far as to put her feet and legs over the newly married couple while relaxed. She even attempted to be nice to the other version of Reginald Hargreeves and at least get Diego talking to him again While she still has a long way to go, it's becoming a little easier for her to let people get close to her and care about them.

From the start, Lila was always a little bossy. Often she pushed her way into other people's lives and while this was just a job, it's definitely changed. Lila prefers to be mostly in control of her own life, whether it be something as simple as leading a dance, to not being told what to do even in
a dangerous situation. She will go so far as to do the complete opposite of what someone wants, especially if she feels like they are being way too protective. This goes hand-in-hand with her stubbornness, refusing to back down to a fight or a bad situation and Lila may go to extreme lengths in order to get what she wants.

Underneath all the terrible things that have happened to her and the shields she puts up to protect herself, Lila is somewhat of a good and decent person. She didn't abandon a kid who's mom often left him and cared when he was destroyed, she always felt there some something personal in each of her assassinations, was terrified of her mother being in power, and wants to be better to her own kid. So while Lila may claim that she's not a good person due to all the things she's done, there is still compassion in her. It may not extend to total strangers she's never met, but pushing it down as best she could was something that was necessary in order to be part of the Commission.

SAMPLE: One | Two

Sitting around in the orphanage doing chores was all well and good for a time while she rested after her whirlwind arrival to this world, but it could only last so long. Which is why Lila took to the streets, heading out to look for anything of interest out there among the people. Whether it was information or items, didn't matter. A girl could multitask and do some shopping while also easedropping on various conversations around her. The city was an interesting one, different from what she was used to, but Lila knew how to blend in. To appear as if she belonged even if she was completely displaced.

Her eye was drawn to a place that sold weapons and the rest of her drifted over. Lila was woefully lacking any sort of weapon in a place that was far more dangerous than the places she normally went. Usually, she was the most deadly thing around, but her days as an assassin were over. At least, Lila had tried to put that behind her. Here it seemed that her skills might be necessary and she'd rather have a few weapons at hand than be without. Upon entering the shop area, her eyes scanned the space for all of the people in it, assessing their potential threat levels. This is the sort of place where she expected trouble, people looking to arm themselves for one reason or another. After all, Lila may appear relatively harmless, but underneath was a woman who had killed countless people at the order of someone else.

The ex-assassin drifted over to the knives, something easy to conceal and she could carry a lot of them. It also reminded her of Diego, one of the most important people in her life. If she was looking for any sign of him still here, knives would be the item to look for. After all, not even Five could tell her exactly what had happened to the man. At least she had enough knowledge that eventually Diego would end up back on Earth. That information doesn't completely ease away all of the thoughts and worry about what could happen in the meantime.

Thoughts and worries she would try to push down to the best of her ability so as to not allow herself to get too distracted and end up hurt or worse. Movement has her looking up, watching the owner come over to her to provide what's sure to be stellar customer service. She motioned to a row of knives. Yes, a whole row.

"I'd like to see these ones, please." A whole collection of different sizes and shapes, as a girl never knew what the occasion might call for. Lila watched as the man's face went from skeptical and unfriendly to one who recognized a deep pocketed spender. People were the same no matter where she went and she knew how to work them.

As the knives are set out for her to test, she picked up the first one and tested its weight and balance in her hand. Flipping it expertly after the initial check to see how it handles between her deft fingers. A soft hum of approval as Lila decided that she liked this one and moved down the line with the same level of attention. With these tested and given the seal of approval, she turned her gaze up to the shopkeeper.

"I'll take these ones. Have any that are more... interesting?" Lila grinned sharply, a twinkle of mischief in her eye. This was a new world with all sorts of new rules, there could be some kind of magical knife in the back that she doesn't know about yet.

INVENTORY:
☂ Her clothes
☂ The beaded bracelet Diego made
☂ An assortment of candy

NOTES:
Pregnancy, but I discussed it with the mods here about how to work around that.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO?
It'll be custom due to the above note section.

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

And thank you so much for the notes reminder, on it!

john constantine | dc comics / vertigo.

[strewth]

PLAYER NAME: Pel
CONTACT: gambeson
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Grapevine!

CHARACTER: John Constantine
CANON: Hellblazer (DC Comics / Vertigo / DC Black Label)
CANON POINT: John Constantine: Hellblazer (2019), Issue #10

BACKGROUND: John's a weird case in terms of continuity. He had a fairly consistent comic all to himself for literal decades, covered here. Then, there was another version of him with a different backstory running around comics for a while; we're completely ignoring that guy, who has very little in common with the character I'm writing besides looks. Nothing about that guy is in this app. In 2019, Simon Spurrier was tasked with bringing the original John back in a series called John Constantine: Hellblazer. Which, quick summary:

• Rather than dying or growing old as it was seemingly implied in the last few panels of the original run, !retcon!, John was actually pushed forward in time to a magical war where a tyrannical wizard had taken over the world.
• John nearly dies in this ~ magic war ~, but makes a deal for his soul to a strange older man instead, and is popped back into 'our' 'normal' timeline, from which he'd disappeared for a few years.
• Trying to figure out how to avert this potential bad future, he seeks out old allies; they're all dead. He looks for who the magical wizard tyrant is in the current day; it's harmless a teenager, whom briefly hazes before stealing a phone.
• John returns to his old haunt in London, and tries to reestablish himself on the magical scene. Hijinks ensue. It seems like someone is trying to stir up hatred and violence in London and frame John.
• John kind of sidles in the vague direction of getting to the bottom of this, maybe.
• John nonconsentually discovers that the person framing him for these incidents is... him. From another universe. The one where he 'lived well' with 'no regrets', but was still a sour bastard who still wants to claim John's soul.
• But the old man wants John's soul 'guilt free', no self pity, no heavy negative emotions. He takes John through a trip through his dreamscape, and shows him how much guilt and shame John feels for himself.
• The old man says, well, if John will just commit suicide, all the guilt will go away, and the soul goes directly to the old man. Presto, London is free from both of their dark arts.
• No way is John doing that. Guess he'll just have to... live with himself?

ABILITIES | POWERS:

John can do magic, which consists of spells the writers tend to come up with as the plot demands. In the interest of making this less bullshit, I'd like to winnow his skillset down to a four major areas:

→ HYPNOSIS. John's never done a day of honest work in his life. How does he pay the bills? Not with magic, that pays shitall. No, John is skilled at hypnosis, and tends to fool cashiers into giving him things for free, fool bank tellers into handing him wads of cash, and trick rich people into writing him blank checks. It's heavily implied a lot of John's more flashy magic-- lighting fires with the snap of his fingers, etc-- is actually an illusion caused by casual hypnosis. John doesn't need you to stare at a watch to do it. He just waggles his fingers at the right magical frequency, and you're hooked before you even know it.

Obviously, if this is ever used on player characters in game, I'd ask the player first and make sure everything's copacetic OOC.

→ SUMMONING. John's specialty is demonology, and he's not terrible at necromancy either. Given the right tools (see below) he can call a spirit back for a chat. He can also call up demons and make deals with them, something that for matters of practicality in-game will only be used as a reset button (this character is massively wounded, fix it for a piece of someone's soul; we fucked up this plot thing, make the demon fix it; etc). An outgrowth of this is scrying-- looking not into the future, but into the cosmos for hints and tricks, answers to vague questions.

None of these skills are John's go-to. For one thing, they also need a massive amount of prep time to work; he can't just pull them out willy-nilly. There's a cost (it will always be something dear to him or someone else, if this is used in-game), for one thing, and they're not an easy show to put on.

If John got in the game, I'd say he could only perform one summoning style spell (summoning a spirit, summoning a demon, or scrying) per mission (or arc?), and I'd always explicitly ask for mod permission beforehand.

I'd also be cool with making the objects John needs to cast these spells hard to come by, what with being in another dimension and all. A quest to get the ingredients he needs could be a fun mini-plot!

(The reverse will also be true of exorcisms and putting spirits back to rest, things John has far less experience with.)

I'm fine with the demon summoning aspect being entirely nerfed if you think it's too OP. Or the entire summoning aspect of his abilities. Whatever works best for you.

→ WARDING. John can make spells that react to certain limited parameters, sort of like a trap. This kind of spell is restricted to an area and a condition: eg, no ghosts can cross a threshold he's warded... but they can still sneak in a window, if he forgets to ward those too.

Each hypothetical house (or space ship, or whatever) would have to have special runes and such written on / around it; if that writing was messed up somehow, it would destroy the warding. Wardings cannot be made in permanent materials.

