CHARACTER RECLAIMS

[powersthatbe]

From now until endgame, Synodiporia is closed to new applications. However, players who dropped or idled characters but who do not have a behavioral strike against them may reclaim characters at any time. Dungeons and app windows are no longer necessary. Simply comment below with "I'd like to bring [character (username)] back!" And we'll take it from there. Players already at 3 characters who wish to bring back a 4th or 5th may do so so long as they're current on AC. Players wishing to bring in characters above 5 may request special mod permission. If you are uncertain if you qualify to reclaim, please email us at synodiporians@gmail.com and ask!

Comments

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

We won't be instituting any hard powercaps, as you addressed very well how you intend to go about using Sera's powers - if there's any difficulty we might revisit this to limit the number of skills, and in certain settings we may dampen some of the Cyber Shaman abilities.

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

We'd like to discuss ways in which we can make sure Shiki's powers can be capped or limited, but most of us are only peripherally canon-familiar. So, we'll be consulting you about that over the next few days; just don't kill anyone magically until we have things settled, :-P.

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

As far as powercapping goes, as we understand it, since she can no longer warp people into Freaks, that should be fine (can she still make them hallucinate?).

As far as the Void goes, it will have to be replaced with Liminal or Telepathic skills, however I think we can easily retain the basic abilities and important flavor characteristics of it by giving Erin either Room Creation or Mind Palace Projection (your choice), plus one additional Telepathic and one additional Liminal skill. This is open to further discussion if you strongly disagree, otherwise, just pick out the skills and report them on the Acquired Skills page!

[cutting]

Oh yeah, of course! There shouldn't be anything upcoming to catch her attention thankfully, so she'll be on "good" behavior haha... I apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for the acceptance!

Varric Tethras | Dragon Age II

[pseudologist]

That's all history is: the best tales. The ones that last. Might as well be mine.

Aveline Vallen | Dragon Age | Not Reserved | Down the Goddamn Wire

[coppermarigolds]

Nothing going on. You'd be the first to know if there were.

[powersthatbe]

Does she need to be within reach of the things she's cutting, or is her perception more abstract? How remotely can it be used?

[cutting]

She has to be close enough to actually cut something for her to be able to do anything (ex. cutting the line of a door lock that's within reach). While she can see the lines and dots from farther away, if she wants to do anything to them, she has to get up close.

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

[powersthatbe]

Would it be acceptable to you to cap it so that she cannot complete the cut? We'd give you a skill in compensation, and she'd still be able to gravely injure/damage her targets, but not kill or utterly destroy them. We can find a different workaround if you prefer; but that's the first solution that occurred to me.

[cutting]

This sounds fine to me! As long as she still sees the lines and dots, I think it'll be fine. Just one question though—would this apply to everything, or just people specifically?

[powersthatbe]

We could do it either way, but I had been thinking everything - otherwise if we ever do a Lord of the Rings jaunt, she could save everyone a trip to Mount Doom by cutting the ring in half! Open to discussion, though.

As it stands, I'd say we've settled the basics, so you're free to pick out one Liminal or Telepathic skill and report it on the Acquired Skills page!

cecil gershwin palmer ∞ welcome to night vale ∞ 1/?

[saccades]

P L A Y E R;

NAME: Anne
AGE: A THOUSAND. no. 23.
PLAYER JOURNAL: trustme_imthe
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: porphyrogene or tavrosno[at]gmail[dot]com
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Lila Zacharov (gitanes)

cecil gershwin palmer ∞ welcome to night vale ∞ 2/3

[saccades]

C H A R A C T E R;

NAME: Cecil Gershwin Palmer
CANON: Welcome to Night Vale
POINT IN CANON: Episode 46, Parade Day
AGE: Haha. Um. Utterly unknown. Probably mid-to-late-thirties, but since time is a fictitious construct in Night Vale, does it really matter? (Probably. But I still don't know.)

APPEARANCE: That is the question!

. . . but really: there are a few things known about Cecil's appearance and much more not known. Definitive statements include "he is not short or tall, fat or thin" and wears a tie in one particular photograph. He is probably human! Almost definitely human. But beyond that, we just don't know.

