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groundrules) wrote2021-01-08 03:30 pm
groundrules) wrote2021-01-08 03:30 pm
Entry tags:
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.
APPLICATIONS CLOSED
→ NAVIGATION MENU
Ben Mason | Falling Skies
CONTACT:
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Kerry
CHARACTER: Ben Mason
CANON: Falling Skies
CANON POINT: s5e9, just after Ben’s secret workings with the communication device uncover where the queen is
BACKGROUND: history here
Key Points:
ABILITIES | POWERS:
Enhanced strength and stamina: Both are greatly increased from his own abilities and much higher than most humans. It especially shows in being able to run and swim for long periods of time without so much as breaking a sweat. In testing the abilities, he jumps rope for nearly three hours without being winded or looking at all as if he’s been doing anything. When others are exhausted, he still has full energy.
Enhanced speed, endurance, and agility: With the spikes Ben is able to run and move faster than the most skilled humans. It allows him the ability to leap from the tops of buildings a couple of stories tall and to move through spaces easily that would slow down others.
Enhanced senses: In canon it is said he can “hear like a jackrabbit and see like a hawk”. Just wearing their own standard glasses he and another formerly harnessed kid are able to see the planets and stars because of these enhancements.
Health: The spikes not only keep Ben in perfect health but they also cured pre-existing conditions such as his asthma. So long as he keeps the spikes, he needn’t worry about illness or most minor wounds. Once they’re gone, that will return.
PERSONALITY: Much of the boy that Ben was before the invasion is known only through all the things that changed once he became harnessed. He was a sickly child who spent a lot of time indoors reading and studying, quite unlike his brother who was an athlete. He fought with his brother, nothing unheard of for a middle child, and was close to his father who often came and read with him.
All of that changed once the invasion began and Ben was, for a time, a prisoner of war. Finding himself freed from the biological harness the invading forces put on him, Ben found himself having to adjust to who he was and what his life would be going forward as everything had changed physiologically as it had physically in the world.
Much of the boy he was is lost after being a prisoner of the invading forces. As a harnessed child, he was one of the group, working without thinking, existing without freewill. Once the harness is removed - minus the spikes he still bears to this day - Ben finds himself in an entirely different place mentally and physically. Those physical changes slowly start to shape the man he’s becoming and how he views the world.
Having lived his life on the outside looking in due to his health issues, Ben finds himself changed more than just physically after his rescue and subsequent de-harnessing. With the abilities granted to him by his spikes, especially being healthier than he’s ever been, Ben finds himself a much more useful member of the family. He’s able to volunteer for missions, to hold his own during them, and as time goes on, discovers that his very unique talent of being able to connect to the enemy means he can do something no one else can in helping them find the Espheni queen and win the war.
Having a chance to prove himself is important to Ben, especially in ways he’s never been able to before. He has been given a chance to feel useful, taking pride in all he’s able to do for the unit and those around him. It’s a new experience for Ben and begins shaping who he is, developing a confidence in what he’s able to do, and a bravado to push himself even harder. These changes shape who he is so much that even when the chance comes to have his spikes removed safely, he chooses not to. Though he is also relieved that his best friend makes the same choice, not leaving him as the only one. Not that her choice was going to stop him from making that decision to stay spiked. Not even the knowledge he will most likely die young due to lack of production of stem cells is enough for Ben to want to give up all he’s gained. Despite the physical pain that can be caused, and worse the abuse he suffers because of them.
There is physical pain that comes with his choices, learning that the spikes can pick up radio waves, as well as causing him physical damage if an alien he is connected to for information is hurt. The pain can be bad enough to cause him to pass out, and this is shown not to be enough to stop Ben from pushing hard to do what he can. The hardest thing though for Ben to deal with is the emotional toll that comes from being a “razorback” or “superfreak”.
From the moment he was rescued, many eyed Ben with suspicion. He’d been mind controlled, still bore the marks of that, and was very obviously not entirely human. Not with the scarring and spikes seen above his collar even as he tried his best to hide them for the most part to the things he could do now that others couldn’t. It becomes a constant attempt at both appearing as human as he can while also trying to be as helpful as he can, no matter the price.
This leads to Ben living constantly on edge, surrounded by a lot of people that he couldn’t tell were on his side or not, especially with nicknames and insults being bandied about as much as jokes as serious jabs. As time goes on, and more and more of those who are deharnessed either giving up their spikes entirely or dying, Ben starts to have to deal with the concept of being the only one of his “species”. It feeds into his anger, that of a young man that has lost his mother, lost the life he knew, and even had given up his freedom. It’s an anger that leads him to being reckless, lying, and hiding what he’s doing to channel his anger into unhealthy activities and killings. Until his activities get another killed, and Ben realizes that his hate is only something that can end in destruction, and he breaks through that anger and begins accepting himself in ways he hadn’t been able to before. But in accepting himself, he finds himself seeking more as well.