If he wanted to ward a larger area than, say, a house-- something like an entire village-- he'd have to envelop it in a similarly large sigil, which is very difficult and time-consuming. He would prefer not to... but if it ever comes up I'll make it something that requires significant time investment, maybe help from other players in a player plot, etc.

Anyway, warding. John's liable to use these to his advantage-- someone he doesn't like can't enter an area, so they have to take the long way, which is vindictively punishing. Or more directly, someone chasing him can't move once they cross into a warded area, so John is free to, say, rob them, or threaten them, or generally be a bastard. (OOCly, I'd always plan these out in advance, or make it clear in an open prompt what a character would potentially be getting into if they fall into the trap, etc.)

This is the quickest type of magic he's capable of, but the time he puts in is directly equal to how long the ward lasts. He can write wards in the air with his fingers, but they only last moments. Physically writing them down in chalk only lasts as long as the chalk isn't scuffed. Writing them in ink works unless it's smudged or the paper is torn, etc etc. Carving into wood or stone would last the longest, but take the most time, and would again be tied to a certain place. John can't use warding to make amulet or something, since warding has to do with a place, not an object.

A subtype of this magic is dispersal, which just means reversing something that is already warded in place (from another ward to a magical monster). This is only possible if John knows the magic principles underlying whatever was warded in place. It can only be used offensively if let's say a shit goblin comes at him and he knows the magical principles to draw a sigil in the air undoing this magic. It lasts a second, and it's done with. Something that kept generating would take more time, more effort, and obviously, the knowledge of the underlying principles.

In another reality, he probably won't know the underlying principles of magic, and would have to put in hard hours of study to learn them. I will ask for both mod permission and estimates of feasibility if this ever comes up.

→ BEING A NERD. John has taught himself a lot of magic, and that means learning a lot of arcane bullshit. He's fluent in Latin, Enochian, Ancient Greek and Arhamaic, has a strong knowledge of various forms of ritual and folk magic. He's also well-versed in various fields of related inquiry, like horoscopes, and mundanity, like English and French history. He's also reasonably good with pick-pocketing and slight of hand, especially when it comes to cards. He's not much of a fighter, but he's good at losing ugly.

Truly John's greatest strength is that he's sly as a weasel. He's a quick and efficient planner, and will always construct the situation to his benefit if he's any say in the matter. He always has one eye open for a potential advantage, for now or for later. He's an unbearable coward, but that doesn't mean running away from danger, just consequences.

As an aside, John is generally depicted as haunted by the ghosts of his many (many) dead friends. I'd like to keep that in game, if possible; it offers John no tangible advantage, it's just good thematic material. He'll be able to see them sometimes, and people with sensitivity to the supernatural might be able to see them as well.

LASTLY: John is a liar. Sometimes when he says he's doing magic, he's not. He's big on impressing people, and may make big promises based on the appearance of a result, rather than one in actuality. Yeah, sure, he can make that coin lucky, or whatever. (This will be noted OOCly.)

PERSONALITY:

Jonh Constantine is a bad person.

He's not evil, he's not a villain, he's not the worst person ever; all of that gives him more distinction than he deserves. John just kind of... sucks. He's a lazy coward who craves adrenaline and adulation, fears genuine emotional connection, and feeds off negative emotions.

If you need a fun friend to expect absolutely nothing of, but give everything to, John is perfect... but no one actually wants that. The latest run by Spurrier tackles this; John's feelings of loneliness and his allergy to consequences for his own actions.

See, John is lonely, but it's his own fault. His tragedy isn't that his friends always die and he's cursed to wander the earth by his lonesome-- his tragedy, if you can call something so obviously self-inflicted a 'tragedy', is that he keeps sacrificing his own friends to further his own gains. When the chips are down, John's first priority is saving his own skin. Sure, he'll try to save other people if he can, but it's not a priority. This isn't like that old adage: in a plane crash, put your air mask on first before you go and save others. John is fully capable of putting his air mask on first, no problem. The thing is, if the air-mask was powered by killing his friends? He'd still put it on to save his life.

He'd feel bad about it after, but that doesn't excuse it.

There's no amount of emotional turmoil, physical damage, or literally-being-sent-to-hell-ness John won't inflict on another to make sure he comes out okay. More than that, he'll go into dangerous situations fully aware that they might end up costing friends, loved ones and innocents serious turmoil. John is happy to use someone else as a fool, bait or collateral to get his way. He justifies it with self pity-- in the issue I took John from, John viewed his dreamscape / psyche. It was a huge cloud of eyes, all perpetually crying in self-pity. John can justify his selfishness as tragic, because he's used to it, because it fits the story he's told himself, about himself.

But he was just smacked in the face with it. Will he change? Can he? It's been decades; the constant repeats are starting to wear on him.

As an insecure child, John grew up into a conniving adult. Rather than learn to process and overcome his own discomfort in his own skin, he made a false version of himself and broadcast it so loud he's basically become it. Suave, self-assured, confident, wise-cracking John Constantine was a con he pulled on everyone he came into contact with. Eventually, he forgot how to be anything else. John's a liar's husk of a con artist, living for the thrill of the moment. He cares more about impressing someone than meaningfully connecting with them, and has a hard time remembering people have fragile emotions until it's too late.

John truly does regret his actions. But that hasn't yet stopped him. He's stuck in a sunk cost fallacy-- he's already caused so much damage, he can't stop now. What would that say about the greater, more terrible things he's done?

John is caught in a perpetual motion device of his own worse impulses. He's too excited by quick, cheap excitement, the thrill of winning and being right, and he's just not motivated to become a better person and stop hurting loved ones. That feels too much like growing old.

And he is old. He was born in 1953, and John is one of the few comic book characters who age in real time. Due to a magical mishap involving demon blood, he stopped physically aging, but he's felt the years. He's seen his friends die and die and die again.

What has he learned from this, then? Besides getting better and better at excusing his own failings and setting others up for the fall he bought and paid for... John has learned self-pity. He's literally haunted by it-- when a magician shows him the shape of his inner heart, it's a manifestation of endless eyes, all eternally weeping for himself. Not grief, not loss, just self-adulation of his own self-perceived tragedy.

John can't move on, can't stop doing this venomous shit, until he's stopped seeing himself as the protagonist of the world, stopped mythologizing his own failings. And that's... hard.

But maybe, for the first time, his canon point is letting him try.

SAMPLE: 1, 2, 3 & 4.

INVENTORY:

Big dumb trench coat, trousers, belt, reasonably clean pants, socks, stolen Time X watch from 2007, collared shirt (white), tie (red), a pack of tarot cards (Thoth style), a half-full pack of cigarettes (silk cut), a now dead smartphone, one stick of pink sidewalk chalk, and a stolen wallet with three quid in and a 2 for £7.50 chicken special coupon for Waitrose. He has folded it into an origami crane.

NOTES: ARE THERE CIGARETTES IN THIS DIMENSION

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? plot heavy pls

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

To hell with nicotine, we can hook this man up with opiates.

caitlyn kiramman | arcane

[clavesregni]

PLAYER NAME: Emm
CONTACT: sprucemoose#7026 or PM
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: from Jesse (Vanessa Ives)

CHARACTER: Caitlyn Kiramman
CANON: Arcane
CANON POINT: after The Shower Scene in 1x08

BACKGROUND:

"Caitlyn is a Kiramman. And that's all anyone ever bothers to learn about her.
If you're a fellow member of the Piltovan elite, the Kiramman reputation
is all you need to know." (x)

Caitlyn is the scion of House Kiramman, one of the founding families of Piltover, a prosperous merchant city-state in the world of Runeterra. Piltover was founded 200 years ago as a refuge against a great war fought by mages, which decimated entire populations and drove some peoples nearly to extinction. It is composed of a utopian overcity, Piltover proper, and a dark and improverished undercity built down into fissures, referred to by its inhabitants as Zaun. Piltover is governed by the Ethos, a code of laws that, among other things, very strictly prohibits any tampering with magic. Caitlyn's mother sits on the Council, the oligarchic ruling body of the city, and Caitlyn is expected to one day inherit her mother's position.

When Caitlyn was a child, her parents decided to sponsor a promising young Academy student named Jayce Talis, with whom Caitlyn became very close. Secretly, Jayce was studying a way to harness the power of magic through technology. Though this was very much against the Ethos, his eventual success led to his instant overnight celebrity and cemented Piltover's place as the City of Progress.