Here is what we will settle on. An adult man with eyes, ears, hair, and skin. Common fandom assumption includes an assemblage of tattoos on his arms, from wrist to upper arm and probably extending down the back. These tattoos frequently change in shape for no apparent reason. Other than these tattoos, his appearance is unremarkable and hard to pin down one way or another.

CANON HISTORY: At last, we are alone. At last we are, all of us, alone together. At last, every human, alone together, on this earth.

CANON PERSONALITY:

Everything that Cecil is comes from the city of Night Vale.

Part of explaining him involves explaining Night Vale, which is hard to do. It is by nature a mysterious, circuitous, almost innavigable place, and knowing that is part of understanding why Cecil is what he is and does what he does. As a citizen of a municipality that teaches its citizenry to question nothing and trust its government implicitly - or risk the consequences - Cecil is a unique example of symbiosis. That is, he upholds for the most part the facade that Night Vale is a perfectly ordinary place to live, just another town just like (better than!) all the other towns out there, and for the most part, he is safe from the various eldritch abominations that parade through town every other day. Safer than most people, anyway. Safer than his interns.

Like many if not most residents of Night Vale, Cecil responds with conditioned positive, even patriotic or prideful responses to the horrors he sees on a regular basis. He doesn't, in fact, register things like regular government-sanctioned kidnappings as horrific; they are just a thing that happen sometimes, a thing that's probably deserved. I mean, the government wouldn't kidnap you unless you deserved to be kidnapped, right?

Occasionally a panic response will break through during times of total catastrophe - especially government-unsanctioned catastrophe. However, when this happens, he generally manages to calm himself down within a half-hour period. This implies that not only is he used to awful things happening, not only does he see them as par for the course and probably deserved or at least part of the natural order, he on some level sees a panic response as maladaptive. As such, his panic response seems at times to have difficulty breaking through his radio-persona positivity, and he even feels the need to couch his fear in coded terms.

As a teenager, while Cecil was in training to become a radio host, something (we never do find out what, and probably never will) attacked him while he was conducting a practice recording. As he has no memory of this event and later reacts with fury at being reminded of it, it's very likely that he was significantly changed in an unearthly, supernatural way - and it's also heavily implied that this change was required for him to become the Voice of Night Vale. Thus it's probable that the inherent nature of being a radio host in the city of Night Vale make him both incredibly perceptive (as discussed in the Powers section) and psychologically unstable. He demonstrates dual demeanors - please note, not personas or personalities; they are neither disingenuine nor separate from his main personality. He can, in the space of a moment, switch from cheerful, optimistic radio host to grim-voiced prophet of doom, then switch back with no indication whatsoever that anything weird has happened. While he is very clearly one person - one damaged, confused, and very weird person - these switches are indicative of a schism in his psyche that both stems from the aforementioned trauma and is a means of coping with the existential uncertainty presented by Night Vale, a town where reality only occasionally matters.

The psychological instability inherent in the position of the Voice is not just due to childhood trauma, though. There appears to be a heavy burden on Cecil, stemming from both external (town and government) and internal (conscience) sources, to not only be what the town needs but behave in a way which is most beneficial to the town. This likely also contributes to his rapid demeanor switches. The Voice is the first window most people of Night Vale get into crises, and these people do not need to be panicking. If they start panicking at the reality of what's out there - at the horrors that Night Vale sees on a regular basis - they'll never stop. Night Vale won't function. No one will be safe. So he doesn't panic. And when he does, when that panic response breaks through, he subconsciously switches tones, not only to cope, but to cover his own insecurity in the face of the unknown - to protect the people of his town from their own insecurity.

Most citizens will spend their days solely reacting to the City Council's edicts. Cecil, however, strikes an interesting balance, unique in Night Vale, in that he is both active and passive. Being the Voice gives him a surprising amount of opportunity to be the dominant power and the actor in his vocal expression; he gets to express his opinion and exercises that right to the best of his abilities. Furthermore, while he is censored - and re-educated - repeatedly by station management and City Council, the little freedoms that he's allowed eventually give him the courage to rebel against Strexcorp. Not well, not efficiently, not with huge success - but he does it. His growing experience of a world outside his strictly Night Vale upbringing lead him to rail against passivity, too. Notable among these experiences are the influence of Carlos and his team as well as the presence of forces and worlds long denied by City Council - angels, the realm beyond the dog park that Dana experiences, and the simple resilience of humanity.

