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[powersthatbe]

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[neverfeltthatway]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Thomas Smit
AGE: 22
PLAYER JOURNAL: neverfeltthatway
TIMEZONE: central time
CONTACT: dastonyth @ gmail/aim/plurk
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: none

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Armin Arlert
CANON: Attack on Titan
POINT IN CANON: end of episode 8, in the battle of trost after seeing Eren emerge from titan form for the first time
AGE: 15
APPEARANCE: 5'4", 120 pounds, petite; blond, blue eyes, round face, generally looking calm or determind
CANON HISTORY: http://shingekinokyojin.wikia.com/wiki/Armin_Arlert
CANON PERSONALITY: 

A brilliant strategist and a loyal friend, Armin is defined in the early series by his determination and his low self-esteem.

Calm
In sharp contrast to Eren's more rash qualities, Armin often takes the role of the voice of reason – as seen when he's apologizing and talking down a soldier after Eren attacks him early in the show, and getting Mr. Hannes to save Eren and Mikasa in the original attack, and carefully thinking out a plan to allow everyone to refuel in the battle of Trost. It also shows through as his friends look to him and trust him to know what to do when things get hairy – seen in episode 10, when they turn to him to convince the garrison that Eren is not a threat. He doesn't panic in a crisis, but stays calm and carefully thinks things through – always preferring to avoid a conflict if possible and think his way out of trouble.

There are scenes that stand in sharp contrast to his usual calm, however – when he becomes frightened before their first time fighting the Titans, or when he gets furious at the female Titan for killing so many people, shouting at Reiner to get revenge for them. He's slow to fear or anger, and even then doesn't quite let it overtake his common sense – but when it takes hold of him, its hold is hard.

Timid
Armin was gentle and weak as a child, which, combined with his 'heretical' ideas, constantly made him a target for bullies. Compounded by the fact he refused to fight back, he always needed Eren and Mikasa to save him. Because of this, he looked up to Eren and Mikasa – but also had a low opinion of himself, thinking he was useless and a burden. Gradually, as he grows older (past the point I am apping him from), he learns to have more confidence in himself and appreciate his value.

Determined
Despite being weak and having low self-esteem, Armin was many times remarkable determined – he always refused to give in or fight back against bullies, or refusing to give up. He was always on the verge of failure, due to his physical frailty, but he did the best to catch up to his friends – he is shown rejecting Reiner's offer of help during a drill, simply refusing to become a burden, no matter how hard it was or what it cost him.

There are other times, however, when his resolve has wavered, and he has been frozen with fear or shock or indecision. Most often, however, it is his own feelings of helplessness that paralyze him. In his first battle with the Titans, after watching his entire squad get decimated, he offers no resistance to being eaten by a Titan until Eren rescues him.

Loyal
Despite his timidity, he has proven more than once to be a brave and loyal friend, willing to put himself in harm's way to protect a friend – as shown when he joins Mikasa in facing down a canon and a company of garrison soldiers to defend Eren, even at great risk of being killed. More than just loyal to his friends, he is loyal to humanity, truly giving his heart to defend it and doing his best against the Titans, despite his fear and lack of fighting ability.

Brilliant
Armin is the brains of the team, many times saving lives with quick decisions or careful planning. He saves Eren and Mikasa in shiganshina district by keeping his head and running to Hannes for help. Later, he comes up with the plan to kill the Titans in the Trost headquarters so everyone could refuel their air tanks and escape the city. Very quickly, even generals listen to his ideas and consider them seriously. In the plan to retake Trost, he comes up with the plan to use Eren's Titan strength to plug the hole in the gate, and to avoid losing soldiers by using the Titans' tendency to gravitate toward the largest amount of people - so the army can attract most of them without engaging – while protecting Eren with a small but elite team that could deal with stragglers and newcomers, but wouldn't attract many Titans on their own.

Dreamer
Armin firmly believes that humanity cannot survive hiding behind their walls, and that those that think so are deluded. He dreams of one day going beyond the walls and seeing the outside world – a dream that he later shares with Eren, and that has enormous impact on shaping their friendship. It is also a dream that defines his childhood, especially given his parents perished while journeying outside the walls.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: n/a
ABILITIES: excellent strategist and tactician, generally more than making up for his poor physique and combat skills.
INVENTORY; 3-D maneuvering gear, scout regiment attire, book of 'the outside world'
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? nothing I can think of!

S A M P L E S; 
FIRST PERSON: 
Wait, Eren! [Armin chases him out of barracks, and eventually catches up with him.] Eren... you'll never convince them by just shouting at them, you know. I'm sure if you just tried to be a little more patient... [Who was he kidding. Eren would always be Eren – he was stubborn and angry and Armin liked him just fine the way he was.

He turns his head away with a small smile, and continues quietly.] Well, try not to yell so loud next time, anyway. If the commandant hears you again, he'll really let you have it.

[Armin sighs, turning to look up at the sky. They're both quiet for several moments.] ...Do you think we'll ever really get to see it, Eren? The outside world. To beat the Titans and see what it's like... do you really think we can do it?

THIRD PERSON: 
Armin refuses to fight back, which of course only makes them want to hit him more. He won't stoop to their level – and it's not like it would make a difference anyway. The leader kicks him in the ribs again, while he tries to stand back up. It's then that he sees Eren and Mikasa on their way, running towards them. His stomach does a little flip, with a strange mixture of elation, relief, admiration... and shame.

He's always glad to see his only true friends. And of course, their arrival means his liberation, and he's grateful to both of them. That they stand up for what's right, they try to be strong. And... they protect him. That's the crux of it, right there – that they think he needs protecting. He tastes bile in his throat as he turns his head away. They do so much for him, but he never manages to do anything in return. He's useless. All he is is a burden to them.

Bitter tears of anger and humiliation spring to his eyes as he tries to get up again, to prove he doesn't need their help, that he doesn't have to be a burden - only to be kicked back down again. ...Of course not. Who was he to think he could be more?

Eren and Mikasa arrive, and throw the others off him. He cries silently, coughing into the dirt – helpless to aid his friends, who mean everything in the world to him.

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

Hayley Marshall | tvd/the originals | reserved

[consequence]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Christina
AGE: 35
PLAYER JOURNAL: lollobrigida
TIMEZONE: Central US
CONTACT: PM consequence
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Applying for Erica Reyes as well.

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Hayley Marshall
CANON: The Vampire Diaries/The Originals
POINT IN CANON: 1x15, before Elijah Returns
AGE: 20
APPEARANCE:

Hayley stands at 5’ 10” and is of a slender build. Not overly muscular, she gains most of her strength from her werewolf attributes. Her hair is brunette, layered, and falls to just above the middle of her back. Most of her clothing has an earthy feel to it. Layered and light shirts, a boho chic style. The only time she wears something flashy is when she goes to the pageant as Tyler’s “Date”. Her make-up pallette is in general neutral tones with an occasional deep color to her lips.

Hayley is currently pregnant and definitely showing. At the time of her canon point I am estimating that she is 6-7 months pregnant.

+ 1 Moon Tattoo against her ribcage - just at the bra-band on her right side
+ 1 Moon shaped birthmark - high in the middle of her shoulder on her right side




CANON HISTORY: TVD Wikia Link

[consequence]

CANON PERSONALITY:

When looking at the type of person Hayley is, the easiest thing to say is that she’s determined with a nice streak of manipulation. From the moment she learns she’s a werewolf, she puts all of her focus and energy into trying to discover where she came from. She travels and seeks out other packs of werewolves. She makes connections and tries to find anyone that can help her learn anything she can about her biological parents. By aligning herself with Shane, she is willing to lie to other members of the packs she has just spent years meeting and spending time with just for the chance at finding her parents. Her determination in finding this information makes her a bit blind to the danger of it, but the reckless side of her doesn’t seem to care how dangerous it gets.

She pushes at people instead of trying to do things on her own, relying on the strengths and abilities of others to accomplish greater things. When we first meet Hayley it’s with a smile and a story about how she’s the reason Tyler broke his sire-bond. It’s not something she brags about, but instead she uses that information to position Tyler as a potential leader. While this is also in part to how she has an arrangement with Shane, this is something she’s learned through her years of being with different packs. While searching for her parents, Hayley also learned about as much about werewolves as one can in that time. Bouncing from pack to pack for short bursts of time allowed her to view those pack dynamics and see moments where challenges arose and how they were dealt with. When Kimberly threatens the plan and puts the rest of the hybrids (and Tyler) at risk, Hayley explains that Tyler is an alpha and that he needs to take control of his pack. She’s positioning herself to not only be a friend to Tyler, but someone that can provide guidance and advice. It’s her expertise that he can rely on and it’s why her plan to put Klaus into Tyler is so easily accepted by him.

She’s easy to trust too. Her looks and soft southern accent (that hits harder when she’s upset) make her not exactly suspicious looking. She tells Tyler straight to his face that she doesn’t know Shane before the Miss Mystic Falls pageant and that she only spoke with him because he’s handsome and smart. In truth, she’s been speaking to Shane for months before this event and is in way over her head with his plan to raise Silas. She doesn’t lie to be mean or to betray the trust of those she relies on, she does it out of need and her own desire to keep those connections in tack. She knows that if she told Tyler that she knew Shane before that there would be far too many questions that would be asked and that it would risk not only her relationship with Tyler but her deal with Shane. She’s always going to look out for her goal of finding her parents.

In fact, all of her desires are related to her family. Her seeking out a pack, of trying to be supportive to Tyler are all traits that come when you have family. Because she comes from an adoptive family, she also has a better idea of how blood isn’t required for that sort of bond. She puts her neck out on the line for family more than once. While her reasons are still always more toward her own goals, she still takes that risk without knowing the end result. When Chris is being blamed for letting Elena go and Klaus is threatening to kill him, Hayley takes the blame herself and stands up to Klaus - something not many in her position would have done. She challenges him to kill her, because she is someone that definitely acts before she thinks.

That impulsive side of Hayley gets her into trouble more times than she probably realizes and the reason she doesn’t realize it is because by the time she needs to properly react there is a new situation to deal with. Most of her impulses end up being more on the side of saying what’s on her mind instead of thinking about how it will impact the other person. She tells Caroline that she’s friends with Tyler, is staying at his house, and that she doesn’t have time for her ‘teen drama’. In fact, most of her relationships with other women tends to be on the adversarial side. This mostly comes from the fact that she is the one that helped Tyler and that sort of ability to be able to stand up to a werewolf/vampire hybrid that is shouting and threatening you with every break of their bone is not for the delicate.

She can give back as easily as she can be given. While Kimberly is breaking her sire bond, screaming in pain and being vocal about how she can hurt the “wolf girl”, Hayley barks right back at her, not afraid of whatever the hybrid might do to her. (Sure she’s chained up, but I think Hayley would still be just as ballsy.) She stands up to Klaus, she pushes Tyler to take control of his pack, she even tries to stand her ground when Klaus orders Dean to go into the hostage situation at the Grill. In fact, the only time she seems to falter is when she feels like her chance at her real parents is at risk. Even in those moments, Hayley will charge forward and act on impulse. Rather than look for different options than the plan Shane has, she just goes to Klaus and exposes the plan. It puts her in harms way, but she feels like she’s done what was needed.

Most of the times where she does push back even at the risk to her own plan it’s usually to protect that plan completely. The manipulative streak that she has within her is something that doesn’t come out all the time, but she definitely wields it to her advantage. She positions Tyler to be the leader of the hybrids. Even when she is talking to Klaus after he saved her from the vampire assassin, she uses her words to ensure that he knows where she stands and how very little leeway she’s going to give him. And yet he still protects her and still sees her as valued in that moment. She uses her friendship with Tyler, she uses her knowledge about unsiring hybrids, she uses anything she possibly can in order to further her own agenda, but she always keeps herself behind the larger immovable object/person so that she’s protected from the risk that she takes.

That doesn’t mean she isn’t tough, though. She’s still a werewolf. Still someone that once a month goes through excruciating pain and then has to fight against her own nature to not kill. She has to be willing to chain herself up to protect herself and others if it’s required. She’s been on her own since her first transformation too, having been kicked out by her parents. She’s built up that thick skin and it’s also a lot of hanging around guys that has shaped a lot of her mannerisms and intolerance to the usual girl-trouble drama/bullshit.

She’s a no-frills girl that knows how to wear a bodycon dress, not because she wants to wear it, but because she knows how she looks in it and she knows what sort of appearance it presents. When she is meant to be implying she’s in a less than okay relationship with Tyler, she doesn’t go for the PDA and the overly girlfriend behavior. Even when she’s with Klaus it’s a very take-charge type attitude that she has. She invades personal space, calls it like she sees it, and sees through most charming anecdotes. When Klaus tries to explain to her the deepness of his art, she laughs it off and calls him on trying to soften her up with the woes and troubles of his life as an Original.

Deep down, Hayley does still seek out that sense of belonging that most younger adults do, but hers has become part of her mission and tied more to her identity as a part of a family of werewolves than of wanting to be part of a pack or a group of friends. She’s willing to put others on the line to save herself and she’s willing to back a play to the very end - no matter the risk to herself. She sees the potential in situations, but doesn’t always have the foresight to see all the possible end results. She sees one path and sticks to it, no matter where it takes her, because her eye is always on what she wants to get, not if there are other ways to get it.

She’s a werewolf girl that has spent most of her time as a werewolf trying to find answers and when she finally gets an answer, it’s not enough because all she’s done is search and to find out that the reward has been taken away is too much and she denies that as being what she wanted. She goes out looking for more, trying to keep that search going, because she still feels like she’s owed something after everything she’s done.

It doesn't stop there either. Pulled from her life into New Orleans, Hayley is instantly thrown into the manipulations and complications that reside in that town with the conflict between witches and vampires. Being pregnant with a hybrid child makes her of value to those people, but Hayley still maintains her independence and resilience. She stops at nothing to find her family, and even goes to the length of kidnapping a powerful witch. Hayley has shown resourcefulness in gaining allies and a willingness to go to extreme lengths to get what she needs. She has shown leadership qualities, but still takes a step back knowing when it's more important that others see the results.

Her prior abandonment issues and problems with what happened in Mystic Falls doesn't allow her to trust easily, but she has found a connection with those that she's grown close to. Rebekah and her girls stick together mentality has made her feel as though she has someone to rely on and she has stood up for her and made efforts to maintain that friendship. She has grown closer to Elijah, despite his own resistance to give into his obvious desires. Klaus is always in flux with her, being someone that threatens her in one breath and then threatens those that would harm her in another. He switches from the one in charge to the one grasping for control so often that Hayley is simply learning how to maneuver around him and his antics.