As a young adult, Caitlyn joined the police force of Piltover, the enforcers, and dedicated herself to the investigation of crime in Zaun. But despite her over-zealous desire to solve every crime and right every wrong, Sheriff Marcus thwarted her at every turn. She was reduced to little more than a glorified crossing guard, relegated to "herding drunks." Unbeknownst to her, Marcus was in the pocket of a Zaunite drug lord, Silco, and couldn't allow her to investigate anything that might lead her towards Silco's operations.

And so, as punishment for her insolent desire to do her job, Caitlyn was assigned to the graveyard shift on the night the city's fairgrounds were bombed. A mysterious terrorist with a calling card of a distorted monkey's face blew up a tent and killed six enforcers. Caitlyn barely escaped with her life. It later came out that the terrorist had also stolen one of Jayce's newly-refined hexgems, stones that could power portable magical devices. Marcus took this as opportunity to fire her at the behest of her overprotective parents.

Caitlyn threw herself even more deeply into her work. She had, at some point, come to the radical - and correct - conclusion that the bulk of the undercity's crime was organized by and stemmed from the efforts of one individual. And now this monkey had shown up at multiple crime scenes, and she knew it was the key to everything. She followed the trail to Piltover's maximum security prison, Stillwater, where she met and freed a prisoner named Vi, who claimed to know the criminal mastermind Caitlyn was hunting.

And so Vi and Caitlyn embarked on a journey together across Zaun, Caitlyn hunting for evidence of Silco's crimes and Jayce's stolen hexgem, Vi hunting for her long-lost sister, the terrorist known as Jinx. Over the course of their adventure, they saved each others' lives a few times, grew closer, and eventually Caitlyn developed romantic feelings for Vi.

The two were kidnapped by a group called the Firelights, led by Vi's childhood friend Ekko. Silco and Marcus had framed the Firelights for several terrorist attacks that had actually been carried out by Jinx. Caitlyn convinced Ekko that the Council would leave the Firelights alone if Ekko returned the stolen hexgem to them. This plan didn't work out; Marcus intercepted them and both Caitlyn and Ekko were nearly killed, first by Marcus and then by a series of bombs set off by Jinx.

After Caitlyn and Vi failed to convince the Council to help, Caitlyn returned home by herself, only to be kidnapped by Jinx.

ABILITIES | POWERS:

Sharpshooter. Caitlyn is, in her own words, an excellent shot. Someone put a gun in this girl's hand when she was 4 or 5 and now it's her whole personality. See this scene for a precocious gun-toting child.

Detective. Caitlyn has an impressive analytical mind. She manages to unravel a criminal empire that no one else even believed existed while being actively thwarted and disallowed from properly questioning a single witness and barely able to investigate crime scenes.

PERSONALITY:

“I’m a misfit,” is Caitlyn’s response to the question of why, on a dark and rainy night, she’s sitting outside waiting to see her only friend, a man who was recently banished from high society and with whom she has been forbidden to speak. Despite being born in the highest echelons of Piltover’s aristocracy, Caitlyn has never felt she belonged there. Dishonesty, corruption, and manipulation run rampant amongst the most wealthy and powerful. Caitlyn, by contrast, values nothing in her relationships more than sincerity. While she can hardly claim that she’s never told a lie, she is anything but manipulative, and will always prefer honesty in her dealings with others. She lacks the skill to play political games, and she has no desire to learn. And though she doesn’t fit in with her peers, she doesn’t fit in much of anywhere else, either. Her working class coworkers certainly don’t accept her as one of their own; they mock and belittle her, seeing her as a noblewoman slumming it in a job that she must know is beneath her. Caitlyn was a lonely kid, with Jayce seemingly her only friend in the world, and she grows up to be an equally lonely adult, with no indication that she made any new friends in the interim.

She may not feel like she belongs, but Caitlyn is an aristocrat, and it shows in many ways. She’s clearly schooled in public speaking, comfortable in front of a crowd and able to express herself eloquently when necessary. She’s used to being shown a certain level of respect; Vi’s coarseness and insolence earn her contempt, scorn, and an angry lecture. Caitlyn never addresses anyone with deference – except the Sheriff in her capacity as an enforcer, and even then, she talks back at him until he gives her a direct order. She has an unfortunate tendency to say derisive things without knowing better, such as looking at an undercity bar and saying it “clearly has bodies buried in the basement.” Her reaction to encountering street food for the first time to is visibly recoil at being offered a taste and to call it “slop.” She also does what she wants with no fear of repercussion. While Zaunites are thrown through windows for the high crime of spitting on an enforcer's shoes or are tossed in maximum security prisons for life based on no evidence, Caitlyn commits multiple felonies and her only punishment is a stern talking-to from her mother. The rules don’t apply to her, so, as Marcus says, “she does whatever she wants,” completely oblivious to the idea that she might ever suffer a consequence.

Part of being privileged is never really learning to take no for an answer, at least when it comes to pursuing her goals. She has a strong desire to uncover the truth and will follow that desire wherever it takes her, no matter how dangerous, hopeless, or reckless a road it leads her down. She is a focused, goal-oriented person, who frequently deflects from uncomfortable situations or emotional conversations by steering the topic back to whatever the goal at hand is. After being caught in an explosion, she barely seems bothered by the fact that she nearly died and several of her coworkers actually did die - she’s busy, immediately back to working while covered in bandages. There’s always so much to do, and Caitlyn is going to do it, and no one is going to stop her.

Caitlyn has also been horribly sheltered by her parents. She has never really seen or experienced “the real world.” As a result, not only does she have very few life experiences, she also has no perspective of the world outside the very narrow one she grew up with. She doesn’t question the power structures that exist in Piltover and Zaun, seeming to think that the tension between the two stems from a few bad individuals rather than from deeper systemic issues. And even then, she’s more prone to suspect innocent mistakes than active bad will, even insisting to Ekko’s face that Marcus hunting the Firelights is just a “misunderstanding.” She also has a very rigid view of the world. Good people are good and bad people are bad, and therefore good people can’t be bad. She’s never had her preconceived notions of the world challenged and is blind to even the most obvious clues that some of the “good” people are not actually all that good. She seems oblivious to the fact that her mother is neck-deep in the corruption that permeates the Council. She doesn’t realize Marcus is corrupt until he shoots an innocent person right in front of her. When it comes to “bad” people, conversely, she’s very open to seeing the good in them, quickly realizing that Vi – despite how rude and violent she is – has a good heart, and that Huck is just an innocent victim of Silco’s drug trade. She’s quick to trust, even when she shouldn’t, and very slow to distrust, even when she really should. In general, she views the world through the lens of her own experiences, and isn’t always quick to understand other perspectives.

Despite how sheltered she is – possibly because of how sheltered she is – she is enamored with the idea of “the real world.” She wants to experience life outside the confines of her wealth and privilege, with no clue how harsh and cruel “the real world” can be. Jayce only wants to keep her safe, but his offer of a desk job is seen as a betrayal, because Caitlyn doesn't want to be kept safe. She wants to see the world for herself and to make her own way in it, standing on her own merits rather than relying on her wealth or status. She feels so stifled that, as confident as she is in her skill, she can never be truly sure that any of her accomplishments are her own - her first instinct upon winning a shooting competition is to assume that her parents paid her opponent to lose. As a result, she distances herself from her parents wherever possible. Her mother’s name could easily open every door for her, but instead she always chooses to use Jayce’s name. She never voluntarily gives her surname when introducing herself. She wants to stand on her own two feet, out from under her mother’s shadow.

That said, she is very confident in and proud of certain abilities. She’s an excellent detective, and she knows it. She’s an excellent shot, and she says as much. When talking about her conspiracy theories, she’s excitable and happy. When she has a rifle in her hands, she's calm and confident in a way she hardly ever is without it. When she’s less certain – usually when interacting with someone intimidating or in a social situation that’s outside her comfort zone – she tries to hide her unease with exaggerated toughness. When she’s really out of her depth, she turns into an awkward mess, barely able to string a sentence together.

In addition to her strengths, she knows her own limitations. She doesn’t have the reflexes to deal with a crisis, and things happening too suddenly will overwhelm her. And while she’s fit and agile, she’s nowhere near as fast or strong as someone like Vi. Because of this, she’s better at using her brains to get out of tight situations, and knows how to assess danger and use the resources she has to her advantage in clever ways, such as noticing a steel beam is weak and that Vi could hit it hard enough to collapse the building, or sneakily grabbing a broken glass to cut the rope tying her to a chair.