However, even while doing this, he defers in a major way to the City Council. On the whole, he is very passive towards even their most egregious exploitations and transgressions of human rights and utterly blase at their transparent efforts to cover up weird shit happening. He seems to have a "better the evil you know" attitude with regard to the conflict between Strexcorp and the City Council; while he doesn't believe in the City Council's propaganda to a complete extent, he's been conditioned his entire life to trust them, whereas Strex is a new and unknown entity with unknown practices and, therefore, implicitly more dangerous.

On a more day-to-day level, Cecil is just a pretty weird guy. To some extent because of the nature of his job, he is always one hundred percent of the time up in everybody's business. He has no concept of public versus private affairs: everything that happens seems to be public information to Cecil, and he shares his personal life freely and exuberantly. The infamous example is, of course, his relationship with Carlos the scientist. Many people develop crushes on cute new scientists who roll into town, but most people don't announce every single detail of that relationship on the town's radio. Cecil does, though, and he does not see anything strange about this.

And since we're talking about Carlos, let's talk about how Cecil forms opinions. Not all to the same extent that he does with Carlos (one cannot, after all, fall in love instantly with everyone), but he seems overall to form very quick, very lasting impressions. The people he hates, he hates a lot, and the people he cares about, he cares about so much he will tell you all about it, in long-winded detail, all the time, until you explicitly tell him to stop.

Finally, Cecil is not brave. He is not an innovative dude. Mostly, he's just a weird guy in a weird town who really likes his weird floating cat. Most of what Cecil does that can be described as revolutionary, he does by accident and/or only after screwing up several times. The fact is that Night Vale doesn't really breed rebellion. What Cecil is is dedicated to his town and, more even than that, to the people in it. This is due to a combination of brainwashing and true, unadulterated, human connection. He doesn't just like Night Vale and the people in it, he loves them. The reason he goes above and beyond canonically is because of people. On his own, he's just a guy. But surrounded by the people he loves, Cecil can almost, kind of, sort of be a hero.

ABILITIES: Cecil is human! But he's also . . . not. Exactly. Human. Because the facts are these: when he was younger, an eldritch creature crawled out of a cassette recorder and attacked him, making him both more and less than human, and thus significantly better suited to public radio!

. . . All right, that's less fact and more conjecture. But something happened, something that forever changed him, and now he is different from the other citizens of Night Vale in the same way that they're all different from each other: weirdly. The assumption easiest to make here - and safest, since we're likely to get no straight answers out of this town - is that people in Night Vale generally start out human, until something happens. Whether that something is knowable or unknowable, government or privately-owned business, eldritch or cassette tape, only time tells.

What can be pretty clearly determined is that Cecil has some kind of extrasensory perception. He's able to watch things happen all across town in real time; not only can he see them, but he can perceive what people are thinking and feeling at the same time as things happen, implying that he has a way of psychically tapping into other people's perspectives. By all appearances, the range of this ability is miles wide and doesn't weaken towards the outside of its radius. Cecil also never bothers to explain it, so it's either always been with him or - more likely, since he never mentions it in 'Cassette' - it was quote-unquote gifted to him by whatever attacked him in the shadows at age 15. An important note: Cecil doesn't really control this. He can't, for example, say, "I want to see what Bob's doing right now," and get a good solid glimpse of Bob. It just kind of happens.

INVENTORY; A microphone, which will be utterly useless and which he'll probably lose, as well as the clothes on his back.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? A lot of what I've put here, in terms of appearance and abilities especially, are by necessity headcanon. If any of it seems out of whack or doesn't work for modly purposes, I am cool with it; just let me know and I will tweak whatever needs tweaking posthaste.

cecil gershwin palmer ∞ welcome to night vale ∞ 3/3

[saccades]

S A M P L E S;

FIRST PERSON:

[The voice is sonorous, though not ominous; precise, though not loud; pleasant, though not cheerful. It's a voice that sounds like it has something important to say, even when it doesn't, the kind of voice that belongs to a man who steeples his fingers before the microphone and weaves words into pictures in other people's minds.]

Well, Travelers.

[A brief hesitation, as though he's unused to the word.]