Her pregnancy has allowed her a chance at having someone other than herself to protect and she has taken that task on with a great deal of commitment. There were rough spots early one where she wondered if the child was worth all of the danger, but considering her own abandonment and adoption, Hayley intends to protect this child the way her own parents hadn't. In her time in New Orleans she's also been able to find connections to her family. Learning of their curse has given her a direction and something to achieve, despite road blocks and a few cases of making large mistakes. Hayley simply falls into the same trappings she did in Mystic Falls where rather than asking for help, she simply waits for the consequences so she can handle them. It never serves her, but she is still learning from those mistakes.

She's going to be a mother, to a child that will be in danger more than she probably realizes. She's going to have to put someone else first, and still manage to figure out how to survive the Mikaelsons without Rebekah to back her up. Hayley will always be herself though and doesn't pretend to be something she's not.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: Hayley will be leaving during her time sitting in the forest waiting to find out if Elijah is going to return with Sabine and the cure for the werewolf curse or not. Everyone has done a lot to try and stop Sabine, so Hayley is unsure if Elijah will allow her to keep the cure or not. She knows that she has nothing left to risk, that her family being cursed is bad enough, so whatever that cure contains can't be worse than that.

Cassandra Cain | DC Comics | Reserved

[hellofist]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Ren
AGE: 27
PLAYER JOURNAL: blahblahlawblog
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: blahblahren
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: none

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Cassandra Cain
CANON: DC Comics
POINT IN CANON: Batgirl 65
AGE: 18
APPEARANCE: Cass has short black hair and brown eyes and stands at 5'5" tall. Distinguishing characteristics include a number of scars (link contains non-graphic nudity).
CANON HISTORY: here, up to the last paragraph before the One Year Later section.
CANON PERSONALITY: Underneath all of the Batgirl, trained assassin stuff, Cass is just a dorky teenage girl. She has her moments of insecurities, she wants to have the normal experiences she missed out on growing up. When she first meets the Nightwing and Robin, she's friendly and eager to make friends with them and curious about them. She's very sweet and determined to be a good person since finding out what her father had been training her all along to become.

After killing her first "target", Cass read his dying thoughts and immediately knew she could never do it again. She ran away and when Barbara took her in and introduced her to Bruce, it was like a new start. They didn't know about her training or her past, just accepted her strangeness and her gave her something that would quickly become incredibly important to her: they became her family.

Still very driven, she spent every night out in Gotham protecting the city with or without Batman. She took her job very seriously, was willing to die to protect people and even putting herself in the path of bullets because she knew her body could take it instead of letting others get hurt. If she wasn't out patrolling she was training, either alone or with Stephanie Brown, who quickly became her best friend.

She still feels a lot of shame about not being able to read, but has been shown trying to teach herself. She learned to string together basic words, but when Barbara called her stupid under pressure, it seemed to put a stopper to her willingness to learn. She's very insistent she isn't stupid, and she's not, but being forced to look at the fact that she's lacking such basic knowledge hurt enough to cause her to push Barbara away for months.

Cass still has a lot to learn about the opposite sex and her own sexuality in general. It wasn't until she was 18 that she had her first exposure to lust and desire and it wasn't something she enjoyed feeling at first. She dated Superboy for a short period of time and fell very hard for Black Wind, a freedom fighter who was killed before their relationship could really be explored. She's still very naive when it comes to romance and tends to cycle through periods of wanting a relationship and focusing on her work.

Once she was given full reign over Bludhaven, Cassandra really came into her own. She started exploring what it was to be Cass Cain, not just Batgirl. She made friends who had nothing to do with Bruce Wayne, even went to parties, and was excited to see herself "volving" and coming into her own. She was proud that Batman trusted her enough to find her own way.


ABILITIES: covered here
INVENTORY; Cass will only be coming in with her batsuit and a grapple gun. She DOES have a utility belt, but there isn't anything in it.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: here.

THIRD PERSON:

The holographic room in her Batcave has become something of a home for Cassandra since she was sent off on her own. She can stay in as long as she needs to, she doesn't have to worry about breaking gym equipment, and most importantly? It provides an actual challenge.

Fighting against people is never something she can really get much out of. It is fun, and she likes knowing exactly how someone fights, to see their body talk as they spar, but in the back of her head is always the constant calculation of how much pressure she can hit them with to just cause a jolt. She won't break bones, she won't even bruise them if she can help it.

Here, that doesn't matter. The arms she's breaking and the people she's knocking out, they aren't real. She loves it, the challenge and the thrill and just letting go, being herself and doing what she was made to do with no chance she'll be seen, no chance she'll turn and find someone has been watching her and she'll see their bodies filled with fear because she's a monster how can she do those things?

She fights alone for hours on end, never stopping, there's no reason to. Sometimes Steph will visit but she's alone today, alone most days, her hands pass through holograms and sometimes, Cass just wishes Batman would smile at her. She's distracted, a hand passes through her and the simulation stops. Words display on the screen that she can't read but she fills it in on her own.

She failed. Unacceptable.

"Computer, restart. Same program. Add more enemies." She says, and there's the quiet whir of the equipment starting up again. Twenty men surround her now.

Good. This time, there really will be a challenge.

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

Tohru Adachi | Persona 4 AU | Not Reserved

[wantedittobeagame]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Skyla
AGE: 30
PLAYER JOURNAL: skyla_doragono
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: SkylaDoragono
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: NA

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Tohru Adachi
CANON: Persona 4 (role swap AU)
POINT IN CANON: Post True End, just as the events in Arena are beginning.
AGE: 28
APPEARANCE: Adachi, though he lost his tie during the course of his adventure.
CANON HISTORY: Canon History, though not much of it applies to this version of Adachi, other than what little early history he has.
CANON PERSONALITY: Adachi is a tricky individual, as he has multiple facets to his personality, most of which is a ruse for what really lies underneath. To most, he appears as the clown, a goofy little dork that makes people wonder how the hell he managed to get a gold badge at his age. On the inside, however, he's much darker, and someone that cannot be trusted.

To most people, he comes off as the comic relief. Most times he's seen on screen, he has a bit of a doofy expression on his face, like he's not really sure why he's around or what's going on. He's instinctively submissive, and seems to be able to know what people want to hear from him and deliver (or not) accordingly. He is also adept at making himself unassuming, often using his goofy actions to make others dismiss him. After all, who would think that a guy that was all gung-ho about cabbages being on sale was actually a detective? This often leads him to looking even more incompetent and pitiable, especially when he runs his mouth off and gives out more information than he should, or otherwise just screw up enough to lead Dojima to taking it out on his skull. Even when alone, he seems to be intentionally far too open with the public, spouting out information he really shouldn't and making very clear and obvious rookie mistakes to the point people have to wonder how he managed to become a detective. He's also almost always slacking off, like he doesn't even try to take his job seriously, and can often be found hanging around Junes just to skip out on work.

Even outside of work, Adachi comes off as overly casual and not really serious about anything. He enjoys making really bad (eely worse than Teddie) puns, and seems to be content with being perpetually single, as he comments that, "marriage is where fun goes to die" when asked about it. In short, he comes off as being entirely unmotivated and uncommitted, and not really interested in much outside of himself. He seems like he wants more out of his job at times, especially when he describes himself as "Dojima's slave", but he does not seem to be willing to do anything to change that, preferring to sit on his ass and act like a clown while waiting for someone to notice how awesome he is. Despite his choice of profession, he's surprisingly cowardly and has a strong survival instinct; he never puts himself in a dangerous situation unless he has no other choice.

His immaturity seems to change after Nanako and Dojima are injured, however. He steps up as a detective, presumably taking over his partner's work on the case (though he's never actually shown doing this, it's implied because you can no longer find him at Junes after Nanako is kidnapped). He sticks by his partner and his daughter, and you can see him there supporting them both every time the protagonist and company visit the hospital, doing little things, like wheeling Dojima around to visit his daughter despite what the nurses say. Even when Nanako dies, he's there for Dojima, struggling to take him away from Namatame's room and potentially making an awful mistake, whether it be taking his rage out on Namatame or injuring himself further. He also shows how upset he is himself, stating that he wishes he could kill Namatame himself for what he's done. It really seems like he steps up and takes charge of a terrible situation, for the sake of himself and his partner and friend.

Seems that way.

When he's finally cornered, when his misdeeds at the beginning of the year finally catch up with him, that's when his true nature is revealed. Adachi is really a sadistic, manipulative person, voluntarily choosing to turn his eyes away from how the real world was like and instead living in his own delusion. He truly believes the world is full of shit, and cannot see anything good about it, because no one ever gives him what he feels he's owed in life. He refuses to take responsibility for the fact that he doesn't try to see what is out there in the world that is right for him, and instead tries to seclude himself while expected everyone to shower him with attention. Even when it comes to the murders of Mayumi Yamano and Saki Konishi, he doesn't take responsibility for it, because it's not his fault. He shoved Yamano in the television because she did not return his feelings, did not give him the love and affection he felt he deserved from her. And because she didn't? Well she was a bitch and a whore and just had the hots for Namatame because of his money. Clearly she deserved to die because of all that. Saki Konishi was the same damn way, out right smacking him because she wouldn't give him what he deserved.

But it's not his fault they died; it was the TV world, the world of everyone's inner thoughts, that actually killed them, and that is actually very true. That's part of what's so frightening about Adachi's real personality: he never lies. He will deflect the truth when confronted, asking why someone like him would try to hurt someone, but he never outright denies what he does. Even before he is caught, he would use his blurted out facts about what was known in the case to lead the Investigation Team where he wanted them to go, away from him and toward the puppet he had set up to continue his little "game". He deliberately planted evidence to make Namatame look more guilty, but even in the fake evidence he didn't lie, saying people would be "killed" instead of using the "savior" angle, like Namatame believed he was (something that would ultimately be his downfall).

Adachi has a sadistic side to him, though this is best shown in the animated version of Persona 4 more so than the game. As he's talking to the protagonist, spouting out his view on the world, he's letting Magatsu Izanagi beat the ever living crap out of Yu's, not even bothering to direct it as it continues to throw Izanagi around and pound on him. This ends up causing Yu an immense amount of pain while he's laying there trapped by a spell, and even still, Adachi goes so far as to press his gun against his head, nearly shooting him point blank. It was clear he was enjoying seeing the protagonist at his mercy, and he almost sounded bored when it seemed like there was nothing left for him to do except just kill him outright.

His view of the world is exceptionally twisted; Izanami described him best when she said he allowed himself to be turned away from the truth and allowed evil to taint him. Adachi really believes that humanity is trash, that the world is really shitty and there's nothing good to be found in it. He wants the fog to envelop all of Inaba, and he wants to see everyone become Shadows. That would just be easier after all; everyone would get to be free of what society says they're supposed to be, and instead be able to live like they want to. That's all that people want after all; to see the true side of other people, and to show off what they really are. This is another part of what makes Adachi's character frightening: because he's so right about how humanity is, but he just can't see that there are people that can still be themselves and still live by the world's rules. The last part of what makes him so scary is that he's really very smart, actually worthy of being a detective. He easily manipulated everyone around him, keeping everyone away from the truth. Even when it came to Kubo's copycat murder, he had easily pointed out how much he screwed up the crime scene, something he makes a point to tell the protagonist and the others.

From all this, Adachi seems completely irredeemable, and during the battle against him, it really seems like it would end badly for him. However, after the Investigation Team stops him, and after he's had a few months to stew in jail, he relents. Adachi agrees that his game was over and he needed to live by humanity's rules, because he was only (an incredibly flawed) human himself. He shows his willingness to change by providing the protagonist the clue he needed to find out who the true culprit behind the events in Inaba was. It was a small gesture, but there is hope for him, however small it may be.

[wantedittobeagame]

POINT OF DEPARTURE: Adachi's AU is a role swap between himself and the canon protagonist, known as Seito Souzen in his story. He is still a detective, however he is placed in the role of the hero and all the baggage that goes with it: social linking, Fool Arcana, Wild Card, ect. He can use different Personae depending on the social links he's formed, in addition to his natural Persona: Izanagi. Because of his different role in the story, he also develops differently personality-wise. His goofy exterior is much less an act and more genuine in this story, however he is still an asshole at heart, and because of his crappy attitude, it takes him much longer to progress than it does for the canon protagonist.

Before going to Inaba, Adachi was an elite detective working in the Tokyo police department, and life was good. That all changed for him during an investigation, where he accidentally shot the suspect of the case. He felt no remorse for it -- the man would have ended up on death row anyway -- and because of this and public outcry, he was quietly demoted and shuffled off to Inaba to be forgotten about. Naturally Adachi was more than a little miffed about this -- he was a damn good detective and always did everything wonderfully, so why should he be punished for doing something the prefecture was going to do anyway? It didn't help that once he arrived in Inaba, the other detectives shunned him as an outsider and his forced partner, Ryoutarou Dojima, kept one eye trained on him like a hawk. Adachi was perfectly content with taking absolutely nothing seriously and getting out of the backwoods town at the first opportunity...

...and then a few days after he arrived in Inaba, a young teenager in a green jacket was found dangling from a TV antenna, dead.

At least things in the hick town were starting to get interesting, especially with the body coming back with the ME unable to find a cause of death. It got even more interesting when the boy that found the body ended up dead, this time hanging from a telephone pole; Adachi had never had a serial murder case this exciting, even in the city!

...and then the second victim's girlfriend came in with "proof" that he knew who his killer was, and everything started to suck.

Saki Konishi had received several messages from the second victim the night before, the most disturbing of which revealed that he knew who murdered the first, and that he was going to confront him -- stupid, of course, no wonder he ended up dead. Adachi's complete disregard for the proof that she provided pissed Saki off, and the two of them scuffled, with him trying to keep her from hitting him. Unfortunately, the fight tripped him up, and they fell toward the TV set in the interrogation room... and through it.

Needless to say, finding out that there was another world beyond the television screen was not in Adachi's plans for that day. The TV world was a dangerous place completely covered in fog, and although they met a friendly bear on the other side that helped Adachi see through the fog and told them that the two victims had been present in the TV, it did very little to help them when Shadows attacked. Outnumbered and cornered, it looked for certain that the two of them would be the next big headline on the news.

That's when Adachi heard the voice of his Persona, and by summoning Izanagi from the sea of the unconscious, he was able to save their lives.