So much of Caitlyn’s personality, goals, and desires are bound up in her privilege and social status. But who Caitlyn is, at heart, comes from somewhere else. As a child, her mentor asked, “What are you shooting for?” She never answers in words, but she does in action, over and over. Moreso than justice or righteousness or any other high-minded ideal, Caitlyn is kind. She doesn’t judge, appraise, or admonish people. She isn’t chasing after revenge. While Jayce speaks of making the world a better place and improving lives in the broadest, most idealistic of terms, Caitlyn is motivated by something much more concrete: who is hurting, how she can help them, and if she can't help, how can she minimize the damage. She never shoots to kill, or even to injure. She goes out of her way to avoid hurting people even in situations where it would be justified. When Vi is bleeding out, Caitlyn doesn’t hesitate to trade her rifle for medicine - symbolically trading away something meant to harm for something capable of healing, but also in a practical sense giving up her only way of protecting herself in a very dangerous area, because she prioritizes Vi's health over her own safety. She's almost eager to jump in front of bullets or offer herself up to be tortured in Vi's stead. If someone needs caring for, unless they are actively threatening her, Caitlyn will try to help them no matter who they are. Caitlyn’s mentor said, “Knowing how to handle this weapon means being able to protect people, to be of service to the city,” and Caitlyn shaped her entire moral worldview around those words.

SAMPLE:

» Eastbound TDM
» The Return Journey TDM, solving cold cases
» Apocalypse How, doing some detective work

INVENTORY:

» enforcer uniform, including the silly hat
» a stupidly fancy custom made lever-action rifle (with her family crest embossed on the stock, naturally)
» a carrying case for the rifle
» a badge identifying her as a member of the Piltover Enforcers Division
» a flashlight
» an old-timey polaroid camera
» a notebook and pencil

NOTES: n/a

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? I'd be happy either way!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Alec Lightwood | Shadowhunters (TV)

[flatly]

PLAYER NAME: Cris
CONTACT: Cris#4369 @ Discord
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: TDM (also, was very briefly here with a very different character last year haha.)

CHARACTER: Alec Lightwood
CANON: Shadowhunters (TV)
CANON POINT: Season 3, Episode 22 (just before the end of the series.)

BACKGROUND: Here!

ABILITIES | POWERS: In Shadowhunters lore, Nephilim are mortals with angel blood. Said angelic blood makes it so they can utilize and survive being marked by Enochian Runes, which they burn into their skin (and equipment) to give themselves temporary supernatural abilities. They must activate these runes/abilities with something called a Stele (think: wand).

As a career Shadowhunter, Alec has a ridiculous amount of runes that he's chosen to mark himself with permanently for ease of use, which appear like black tattoos until activated (at which point they briefly glow like they're burning.) Regardless of the fact that the runes are always present on his skin, each use is temporary and they must be repeatedly reactivated with a Stele in order to be effective. Alec has memorized all of the known runes, though, so he could theoretically use any rune listed here as long as he has the time to draw it on himself and the Stele to do it with.

Alec's Permanent Runes:
• Block/Deflect: Increases his ability to effectively block or deflect attacks, and it also works to thwart most magical tracking methods while active.
• Stealth: Renders him invisible to humans, and to surveillance equipment. He can still be seen by other supernatural creatures and humans with "The Sight" (the ability to perceive the supernatural.) In-game, he'll still be visible to all other player characters while using this.
• Heightened Speed: Gives him the ability to move fast enough to become blurry to the human eye in short bursts.
• Healing/Painless: The Iratze rune can heal most physical trauma that is not immediately fatal, though there are exceptions for particular types of magical or demonic wounds specifically made to circumvent it. Either way, even after being healed with Iratze, he is likely to be too drained to return right to combat after.
• Strength: Gives a very short burst of incredible strength.
• Flexibility: Alec only marked himself with this one after he became sexually active and he stuck it in the middle of his upper back, so draw your own conclusions.
• Equilibrium: Improves equilibrium to a superhuman degree.
• Agility: Improves agility to a superhuman degree.
• Endurance: Improves endurance to a superhuman degree.
• Courage in Combat: No flight instinct, only fight instinct.
• Soundless: Allows Alec to move completely silently for short periods of time. Could briefly soundproof a room if placed on a wall/door.
• Calm Anger: Calms... anger. He doesn't use this one as much as he probably should.
• Accuracy: Enhances accuracy, limits unknown.
• Recall: Allows him to recall targeted events from his memory with perfect clarity. Generally uses this for mission reports.
• Promise: (Effects unknown.)
• Gift/Talent: (Effects unknown.)
• Expectation: (Effects unknown.)
• Angelic Power: Mostly symbolic on Alec since he already has angelic blood, this rune is used to indicate when a Shadowhunter child is ready to graduate from training to field work. When placed on objects it imbues them with certain angelic properties, which is why it is used mostly on weapons to inflict more damage on creatures with demonic blood.
• Parabatai: This rune indicates that Alec has entered into a soul bond with another Nephilim, namely Jace [Insert Current Last Name Here]. They are stronger and better coordinated when they fight side-by-side than they would be otherwise, the runes they draw on one another are more effective than they would be otherwise, and also they can sense one another's physical trauma and emotions through the bond. Practically speaking, if anyone can sense this sort of thing, they have literally intertwined their souls and Alec is walking around with a bit of his missing, while carrying around a little bit of someone else's. Weird!

Runes Alec is not permanently marked with but is most likely to be using:
• Tracking: If he has an item relevant to the thing he is looking for (someone's personal belongings, for instance), Alec can intuit a location based on visions or feelings given to him by the rune while holding it. This is not the most effective magical tracking method in-series, but it's better than nothing if that's what else you're working with.
• Heat: This rune is used by drawing it on paper in order to send a fire-messages. Not sure how useful this will be when they have a Network available, but it is something he's accustomed to using and very convenient in a pinch.

PERSONALITY: Alec has changed a lot from his introduction in the series, though shades of who he was before do still peek through. Alec at the start is incredibly uptight and haughty, and while he has mellowed out considerably around family and friends, he probably still appears that way to strangers—at the very least, he's still impatient and prickly. During the show's first season he speaks almost exclusively in either deadpan sarcasm or sneering judgment, and he had a bad habit of wielding cruel bluntness as a weapon when he wasn't actively forced to be diplomatic for the sake of his career or safety. It wasn't that he didn't know better, he had a perfectly functioning filter, he was just too miserable and mean to choose to use it on anyone he didn't actively like. (And even on them, when he was in a particularly foul mood.)

His first instinct then was basically always extreme pettiness. He more successfully fights against it at his current canon point, but honestly it's an ongoing struggle and when stressed he reverts back to it with a vengeance. When he feels like things are spiraling out of his control he tends to have a terribly short temper and he lashes out at the people around him (verbally) and himself (physically), even when they are just trying to help him, though he is at least willing to go back and apologize later and own up to the mistakes he makes. Regardless, a lot of the worst behaviors come directly out of the way he was raised, isolated from most of the world in the warrior cult-like Shadowhunter society. Nephilim are raised with the full knowledge that they'll likely die young and violently in battle against demons—that it's their duty and purpose—which would probably be enough to mess anybody up, but to the still-closeted gay man Alec there was always the additional expectation that he would need to marry a woman and have children with her to do his part in replenishing the Nephilim population, a possibility that hung over his head like a sword of Damocles. Because Alec grew up in and was completely indoctrinated by this messed up, martial society he has already started to replicate some of its worse tenets, including sending his extremely young (10ish?) brother into field duty. It's the same age that he started, and he still doesn't really see anything wrong with it, even after his sister (who has always had more perspective than him honestly) tried to stop him.

Even towards the end of the series Alec has a tendency towards being deeply insecure in his own self-worth due to a childhood with emotionally distant parents who heaped impossible expectations on their eldest child, and made him feel both that their love was conditional and that nothing he ever did was good enough for them. This led to Alec being being a perfectionist, and to resorting to self-harm when he was incapable of living up to his own exacting standards, generally through hiding and refusing to treat his own injuries after receiving them (though he also would train to the point of making himself bleed if he was not already injured.) Alec is a stickler for the rules and follows them without question... up to the point that they effect the people he cares about, in which case he will immediately find a way to rationalize bending or breaking them. This bleeds into the way he will protects his own first and above all others, and he would—for all of his dedication to duty—absolutely choose to preserve his loved ones over the rest of the world. He doesn't lack compassion for everyone else, exactly, he just gets some serious tunnel vision for the people that he thinks of as his responsibility. At least until they make him confront the fact that others need his help and protection more than they do.