Well, Travelers; we have come back.

Not all of us, of course, have come back. Many of us have stayed behind, for reasons that escape those of us who have come back, who see their absence as an abscessed wound or as a barely-noticeable splinter. Or even less. Some of you are happy to be fewer in number, to have enemies gone and complicated relationships unequivocally ended.

[Soothing:] That's all right. It's all . . . all right.

Because we're rewarded. Every time, we're rewarded. We get a few days in which our minds, all of them, are as wholly ours as minds ever belong to any of us, and that, Travelers, is a great gift. You should all be grateful.

[Dark:] We should all - be grateful.

[And then, like an utterly different man, or a child who's just caught sight of a particularly fluffy puppy:] Did you see they've got cotton candy in the hallway by the entrance? And candy corn just a few feet down from that! This place is amazing. I wish we could take pictures. But they wouldn't last, I suppose; we couldn't take them with us.

THIRD PERSON:

Cecil would feel better if he could see them. The Trumps, that is - and is that so strange? In his opinion, all things, even the impossible, are more comprehensible when tangible.

He finds himself daydreaming on occasion about them. Whether they keep themselves hidden, as he suspects, because they are grander and greater than a collection of by-and-large human beings can handle, or for some other reason. Maybe they experience some strange and inexplicable version of shame because of their ugliness or awesomeness, or because they aren't perfect. Maybe they're afraid of being mistrusted.

Maybe, he wonders in the most secret parts of his mind, they are angels.

It feels like a betrayal of all that they've done, inscrutable as it is, to miss Night Vale. But he experiences his loss as a gaping hole sort of feeling in the place where his heart is (probably is), as though a few weeks ago every soul in his city was wedged neatly beneath his ribs, a many-headed bird in an ivory cage. Now they have all at once vacated their cage, or rather it has abandoned them. Are they cold at night? Unsure? Undirected?

Sometimes he says, "I'm sorry," out of nowhere, in the middle of conversations. He doesn't know why. He shocks people with it. He shocks himself. He wonders if the Trumps can hear him, or if his voice carries back to the microphone, or if he says it loud enough, Carlos might hear.

All he knows is that once the words spring without permission from his stumbling lips, he feels a little better. Lighter. As if somewhere, by someone, he is forgiven.

dragon age 2 | fenris | no reserve.

[broodypants]

◦°˚\(*❛‿❛)/˚°◦

lief | deltora quest

[ofdel]

he was not praying for a miracle, because he did not believe in miracles.

ibuki mioda | super dangan ronpa 2

[poyoyon]

Linked for spoilers!

Leonardo | TMNT (IDW comics)

[kamiizumi]

whooooosh

Howl | Howl's Moving Castle

[strangewonders]

The nothingness was only an inch-thick after all.

Teddie | Persona 4/Persona 4 The Golden

[palliative]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Kuma
AGE: 28
PLAYER JOURNAL: palliative
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: plurk: kumabing, aim: pixie.petals
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: None in this game!

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Teddie
CANON: Persona 4/Persona 4 The Golden
POINT IN CANON: Post Persona 4 The Golden True Ending
AGE: Unknown (appears to be 14/15)
APPEARANCE: Teddie resembles a fourteen year old boy in his human form. He has short blond hair that waves to the side with bright blue eyes. He’s fairly petite (weighing in at 121 lbs), standing a little taller than the girls of the group. Teddie is also small enough to fit into his bear suit, which he wears often. The picture of the suit is here!

CANON HISTORY:Teddie’s Wiki

CANON PERSONALITY: Teddie is a very simple character to understand, when it comes to his personality. The first thing that one would notice is that he's very optimistic. It's easy for Teddie to show off how much he likes and trusts someone, as well as his positivity for every situation. During the battles on the Midnight Channel, he is often the one cheering them on and encouraging the group. It is even said later in the game that this bear being around was always helpful for the team to stay strong because of his encouragement and high energy. When he goes missing, all the members of the Team mention that without him, things seem quiet and a little depressing. This is a great example of the impact Teddie has made on the Investigation team.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t have his demons. Teddie struggles with the questions that everyone does in life, especially in reference to who or what he is. Being a Shadow, Teddie has and can view this as a bad thing, but it helps that he has friends who talk to him and help him to realize that he can’t help what he is. The appreciation he shows to the others for this is immense and he is very grateful to have accepting friends, though he doesn’t really mention it to people at first. Even in Persona 4 Arena, Teddie hesitates to tell Labrys, but ends up doing so to help her feel better.