Despite being able to do something ridiculously awesome completely unbelievable, Adachi still did not appreciate the fact that he was probably the only person that could solve the mystery behind the two murders they had on their hands. Even after Saki had faced her own Shadow and accepted herself to obtain her own Persona, he still didn't want to accept what was going on, leading to the first of the many times he would be declared a dumbass. He especially did not appreciate the fact that Saki was insistent on being a part of solving the case, leading to a heated argument between the two of them once Yukiko Amagi was kidnapped. Adachi found it exceptionally ridiculous that she was in the TV, especially since he had just seen a broadcast of her at midnight the other night, something Saki did not believe. At first he was going to let Saki go running into the TV by herself and leave it at that, but morality eventually won out, and he followed her inside to help with saving Yukiko so the Amagi Inn heiress could confront and accept her true self and also obtain a Persona.

Adachi and Saki thought they had outwitted the murderer that time, but it couldn't be any farther from the truth. The next morning after rescuing Yukiko, as Saki left for school, she looked up to see her own brother's lifeless body dangling from a utility pole outside her home.

Even Adachi started taking the TV world and the murderer a little seriously after that, though considering his crappy attitude it did little to help. Saki was forced to be more of a leader, and when your real leader was a twenty-seven-year-old child and your only other member was more concerned about revenge for her dead friends, it made things difficult. On top of it, the three of them were being kept a close eye on by Naoto Shirogane, a private detective that had been called in by the prefectural office. Naoto suspected them of being responsible for the murders, especially Adachi considering all the victims so far had been teenagers, and he was hanging around teenage girls most of the time.

It wasn't long before Naoto's appearance everywhere was a big talk in the town... and suddenly he disappeared, with no explanation as to why. Suspecting his disappearance to be the same as Yukiko, Adachi decided to keep an eye on his unplugged TV at midnight again... and sure enough, there was Naoto. Once again, his Investigation Team jumped in the TV to help Naoto, discovering "he" was actually a "she" in the process, but still managing to succeed in helping her accept herself and return from the TV victorious...

Nezumi | No. 6 (AU) | 1/3

[vindico_mus]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Laure
AGE: 30+
PLAYER JOURNAL: quixotic_dreamer
TIMEZONE: CST
CONTACT: elvellyn
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Zelman Clock

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Kobayashi Nezumi (Surname name given for AU character)
CANON: No. 6 novels
POINT IN CANON: n/a, native to previous game setting
AGE: 18
APPEARANCE: Nezumi is a man of average height, standing at 182cm, and a pale ivory complexion. He has long blue-black hair that reaches down to his shoulder-blades when down, though he usually wears it twisted up into a knot at the back of his head, save for the layers of long bangs that surround his face and piercing gunmetal-gray eyes framed in thick black lashes that rarely reflect any emotion at all. He has a lithe, lean yet muscular build that lends him a natural grace in movement of most any kind.

He does have what appears to be burn scarring across his back; however he has no memory as to how he received it. The old Lady never said and Nezumi never bothered to ask.

When he’s not at work, he’s usually dressed in some form of cargo pants, boots, and long sleeve shirts, sometimes adorned with light jewelry, most of the time not. When working as ‘Eve’, he usually dresses in soft, flowing gowns with only a touch of makeup to highlight his rather androgynous looks.

CANON HISTORY: The Wiki

Previous Game Premise:
New Babylon is a panfandom roleplaying game set in a cyberpunk world, with multiverse elements inspired in part by Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber. The action centers in and around the dystopic arcology New Babylon, one of the last bastions of civilized humanity left in a post-apocalyptic wasteland blanketed by nuclear winter.

Characters can be either offworlders who have been pulled to New Babylon via an ‘experimental glitch,’ or natives who have lived their entire lives in the city; how they cope with life in New Babylon is up to them, whether they choose to carve a life out for themselves in their (new) home, or uncover the truths hidden in back alleys and boardrooms and behind corporate firewalls, or something in-between.

Re: Nezumi | No. 6 (AU) | 2/3

[vindico_mus]

CANON PERSONALITY: His personality is exactly the same as his OU, though I've adjusted the reasons for his thoughts and mannerisms to fit the AU setting.

Nezumi is, in a word, a survivor. He made a choice early on, to dig in deep and claw his way forward - to hold fast to this life he has by any means necessary. And he made that choice, again and again as he grew older. When circumstances, uncertainty, or exhaustion wore him down, he chose to continue to live no matter what. He learned to do whatever it takes in order to ensure his own life reached the next day, and discovered all too soon what the weight of having to take a life felt like, accepted the realities of having to kill another to reach that goal of survival.

He truly believes the axiom ‘Survival of the fittest’.

It’s because of this that he learned to shut people out, to distance himself from them as much as possible to avoid attachment or perceived weakness on his own part. Jagged and jaded to the extreme, he became the perfect example of a hard-hearted loner, utterly cool, aloof, and uninvolved.

Experienced and unaffected on every level.

From his actions and reactions, it’s obvious that Nezumi is a seasoned close-combat fighter with reflexes honed in experience rather than simple instruction. He has an above average grasp of situational awareness, thus can easily take ‘stock’ of the moment and plan accordingly – a skill that makes it exceptionally difficult to catch him off guard. While he is proficient with using whatever is at hand in a fight, his weapon of choice is the switchblades that he always carries on his person.

He’s confident without being cocky in his fighting skill, and doesn’t brag or boast unnecessarily to appear greater than he is (at least in that respect). He’s self-aware enough to recognize his strengths and weaknesses… and how to hide them all.

And yet.

He befriended a trio of mice early on, introduced to him by his guardian - going so far as to call them his companions, and developed a deep, abiding passion for literature. Especially tragedies. He would spend all of his free time in the safety of his home – nothing more than a run down, two bedroom apartment on Level 4 left to him by the old woman that had cared for him after his parents were killed – reading every single book and tome that he managed to salvage from the lowest storage rooms of the abandoned library on Level 2 and what he can reappropriate from the upper levels.

Books on science and technology, on mathematics and engineering, classics and religion. Shelf after shelf, he lost himself in a wealth of knowledge contained in his run down apartment, all stacked in haphazard piles against walls, around his bed, in the hallways and the miniscule kitchen so that the place was little more than a bed, a piano, a couch and a small coffee table, and his interface equipment - all surrounded by his amassed treasures.

He’s mechanically inclined, having developed his own miniature AI that looked like mice, complete with warm fur and fluid movements that he used to both infiltrate the government on the upper Levels and to find Shion again because for him...

Shion is the only one that can evoke such a confusing mix of frustration, irritation, exasperation, joy, and bemusement in Nezumi.

In canon, he can’t help the sarcastic teasing that he used with the other, nor the sharpness with which he berated him for clinging to the bonds Shion still held in No. 6. While talking to Shion, Nezumi revealed a rather telling bit of advice that shows how he views survival:

"Back there, you threw away your citizenship card because it was a danger to us. So are feelings for other people. You get dragged around, pulled this way and that, and before you know it, you're in dangerous territory. Your mama, papa, your grandma, whoever― they're all strangers now. There's no emotional room in you to be concerned about strangers. Your hands are full enough trying to keep yourself alive."

And yet.

For all that he continuously claims that he and Shion are strangers, he always follows harsh criticisms with almost gentle words or actions that reveal the shades of a lie beneath the assertion.

To Nezumi, reality is something that betrays people every day, with a disturbing ease even as it pulls people's lives in unanticipated directions. Reality is something that can coolly and casually fling them into despair, was equally cruel and violent, and utterly absurd. Reality isn’t to be trusted - it could make anything happen at any time, or take anything that was of value without hesitation.

Personal questions are ignored outright by anyone, and downright anger him if asked with any measure of persistence - because by his estimation, they’ll break down the safety barrier of ‘strangers’ that he has set between him and everyone else. It’s in these moments that people see the harder edge to Nezumi, an animalistic quality that bespeaks of a stubborn fight or flight instinct to avoid human attachments.

For all that Nezumi’s actions and words reveal a special case for Shion, this skittishness and wariness has become something too far ingrained within Nezumi. He also reveals, in constant subtle ways, that his own grasp on reality is often suspect. In canon, when spoken to by Shion with a blunt honesty, Nezumi automatically assumes Shion is quoting lines from a book or play. He doesn’t always connect sincere words and action to the truth or feeling, as he’s never really had the experiences in his life that would indicate those things exist outside of said book and plays.

It’s a weakness that only Shion has been unwittingly gifted the right to see by Nezumi, though Nezumi himself is quite unaware.

He uses harsh, often cutting words to maintain that distance between him and everyone else, then turns right around and softens the blow with an act of kindness or softer reassurances if that person is Shion. He’s a constant contradiction, but only with Shion.

And the reason? Nezumi firmly believes that he and Shion will become enemies one day. Because of Shion’s strong desire to still keep and protect those few bods he holds within No.6 (or in this case, New Babylon) and Nezumi’s intense hatred for all that No. 6 (New Babylon) stands for, Nezumi can’t see or accept that there will be a middle ground.

It’s one of the many ways Nezumi shows that his world view is very much ‘black and white’. Upper Levels, Lower Levels, holding onto those bonds or cutting all ties, survival of self over acts of kindness to others. All things he views in strict lines, save for the few instances he crosses those lines.

Cosmic Boy | Legion of Super-Heroes Comics

[rokkofthelegion]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Kylie
AGE: 27
PLAYER JOURNAL: http://lady_sith.livejournal.com/
TIMEZONE: UTC+10:00
CONTACT: chemicallyincompetent on plurk
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Cosmic Boy/Rokk Krinn
CANON: Legion of Super-Heroes, Threeboot version
POINT IN CANON: After his last appearance in the series at the end of ‘Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes’ issue 30.
AGE: 19
APPEARANCE: http://s608.photobucket.com/user/LadySith/media/Cos2.jpg.html?sort=3&o=7
Well muscled and athletic, Rokk has short dark brown hair and blue eyes. Standing at 5’7” he carries himself with a sense of confidence and authority which tends to make him seem older than he really is.

CANON HISTORY: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Super-Heroes_%282004_team%29
The wiki isn’t that detailed though, so I've summarised the main points of the series.

As there's virtually no background for the Legion or half the characters given canonically but based off other versions of both and the odd background detail it seems likely Cos’ backstory is the same as in previous versions which is what I've used here.

A native of the impoverished world of Braal (where everyone has magnetic powers for reasons) and born into a typical family with low socio-economic status, Rokk Krinn would ordinarily have been destined for an unassuming life if it weren't for his exceptionally strong natural magnetic abilities. At a young age he managed to break into the professional magno-ball circuit, a popular Braalian sport, which allowed him to support his family financially with his winnings. The youngest ever winner of the Cosmic Games, he became a local celebrity, being given the nick-name ‘Cosmic Boy’ by the local press (so the dorky name isn’t his fault at least).

On an exhibition tour on Earth he ran into two other teenagers - Imra Ardeen, a native of Titan where everyone is telepathic, and Garth Ranzz who possessed unusual lightning powers. The three of them were inspired by the injustices they saw both on Earth and elsewhere where any underager had virtually no rights of their own to the point of often being conscripted in conflicts and constantly monitored in day-to-day life, to found the Legion to fight back both against this oppression and against the stagnant, unbending United Planets. From the initial three the Legion grew, becoming a powerful political movement spread across many worlds with a core team of powered individuals who fought back for those who couldn't fight for themselves. Or that was the idea anyway. To be perfectly honest the Legion spent as much time fighting amongst itself as it did fighting injustice.

But despite this they did their share of hero-ing, one of their major achievements (and where the comics kick off) coming when they stopped the schemes of a man named Lemnos who sought to start a war within the United Planets to force political change. After saving the UP, the Legion was signed on as agents of the government thanks to the impulsive actions of founding member Garth and Rokk started making noise about resigning as Legion leader. This got put on hold as Supergirl somehow accidentally travelled forward to their time from the past and, being told she was suddenly a thousand years in the future after having just learned her entire planet was gone and her infant cousin was all grown up oh, and by the way, she's also got an assortment of superpowers now, she not unreasonably figured it was all a bizarre dream she was having.

Rokk, figuring she was potentially dangerous until she came to terms with reality decided the most appropriate course of action was to poison her, drug her and then essentially slap her in the face with the fact that almost all her family and race were dead and had been for some time. This plan was conceived about five minutes after another Legionnaire convinced him that he didn't, as he'd originally thought, have a crush on her. Heaven forbid he ever actually goes through a break-up. Although, in his defense, he did try to make her see reality more gently to begin with.

But while they’re traumatising Supergirl they find out about a guy named Mon-El, a Daxamite (read: Superman with lead being his weakness instead of kryptonite) who’s been trapped in a Kryptonian prison dimension known as the Phantom Zone for a thousand years. Mon-El had been placed there by Superman to stop him dying from lead poisoning as time doesn’t really pass there (though he’s aware of the outside world somehow) and spending an eternity dying slowly while watching the world go on around him rather than just putting him out of his misery probably seemed like a good idea at the time. They temporarily cure him, in time for a race known as the Dominators (just in case there was any confusion about whether or not the ugly aliens were evil or not) to take over the Earth by way of a virus that turned their technology against them.

Being hunted by enemy forces and with no way to communicate or get reinforcements, Rokk chose to get himself and another member of the Legion captured so they could feed the Dominators false information when interrogated and trick them into letting the Legion's forces onto their poorly defended, still technologically active homeworld. They catch the Dominators off-guard and essentially conquer their planet. But while doing so they learn about a failsafe plan that they can't avert that will guarantee the Dominators will be a threat again in the not-too distant future.

This being the case, Rokk makes the controversial choice to blow up the planet with everyone on it and sacrifice Mon-El – who’s dying of lead poisoning again - to do so. Or that's what most of the Legion is made to think. In reality the entire planet is sent to the Phantom Zone with Mon-El. So rather than murder an entire species, he condemns them to a potential infinity of sensory deprivation and isolation. And then he disappears off with some people who claim to be from the future and want him to come play hero with them without telling anyone where he's going or if he'll ever be back.


CANON PERSONALITY: As suggested by some of his actions, Rokk can be an unbelievable ass, made worse by the fact he generally believes he's in the right. He pretty much insults his team to their faces – on more than one occasion a Legionnaire will comment about how Cos says another is stupid – and yet expects them to still follow him. It says something about his ability to deal with the conflicting personalities under him that they actually do – to some extent at least.

Single-minded and stubborn, he can be incredibly ruthless when it comes to achieving his goals and doesn’t tend to appreciate that others might not be willing to resort to certain means. He favours a direct approach to most problems, due to generally having the power – as an individual or a team – to be able to bulldoze over most issues. That said, he’s far from stupid and is more than capable of talking his way out of problems or scheming up an alternative solution. He’s also not above taking the easy way out of a problem and has more than once manipulated events to avoid making a difficult decision himself or allowed someone else to take the blame for his actions.