Just as the spikes allowed connection between the aliens and those children with the harnesses, and later spikes, Ben finds himself seeking connection with others with an almost desperate need. Growing close to Denny, another deharnessed kid, and working like a team through many missions, he finds that he’s seeking and then losses with her death. Later when he gives up several of his spikes to save the life of another, he develops a needed connection with this person. When she chooses to give up her spikes, Ben sees this as a betrayal, seeing it as he gave up part of himself - revealing he wholly does see them as part of himself - and she just threw that away. Ben often seeks out others to bond with, wanting and needing that connection as a reflection of the family he grew up with.
So much of Ben’s actions and reactions reflect back on his family, even if he isn’t always aware of it. It’s why he works so hard to prove himself, needing to show that he can live up to the way others see his father. First a respected professor before the invasion to a respected leader of their encampment to be president of the New United States, Tom casts a large shadow that Ben feels the need to not only try and shine but to keep his father’s attention as well.
Used to having a special part of his father’s attention as both the sick one as well as being more academic than he is athletic, Ben aches for that back for himself as well as proving that he truly is Tom Mason’s child to others. Not that he would admit it in so many words but it shows in how much he pushes to prove himself after his return, especially to show that he is loyal and not a spy of any sort, something he’s accused of time and again. The combination leads to Ben pushing to prove himself, to show he can take on anything, and it’s a driving force he lives with to this day, leading him to endanger his life time and again as he pushes the limits of the alien connection embedded in his skin.
It’s all an unhealthy mixture of pride and the desperate need to be accepted and wanted, something he had known as the middle child and then as an outcast who slowly loses those that could understand what he’s been through and what he’s feeling. It’s left him caught in a dichotomy between a fairly bad ass soldier who is willing to do whatever it takes, and a hormonal teenager who just wants to feel like he can still be wanted and loved.
He regularly seeks connection with others which often leads to loss and pain, things that he works to hide and does so by sacrificing himself to bigger and badder missions, willing to accept that he is the only one that can do what’s needed and taking the chances that come with it. Though it’s much smaller than just after his deharnessing, he still has a chip on his shoulder that leads to reckless behavior to prove both his abilities and his loyalties, something that has been questioned often and ended up with him being tortured to uncover a “truth” that isn’t there. It’s an endless cycle of needing to prove himself and when that isn’t enough, doing riskier things to try and prove the same.
All he’s been through has brought Ben to a place where he is much more in control though. In control of the spikes, of his desires, and of his emotions though it is all about holding onto that control. Facing a firing squad he is calm and tries reasoning with those who are part of his execution squad, though just days before he had taken down a unit of trained and armed soldiers with his bare hands. He fully accepts his spikes, his status as more than human, and he’s prepared to move forward as a liaison and delegate between mankind and the other alien species out there.
None of this changes though that when faced with challenges, Ben will be the first one to throw himself into the fray. Finding himself in a new place without the pressures and perhaps without the judgments of his world, Ben will be eager to prove that he can pull his own weight plus some. Finding himself away from his own world, in the beginning, he will find a freedom he hasn’t had before, with a chance to prove himself without being judged for what he is. At least until he has to start answering questions about how he can do what he can.
SAMPLE:
sample 1
sample 2
INVENTORY:
NOTES: Ben will have a fairly bad wound on his back, just between the shoulderblades, he’s nursing after torture. Because it’s a removed spike it’s not healing as he might other wounds but unless there’s a risk of contamination, it should be fine.
IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot-light works
APPLICATION RECEIVED
ACCEPTED
Thank you for your application!
ADMIN
NOTES
Luckily, before his exposure can advance past the point of itching rashes, Ben is discovered by a group of biologists — the party’s current escort, Enam, and his helpers — all dressed in the finest red haute couture. Noticing Ben and his unprotected state of dress, they cover him in one of the spare suits they carry and supply him a communication and translation device. They rush to herd Ben back to the lighthouse, where he finds his mind clears of any lingering thrall.
Enam informs Ben that he has reached the world of Akhuras, where undead forces have been battling for dominion with the living and each other. The undead factions summon otherworldly reinforcements, seeking to enslave or weaponise them in the conflict. Enam’s collaborator, the Merchant typically leads efforts to find and transport such newcomers east, to beacons hoped to return the visitors back to their home worlds. The Merchant has uncharacteristically slated the party for a detour to explore his home region — the once glorious, now barren and elusively savaged citadel of Ellethia. First to fall to the undead, it has been sundered by sea water into two cursed regions: Allayar and Hamsour, where they are currently located.
The party has been labouring to decipher the mysteries of Ellethia and its strange lighthouse. The Merchant will later send a missive updating Ben on the story so far. You do not need the linked background material to play at this time, but feel free to assume he has that knowledge, if you wish him to.
Over the next three days after his arrival at the lighthouse, Ben will:
Feel free to under or overplay these effects as much as you want.