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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
Tess Servopoulos | The Last of Us (Game)
CONTACT: victoryfanfare on plurk
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: I'm already here with Kim Wexler, just bringing in a character who is far more social :')
CHARACTER: Theresa "Tess" Servopoulos
CANON: The Last of Us (game)
CANON POINT: Immediately after her encounter with an Infected in the history museum, while transporting Ellie to the Capitol building.
BACKGROUND: Tess @ the TLOU Wikia
ABILITIES | POWERS: Baseline normal human, with 20+ years experience in urban survival, including weapon proficiency, improvising tools/weapons, brawling and first aid.
PERSONALITY:
Twenty years ago, Tess was an optimist. Even in the midst of society collapsing to the Cordyceps Brain Infection pandemic, she was even willing to make a crusade out whipping the world back into shape: she joined a radical resistance group called the Fireflies, tried to overthrow the military state that governed the surviving quarantine zones, and tried her damndest to make the best of it. That didn't last; between the eventual fall of most QZs, the death of her brother, and increasingly violent tactics making the Fireflies no different from the military they sought to overthrow, Tess's spirit was broken. No more hope. No more crusade. The threat of death was all around her –– infection, execution, gang wars, or even just bacteria in a contaminated tin of food. What was the point in fighting it? So she broke bad and became a smuggler, and worked her way up to being one of the black market's top dogs. No matter how close humanity is to extinction, she has her own tiny kingdom. She mows down anyone who fucks with her, smuggles contraband, deals in drugs and guns, takes advantage of anyone she felt like, and breaks security on the daily. Why not? Everyone will die eventually. What optimism she has left is kept bound and gagged in some quiet, dark room. Survival is all that really matters.
And because survival is much of her life, and it's important to her she excels at it. She's crafty, highly organized and meticulous, but she isn't a great long-term planner –– sometimes she can throw away an entire plan on an impulse if she gets a better idea. This doesn't always impress the people around her, as her plans aren't always safe or comfortable, but she'll pretend everything is going according to plan; it very much matters to her that she looks smart and sure of herself. In extreme moments of fear or insecurity, she can beeline for blind faith, hoping to figure it out later. The black market is a very male-dominated "industry", and there's no room to show weakness, so she dresses femininely (relatively speaking for the apocalypse) and oversells on violence just to make it clear that she means business. And while she's very much a city girl, she respects that nature doesn't consider excuses for those ill-prepared to survive in the wilds. You scrape yourself together and do the work.
Tess is a social butterfly and likes to be in charge. With strangers, she's very direct and particular about how things are done, whether she's happy or unhappy, but especially when she wants something from someone. She can be petty about being doubted, but she's comfortable finding compromise if there's any indication there's good faith there. If she can slip someone some sort of incentive instead of threatening them, she will, because she too is easily flattered and easily bought. She doesn't scare easy, so she often finds herself in sticky situations with people much bigger and more powerful than her, with the mettle to see herself through to the other side. She's got the scars to prove it, but a good chunk of respect, too.
Tess is also someone who is very driven by her feelings: she can project, she can be vindictive, she can also be intensely playful and easily swept up into excitement or attention. She likes adrenaline and does not care that it makes her reckless, and she does not care that it makes her a real asshole sometimes. She is also surprisingly soft underneath that tough-girl shell –– she can be quite patient (if not still blunt) with children and she's a fair bit more lenient with women than she is with men. When someone's her person, she'll check in on them and dote on their well-being. She'll encourage weak links to toughen up instead of outright abandoning them. In relaxed moments, she's got a quick wit and an ease to her, and she'll share what she has. She has no poker face when people dear to her are upset with her, either –– she'll act wounded and (or!) start lobbing passive-aggressive bombs.