In general fairly level-headed, especially in times of crisis, he nevertheless has a hot temper and when he does blow up it tends to be quite spectacular. Add to this the fact he hates losing or admitting he might be wrong and he can be confrontational at the best of times. And a giant hypocrite, another fault he doesn’t tend to acknowledge.

Despite his faults he honestly wants to change the world for the better and is completely dedicated to this goal. He’s made a lot of personal sacrifices for the Legion – for example, it’s shown at one point that his father has some potentially terminal illness for which he’s receiving treatment but despite this Rokk rarely visits his family, putting the Legion first even when faced with the possibility of never seeing his home again. He tends to expect others to make the same sacrifices if need be and is unsympathetic when they don’t meet these expectations.

At his heart Cos is an idealist who passionately believes that a single person can change the world for the better. This idealism is tempered by his practical nature as he knows that ideas can’t achieve anything without action. He’s loyal and honestly believes in people, even if he doesn’t always like them, and would risk his life for a complete stranger or someone he hates without even thinking. He has a strict code of morals – even if it’s not always consistent – that he adheres to and he expects others to be similarly dedicated to doing what (he believes) is right.


POINT OF DEPARTURE: After he’s disappeared off with a group claiming to be heroes from the future.

ABILITIES: Can I cheat and say he's essentially Magneto powers-wise? No? Fine.

Like all members of his race, Cos has comic-book ‘magnetism’ which means he can manipulate any metal except the rare alloy 'plot convenientium'. He's able to lift massive objects with his powers and once threatened to rip all the iron from a teammates blood, a threat that was taken pretty seriously so is presumably legit.

He can generate EM fields which he's canonically used to create force-fields - strong enough to contain something as hot as a small sun, disrupt other force-fields, fly (somehow) and also to manipulate and interfere with electronics. He has a sense for EM fields too so can generally tell if there's active electronics around and probably always knows which way is north and canonically has been described as a frequent source of EM bursts powerful enough to be detected from another planet.

While it’s implied all of the Legion have some hand-to-hand combat training courtesy of Karate Kid (no, really) Cos does tend to rely on his powers more than anything so in a situation where he can’t use them he’ll struggle to defend himself. Physically he’s pretty much human with same vulnerabilities and may in fact be more vulnerable to illnesses than a modern day person as the Legion’s future is portrayed as very clean and clinical.

INVENTORY; His costume and Legion flight ring which as well as allowing him to fly acts as a personal communicator, shields him from public tracking/monitoring systems and provides protection from the elements up to and including the vacuum of space. It’s coded to his specific bio-signature so can’t be used by anyone else without some tinkering. I’d like him to be able to keep the ring if possible even if it’s non-functional or limited.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? The universal language in the Legion’s time is Interlac and it’s shown that several members of the Legion also know some English as well as whatever languages are spoken on their respective homeworlds – Braalian in Cos’ case.


S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:
This is Cosmic Boy of-

[Except for the initial falter, Cos’ mental ‘voice’ is crisply professional, cool and steely.]

I’m looking for someone with sufficient technical skills to help me with a problem. Anyone who has some familiarity with Valorium or Nth Metal would be of most use, or simply any individual experienced with sufficiently advanced technology…. If your homeplanet hasn’t developed interstellar travel yet don’t waste your time.

And while I have your attention, it would be best to arrange some group tactical and planning sessions. If we’re going to be entering potentially hazardous situations I- we need to be aware of each other’s capabilities. If no one has any objections I propose we meet as soon as the current ‘Jaunt’ is complete.

Cosmic Boy out.


THIRD PERSON:
Rokk sighed, letting himself slouch tiredly once he was certain Phantom Girl and Dream Boy had left. Picking his way carefully through the wreckage that was all that remain of Legion HQ - again - he muttered to himself "Why is it that half the battles we fight start in our own headquarters?"

Not that it was going to be his concern for much longer. The Legion election was racing to a close and soon enough the new leader would get to enjoy all the 'perks' of the job. He just hoped whoever the United Planets planned on sending to secure his arrest arrived quickly. Not that he was in a hurry to see whatever prison he was likely going to be spending the rest of his life rotting in but waiting for the inevitable was far worse. No matter what Tinya might say on the matter, for the moment he was a war criminal, guilty of committing genocide and even the UP weren't so inept and dull-witted to let him roam free for long.

The best he could hope for right now was that they took him away before most of the Legion found out what was happening and everyone started choosing sides again. Although, if it did come to that, this time around his side was going to be laughably small.

A faint gleam among the rubble caught his eye and bending down Rokk tugged it free to see the old statue they'd been given during the Legion's early days. Himself, Garth and Imra, side-by-side, united and hopelessly optimistic, certain that they could change the galaxy. What he wouldn't give to be able to go back then. But that was selfish - the Legion had achieved so much already and could do even more still. They'd just... be doing it under different leadership. So long as someone half-way competent was voted in... not all the candidates were hopeless.

Well, there was his bright side to a life-sentence - no need to see the fallout if one of the team's less competent or more morally bankrupt members was elected. He almost couldn't wait.

He was jerked from his thoughts by a crackle of static and an unfamiliar voice saying his name. The three strangers made an interesting offer to say the least - considering his options, it wasn’t a hard choice and he quickly slipped the Legion ring from his finger, leaving it so the team would know he went willingly and stepped forward to see what the future held.

Re: Cosmic Boy | Legion of Super-Heroes Comics

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

The Legion flight ring will no longer act as a communications device or shield from monitoring, but it will still allow flight & protect from hostile environments!

David McDonald (AKA The Doctor) || Doctor Who AU || Reserved

[impulsive_charm]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Jeni
AGE: 31
PLAYER JOURNAL: NA
TIMEZONE:  ET
CONTACT: plurk: substituteskull
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: NA

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Professor David McDonald (The Doctor)
CANON: Doctor Who
POINT IN CANON: Post Year That Never Was.  Specifically, just before the Master refuses to regenerate during "The Last of the Time Lords" episode)
AGE: 903
APPEARANCE: The Doctor is 6 foot one, tall, lanky, with expressive hedgehog hair and brown eyes.  He rarely is found wearing anything other than suits, his long brown duster coat given to him by Janis Joplin, and a pair of trainers.    Ocassionally, he dons a pair of glasses because he thinks it makes him look smarter.  David, on the other hand, wears glasses for corrective reasons but prefers contacts.  We wears suits as well, mostly because of his work, though he insists that trainers are strictly for leisure and have no place at his job.  He carries around a curious fobwatch, long sing broken.
CANON HISTORY:  The Doctor and all of his incarnations have a very, very long past.  This is a link from the Doctor Who wiki on the Tenth Doctor alone.
CANON PERSONALITY:  The Tenth incarnation of the Doctor is by far the most morally and emotionally complex of his previous regenerations. This Doctor is rude, light-hearted, witty, sarcastic, jovial, manic, forgetful, clever, burdened and remorseless...often all at the same time. He is extremely excitable, given to babbling, and often talks as if his sole intent is to gain the interest or at least the attention of those around him.

The Doctor has a selective morality. He is just as likely to be cruel to his enemies as forgiving and kind depending on his mood or his own emotional ties to the situation. Though many other incarnations of the Doctor abhor the thought of killing or harming living creatures, the Tenth Doctor often appears to have no qualms about it.  Because of this, the Doctor has earned the title: "The Oncoming Storm." Intelligent races that know about him typically tend to fear him. He does, however, suffer survivor's guilt over the destruction of his home planet, something he blames himself for doing though it was the only way to stop his people from destroying the entire universe. Because of this and his long life span, he is an incredibly lonely man, no matter how well he hides it.

The Doctor comes off as being carefree and a wild spirit. He shirks duty in favour of sightseeing. His favourite race is, unsurprisingly, humanity because only humans can see the universe with as much curiosity as he does. For this reason, he often takes on human travelling companions.  Though rarely linked romantically to these companions, this incarnation of the Doctor sees a little more action than his previous regenerations. He is flirty and generally is quite pleased when he is kissed. However, he seems to prefer hand holding and hugs to other sorts of physical, sexual expressions and comes off as being quite asexual most of the time.

Re: David McDonald (AKA The Doctor) || Doctor Who AU || Reserved

[impulsive_charm]

POINT OF DEPARTURE: After discovering that he was not the only Gallifreyan to have survived the burning of his planet, the Doctor accidentally awoke the Master from his human confinement and set off a chain of events that included the total and complete domination of the human race by the Master.  Suffering for a year under this oppression as a captive, the Doctor was eventually able to overcome the Master through the combined will of the planet.  In the confrontation, the Master was wounded.  Because the Master is the last of the Time Lords, once the Doctor used the TARDIS to revert the world to a point several years prior in order to allow humanity to forget the Master and his deeds, he used the Chameleon Arc to once more turn him human.  For a time, the Doctor stuck close to the human Master but his own guilt got the best of him and before too long, he used the Chameleon Arc on himself, writing a new personality to fill his head and give himself a holiday from being a Time Lord.

Unfortunately, David did not end up being a holiday, but more of a new life.  He has many of the Doctor's characteristics (including a love of licking) but he is completely devouted to "Harry Saxon" (AKA the Master).  David has taken a job at Westminister Academy teachning physics and works from time to time off the books for JPL and the European Space Agency, submitting accidental breakthroughs in technology that come to him from time to time in dreams.  He is a somewhat skittish teacher, loves animals, and would do anything for a friend.

ABILITIES: The Doctor is a member of a humanoid, alien race called the Gallifreyans and is a Time Lord (the oligarchic ruling class of the planet Gallifrey) While he appears human in every way (save for some interesting internal additions), he is over nine hundred years old and has gone through a process called regeneration nine times. All Time Lords are given twelve regenerations which allow each member to 'cheat death.' Regenerating causes the Time Lord to change physically, mentally, and emotionally, making him or her both the same and different. All memories of previous regenerations are retained, but everything from taste buds to personality to style preferences are dramatically different after each cycle.

The Doctor has two hearts, allowing for one to be injured or disabled while still allowing him to live. He also has a respiratory bypass, allowing him to breath far less often than humans, survive poison gas and even strangulation. Gallifreyans are much stronger than humans and far more resilient. They are also able to enter a healing sleep to repair themselves. The Doctor has shown superior senses of low-light sight, ability to taste chemical compositions down to blood type, and enhanced smell. 

The Doctor can speak several thousand languages despite having a time machine that translates for him (and his companions). He is able to retain vast amounts of information, though he admits to forgetting details here and there. He is also proficient when dealing with large varieties of technology and can cobble fantastic devices together rather easily with the right tools and a little know how.

David, as a human version of the Doctor, created through the Chameleon Arc of the TARDIS, does not have any of these abilities.  Genetically human, he has poor eye sight and must wear glasses or contacts.  He is still a genius, however, and consults for various space agencies on new schematics for propulsion or fuel or solar arrays that come to him in his sleep.

INVENTORY; David has his wallet with a few pounds in it and an Oyster tube card, his photo ID allowing him access to Westminster Academy where he teaches physics, and a picture of Harry and a few other fellow teachers from a retreat.  He also has a shoulder bag with a contact case, some contact solution, a weird USB drive (his sonic screwdriver), a pair of gloves, fish food, his lunch, books, and a lesson plan in it.  He has his fobwatch too, but it's broken.  He can't figure out how to open it.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:

[Despite the smile on his face, David looks terrified. His hair stands straight on end and his glasses are askew.]

Horrible timing and so, so sorry to be a bother but has anyone seen a short, brown haired man with a temper and likely a 'kick me' sign on his back wandering around shaking his fists or throwing chalk at people?

Very nice, incredibly friendly, answers to the name of Harold Saxon?

[Wait. What?]

If so, could you tell him that I did not tape the sign onto his back and send him in my direction once he's agreed to drop the chalk?


THIRD PERSON:
No one seemed to understand what it was like to find the TARDIS as they did. The Doctor almost felt as if his very life had been drained out of him. He loved her like no other and to see her spread out, bare and brutalized, was enough go make him ill. One didn't spend most of their life with a living, breathing piece of perfection and not fall terribly in love with it. He swallowed hard. "We have to end this."

Captain Jack, meddling, wonderful, itchy Fixed Point that he was pushed on ahead of them all, leading the way as if it was his right. The Doctor didn't mind so long as he and Martha played their parts well in the struggle to come. Getting the perception filter around Saxon to reveal him as the Master would be impossible, but the Doctor was fond of impossible things, much like Carroll's White Queen. He just didn't have to think of them when he could simply live them.

The Master had to be stopped, not only for the sake of his ship, but also for the sake of humanity and for the Master himself. They couldn't go on like this. The elaborateness of the plot, at least, gave the Doctor hope. The other Time Lord was as beautifully brilliant and as clever as he had ever been. He could still reason with him. There was still a chance!

No matter how slim it ended up being.

Slim, it turned out, was not the proper word in any of the thousands of languages that the Doctor knew. One wave of the Master's laser screwdriver and plan B had to be enacted. Now, it was all up to Martha Jones. The Doctor only had to survive long enough for her to succeed.

erica reyes || teen wolf || reserved

[better]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Christina
AGE: 35
PLAYER JOURNAL: lollobrigida
TIMEZONE: Central US
CONTACT: PM to journal
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Hayley Marshall

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Erica Reyes
CANON: Teen Wolf
POINT IN CANON: During her time in the Vault over the summer. Post S2.
AGE: 16
APPEARANCE:

Erica stands at 5’8” and has a healthy weight. She is more curvy than she is muscular. After she is transformed into a werewolf, she wears low cut tops, tight jeans, the required leather jacket, and takes on a very vamp-vixen style to her dress. She usually wears bold/lighter colors paired with darker accents. Bright blue with black. Tan tank top/dark blue jeans. She usually wears heels that are generally stilettos and even her chunky boots have a rather high heel to them. A majority of her accessories are silver - such as rings and any metal stud accents on her boots or jackets.

Her hair is long, blond and usually full of loose ringlet curls. She wears it down almost all the time and has at times gone to the length of straightening it all and it has also been seen in a wave/loose crimp. Mostly, she’s just got a lot of hair and lets it stay loose so that it’s pretty and can whip around during fight scenes.

She wears eyeliner (sometimes lined with black and an additional color to match her outfit) and a glossy look to whatever color she puts on her lips. With the exception of her first appearance with her new look, Erica's lip colors have stuck to a very natural pink. The deep red she wore the first day she was a werewolf, when she made her grand entrance wasn't really seen again. The rest of her make-up is a slightly neutral palate with no real emphasis put on eyeshadow or blush.



(Description of her werewolf form is included in her abilities section.)