However, Teddie is often the comic relief of the group. When things get a little too serious, he is sure to pull out some kind of unbearable pun to lighten the situation. He’s even taken the names of the Team and made them into Sensei-tional puns (since he calls the main “Sensei). Also, Teddie is quite the uncontrollable flirt. He will practically hit on anything female and very obviously so. The girls in the group often ignore his passes, but he has (because of his looks) made a lot of girls flustered. He even hit on a married woman who works as a Sample Lady at Junes! Someday, Teddie will, as he says “score” with the ladies, but sadly, his attempts have ended in failure. It’s also implied that he doesn’t really know what “scoring” means, but it doesn’t seem to stop him from using the term anyway.

Additionally, Teddie is very childlike. Being a shadow, he developed a human ego and eventually, after obtaining a persona, a body. He hasn't experienced things in the human world, so when he goes over, he often has questions on how to do things, often repeats words/phrases he hears and loves trying every new thing he can try. This makes him much like a child learning about the world, which is likely the reasoning for his closeness with Nanako. He also tends to repeat things he hears without much consideration on how or what those things mean. The prominent line he uses is “scoring with hot studs” and other words that he hears the others say, much to Yosuke’s annoyance (which could be the reason he does it).

That being said, Teddie does have some pretty deep emotions running through him. He's always thinking about what he is and how he fits in, and he even runs away from the group to try and figure it out. When Teddie isn't helping someone, something that he tries very hard to always do, he feels completely useless and it really gets him down. This is why, after Nanako is hospitalized, he disappears. Teddie thought that he was just useless, but also realized he was a shadow and was afraid of the others would react to him. Once he was told that everything was okay, that he was okay being him, he returns to his usual, chipper self. He still struggles with wanting to help, but given his positive personality and the support he has from his friends, Teddie believes he can do anything.


POINT OF DEPARTURE: N/A
ABILITIES: Teddie's abilities at first are mostly used for Support. He is able to “sniff” out the location for the group as long as he has some idea of who the person is. This, however, is replaced when the group obtains Rise and he gets his own Persona. Using things that can be put on his hands, mostly claws, he is able to attack and also use his persona to assist the group.

His persona specializes in healing as well as ice magic. It’s also implied (and stated in P4 Arena; the fighting game that takes place after the initial game) that Teddie’s persona, like Rise’s, can affect people’s minds. The only thing that he has displayed is the ability to talk to the others through a mind link, like Rise, but other than that, it seems that’s where the ability stops. Additionally, Teddie’s persona can also assist with stat effect changes, such as increasing speed or healing someone from exhaustion.

INVENTORY; Aside from his trademark bear suit (which he will be wearing on arrival), Teddie will also have his claw that he uses to fight.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? Bear puns. So many bear puns.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: Test Drive #4

THIRD PERSON:

Small feet squeaked with every step in the space. He wasn’t sure, exactly, when his world changed like this, but he was certain that this place was different. Didn’t that mean that someone would be here? Sniffs fill the air as he tries to see if maybe someone got pushed in by accident. From the sniffs, the bear could decipher nothing. No other person was here with him, in the TV. Strange. Normally, people couldn’t mask their scent. Unless it was Adachi, but he was gone!

“Hello?” The bear said, looking around, “My name is Teddie!”

Teddie moved his little feet more, in a quick succession. The squeaks remained the same as he hurried to a random direction, finding himself in a town much like those cowpoke movies Yosuke’s dad watched (or was it cowboy…? Teddie didn’t have time to remember). Either way, he frowned, looking really confused. If no one was here and we was going to be in this weird little town, then where could the person be that got dropped into the television? With a quick motion, Teddie was out of his bear suit, carrying it down the way with him and hurrying to see if someone could help. Surely his sensei or Yosuke had to be close by! They would definitely know what was going on!

Dick Grayson | Young Justice | not reserved

[turbedon]

One little dicky bird.

Ezio Auditore | ACII | no reserve

[combattente_auditore]

Molto benene