Which is not to say Alec was all flaws, even back at the beginning, just that he developed most of them as a shield to protect his incredibly gooey center. Alec is loyal, persistent, and highly intelligent, though his particular expertise lies in coordination and administration rather than something more usually associated with genius, like the sciences. He is ambitious and resourceful, and is rarely ever afraid to throw his political weight around to get what he wants out of people—which, generally speaking, means trying to coerce the broken system he works within into actually helping the folks who need it. Despite the cold and aloof way he presents himself, he is actually deeply nurturing, which rears its head as soon as he starts to like a person or is just under the impression that they need protection: he's absolutely the mom friend, he's just very prickly about it. He loves kids and after helping to raise his little siblings, he has a way with getting them to like him back. He would do literally anything for the people loves, included but not limited to: going to Hell just to see them again. He clearly yearns for the sort of domestic bliss that people who aren't Shadowhunters get to have, and he basically rushes headlong into his first romantic relationship at breakneck speeds, trying to settle down and move in within just a couple weeks (lucky for him Magnus was not afraid of commitment, or Alec might have sent him running for the hills.)

He also becomes downright sweet and playful in relationships, which if one met him in any other sphere of his life would seem bizarre, but it's just how he is when he lets down his walls. His lack of experience with romance, therefore his lack of being hurt by it in the past, makes him almost painfully open and earnest with his partner. While that warmth does not necessarily translate over to his interactions with anyone else, he is still much less hostile than before, and is more willing to stick his neck out for people he might have just ignored at the start of the show. Honestly, Alec can be a mixed bag, but he's absolutely someone you want on your side anyway. He'll make it worth your while if you let him.

SAMPLE: TDM thread but since I came in pretty late so there's not much going on there yet, here is a more extensive thread set in a different game!

INVENTORY:

• Bow & Arrow: His bow and arrows are heavily Runed so that he can summon them into his hands (like so) and also dismiss them at will. The arrows are made out of a supernatural material (Adamas) and are strong enough to punch through concrete walls when he shoots them. He has even used the arrows in lieu of melee weapons during a fight, because they are durable enough to parry swords. He can and will shoot up to 5 at once, ridiculous.
• Seraph Blade: A sword that appears to just be a hilt when not in use, which Alec frequently carries in a holster strapped to his thigh. It activates in Nephilim hands and manifests an adamas blade, which is especially fatal to most demonic creatures.
• Stele: A tool he uses to draw runes. If he loses this or breaks it, he will not be able to use any of his above rune specific abilities.
• Clothes (black jacket, long-sleeve shirt, pants & combat boots) & engagement ring.
• Smartphone

NOTES: Alec doesn't need any special accommodations!

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot heavy if available!

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

Wanda Maximoff | Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

[divaricate]

PLAYER NAME: Tessa
CONTACT: pm
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: TDM (linked below in samples)

CHARACTER: Wanda Maximoff
CANON: MCU
CANON POINT: post-Multiverse of Madness

BACKGROUND: Wanda ❝Scarlet Witch❞ Maximoff — Marvel wiki link.

ABILITIES | POWERS:
I've proposed nerfs within here, but, of course, mods can modify those further as needed.

PSIONICS ➝ Wanda is able to move (including levitate and otherwise manipulate) a number of objects with her mind. She can pull things apart, and use this force to create a type of energy shield to protect herself and/or others. She can also send red energy blasts from her hands — this red energy also allows her to fly, levitate others, and perform actions such as filtering poison gas out of air or containing/causing explosions. She is also powerful enough to manipulate an infinity stone.

Wanda can read minds (thoughts/dreams), and mentally communicate with people. She can do this at a level that is shown to be a pretty narrow focus. Wanda can influence people mentally. She can put people in a trance-like state where she makes them see what she wants them to — things like their deepest fears, for example (though what they're afraid of isn't decided by her) — and trap them within that state while they interact with their hallucinations as if they're real. She experiences that along with them, though the victim is unaware of her being with them. With this, she can also influence the memories, actions, and thoughts of people, their emotions, senses, and feel their general aura. This ability also allows her to induce feelings of pain, or sleep, etc. She can also temporarily paralyze people with this.

CHAOS MAGIC ➝ Wanda has a form of chaos magic. Her magic is ill-defined in canon, so for game purposes, I am limiting it to the following spells with the following limitations:
✦ Teleportation— Wanda's teleportation associated with this will only allow her to teleport herself and up to two others a short distance.
✦ Cast spells to heal herself and others— however, if they die from their injuries, she cannot under any circumstances bring them back to life; she can only heal them as long as they're alive.
✦ Casting spells to transform one thing into another— She can handle anything that's up to the size of a human, so with this she can't do something like turn a large tree into a house or vice versa for example, but she COULD turn a coin into a sheet of paper for example.
✦ Conjuring liquid substances/solid substances/decor out of what seems like thin air— The limitations to this being that she cannot conjure living human beings under any circumstances, and can conjure any non-edible solid materials up to the size of a large car for usual playing purposes. Anything bigger than that would be impossible for usual gameplay and is therefore subject on my end OOCly to special plotting and mod permission. She can conjure up to five of each individual object (per month).
✦ Protection spells— These spells can protect a person or location from most magical or non-magical threats for up to one day before the spell wears off and she would have to recast the spell, unless she only makes the spell good for a lesser amount of time; if the threat were particularly large in scale -- like, a loooot of heavy weapons or just against magical forces more trained than hers, her spell would break under the pressure.
✦ Clairtangency— When she physically touches an object or person, this contact causes her to pick up a small amount of information from it (anything about the object or person; this can be history of an object or person, feelings/emotions of a person at the current time, or about a past event, et cetera). This won't happen every single time she touches something/someone, and no information will be obtained in threads unless discussed with all players involved about what she would find out beforehand, since I'm obviously not interested in using this to godmod/infomod. Same stipulations apply when it comes to finding out game metaplot info; mods will be chatted with first. Also, if your character is a robot/android/undead/etc, I will default to assuming, as with her telepathy, that she can't read their emotions or feelings, unless you'd prefer otherwise.
✦ Runes— She uses runes to do things like protect a room and make her magic the only usable one in it for a time.
✦ Astral projection— While she won't be able to travel to any actual other realms (i.e.: the afterlife, et cetera) in game, she will be able to use this more like she uses her teleportation ability. Except it's just teleportation for her astral self, not her physical self. She can only stay astral-ly projected for up to 30 minutes at a time without risk to her physical self; any longer and she'll be at risk of any number of things -- like her physical body being possessed, passing out, headaches, so on.

OTHER WEAKNESSES/POWER LIMITATIONS ➝ Even with her abilities, Wanda is still a regular human underneath that and can be killed by anything that would kill a regular human. Wanda's powers will not work on anyone who is immune to mental infiltration, or has any other kind of mental block skill that would not allow her to read their thoughts or otherwise mentally manipulate them. Any kind of sonic wave blasts sent at her will disrupt her focus enough to get her powers to be rendered temporarily unusable; shock fields of electricity will also block her powers. In games, I also play her powers to be something that doesn't work over network communications. As in, if she's communicating with someone via video/audio/text, she cannot use her telepathy on them during those mediums of interaction. Her telepathy is also null and void against any creature that does not have a living mind (i.e.: robots/androids would fall under this category, as would undead creatures like vampires).

PERSONALITY:

Wanda, a caring, perceptive individual lost her parents at the age of ten when the family’s apartment building was bombed (this tragedy planted a seed of vengeance in her; more on that later), but has been determined to turn the tragedy of growing up in the war zone into something meaningful. She and her twin Pietro were always front and centre in protests and riots against Western (USA, et al) powers at hand that were occupying and destabilizing Sokovia before hidden Hydra scientists approached them and promised the twins power. Not simply accepting their fates, Wanda and Pietro rebelled against it, supported each other and developed their co-dependent relationship. They balance each other out - Pietro convinced Wanda to participate in Strucker's experiments from the word ‘go’ and Wanda had to talk Pietro into not releasing Tony in Age of Ultron when they both held resentment for his Western weapons business.

Once she loses Pietro in the battle against Ultron, she presses on with her resilience by leaving Sokovia and joining the Avengers in New York. Seeing that SHIELD was not exactly the monster she had believed it to be, since they did show up to save her people, she gives them this chance -- despite her feeling guilt for her part in Ultron and what it did to Novi Grad and her brother. Wanda feels a need to prove both to herself and the world that she can be better than before. She grows stronger. Even in at the fight at the airport in Civil War, she knows more than anyone else what will happen to the ones that stay behind to try to press against Tony and his team -- what kind of place Ross will put them in, but she doesn't hesitate because she knows stopping Tony is more important.