CANON HISTORY: Wiki Link || Personally Written History Section

Erica Reyes 2 of 3

[better]

CANON PERSONALITY:

Living most of her life as an epileptic, suffering from tonic-clonic seizures (grand mal seizures), Erica has learned the hard way how to manage many of her difficult situations. She’s coped with being the subject of negative comments, the target of practical jokes, and even worse the experience of being cyber-bullied as an online video was posted of her experiencing a seizure. While this is not a positive environment for Erica to have her education in, she handles it all with a determined look and a willingness to push past it.

She’s more than just determined; she is willing to prove to herself that she can do things that others don't believe she's capable of doing. When the rock wall is presented as a challenge, she doesn’t stand down from it. Erica instead opts to climb it (when alone) which proves to be not entirely smart. The physical challenge puts strain on her muscles and even though she climbs up a fair amount, proving to herself that it is possible, she still triggers a seizure and falls from the great height. It is a choice she made, and one that she knows she shouldn’t have made, but she did anyway. She doesn’t like being the weak one, doesn’t like having that sort of choice be out of her control. In fact, gaining control over her life and her body is one of her main motivators. Erica chooses to stop taking her medicine for epilepsy in some attempt to regain control over what she does to her body. The side-effects that present themselves due to her meds aren't attractive and she's trying to regain her sense of self with the choices she makes.

“What if I told you that all of this could go away? The side effects, the symptoms… All of it.
And what if all those things not only went away, but everything else got even better?” -- Derek Hale in Ice Pick

When she’s given a chance to have a new lease on life, to be given a way to take everything life has given her and get what she believes she deserves, she takes it rather quickly. Derek offers her the Bite, to become a werewolf, and with it comes the promise of a way to let everything get better for her. Erica accepts that offer and she doesn’t look back. It’s the forward momentum that she has always craved. She doesn’t ask him questions about it, doesn’t have reservations or hesitations. She’s seeking a way to become healthy and this is the shortcut she always wanted.

Becoming a werewolf allows her inner strength to become an outer force. She’s confident and exudes the level of pride that doesn’t just come from a stride, but it comes from deep within her. She doesn’t care what others think of her and she plays the part of the top of the food chain. Erica dresses in seductive clothing, struts around, and makes sure everyone notices her now. She feels like she has a right to be noticed and a right to make other people’s lives difficult, since that’s all they did to her.

“Just because you got the alpha bite makeover doesn't give you a license to go around destroying people.”

“Why not? That’s all anybody used to do me.” - Stiles & Erica in Restraint

In a way, having the bite simply develops traits that she already had within her. Her willingness to take risks, her desire to have strength and not rely on medication were all things she was displaying before the Bite. This just gave her the confidence and physical strength to support herself, to not allow herself to be the victim anymore. Instead, she is finally allowed to be the aggressor - to create pain instead of suffer from it, and to be above everyone else instead of on the ground where they can laugh at her.

With enough attitude to give anyone a hard time, regardless of who they are or were to her before, Erica tries to assert herself as something to be looked at, even touched, if it's on her terms. However, there are still aspects of her that seem very much like a front, as though she realizes she's putting this new persona out there and she needs to continue pushing that presence forward. There are quiet moments of realization that can be spotted, such as when she's at her locker and watching her reflection as she fixes her make-up. That's a moment of quiet and when she smells Scott behind her, courtesy of her enhanced sense of smell, she takes that split second to almost center herself and present that high gloss shine to him. Except, even during her brave faced confession about how someone videotaped her seizure, the cracks in her are easy to see as she allows her hurt and anger to come out. She manages to bottle it up quickly, but the flash of anger is real and shows the hurt that she uses as part of her justification of her behavior.

“You know, the only good thing about seizures was that I never remembered them.
Until some jerk-off had to go and put cameras in everybody's phone.”

She’s capable of being trusted, but doesn’t like everything to be on her shoulders; which is good considering she’s part of a pack. Her desire not to be the one that everyone looks to could have proven a challenge since she was the only female in the pack, but her age and lack of time/experience in this new role means she will always look to someone else for guidance. In fact, when they are preparing for the first full moon, Isaac questions why Derek isn't training them properly. As Derek tries to explain, and Isaac expresses his dislike for the "go after the Kanima plan", Erica glances to Isaac as if she's looking to him for his opinion. She brings Boyd with her to tell Derek that they're leaving and there is a sense that it was going to be all three of them confronting Derek, instead of one of them taking a stand against him.

Her loyalty to Derek isn’t as rock solid as it should be because of all that she expected to get from his offer of the Bite. Derek had offered her strength and a way to be free of her illness. However, once the attack in the library takes place all bets are off. Experiencing a seizure - even with her new status of werewolf - means to Erica that she's still weak, that Derek didn't have all the answers she is looking for when it comes to becoming better. For Erica her epilepsy and the seizure she suffers for are the main representation of her weaknesses. Where some have weak spots that they can hide or they can bluff their way through - Erica's seizures actually shut her down. For an epileptic experiencing a seizure is a terrifying thing, because they lose consciousness and black-out. They make her vulnerable and a victim of her own body. When she is offered the bite, she saw it as a moment of being able to have control and realizing that she still doesn't have that control is a terrifying thing. In fact, in the middle of seizing (which is an altered seizure because she doesn't black out completely) she requests going back to Derek, back to the one that promised her that he'd make her better, because she wants to reclaim that strength that he said she could have.

She trusts her pack, ensuring that she can support them in whatever way she can, but she doesn’t trust the leadership. She craves a strong leader and expected it to be Derek, but with crazy circumstances following them everywhere, the safety and security she wants doesn’t feel like it’s close enough for her. She’s not looking to take charge, but she’s looking for her efforts to be needed and used wisely, because she figures she didn’t become what she is to just watch everyone around her fail. Though, despite all of these struggles, Erica would never betray her pack and she proves this by taking the abuse and torture that the Argents give her when she's captured. She doesn't speaking out against her pack to give them up.

“They were trying to warn you; it's electrified.”

“What are you doing with them?”

“At the moment, just keeping them comfortable.
There's no point in torturing them; they won't give Derek up.
The instinct to protect their alpha is too strong.” - Gerard Argent in Master Plan

Regardless of her seeking proper leadership, she’s still struggling with her own identity and her own place in the pack. She’s used her new strengths and confidence, but even with that her environment and peers are placing her into situations that require her to make drastic choices. Things aren't the same now that she's a werewolf. This isn't just her getting fancy new powers and continuing on with her daily life. She's put into the middle of a power struggle between opposing forces. The Kanima is out there, the Argents are a threat, and there's also actual high school to deal with. Where she used to have a crush on Stiles, this new confidence should give her a better chance with him and she should be able to try and actually get the guy. Instead, she needs to gain the upper hand and take him out of the way. It's not the best way to win the guy, when she clobbers him with a piece of his own car. It’s very much the usual story of any teenage girl that is trying to find her identity, but the bonus is that she had this new facet shoved onto her and shifting everything a lot quicker.

Capable of withstanding a lot of pain, according to Derek, falls to her simply because she's female. When Derek is preparing them for the full moon, she gets the brunt of the physical torture devices because, as Derek states to Isaac, she can withstand more pain. It's not exactly a proven way to deal with her shift, but it's what Derek believes he can use without time for anything more effective to be taught. The lack of training and being able to educate them means that Derek is relying heavily on using pain to shut down their shift on the full moon, instead of teaching them how to find their own anchor. The shift that comes from the full moon is a lot for her to take all at once. Her history with epilepsy and seizures don't exactly help her with the actual shift, but it can be part of what helps her cope with the pain. She's endured physical trauma as well as the mental abuse that comes from growing up as someone that is made to be the subject of jokes and teasing. If she's looking to find an anchor, I don't think hers would be in anger (like Derek), but instead in her tolerance and her new association to what it means to have someone supporting you. Of course, she ends up needing to be knocked out to be stopped, but it's still her pack that does that for her.

There's proof that she is still stronger even when she's not fully shifted. By being the one to restrain Jackson when he's attacking Scott and by lifting the weight off of Jackson's chest - these are both instances of showing just how physically strong she is. It's another aspect of her new form that she takes a great deal of pride in. It's part of what makes her valuable to the pack and her increased pain tolerance is something that she can appreciate too. Considering most of her life has been burdened by pain and struggle, being stronger than the others in her pack is an incredible thing. You can even see it in her eyes when she's at the rave in "Raving" that she's experiencing a new side of her life. Attending a rave that previously would have triggered her into seizures with the flashing lights alone instead is somewhere that she can be free and enjoy her own body. She's prepared to take risks for her pack and to make sure that Derek gets what he needs, but beyond that it's another step into the control over her life and body that she's always wanted.

Like most teenagers, Erica frustrates easily. This isn't exactly a good thing, considering her frustration can lead to anger. That anger can present itself in a physical manifestation, like when she pushes Stiles against the wall, her claws showing against his chest. It's impulse control, but more than that it's just her lack of training and her frustration/anger making her lose control of her shift. Which is a big part of what Erica had sought to gain with the Bite, control over herself. She wants control over her future, over her health, over the options she has available to herself. Another driving force for her is her desire to belong, but it's difficult to feel as though you are part of a family (her Pack) when 'Dad' (Derek) is off with the black sheep of the family (Jackson) and your 'Brother' (Isaac) left you to go find a new family. After years of being pushed aside and being looked down upon and made fun of, she thought she had something, but now she’s unsure and trying to figure out where she really belongs.

Her parents aren't mentioned, beyond her father being an insurance investigator that keeps all of his email - dating all the way back to 1995. I think that it's interesting that while Isaac is missing his parental figure which would explain why there isn't much concern about his runaway status, there aren't concerned parents talking to the Sheriff about their missing daughter. Isaac is referred to as one of the runaways, by Ms. Morell, which would lead me to believe that the other one is Erica. Especially since she's shown showing up with her new look at lunchtime and then ditching the rest of the school day.

I'm also a firm believer in the thought that Erica's crush on Stiles also guided what she did with her free time pre-bite. Her seizures and the medicine she had to take for them wasn't who she wanted to be. The same pop-culture things that Stiles liked, I like to believe, Erica looked into as well. Trying to give herself an escape in media as well as allow her something to talk to Stiles about. It also explains her vamp/glamazon-like appearance after her change. Having read comics and seen the type of movies that would appeal to Stiles, the female form is often depicted in low-cut tops, bustiers, and leather. She ends up most of the time dressing as though she's waiting to change into her catsuit and go steal from unsuspecting jewelry store owners. (One outfit is even very similar to what Dinah Lance (Black Canary) wears.) She dresses the way she wants to and doesn’t care what people think of her now, because she’s proud of what she has. Before the bite the attention she gathered wasn't what she wanted, but now she has control over that aspect of her life. Erica's outfits draw more attention to her physical form, curves, and the blond curls of her hair.


POINT OF DEPARTURE: Erica is arriving during her time trapped in the bank vault where Deucalion and his Alpha Pack have been keeping her, Boyd, and Cora held.

saitou hajime | shinsengumi hakuouki kitan | not reserved | 1 of ?

[auguriesofinnocence]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Ari
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL: Don’t have one!
TIMEZONE: CST/CDT
CONTACT: plurk: redrumreversal
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/a

saitou hajime | shinsengumi hakuouki kitan | not reserved | 2 of ?

[auguriesofinnocence]

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Saitou Hajime
CANON: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan (GAME)
POINT IN CANON: Chapter 4; right after making it to Osaka Castle.
AGE: 24
APPEARANCE:

a red-breasted robin in a cage
puts all heaven in a rage

Height: 168 cm / 5.55 ft.



CANON HISTORY:

a starv'd dog at his master's gate
predicts the ruin of the state

Birthright

---

"It must be fortunate to be aware of one's own gift and develop it. When did you find out about yours?"
"That's...that must be when I have nothing left but this sword. This is all I have, simple as that."

While many leading men are born in a storm, Saitou was born in its preliminary silence. The Tokugawa shogun had been in power for over two centuries and spent a large majority of its rule isolating Japan from the rest of the world. The fear of foreign influence on the nation’s pure soul ripened in early Edo era (1603-1868), leading to a series of highly-restrictive trade laws known as sakoku (“locking the country”). Under sakoku, the gallows filled with the bodies of any foreigner who dared to enter Japan’s borders or citizen that tried to escape them.

In 1853, that all changed.

The Americans, a young commonwealth from the West, arrived on the island country’s shores with a demand for trade and an envoy of warships to back their commitment. The nuances of the West’s threat aside, the shogun was forced to reckon with the overwhelming military superiority and concede. Shortly after, several other European powers secured trade agreements and ushered in the end of an age.

Whether or not Saitou, nine at the time, was cognizant of these events is never explicitly stated. Indeed, very little mention has been made of his life previous to the Shinsengumi. What information is available is that he was born into a gokenin clan, the lowest ranking vassals serving directly beneath the Tokugawa shogun, by way of purchase. Japan operated on a rigid caste system at the time, but his family was able to buy favor and upgrade from disputable warrior status to firmly samurai by the time he came to the world.

As such, Saitou was trained from a fragile age to fit the mold of the samurai. He was to kill; to yield to a lord as an honorable extension of Their will, forever faithful. Perhaps because he was never given another option, the lifestyle was embraced wholly and he reached a master's level in iaijutsu by the age of eighteen.

The sword mastery was double-edged in reception. As a result of left-handedness so often being corrected, Saitou found very few individuals who could defend against a southpaw's attack.

But it was also a reason for persecution.

He rarely, if at all, received recognition for his talents. When challenging martial arts schools in Edo, every match he won was squabbled down to accusations of cheating and disqualification. Saitou continued the pursuit regardless, not requiring the acknowledgment of any but his clan and their respective daimyo. He was never so petty as to be dissatisfied with the truth alone.

Shieikan Dojo / Leaving Edo

---

In the sweltering heat of 1862, a quiet voice interrupted the lively banter in the Shieikan training hall. Saitou, in the manner already common to the teenager, had arrived at the dojo without drawing the attention of the residing combatants. Here, he approached his future comrades with a politely thrown gauntlet.

Shieikan’s tenants specialized in Tennen Rishin-ryu, a style that was applied in active combat and used armaments as heavy as real swords in training. The norm for a contest was bamboo or other light material, so traditionally the dojo would request a nearby school to act on their behalf for challenges.

A foul temper deviated that precedence. Souji Okita interrupted to address the stranger, lauding hostile invitations for a match with Shieikan’s weapon of choice. Saitou retained his usual stoicism, equally as accustomed to sparring with wooden weapons as he was their loudmouth counterparts and accepted the conditions.