Her radar for bad interpersonal situations is also pretty broken. Tess is at home with emotionally unavailable (and often violent) men, and can dip into people-pleasing streaks around ones that show affection to her. These relationships can veer hard towards being transactional –– she puts in what she thinks they want, and she takes whatever she gets in return. What she values most out of those relationships is being the "good cop" to a scarier person's "bad cop", and she gets satisfaction out of "earning" affection that is otherwise hard to get, especially when she gets to be the boss of them. She and her partner, Joel, have a relationship contingent on a mutual ease with violence and an understanding that she gets to call the shots, but if she asks for more emotional vulnerability than he's ready to offer, he'll cut her out. She does want more. Unfortunately, he's likely never going to give it. She'll settle for that.
So Tess has edges! But she's also a person who has never had an opportunity to live comfortably. She never got to have a normal adult life, or any of the milestones that come with it, even though she grew up thinking she would. She lives under a fascist military state where public executions happen right in the streets. She's lost just about everyone in her life, and knows she'll lose the rest eventually, probably violently, and if she's really unlucky, they'll get infected and she'll have to kill them herself. Nothing she owns is less than twenty years old. She's emotionally distant from people because she has to be, even if she doesn't want to be. She's violent because it's the only way to make it in the world. But she knows she used to be a different person. A more open, more compassionate, more giving, and more emotionally honest person. It might even be possible to discover that again, if she can just remember that there's something bigger to fight for. But maybe it isn't. She's done some horrible things, and as much as she likes to pretend otherwise, almost all of it was by choice. Maybe that makes you a shitty person forever.
SAMPLE:
network on TDM
impromptu field surgery on TDM
INVENTORY: A beat-up backpack containing a Browning Hi-Power handgun, a couple boxes of 9mm ammo, some first aid supplies, a mickey of whiskey, a couple glass bottles, some scrap rags, a pair of scissors, a map of the Boston Quarantine Zone, a utility knife, a half-finished roll of duct tape, a tactical flashlight, an S-10 NBC respirator with one filter, a ring of apartment keys, a pair of jeans, an olive t-shirt, a purple Wrangler shirt with the sleeves torn off, slip-on boots and a silk scarf. Everything she owns is 20+ years old (save for the bullets) and in various states of decay.
NOTES: Tess is coming in with a pretty significant bite wound on her right shoulder, which she will (or technically has, given the TDM) debrided like a lunatic to prevent the cordyceps infection from reaching her brain. This, on top of not having slept much for 24+ hours, running through city ruins and fleeing/fighting infected and the military, often in a downpour, and having been beaten up at the beginning of her day. So she's not doing so hot! She'll tough it through, and probably sleep for a zillion years in a snail shell, but I'll see about finding her a new friend who can make sure she doesn't, you know, just drop dead.
Also, there's a show airing now! It's written by the same guy. (Mostly.) The game and the show are extremely similar in plot beats and themes, but the characters are a little different tonally, and we don't quite know to what degree yet. I may scrape a few factual details here or there where the show reveals something new about Tess, as the show is expanding on content the game already inferred, but as far as characterization goes, the game is the interpretation I'm sticking to exclusively.
IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Let's go heavy if there's space, babyyyyyy!
APPLICATION RECEIVED
ACCEPTED
Thank you for your application!
ADMIN
NOTES
INTRO
The Scavengers seem to orbit Tess, attracted to her survivor streak — or perhaps watchful if she perishes, and they might have the chance to claim her wares and waters. A polite bunch! Either way, she enjoys efficient and largely taciturn company — barring nights, when even the Scavengers who hold the watch entertain themselves with chatter.
Some appear grateful for the chance to visit Alem, beloved house of the skyless gods, the 'Gate of Heavens.' They praise it for being the wall and unyielding obstacle that has resisted months, if not years, of dire attack, preventing the eastern forces of undead liege Rakkathu from advancing westward. But one murmurs, Alem is not all so glorious, so sacred. They say, when they raised her, the citadel would not stand, bricks crumbling, foundations decaying, the work of every day destroyed overnight... until workers put the blood of good beasts and better men into the binding paste. And what of the chains on Alem's bridges of judgment? Left there to symbolise freedom from oppressors, why is it at night you hear them rattle as if waved by skeletal hands?