After being tossed in the Raft, she's lost almost everything. Sokovia, her brother, her second home with the Avengers. The Avengers were her chance to find a new purpose and belonging, and she still looks for it now. Her instinct for kindness and protectiveness means that anyone who shows that to her will find her returning it to them. She can have trust issues, but she isn't so cold that she will be ice to everyone nice. Her anger and doubt can be her weaknesses, because if someone she loves is hurt, she will go fight hard at whatever or whoever wronged them, and she can get massive blinders and not see straight. Until a trusted friend comes along and talks her out of it. And despite her dark history, Wanda has found some light in dry sarcasm. She will tease her friends and family, lightly, in a blink and you might miss it, way. It keeps her going.

Moving mostly past her issues with the Avengers when she joined the team, and her issues with SHIELD, shifted her perception of how she can be a hero in this new age. She still hates Tony, but she can work with him. Even with Clint "retiring", she still has a soft spot for the Avenger who is like a father figure for her now, since his life is because Pietro gave up his. To close friends of her friends, she treats as close — when T'Challa went for Bucky, she protected Bucky, since he's Steve's friend — and she trusts Steve.

Wanda is still learning how to deal with failure and her powers. Her kindness means she wants to save everyone, but sometimes, as Steve says to her, that isn't always possible. Saving as many people as possible has to be good enough, even if it sucks that some people die. She wants her power to be enough, but it's not, and she can blame herself quickly for that. She expects so much of herself after gaining this power. However, once Wanda's made up her mind, she acts decisively and good fucking luck taking her out of it. She knows and is terrified of how destructive her powers can be, and how easily she can be made into a living weapon, which she tries hard not to be. Her confidence in knowing she has all of this power, and that constant fear in her own mind that she's going to mess up and kill people, eats away at her in an inner battle. Sometimes she ruminates in the guilt which motivates her to do better and be better, and also tells her to stand back and don't get involved lest people die.

Despite this, her vengeful nature comes back into play should people she cares about be in harm's way. Mostly, she takes actions which incapacitate (not harm) the threats to them, but if her loved one's lives are on the line? She's going for the kill. (Example A: In Infinity War, she threw shredded Proxima Midnight for almost killing Natasha.) When Wanda does have to kill, she surprisingly doesn't seem to show regret for that because she knew it had to be done, since it is a last resort for her.

After manipulating reality and holding a town hostage for a few weeks, Wanda is yet again isolating herself and trying to learn about her new chaos magic abilities. While also trying to figure out how to get back her children that she gave birth to in her fake reality, then had to erase. Grief is an understatement, but she's also motivated in a way she's never been motivated before.

That motivation plus the Darkhold's corruption leads her to send demons and monsters to hunt a young teen, America Chavez, a multiverse hopper, across the multiverse. Wanda believes America 's powers will allow Wanda to see her children again - the catch being that taking America's powers for such a purpose means killing America. Wanda sees this as a reasonable trade (curtesy of the Darkhold) and doesn't mind the action.

This pits her against Stephen Strange and the other sorcerers of Kamar-Taj.

Eventually, through her series of multiverse travels and fighting former allies, she breaks free from the Darkhold long enough to realize that it and killing America isn't the answer. She destroyed every universes darkhold by collapsing it's temple, with her inside. Her fate is TBD, but anyone who's read Children's Crusade in the comics probably knows what's coming.

SAMPLE: tdm | inbox from another game | top level from another game

INVENTORY: This outfit and if possible the Darkhold. I won't have her do anything game-breaky with the Darkhold, and any major use of it will be mod-approved for a plot well beforehand.

NOTES: She shouldn't need any particular accommodations, or anything unusual like that.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Either!

[groundrules]

Heya — thank you for the above!

Would you happen to have any samples from the past 12 months (or would you be okay to write something, whatever works easiest) showing how she handles anger/sadness or the vengeful nature your rightfully mention in her personality section? Asking because unfortunately Wanda's emotions are very closely linked to her powers, and that combination has proven to be — for want of better words — explosive in the MCU canon, from time to time. So seeing how you handle that aspect of her in play is more relevant in her case than in that of other characters, purely because of the magnitude of her (pretty awesome) abilities.

If you could get back with that within the next 48h, that would be absolutely fantastic.

yelena belova | marvel cinematic universe

[vdovy]

PLAYER NAME: Lia
CONTACT: cosmology#1563 on Discord
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Test drive

CHARACTER: Yelena Belova
CANON: Marvel Cinematic Universe
CANON POINT: Following the Hawkeye finale

BACKGROUND: MCU Wiki

ABILITIES | POWERS: Yelena is a trained killer with a range of associated skills including marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, and espionage.

PERSONALITY: For most of her life, Yelena Belova was chemically subjugated to kill for the Red Room. She describes this kind of brainwashing as different from psychological conditioning: "I'm talking about chemically altering brain functions... You're fully conscious but you don't know which part is you. I'm still not sure." She has years worth of traumatic experiences and destructive actions to unpack, and learning to trust is an uphill climb. In fact, she can't fully trust her own self, as she is still untangling the part of her that was brainwashed from the rest of her psyche. Even her early memories are a mess to navigate: she was happiest when she lived with her parents and sister in Ohio, six years old and oblivious to the truth that all four of them were spies sent to steal secrets from S.H.I.E.L.D. In a terrible twist of fate, those stolen secrets helped to develop the chemical agent used to control Yelena for the next 21 years. Such ironies are familiar to Yelena and influence her cynical outlook.

NATASHA: I was trying to actually do something good. To make up for all the pain and suffering that we caused. Trying to be more than just a trained killer.
YELENA: Well, then you were fooling yourself because pain and suffering is every day, and we are both still a trained killer.

Yelena is very direct: she doesn't sugarcoat her words, nor does she soothe herself with pretty lies. She accepts being a killer despite her lack of choice in the matter. Although she feels remorse for the lives she has ended, she doesn't fool herself that she can do anything to make up for her past. Instead, she takes each day at a time as she comes to terms with having free will and how to use it.

The Red Room was the sort of place that could burn the humanity out of someone. Remarkably, Yelena retains a strong sentimentality and even the capacity to be vulnerable in front of others. She expresses feeling betrayed by her "fake" family when they try to cheapen what was, for Yelena, a very meaningful and defining experience. She admits remorse over killing the widow that freed her. The strength of her emotions is so dependable that villains use it against her: Yelena's grief over her sister's death allowed her to be manipulated into an attempted revenge killing.

Yelena masks any fears or anxieties behind her sense of humor. In near-death situations, she jokes about whether or not the given scenario would be a cool way to die. After Natasha deals a low blow, saying Yelena is not her "real sister," Yelena responds by mocking Natasha's fighting style.

Since regaining her freedom, Yelena has developed her own version of a moral compass. It doesn't keep her from killing if the situation calls for it (see: revenge) but she does exhibit care for others. Even as she goes after the man she believes responsible for her sister's death, Yelena takes measures to keep others out of harm's way. She dedicates herself to freeing the remaining widows under chemical mind control and helping them adjust to new lives. Yelena would never think of herself as a hero, but she does believe that people are defined by what they do. The evidence suggests that part of her does want to be good, or at minimum, to do good.

SAMPLE: Test drive top level | Tag in | Tag in (Note: I'm hoping at least one of these will be up to five comments by the time apps close but if need be I will happily write another sample.)

INVENTORY: One black tactical suit, three hidden knives, a pair of Widow's Bite wrist tasers, and a handgun.

NOTES: N/A

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? I'm good with either!

[groundrules]

Heya — this reads great, but your suspicion was correct, it would be great to have a few more samples. Apologies to ask, as you've been tagging on your end.

If it makes this hopefully quicker and easier for you, happy for you to respond ICly (as a short writing sample) or OOCly (as a summary) to the following scenario —

Suppose Yelena were in blissful Serthica, minding her own business, infiltrating a haunted tower, as one does. (The doppelganger of) her 'sister' Natasha appears, pretends initial fondness to see her, then ruthlessly takes advantage and stabs her. How does Yelena react?

Just a few lines would be great, if this works for you within the next 48 hours!

Vrtra (Varshahn) | Final Fantasy XIV

[eyeofthavnair]

PLAYER NAME: Molly
CONTACT: marvelousmith
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: got a few threads going on in the TDM!

CHARACTER: Vrtra (“Varshahn”)
CANON: Final Fantasy XIV
CANON POINT: 6.2, just before walking back through the portal to the Source

BACKGROUND: First, a note on names: “Varshahn” is the name of his current simulacrum body, while “Vrtra” is his true name as a dragon. The game typically calls him Varshahn when he is on-screen in his simulacrum body, and Vrtra when he is on-screen as a dragon. He answers to both and states that he does not mind people more-or-less choosing which they want to call him.