When the talking had finished, they met as warriors. Formal rules were quickly ignored, the full moment seized for how preciously rare it was. Saitou had met an equal, a challenge, and uncertain he ever might find another chance, he fought without abandon.

Bruising blows were ignored on either side of the battle as excitement and compliments were traded between each merciless advance.

Nagakura Shinpachi uselessly tried to intervene, completely ignored by both sides. Hijikata Toshizo’s order finally suppressed the skirmish and pulled the two apart for much needed reprieve. Saitou, panting, spent a moment to savor the end of a good thing and readied himself for the disparaging remarks.

Kondou Isami’s voice was anything but that. Stunned, Saitou’s eternal composure wavered for a glimpse of raw honesty. Kondou just ignored his left-handedness, seemingly unaware of the social stigma attached even when the offender softly pointed it out. After Hijikata echoed his master's sentiments, the first ties of an earnest loyalty began to thread.

From then on, Saitou made regular visits to Shieikan for training and shared meals. He did his best to leave no impression on the dojo’s existence, paying every coin he might cost and keeping as a shadow to those around. He had no mind to press this delicate treasure he had found; he would not interrupt its natural state.

No matter how content he had been with knowing his skill, the acknowledgment – and perhaps, acceptance – within such an exceptional group of warriors forever changed him.

Unfortunately, Saitou's naiveté proved problematic a few months later. He engaged the son of a hatamoto-ranked clan (a social class above the gokenin) in what he thought an honorable duel and won by survival. Instead, he was accused of murder and forced to leave Edo. Without a clan to serve, he ceased to be a samurai and laid his swords down.

Joining the Roshigumi

---

Japan’s deteriorating political structure built into a cresting tsunami that darkened the country’s skies with ominous warnings for the future. All too soon, the shores of a falling regime would lather with the blood of civil war.

Kyoto had begun to feel that shadow as spring of 1863 approached. Support for the shogun had steadily festered the more foreign powers breached Japan’s culture and a decade later, it was finally busting through the skin.

As one power declined, another brightened. The emperor, who was believed to be the son of Heaven itself but only nominally a leader at this point of time, gained momentum among the people. Possibly to appease the mounting hostilities, the reigning shogun Iemochi broke tradition and planned a visit to the imperial home in Kyoto.

Previously, the Tokugawa shogunate had made public spectacles of the royal court's submission by acting as the hosts of each conference. Iemochi's decision shattered a practice well over a century in the making, spurring a flurry of unprecedented action in its wake.

In order to protect the shogun in the increasingly dangerous Kyoto, groups of highly skilled ronin from Edo were recruited to act as Iemochi's guard. They became known as the Roshigumi (“Defenders of Kyoto”) and included among their prominent ranks the Shieikan dojo’s residents.

When word of this reached Saitou’s ear, it was only a matter of time.

He describes himself as having been “nonexistent” in the transition from leaving Edo to joining the Roshigumi. He trained students at a family friend's dojo in Kyoto for a while, his steps feeling hollow by the lack of blades to weight them. It was the small pieces of life threw him the most, from the emptiness on his hip to the sudden convenience of unarmed travel.

For a long time after arriving to the Roshigumi’s doorstep in the fringe town of Mibu, he waited in silence.

When later asked why he had taken so long to enter, Saitou touched the hilt on his hip and replied, " ... To make a resolution. Resolution to use this sword again."

Roshigumi to Shinsengumi

---

By the time the discredited iaidoka arrived, the Roshigumi he found was a fraction of its original mass. Only a handful of members remained for reasons he never asked about and never would. The reunion itself was warm and welcoming, and shortly thereafter Saitou fell into their ranks with ease.

The public was less inclined towards the same ingratiating attitude. The Roshigumi frequently met difficulty on patrol, lacking authority and recognition to sway the hearts of citizens disgruntled with the shogun. Outlaws were hidden and defended in the same hissing breaths of insults - and not all of these actions were so unjust.

Serizawa Kamo, the acting commander, was instrumental in establishing the Roshigumi's political relations with the Aizu Domain and being granted any legal status. Although Kondou was of technically the same rank, the man so often deferred to the other that Serizawa singularly maintained dominance. Serizawa, albeit sharp and politically convenient, had a nasty temper that continuously impeded the organization’s progress.

Inadequate leadership was not their only obstacle. While they had secured the graces of the Aizu with a martial arts demonstration, the Roshigumi’s work would go unpaid until they made a greater name for themselves. This left the Kondou faction’s finances strained at best and deepened their reliance on Serizawa.

Worse still, Kyoto’s size far exceeded their meager numbers and rendered patrols ineffective without the cooperation of the citizens. For a stretch, every element seemed to work in tandem with one another to create a vicious cycle of defeat.

But Saitou's desire to be there never once waned and soon enough, their issues began to resolve.

For their thinned ranks, they received a unique solution. Kodo Yukimura, a doctor trained in the West, arrived with a mysterious substance to aid the Roshigumi under orders of the shogun. Identified as Ochimizu ("Water of Life"), the concoction could make a human near immortal at the price of his very same humanity. After being forced to kill a comrade from the resulting madness in the same conversation, Hijikata and his captains strongly disapproved of any involvement.

Despite the reservations of the Kondou faction, Serizawa pushed the project forward and began testing on captured ronin and their own troops. Through dilution, the doctor was able to alleviate the lunacy up until the moment a test subject was exposed to fresh blood, upon which they degenerated into the same mindless beasts. Before this research could get any further, Kodo disappeared and forced the creation of rasetsu units to a halt.

To amend the second problem, the Roshigumi organized a series of events to boost public morale and soften the harsh rumors surrounding their reputation. However, for every great aim or achievement made on this front, Serizawa’s tendencies buried the merit by bombing merchants or violently coercing civilians.

Saitou, for his part, served beneath the tyrant with little complaint. The budding devotion that had been present on arrival deepened into a loyalty that would carry him into unnecessary fight after the next unquestioningly. In his own words,

"I didn't come back to life until I came here. In no other place was I acknowledged as a samurai. This is where I belong. Therefore, I have decided that no matter what happens in the future, I will believe in Kondou-san, Hijikata-san, and Sannan-san."

If they believed in following this man, then he would fall in line until told otherwise.

Miraculously, the Roshigumi was successful enough to be officially recognized as the Shinsengumi by late August. The title had once belonged to an ensemble of Aizu martial artist that owned a history Saitou described as "long and honorable".

It was a privilege that stunned and moved Saitou so much he reverted into mute contemplation while examining the door-plate for minutes on end. To think they who were called the wolves, seen as nothing before the eyes of the gods and spat at in the streets, were so blessed as to receive this name.

For this Aizu Clan, for this Shinsengumi, he could follow any order to his grave.

For this Aizu Lord, he betrayed a friend. After helping dispose of Serizawa's second in command, Niimi Nishiki, the order was handed down to eliminate the commander himself. Saitou remained behind to prevent Shinpachi, who had trained in the same Edo school as Serizawa, from going to the man’s aid.

When the blood dried, the three men he had vowed to follow could finally receive the recognition they deserved.

Nahadoth's Shadow/Naha/Hado/Ahad | The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms & sequels by N. K. Jemisin 1/2

[shadowthehedgegod]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Isabelle
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL: vibishan
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: shipoftheseus
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: n/a

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: he doesn't have a name of his own, but he uses pieces of Nahadoth, and goes by 'Hado' at the canonpoint I'm taking him from
CANON: The Inheritance trilogy by N. K. Jemisin (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Broken kingdoms, and Kingdom of the Gods.)
POINT IN CANON: About ten years after the end of Broken Kingdoms, after he has left the Arameri but not yet figured out that he's a godling.
AGE: about 2300 years, appears in his mid/late twenties.
APPEARANCE: Brown skin, black hair, pretty. I'm using Naveen Andrews as a PB.
CANON HISTORY:

From The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms:

"There were three gods once. Only three, I mean. Now there are dozens. They breed like rabbits. But once there were only three, the most powerful and glorious of all: the god of day, the god of night, and the goddess of twilight and dawn. Or light and darkness and the shades between. Or order, chaos, and balance. None of that is important because one of them died, the other may as well have, and the last is the only one who matters anymore."

Itempas, the god of light/order, quarreled with Enefa, the goddess of life/death/balance, out of jealousy over their brother Nahadoth, the god of darkness/chaos. Enefa was the strongest of them, but rather than facing her squarely, Itempas tricked her and killed her with poison. (The blood of human/god hybrids, called demons, is poisonous to gods, because it contains both godstuff and mortality.) Nahadoth discovers her death and attacks Itempas, filled with grief and rage, and their children, the godlings, are forced to takes sides. (Godlings are not strong enough to approach the Three, who are woven into the fabric of the universe, but they can be very powerful by following and manifesting their nature.) The God's War devastates and nearly destroys the human world.

It ends when Shahar Arameri, High Priestess of Itempas, uses a relic of Enefa's power (which Itempas preserved to prevent the universe from unraveling, as she was a part of its tapestry) to control Nahadoth and three godlings who fought by side. This relic, known as the Stone of the Earth, can only be wielded by a child of Enefa, either mortal or godling, and is so powerful than a single moment of using it burns through and kills any human who does so.

"The Arameri get their power from this remaining god. He is called the Skyfather, Bright Itempas, and the ancestors of the Arameri were His most devoted priests. He rewarded them with a weapon so mighty that no army could stand against it. They used this weapon - weapons, really - to make themselves rulers of the world...

"...What was I -? Oh, yes. The gods. Not the gods that remain in the heavens, who are loyal to Bright Itempas. There are others who were not loyal. Perhaps I should not call them gods, because no one worships them anymore. (How does one define "god"?) There must be a better name for what they are. Prisoners of war? Slaves? What did I call them before - weapons?

"Weapons. Yes.

"They are said to be somewhere in [the Arameri palace of] Sky, four of them, trapped in tangible vessels and kept under lock and key and magic chain...sometimes, their masters call them forth. And then there are strange new plagues. Occasionally the population of an entire city will vanish overnight. Once, jagged, steaming pits appeared where there had once been mountains. It is not safe to hate the Arameri. Instead we hate their weapons, because weapons do not care."

Immediately after the war, the Arameri commanded their new slaves to help rebuild the ruined Earth, offering their help to the nations of the world - but not for free. So begins their supposedly benevolent dominion. In the generations after the God's War, the Arameri form an elaborate clan system. The four gods/slaves/weapons call themselves Enefadeh ("we who remember Enefa") and are magically compelled by Itempas in conjunction with the Stone of the Earth to obey all orders from any of the Arameri, in priority according their rank designated by family sigil, and prevents them from harming them, unless they allow it by giving imprecise or idiomatic orders. Unless detained by a member of the family to make use of their divine powers or to torment or toy with them, the Enefadeh have essentially free run of the palace; human, mortal bodies are their prisons, the limits of flesh and physical space. Although they cannot be killed, and will resurrect if their bodies are destroyed, they can certainly be hurt.

Because gods are so tied to particular concepts, they are limited in how they can apply their power, no matter how strong. Nahadoth, despite being one of the founders of the universe, becomes useless during the day, because it is his opposite, the domain of Itempas. Not only does he have no strength while the sun is up, he cannot even manifest his own personality, but the prison of his body still exists, and it still has a brain.

Sieh, one of the Enefadeh and the god of childhood, tells us in The Kingdom of the Gods:

"The meat's mind was as empty as a newborn babe's. Still dangerous, though, especially when sunset came."

At sunset, Nahadoth's power and the full force of his mind - the enraged and enslaved god of chaos - returned, with overwhelming suddenness, and for a period of time at twilight the creature was neither man nor god, but an overwhelmed and overpowered beast of madness as the one disintegrated and was swallowed by the other.

"Because it was, in its own way, a child, I was given charge of it. From the first, I hated this. It shat itself every day, sometimes more than once. (One of the mortal women tried to show me how to use a diaper; I never bothered. Just left the creature on the ground to do its business.) It moaned and grunted and screamed, incessantly. It bit me bloody when I tried to feed it - newborn or not, it had a man's flesh, and that man had a full set of strong, sharp teeth. The first time it did this, I knocked several of those teeth out. They grew back the next night. It didn't bite me again.

"Gradually, though, I came to be more accepting of my duty, and as I warmed to the meat, so it regarded me with its own simple species of affection. When it began to walk, it followed me everywhere. Once Zhakka and Rue and I had built the first White Hall...the creature filled the shining corridors with jabbering as it learned to talk. Its first word was my name. When I grew weak and lapsed into the horrifying state mortals called sleep, the meat creature snuggled against me. I tolerated this because sometimes, when dusk fell and it became my father again, I could snuggle back and close my eyes and imagine that the War had never happened. That all was as it should be.

"But those dreams never lasted. The thin, lifeless dawn, and my mindless charge, always returned.

"If only it had stayed mindless. But it did not; it began to think. When the others and I probed inside it, we found that it had begun, like any thinking, feeling being, to grow a soul. Worst of all it - he - began to love me. And I, as I never should have done, began to love him back."

This was disastrous for Sieh, because - as a god of childhood - parenthood was against his nature, and would have killed him had he embraced it. Instead, under the pressures of slavery and confinement and abused by his keepers, and already resenting the creature for being his father's prison, he took out his frustrations on the one creature weaker than himself and in his power, abandoning him to the Arameri's whims and sometimes badly mistreating the man himself.

This person, Nahadoth's daytime counterpart, described his centuries of confinement as follows in Broken Kingdoms:

"Once upon a time, there was a god imprisoned here. He was a terrible, beautiful, angry god, and by night when he roamed these white halls, everyone feared him. But by day, the god slept. And the body, the living mortal flesh that was his ball and chain, got to have a life of its own. It wasn't much of a life, mind you. All the people who feared the god did not fear the man. They learned quickly they could do things to the man that the god would not tolerate. So the man lived his life his increments, born with every dawn, dying with every sunset. Hating every moment of it. For two. Thousand. Years."

After those two thousand plus years (more like 2200, according to dates on the historical bonus documents) of torture, rape, and waking up next to the occasional corpses of women Nahadoth seduced into commanding him to pleasure until it literally killed them, he was finally set free by Yeine, a mortal woman who shared her body with the drifting soul of Enefa, embedded in her to help heal it, and who was able to use to the Stone of the Earth to free the Enefadeh, bind and punish Itempas in his own mortal shell, become a new goddess of balance, and grant Hado his own body and his own separate existence.

Although Hado had a long-standing agreement with Nahadoth that if they ever became free, Nahadoth should kill him, Yeine commanded him to live, and as the newly-invested goddess of life, this made him not fully human but a young godling, a creature that would live forever without very specific intervention, although he did not realize this at the time.

He decided it would be wrong to waste her gift, and that he would indeed live with his newfound freedom. Because he was jaded and damaged and very skilled at manipulation and navigating the treacherous Arameri court, he remained in the Palace under the new Family Head T'Vril Arameri - a former steward chosen by Yeine to moderate Arameri tyranny while preventing the immediate and terrible civil war that would occur if the world's government were dismantled straight away - and set to work playing politics.

After ten years of this, he was posing as a spy with a dangerous cult founded by a disenchanted Arameri cousin and her mad demon husband that nearly provoked Nahadoth into destroying the entire capital city. Hado's help in foiling the New Lights' plot earned him adoption into the central family, according to his agreement with T'Vril, who was if not precisely his friend, probably the closest thing he'd ever had to one. Hado intended to become family head and eventually rule the world, preferring to wield power than to be subject to it, and equally convinced he'd be at least as good at it as previous despots.

Some time after this, however, he seduced T'Vril's wife for money on behalf of another branch of the family, who wished to disgrace her and have T'Vril married to their own candidate. T'Vril, who had married her in the first place for purely political reasons, didn't care at all. Abruptly, Hado realized he was tired of scheming and the heartlessness and everything to do with the Arameri and Sky, and promptly departed. I'll be taking him from a little while after this, when he's still trying to figure out what in the world to do with himself, and has no idea he's anything other than human.

CANON PERSONALITY: As a matter of self-defense in their cutthroat, brutal court, Arameri children are taught from a young age to conceal their emotions, not with blankness, but with opposite emotions, and Hado has developed the same habit. When he's angry or hurt, he smiles; when he's pleased he looks unimpressed and contemptuous. He has absorbed their precise, high-class and high-handed way of speaking as well. The more threatened he feels in any situation, the more Arameri his mannerisms become. Although he has had little opportunity to learn anything else, he hates the Arameri and how much they have shaped him; with people he likes or halfway trusts, he can make an effort to present more honest, albeit subdued emotions.

2/2

[shadowthehedgegod]

All of this goes out the window if he gets angry enough. He has a few all-out rage buttons, many of them related to Sieh, and when he looses his temper he hides nothing: he screams, he picks Sieh up by his throat and slams into furniture, he becomes absolutely venomous. He's proud, and not entirely rational. He flips out when Hymn unthinkingly phrases something as an order, because humans do not have the right to order him around, will never have that power again. However, even in this state he does maintain some level of control: during the entire confrontation in his office, he never hurts Hymn, or even has a more unkind word for than basic aggravation, because - although she brought Sieh to him - she is an innocent in his estimation.

Although Hado goes out of his way to portray himself as a cold, cruel nihilist, he's actually nothing of the sort. He's highly guarded, after a long, long life in which no one was worth trusting, he doesn't let people in and he doesn't let himself care about them. He's proud and he can be abrasive, cutting, and cold - and he enjoys it - but only ever deliberately, and only to people who have earned his ire - or, in the case of some of his prickly fellow godlings, are easier to control socially after he has humiliated them. With Oree, who dislikes and disrespects him but is herself a prisoner, he is occasionally manipulative to maintain his cover but never cutting or cruel beyond what is necessary to motivate her; once his cover is no longer necessary he is frank and courteous with her, and he's capable of being quite charming.

He's an amazing actor - he acts like a venomous monster to Yeine when Scimina, his Arameri keeper, is looking on, and gives away not one whit of the terrible hope that Yeine's presence inspires in him. When working as a spy with the New Lights, he conducts an interrogation where he appears perfectly skillful and seductively cruel - but actually succeeds in reaffirming Oree's will to resist, without either she nor his fellow cult members realizing he intended to do so. His affect is highly contextual, even within a single scene, treating Hymn and Sieh very differently in the same conversation without either of them really noticing. He responds to even very small scraps of kindess, if they are sincere, with intense gratitude, though he is more likely to express it through actions than words, and he is bitter but never surprised when people still believe in his monstrous act even when he's demonstrated otherwise. He would do anything to make his life easier, after all - with his life, who wouldn't? Except of course that it isn't true.

He volunteers to run an organization of godlings - the ultimate in herding cats - in order to protect humans from abuses of their power and protect the right of godlings to live among mortals, simply because no one else wants the responsibility, and it needs to be done. He builds up a strong business network, ostensibly for wealth and power (both of which he certainly enjoys), in part by gradually taking over all the prostitution in the city and making the entire industry coercion-free. Both Yeine and Sieh say he would do anything to make his own life easier, and he encourages this image. It's true that he's willing to do a lot of things he finds distasteful to further his goals. He's immensely pragmatic. He loathes Itempas and deeply resents Nahadoth, but he's willing to work with or style himself after either of them to achieve his own ends - but those ends are never as selfish as he presents them to be, and in fact he goes to quite a lot of unnecessary trouble to try to keep the world safe for mortals and godlings alike. 

He acts ambitious, and it's not entirely an act. While he has realized by the canon point I'm using that he doesn't enjoy politics for its own sake, doesn't want to spend his whole life being a snake among snakes and no longer wants to rule the world, he has lived his whole life surrounded by the machinations of power; it is his first language, and he'll always be fluent in it. He will always be very damaged, defensively vicious and most comfortable when he has the upper hand, but he's also understandably very sensitive to abuses of power. He's a genuine sadist who never takes advantage of people who are helpless - he takes care of Yeine when she's unconscious, and protects Oree from the other New Lights as well as he can, and while he does needle Sieh and pressure him into drinking enough for a vicious hangover, he also takes care of him and makes sure he has has what he needs at his weakest point, even though he has as much bad blood with Sieh as anyone alive by that point.

He rebuilt himself shred by precious, fiercely hidden shred, in an act of incredible and terrible will, in endlessly hellish circumstances; has not become his own tormentors, and he never will. When Sieh suggests simply killing problematic mortals - or their loved ones - Hado loses every bit of patience with him, shouting at him and shaming him, compares him to Itempas and the Arameri and his past self as a weapon in their service. He alternately claims to hate and not care about Sieh, but still helps him throughout Kingdom of the Gods, gleefully making his life unpleasant and difficult but still giving his former abusive parent-figure everything he needs, and helping him when Hado could very easily destroy him instead. He wants to look like a cold-hearted power-hungry ass - and he can certainly act like all of those things - but his nihilism is a pure front. He cares very deeply about safeguarding free will, not merely in principle but in the small logistical particulars of being safe and secure enough to exercise it.

He's a principled realpolitik backroom powerbroker, wheeling and dealing and watching and scheming to safeguard people who don't even know he's there, who wears many different faces, different layers of callousness and cruelty for different audiences. He's a god of love who is afraid to admit he cares about anything, and in his own deeply bizarre way, an optimistic cynic. He expects the worst from people but tries to help make a world that will let them be their best anyway. When Oree asks whether he would choose death or life on a leash again, he chooses - despite his vehemence that no human will ever give him orders again, despite his own desire for death for most of his existence - life. "If it were truly a choice," is his caveat. Choice matters to him more than anything. If it were his choice, he would choose life just to spite his captors and his torturers, so many of whom he has outlived already. He would fight them with a smile.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: (if AU or PG, please take at least 200 words to explain the differences in background and personality from canon. Specify the game if PG, discuss the universe if AU, and then tell us how these things affected your character.)

ABILITIES: Godlings in HTK have a very versatile suite of powers; technically, what being a god is means that one's will is simply manifest in the world, and a god can do basically anything related to their nature somehow, even in non-obvious ways. However, they become stronger by living true, unreservedly embracing their natures, and become weaker when they contradict it. Hado's nature, unbeknowst to him, is love, and since he's adamantly unwilling to love anyone or anything out of self-defense, he's quite weak for godling, but this could and probably will change eventually in game (it doesn't have to be romantic love; any kind will do). The powers he actually uses in the series are as follows:

- teleportation, of himself and others, including sending others without going along with them
- transforming parts/all of himself into black mist/incorporeal form -  and he doesn't actually have human bodily needs anymore
- local telekinesis, including simply preventing Sieh from coming any closer to him, because he does not wish it, and wrecking his office in a fit of temper
- lighting his cigar with his mind
- inhuman strength
- conjuring small objects 
- accidentally killing someone who tripped over his triggers strongly enough (in bed; would not happen in casual acquaintance/regular game play) with just his mind/will
- the gods' language also just makes things happen, but he only knows a few words of it at this canonpoint (like atadie, 'open', which works on walls) and no way to learn more in game

Based on the other gods in the series, it's also fair to assume he can change his appearance however he wishes, although he generally prefers to use the face Yeine left him, and that he can heal himself more or less and will and cannot be killed except by one of the three high gods (or equivalent superbeing), by not only neglecting but sufficiently violating his own nature, or by poisoning with demonsblood. He can, however, feel pain if he is living his nature insufficiently to heal immediately/without effort. Once he gets a little bit more connected to his nature, he'll probably have a sense for love in others, and things that are loved, in the same way Sieh can sense which toys were the focus of children's wonder and see their little souls. He might also have an animal form. It's implied that some gods have one and some don't. 

All of these will be pretty weak to nonexistent at the start of the game except for his functional immortality, and Hado completely inexperienced at using them, but once he figures out what the hell he is, he'll get better. 

Additionally, because of his own strange origin, he has a sense for when people have strange/dual/modified souls. He's also a flawless actor and exceptionally good at reading people, what they want and what they fear, but nothing about this is supernatural: he earned it the hard way, with practice.

INVENTORY: Rolling paper and tobacco for making cheap cigars, a flask of expensive red liquor of some sort, a few coins of various denominations (gold/silver/copper), some silver rings, a pack of matches, a key, and a sharp inhuman tooth from Lil, goddess of hunger.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? YOU SHOULD READ THESE BOOKS IF YOU LIKE THE KUSHIEL BOOKS OKAY JUST SAYING THEY ALSO HAVE AWESOME WORLDBUILDING AND COOL MYTHOLOGY AND RICH CULTURES AND POLITICS AND SEX

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: d_m thread - technically I was playing around with a D/s AU version of him in this thread, but his personality and history are all basically exactly the same, except with more explicit terminology for the shit that was happening in his life anyway.

THIRD PERSON: They're infiltrating Hell. Not his hell, obviously: too many shadows, not enough white. There are a few desperately Arameri touches, though - the arching ceilings, the grand marblesque sweep of the ballroom before it twists off into impossible curves, that might be painful for some people to contemplate. The open braziers with the screaming wretches dotted between the regally dressed dancers, all corsets and lace over spines and extra eyes. The throne. That's white. But bones, instead of daystone. The arrangement is geometrically fascinating. 

One of his sometime-colleagues reclines there, horned, bored, cold. Disgusted with the realm he has built and the creatures that populate it, regarding Hado with worse: suspicion as well as disdain. What does a jumped-up newcomer want in the court of hell?

His laugh comes easy, rich and dark. He knows how to play the demon. 

He turns to one of the other inhabitants, leaning on a cane he doesn't need. "That's beautiful. May I?" He holds out his hand expectantly, stares with a cool smile of his own until the instrument is handed over. A warm golden topaz the size of a man's fist tops the cane, and this place has a fashion for physics, for physical laws, for the verisimilitude of mortal substance. Topaz is harder than any natural mineral but corundum and diamond. He twirls it like a baton, lightly, whimsically. Then he puts the topaz through the creature's skull. He twirls it again, just as mildly, scatters purple-black blood over the red satin waistcoats of the onlookers with the temerity to act shocked.

"I want," he says slowly, making every phoneme precise, "to cause a bit of a fuss." It's even true, from a certain perspective, although the wild glint in his eye, the edge of teeth in his smile suggest that this desire comes from a raw, monstrous delight in chaos, rather than a fundamental revulsion for this place and everything it is established to accomplish. "If you really prefer to keep things continuing smoothly as they are, my Lord, by all means, toss me out onto the painfields."

He's had worse. He thinks about it, lets the edge of it show - not as bravado, but as familiarity. Allows his mad, half-eager gaze to convey how welcome it would be, if his Lord wished. But he won't, of course. Hado has gauged his ennui and his contempt correctly.

Lucifer, with his Traveler's face, invites Hado to a private audience after the ball, to discuss further the matter of a little turmoil. Just to spice things up. Hado sweeps a gracious bow, deep enough to be proper but too flamboyant in the swish of his charred velvet cape to qualify as truly obsequious, and therefore contemptible himself. He keeps the cane, and turns to a lady with periwinkle-blue bat wings and a haggard, upside-down face. Before the tawdry entertainments of the damned draw to a close, he intends to dance.

Nilin Cartier-Wells | Remember Me | Unreserved

[quoted]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Jinx
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL: corsetjinx
TIMEZONE: EST (GMT -5)
CONTACT:
AIM: CorsetJinx
PLURK: BurialApplicant
EMAIL: Beloved-Belial@hotmail.com

OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: No go.

Character

[quoted]

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Nilin Cartier-Wells
CANON: Remember Me
POINT IN CANON: Post Game
AGE: 25-ish
APPEARANCE:
Equip Combat Skin

CANON HISTORY:
Tiny Bio
Game Info #1
Game Info #2

Susumu Yamazaki | Hakuouki | 1/2

[tatamiflipped]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Heather
AGE: 31
PLAYER JOURNAL: nutedtempest
TIMEZONE: CEST – Central European Summer Time (UTC +1)
CONTACT: heathar@gmail.com, mutedtempest on aim and plurk
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: none as yet!

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Susumu Yamazaki; in traditional Japanese fashion he introduces himself with his family name first, Yamazaki Susumu
CANON: Hakuouki
POINT IN CANON: The tail end of the first season of the anime, episode 12; his death on the ship during the Shinsengumi’s retreat to Edo
AGE: Young, probably very early 20s in Hakuouki. His age in reality was somewhere around 30 or so when he joined, however.
APPEARANCE: Yamazaki is a rather short man with short, somewhat spiky brown hair with a very thing ponytail at the back. He had light violet eyes and rather pale skin.
CANON HISTORY: The Wiki is here: but it’s woefully lacking, so:

Yamazaki was born in Osaka, and joined the Shinsengumi when they were looking for recruits under the leadership of Serizawa, in episode 6 of the prequel anime series Hakuouki Reimeiroku. He tells them that his father was an acupuncturist, and that he has a little bit of medical knowledge, which Hijikata says will be useful. He reveals several episodes later that he was born into the family of an acupuncturist, but had always longed to be a samurai and had impersonated a ronin in Kyoto and Osaka. But, he said, the more he tried to outwardly copy them, the further he drew from the true essence of a samurai. When told at recruitment that all Roshigumi members would be treated as warriors, regardless of their upbringing, Yamazaki felt that he could truly become a samurai with them. His loyalty to the corps was cemented that first day and he dedicated his entire life to their well-being, taking on the role of inspector to aid them more covertly but still fighting when and if it was needed. He developed a very strong bond of respect and loyalty to Hijikata, who, as far as we know, was the first person to consider him worthy of being a warrior. This bond remained until the end of his life.