Here is his wiki link, which has not yet been updated for the latest patch, 6.2. To complete his background, here's a brief summary of the patch:

Preparations for crossing into the Void are completed, and Y'shtola, Estinien and the Warrior of Light (i.e. the player character) meet up in Thavnair to get down to business. Vrtra arrives as Varshahn, but before they leave he is gifted a sort of “upgraded” adult body that can better fight and use magic. The four of them travel through the gate and fight their way through a ruined, haunted castle (the Fell Court of Troia). They discover that voidsent can regenerate after death, and that they are ruled over by the strongest among them, currently Golbez and the Four Archfiends. They befriend a half-voidsent woman whom they name “Zero” and, with her assistance, defeat one of the Archfiends, Scarmiglione. Zero knows how to essentially crystallize her fellow voidsent, preventing them from regenerating and thus killing them for real; she begrudgingly agrees to continue helping the team so long as they let her feed off of their aether. (Y'shtola volunteers her aether first, but later Varshahn offers his instead.) The Warrior manages to see into Scarmiglione's memories and sees that Golbez has captured Azdaja and is keeping her alive in stasis for unknown but doubtlessly evil reasons.

After some investigation, and while gaining further insight into the lives and culture of the voidsent, they are confronted by the second Archfiend, Barbariccia, who taunts them with knowledge of Azdaja's whereabouts if they can defeat her in battle. They do, but the Warrior is unable to get anything from her memories (and uh they killed her instead of questioning her, which wasn't the best move but whatever), and Zero is exhausted from the battle, forcing them to retreat. They step back through the portal to their home world with Zero in tow, and the patch ends with the Warrior and Varshahn showing her around Radz-at-Han and resting up for their next foray.

ABILITIES | POWERS: dragons in FFXIV are extremely powerful creatures, able to breathe fire and send out magical/sonic blasts, sustain themselves only on aether (magical energy), pop their eyes in and out of their skulls (and let others borrow them!), and so on. Most of these powers do not seem to translate to the Varshahn body, however.

Here is what we have seen him do as Varshahn:
- sense other dragons (including those “touched” by dragons such as Estinien) and possibly get a sense of other's powers or magics
- fight using sword and shield, or a lance
- use protective and destructive magics (i.e., he can tank or dps) including shielding others around him

Here are things that his dragon-self can do, with notes:
- sing/call to other dragons, which is “borne on the aether” (cannot be done by the simulacrum). It is somewhat implied that dragonsong has other magical properties, but these are not clearly defined. If there is ever an opportunity for Vrtra to sing in-game, I would probably play it as just “music that is incredibly moving and resonant within one's soul”.
- auto-translate their own language via telepathy (possibly can be done by the simulacrum?)
- breath fire/sonic blasts (won't be possible in-game)
- fly, including in outer space (nope)
- natural protection against corrupting magic/influences (presumably not relevant in-game)
- control lesser “scalekin” like crocodiles, pteranodons, etc. (presumably cannot be done by the simulacrum)

And finally, as a simulacrum rather than a real person, Varshahn presumably does not need to eat/drink/sleep and so forth, and can be “deactivated” by taking the eye out and putting it back in the dragon's skull. Vrtra is technically capable of moving and observing from both bodies at once, though in-game his dragon form will be miniaturized and confined to a pendant.

PERSONALITY: Vrtra's main personality points are devotion, self-sacrifice, and insecurity. He views all of Thavnair as his children, and has secretly guided and watched over them for generations. His love for them is strong enough to stop him from answering his brother's centuries-long call for blood after the brutal murder of his sister; he describes himself as hiding away and desperately hoping that the war does not come to his shores and disrupt his people's peace. Even when the Final Days come to Thavnair and warp its citizens beyond recognition, corrupting their aether and turning them into violent monstrosities, Vrtra hesitates to hurt them and mourns their loss deeply (“O capricious and cruel fate – they are undeserving of such condemnation...”). His love for his sister, too, has defined him for years; he spent centuries looking for a way to reach her after she became trapped in the void, and even after nominally giving up on the search, he quietly harbors hope that she is still alive. His normally calm demeanor gives way to concern and even frustration and anger when it is clear that she's still in danger during the events of patch 6.2.

While he protects and cares for Thavnair specifically, he also loves all of Eitherys and views it as his father did – the “last bastion of hope” in a universe filled with despair. In order to help save the lives of its people, he donates his own scales to research into protective wards. This results in a large, bloody wound across his side when the player first meets him; it is unknown exactly how many scales he's taken off of himself, or for how long he's been doing it, but it's obviously caused a great deal of pain and damage. He dismisses this as “a mere annoyance compared to the dreadful suffering inflicted upon this land and its people”. In terms of slightly less literal self-sacrifice, he's hidden himself away for most of his life in order to uphold peace and stability for his people, living confined in the mountain palace of Radz-at-Han and almost exclusively interacting with others through his living dolls. His only real companions have been the royal family, to which he gives all the credit of leadership to – even after he steps up and becomes the satrap officially, he speaks of the last satrap, Ahewann, with great respect and fondness, clearly seeing him as just as much of a leader as he himself is.

His arc in Endwalker is one of overcoming his insecurities and fear of rejection by his people. He describes himself (in detail) as just as frightening as the monsters created by the Final Days, and agonizes over the decision to reveal himself to his people, only relenting once Ahewann dies and Thavnair is left leaderless (and Estinien gives him a nice pep talk). As Varshahn, he introduces his dragon self to his people by asking them to remember that he means them no harm, despite his appearance; after the crisis of the Final Days is averted, he continues to use Varshahn as well as his real body to communicate with his people. His dragon model is also often posed as crouching low to the ground, unlike some of the other dragons we have seen previously, as though he is trying to make himself smaller or less intimidating.

Since he wanders around masquerading as a cute kid, he also appears to have a fanciful side; he plays the part of Varshahn well and is even noted to have joined the children of Radz-at-Han in their daily games. Even after he reveals himself and the true nature of “Varshahn”, the people of Thavnair continue to treat him in an affectionate manner, referring to him as their “little brother”, which he seems to enjoy and even encourage.

SAMPLE: The chiming of the clock is still reverberating inside of Varshahn’s horns as he blocks a knife-wielding mannequin’s attack. He has, unfortunately, been trapped in the dollhouse for over an hour by now, so this is not his first little “hunting session”. At least that has given him the knowledge that the partygoers will stop attacking soon - he just needs to hold out against their assault for a few minutes.

He’d tried reasoning with them at first, hoping for a non-violent solution, but his words had fallen on deaf ears. Assuming they had ears. The reward for his pacifism was a few knife-wounds to the simulacrum body. (His true form is still safely inside of the strange pendant he’d been given before boarding the train a couple of Unwindings ago.) The magic that ties his two bodies together allows him to feel the pain of the simulacrum, but he’s experienced with his double-life enough to be able to focus his attention away from it; and the body itself works just fine even with damage. This much damage, anyway. It won’t do to have a part cut off. He’d be trapped inside the pendant with no means of carrying himself away then, and to be frank he’d feel guilty for ruining his alchemists’ hard work on the vessel.

The chiming is finally fading as he wrests the knife out of the mannequin’s hands and turns the blade against it, a doll fighting another doll, as though they were the playthings of a precocious unseen child. Vrtra isn’t entirely sure that such a description is inaccurate; he’s been told something about forces summoning them all here against their wills, the need to escape via beacons to the east…it’s been a lot to take in, even without the murderous mannequins. He hopes, as his adversary finally stills in a heap on the floor, that he gets more answers soon. An ancient being such as he knows how to be patient, yes, but his incomplete mission back home grates on him; he has to get back to the others, back to taking care of Zero and to finding his sister…

Clanking footsteps pull him out of his worries over friends and family. There are more mannequins after him. He dashes down the corridor to find a more defensive spot, wishing he had his sword and shield instead of the admittedly snazzy clothes that Varshahn had been inexplicably put in.

He finds a room with what looks like a sturdy door and decides to barricade himself inside. Only to find that he is not alone - the occupant isn’t a mannequin or faceless robot, so he assumes that they’re a fellow victim of the Unwinding.

Then he notices the blood and wounds his new companion is trying to hide, and his heart aches. Yes, this is definitely another victim.

“Do not fear,” he says softly to them. “We shall survive this together. If they come for us, stay behind me, and I will protect you.”

It would really be nice to have his sword and shield.

INVENTORY: he'll be living pretty much entirely in his simulacrum body for the duration of the game. The simulacrum comes with clothing as well as a sword and shield, and he is also carrying a protective talisman made partially from his own scale. The talisman protects its bearer from the influence of hypnotizing demi-gods known as primals, as well as from corruption by the Void.

In addition, he will have a locket which holds his miniaturized dragon form, as discussed with the mods.

NOTES: see above with regards to his dragon body!

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot-light intro since things will be exciting enough for him just...existing as a living doll carrying his miniature real self in a Pokeball, lol.

[groundrules]

Heya — this all looks fine, okay to onboard im.

Just two notes:

— please make it opt-in for player characters, if they want Vrtra to sense that they are dragons or have magic, etc.

— in Arc IV, characters are mod-assigned false identities and a location between Eidris and Minaras. This is mostly to give them a 'base,' and they can still traverse to the other citadel half. The thinking was to assign Vrtra to Eidris, especially given his dragon connection. Does that sound good?

lucyna kushinada < cyberpunk: edgerunners >

[edgerun]

PLAYER NAME: Sam
CONTACT: verities
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: ruxi ofc

CHARACTER: Lucyna Kushinada
CANON: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
CANON POINT: end of s01e08 - shortly after getting her brain fried trying to take out an enemy netrunner

BACKGROUND:

| LUCY WIKIA
| CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS WIKI
| CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS EPISODE WIKI

ABILITIES | POWERS:

At her core, Lucy is an average human of average strength, agility, etc. She does physical exercise, as well, to keep up her body stamina and strength, but does not appear to have any augmentations to her natural physical strength and speed.

CYBERWARE > Like most citizens of Night City, Lucy has a number of cyberware augmentations to her body to enhance or gift her skills she wouldn't have naturally. Please note, so far she does not appear to have a heavy number of physical enhancements, but these sorts of augmentations can be more subtle. Until creators confirm otherwise, I am only listing augmentations she blatantly seems to have. If creators say otherwise, I will reach out to mod before implementing. Her current cyberware enhancements include:

CYBEROPTICS :: Lucy has cybernetic eyes that allow her to read displays from her neuroimplants as if in front of her, scope her eyesight in to view things from long distances, comes with anti-dazzle protection to protect her vision from harsh sunlight and flares without the use of sunglasses, establishes a targeting display when using her weaponry, has low-lite function to give her clearer vision in the dark, and has image enhancement capabilities to keep her vision clear and defined.

CYBERDECK :: Lucy's neural system is integrated with an unknown but highly advanced cyberdeck system. This system allows Lucy to read out information about technology around her, hack systems/other people, jack into systems from a distance, and more. Her advanced deck allows her to do these things with quicker speed and efficiency than most other hackers like her. Cyberdecks also allow users to connect with their phones to take calls/text messages using their own neural connections.

MONOWIRE :: In both of Lucy's arms is installed a monowire. A monowire is a long range, string of energy that can be wielded almost like a whip. It is thin and strong enough to slice limbs off with ease. It relies on battery charge to sustain the wire, and needs to be 'holstered' back in her arms to recharge.

INTERFACE PLUGINS :: These are ports located on the body that allow the user to 'jack in' directly to a network system and interface in the cyberspace for more direct hacking and netrunning. Lucy has a small interface port that allows her to jack into lighter technology pieces (computers, atms, etc.), but Lucy also has a larger port in the back of the base of her skull that she keeps covered with a cosmetic piece. This allows her to lie in tubs of ice and use stronger connections to enter cyberspace more fully and interact on a more direct level.

COSMETIC CYBERWARE :: Lucy also has some cosmetic cyberware pieces to enhance her body as she personally sees fit.

NETRUNNER > A lot of edgerunners and mercs have cyberdecks that allow for basic to low-level hacking skills. Lucy is what is known as a netrunner, in that she's trained specially to hack, create viruses, and more when it comes to software technology. Her cyberware is corporate/military-level advanced, and her skills rival any other known netrunner.

SKILLED COMBATANT > Having been raised by a corpo to be a netrunner, Lucy's physical skills were also not neglected due to corpos being strongly tied with militaries as well. Additionally, stronger physical prowess gave netrunners more stamina to withstand longer times in cyberspace and face down the daemon viruses within. As such, Lucy is skilled with hand to hand combat, melee weapons, and small arm weapons like pistols.

PERSONALITY:

Lucy is a dreamer in a city that crushes dreams.

Raised in a corporate (corpo) environment, Lucy was taken from her family before she could even remember them. This was due to Lucy having the physical markers of a strong netrunner, and then showing an aptitude for the technique once taken in by Arasaka. Lucy was raised along with twelve others to believe they were special. That she was special, and thus her unique talents would lead her to well-placed career within Arasaka, sent out into the world to share her gifts with the corporation that gave her her best chance at a good life. It wasn't until her training was complete in her early teens that reality crushed her. Lucy and the others were not freed, but instead hooked into cyberspace for hours/days on end and made to datamin the cyber frontier post cyberspace cataclysm. This life was physically grueling and mentally scarring, and Lucy watched one by one as her brethren died before her eyes.

The flaw in Arasaka's logic, however, was instilling in Lucy that she was special. The best. Which meant that those who held her captive were weaker. Lucy and her remaining brethren used this logic to embolden themselves to stage an escape using their hacking abilities to release their technological bindings and fry the brains of their captors. However, it is strongly implied that Lucy was the only one to have made it out alive in the end with guns shooting at her from behind.

With this upbringing, Lucy set out to make her own path. Lucy used her training at Arasaka to strengthen herself, mask herself in cities, and become an edgerunner (another word for cyberpunk outlaw/mercenary). Her logic was that cities were so big and loud, hiding right under the eyes of the corpos in all that noise would cover her trail. An effective strategy that helped her live into her early twenties.

During this time of survival, Lucy learned to become a mysterious woman that revealed little to others. However, she did see the need for survival in numbers and joined a edgerunner group as a member of their team. This helped her both earn money to survive and round out her weaknesses with members that excelled where she lacked. Kiwi, the woman that brought her into the group, told Lucy not to trust anyone, though Lucy would say she didn't need that lesson after what Arasaka did to her.

Truthfully, however, even Arasaka hadn't been able to kill the good spirit that still resided within Lucy.

Lucy's outward behaviors displayed that of a woman who was indifferent to the world around her at worst or amused by it's trivalities at best. She can come off pragmatic in her logic, but reckless in her treatment of others. Almost as if everything is a game in her mind, keeping others guessing at her next moves.

In reality, Lucy is a dreamer still at heart. She carries with her the ideal of moving to the moon, far away from where corpos can reach her so she can be free to live her life as she pleases. This sort of thinking is rare in Night City, as few believe they can obtain a better life of any kind so don't dare to dream of it.

However, it's not only Lucy's dreamer-like mentality that Arasaka failed to snuff out. Despite having plentiful reasons to distrust others after the abuse at the hands of corpos and Kiwi's warning to only look out for herself, Lucy cares deeply for those around her. Especially those in her crew. She hates seeing what society ruled by corpos does to others, though often she feels at a loss on what she can do to help. But with those closest to her, she does try to help however she can. She wants to protect them the way she didn't protect her brethren, and to also protect the innocence that she had destroyed herself. Lucy finds herself to be cynical and too far gone for the world, despite being someone who still cares about others more than most. This particularly shows when Kiwi, the one who warned her, ends up being the one to outright betray Lucy. Showing that Lucy let her guard down and trusted someone close to her when she shouldn't have.

Lucy likes to act like she's jaded, but in reality she's still the dreamer Arasaka raised her to be. All she wants is a better future for herself, but also those that are victims of the harsh realities of life.

SAMPLE:

LOG + NETWORK TDM

INVENTORY:

+ Clothes on her back
+ Cyberware implants
+ Unity pistol

NOTES: I don't know if Lucy's implants would continue working as-is or if they'd need to be like magic compatible? They run deep in her neural and physical systems, however, so they do need to maintain functionality, but it's heavily implied that cyberware operate using the physical body to maintain their power levels as people with cyberware never have to recharge anywhere and too much cyberware can lead to cyberpsychosis from messing with the bodys system and brain too much.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? N/A since she came in on the Unwinding event!

[groundrules]

Heya:

— she's okay to come in.

— Lucy then invited David home to her apartment and even included him in a romantic moonwalk Braindance. ...this sure sounds romantic.

— let's go with having her implants be magic compatible, if that sounds good to you, so she can recharge them. She can 'charge wirelessly' by being around magic users. Just let them know she might be drinking off them a bit, heh. Let's assume she has to actively want to charge for it to happen at a solid rate.

— in Arc IV, characters are mod-assigned to either Eidris or Minaras. They can still travel from one half of the citadel to the other, and the choice only defines their home base. What's your preference between them?