No one knows anything more until Yamazaki appears as a spy in the first season of Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan (well, the games detail a good deal more, but since I don’t own a PSP I’m using anime knowledge alone xD). He dressed in his ninja outfit to deliver a message to Hijikata, and protected Chizuru from attackers so she could carry the message herself. Yamazaki is fine after his fight, however, and went back to his duties immediately. He is seen thereafter gathering as much information as he can for the Shinsengumi, as well as helping tend to the injured. In the OVA, Yamazaki decided to impersonate a ninja in order to protect Chizuru, who had taken on the role of an undercover geisha. He was her bodyguard, along with Saitou, and did an excellent job of protecting her, referring to her as his princess while fighting. His last appearance was to throw himself between Hijikata and Kazama in order to protect Hijikata, becoming mortally wounded in the process. He died on the ship on the retreat to Edo, after telling Chizuru to take care of the Shinsengumi in his place, since she was the only one he could trust with this duty.

Susumu Yamazaki | Hakuouki | 2/2

[tatamiflipped]

CANON PERSONALITY: Yamazaki is incredibly loyal to the Shinsengumi, and this seems to be the most obvious aspect of his personality. He believes in the Shinsengumi’s cause with his whole heart, and is shown to be rather disdainful of those who cannot dedicate themselves to it entirely (for example, Ibuki Ryuunosuke in Reimeiroku). He sees them as a liability to the cause since they are not fighting for it with the certainty of their entire heart.

He is very respectful of all the captains, but especially Hijikata, whom he has a special fondness for. He is rather quiet and generally gentle, but can be impatient and taciturn as well. His dedication to the Shinsengumi is the most important thing to him, and he is willing to do whatever they need of him at any time. He seems to be close to the other members and to get along well with them, especially Saitou.

While quiet and gentle for the most part, Yamazaki is a tactical fighter capable of bloodshed with no hesitance when it is necessary. His history as an intelligence officer means he is adept at lying and pretending to be someone he’s not in order to gather information, and is very secretive and private in general. He is not fond of sharing information unless he needs to, and tends to keep most things to himself. This doesn’t mean that he’s as aloof as he appears, because he does care very deeply for those he’s close to.

Yamazaki’s level of loyalty and sacrifice for the Shinsengumi and for Hijikata, who had become a very close friend to him, is illustrated most in the episode I’m pulling him from. As Yamazaki is run through by sword to stop Hijikata from dying needlessly at the hands of Kazama, he asks Hijikata what he is doing, as he is the vice commander and therefore the most important of them, and cannot go risking himself unnecessarily. That he is willing to become grievously wounded in order to stop Hijikata from becoming the same or worse shows not only how dedicated he is to his cause but to his friend. While his level of respect and loyalty toward Hijikata is greater than that of the others, I think he would do the same for any of the captains if they needed him to, simply because, as he says, they are the more important pieces of the puzzle and thus the ones needed to further the Shinsengumi’s cause.

In the OVA, Yamazaki fights hard in order to protect Chizuru when she is being given a hard time. This shows that he does indeed become bothered by things, and that he is a protector at heart, doing whatever is necessary to keep those he cares about safe.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: --
ABILITIES: Yamazaki is a human, and as he never takes the Ochimizu even when critically wounded, he never picks up the abilities of the rasestsu like many of his comrades. He is a very skilled fighter. While he impersonates a ninja and wants to be one, he is not one in canon. However, he is able to fight and use stealth well enough to make this completely believable. He is trained in medicine, as his father was an acupuncturist, and he is an intelligence officer for the Shinsengumi, spying and running messages when needed. He is also useful to the Shinsengumi with his medical knowledge, and often helps Chizuru to care for the wounded.
INVENTORY; His green kimono (which bears no small resemblance to a bathrobe) and the hakama he was wearing on the ship. He also will have his sword with him, as well as a bit of the medicine Chizuru was trying to give him when he passed.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? He’s coming from the time of his death, and he knows it. He’ll be arriving injured; able to move about okay but will tire pretty easily for awhile until he heals.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: [At first, all that could be heard were shaking, raspy breaths from a man very close to death. They continued for quite awhile, until the person woke up slowly. After glancing around and realizing he was no longer on the ship to Edo, was worried for the others. He knew Chizuru would take care of them, as she’d promised, but…]

Yukimura-kun? I…cannot care for the others well, or help you with it, if I do take my medicine, remember?

[He tried to clear his throat against the raspiness of his voice, knowing it would do no good. But he needed to stop her from worrying. If she could hear him to begin with…]

My princess, there is no way I can protect you if you do not allow me to take my medicine.

[It was a joke, of course, but there was seriousness under it. He could protect no one if he died, after all.]

I hope that the others are all right. You should tell the fuckuchou for me that all is well and that I will be back to my duties as soon as I can be.

[Well. There was no sense in worrying about it now. He didn’t try to call for any of the others, not even Hijikata-san. He was simply too exhausted, and calling for Chizuru had weakened him. He fell into a fitful sleep, hoping she would come back soon.]

THIRD PERSON: Was this the afterlife? No, it didn’t seem to be; he was in a fair bit of pain, but it was nothing like before and he knew it wouldn’t be fatal. He definitely wasn’t on the ship any longer, either, and Yukimura-kun was nowhere in sight. He was glad of that; while he felt reasonably all right, there was still a rather large wound in his chest, and he hated that she’d had to see him this way.

The events leading up to their journey back to Edo still left him feeling a little hopeless. He believed in the Shinsengumi’s mission with his whole heart, but the way things were going worried him. Still, he hoped this would be a chance to make things right again. If he survived, he would do his best to help. He could probably get back to his intelligence work soon, when his wounds had healed, and there would of course be the watching over of Okita-san and any of the others who might become ill or injured…

His chest hurt. A lot. He hadn’t gotten the chance to drink the medicine Chizuru had been preparing for him, and it made him want to fall into unconsciousness again to escape the pain. But before that, he needed to make sure the others were safe, although he had no idea how to go about doing that in the state he was in.

“If I could…leave this bed…”

But he couldn’t, and he was too tired to try even if he’d wanted to. He would have to leave things to the others for now, until he was strong enough to move again, to do his duty.

Thane Krios | Mass Effect | Not reserved

[distantshores]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Britt
AGE: 28
PLAYER JOURNAL: bilbo
TIMEZONE: CST
CONTACT: commodore
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Thane Krios
CANON: Mass Effect
POINT IN CANON: end of Mass Effect 2 (no one gets left behind scenario)
AGE: 39
APPEARANCE: x
CANON HISTORY: character specific page, about the drell, and the story of Mass Effect

Re: Thane Krios | Mass Effect | Not reserved

[distantshores]

CANON PERSONALITY: The drell are a reptile-like race that originated on an arid desert world called Rakhana. However, around 1400 CE the drell began rapid industrial expansion that exhausted the planet. They were then incapable of interstellar flight and forced to remain on their dying planet, warring with one another over what little supplies there were. Then, around 2000 CE (Thane himself was born in 2146) a jellyfish-like race called the hanar made contact with the drell and over the next several years the hanar evacuated around 375,000 drell to their own home planet, Kahje. In an effort to repay the hanar, the drell entered into an agreement with them in which they promised to assist in any tasks the hanar couldn’t complete due to physical limitations.

Honoring this promise, Thane’s parents gave him to the hanar at the age of six to be trained as an assassin. He made his first kill at age twelve. Obviously this training had a massive impact on who he became, shaped him as a person. He views killing as an art, to which he is a master. At the same time, he doesn’t often feel guilt or remorse over the things he has done. To him, his body is simply a tool being used by those who hire him, much like a pistol or knife. It isn’t his own will that kills his victims; it’s the will of his employers.

If Shepard expresses confusion about his lack of responsibility, Thane explains that the drell see the soul and body as separate in the most literal sense. The body does things that the mind does not tell it to. He takes responsibility for his actions, he feels guilt for his mistakes, but only those that he has chosen to make.

Normally I’d put another quote here but I can’t find a good one lalalala

Thane has spent a lot of time on his own, and a lot of time killing people, but he’s remarkably well-adjusted despite that. Due to the nature of how Mass Effect is set up you never really get to see the crew members interact that much but it can be assumed that Thane maintains a pretty friendly relationship with them, although most likely distanced.

As for Shepard, I’m writing Thane as knowing a female Paragon Shepard meaning she’s a kindhearted person who will always do what’s right and noble whenever possible. The “girl scout”, I guess. She successfully helped Thane find his son, Kolyat, and prevent Kolyat from completing an assassination, thus gaining Thane’s complete loyalty. He respects Shepard and values her as a dear friend, one whom he can confide in.

His relationship with Kolyat is a little more complicated. Thane is one of those shitty dads who peaced out of their son’s life, although at the time he saw it as the right thing to do. Story time! Once, long ago, Thane had a wife named Irikah whom he loved very much. He met her on an assignment, when she stood in front of his target to block his shot, staring defiantly into the scope. Thane was so taken by her that he made it his mission to find her and he did and they eventually fell in love and married.

This marriage allowed Thane to leave the hanar’s service, but killing was really the only thing he knew how to do so he became a freelance assassin. His attempts to keep his work and personal life fail and one day, while he’s away on a mission, a group of slavers go after his family and kill Irikah.

Thane returns to Kahje for Irikah’s funeral and leaves Kolyat in the care of family. He then enters “battle sleep”, a state in which drell surrender to their instincts and allow the body to do as it wills. (Basically he got really pissed off and ragequit family life. BASICALLY.) He hunts down the slavers responsible for his wife’s death and kills them all, though this is the only time he takes full responsibility for killing and admits that it’s also the only time he deliberately let his victims suffer, torturing these men before he let them die.

He then decides to make the excellent decision to cut ties with Kolyat because he thinks it would be safer for him, and likely as a means of dealing with his own grief as well.

Flash forward to present day and Thane catches wind that Kolyat has accepted an assassination contract of his own. Thane goes to Shepard and asks her if they might find Kolyat and stop him before it’s too late, as he doesn’t want his son falling into the same path he’d followed. They succeed and although it’s obvious that his relationship with his son will need a vast amount of work Thane resolves to repair it as best he can before he dies.

In general, Thane is shown to be a polite and respectful character. He remains pretty cool and calm at all times and doesn’t succumb to intense emotion very easily.

Prayers for the wicked must not be forsaken.

Thane is, perhaps surprisingly, a deeply religious man – but most drell are. The drell religion is polytheistic and consists of at least three gods – Amonkira (lord of hunters), Arashu (goddess of motherhood and protection), and Kalahira (goddess of oceans and afterlife). Thane will pray to Amonkira before a mission to grant him swiftness and strength. He’ll then pray again after the mission is completed, a “prayer for the wicked” – in this case, himself. In a letter (if romanced) he mentions praying to Arashu to grant protection to Shepard, and there’s a lengthy prayer to Kalahira during his death scene.

He believes that after the soul departs from the body in death, it travels across a sea to the shores of the afterlife and mentions waiting for (romanced) Shepard across the sea.

He’s intelligent and well-spoken as well. A decade on his own granted him plenty of time to read, so that’s what he did. He even quotes Thomas Hobbes at one point so he’s the type of person that has read literature from across the galaxy. He spends the majority of his time on the Normandy meditating.

This was supposed to be my last job. I’m dying.

Thane suffers from Kepral's Syndrome, a disease that arose among the drell after they relocated to Kahje. As mentioned before, Rakhana is a dry and arid world covered in desert. Kahje, on the other hand, is 90% water. The resulting humid air wreaks havoc on the drell respiratory system, slowly destroying the lungs' ability to absorb oxygen and effectively suffocating the afflicted person over time and affecting other organs as well – that’s Kepral’s syndrome. There is no known cure although the symptoms can be lessened by organ transplants. Thane also mentions that the hanar are working on a cure but it likely won’t be complete for many years.

When Shepard first meets Thane, he’s at peace with his future. He has accepted his fate, that he will die and nothing can change that. This is a man who has spent a decade alone, cut off from family and friends. He’s ready to die.

However, as time goes on things begin to change – chiefly Shepard becomes a dear friend, and Kolyat reenters Thane’s life. Thane begins to feel troubled about his future; he doesn’t want to die anymore. This change in attitude is made particularly clear if Shepard is romancing him. If that’s the case there’s a scene where Thane outright says that he’s done everything he can to prepare for death but now he’s afraid and that makes him ashamed.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: --
ABILITIES: Thane is a biotic, meaning he has the ability to create mass effect fields for use in combat. The two biotic abilities he is given specifically in game are throw and warp. Additionally, he’s extremely skilled in hand-to-hand combat and a talented marksman. He’s very efficient at what he does and tries his best to kill in the quickest, least-painful way possible. He moves silently, with cat-like grace and agility, and can slip into buildings and rooms virtually undetected if he needs to.

Also, drell have incredible eidetic memories and can relive moments in perfect clarity. Thane can recall exact details from any event from any moment in his life, slipping into a kind of trance (called solipsism) as he recalls the details. The memories are so vivid that drell sometimes mistake them for reality. The lapses into these memories can be triggered by external stimuli and seem to be involuntary. Thane will often apologize after reliving a memory in the midst of a conversation.

Oh and apparently prolonged skin contact with him can cause rashes in humans, or hallucinations if the contact is oral.
INVENTORY; M-97 Viper sniper rifle, M-9 Tempest submachine gun
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? I don't think so!

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:
Kolyat.

[ Thane could see that his son was practically vibrating with anger. This had not been easy for either of them. He certainly hadn’t imagined a reunion with his son leading to a holding room in C-Sec.]

Kolyat… it’s been a long time, much longer than it should have been. I’ve thought about this moment often -- when we would finally face each other again and I would have the opportunity to explain myself. However, now that I find myself presented with such an opportunity I’m afraid I’m at a loss for words.

You deserve better, Kolyat, in every possible sense.

[ He sees his son scoff, and his own heart feels just a little bit heavier. ]

I think that perhaps in our case, neither of us is quite ready for explanations. Perhaps the best words I can offer are simply “I’m sorry.”
I’m not asking for your forgiveness. In truth, I probably don’t deserve it. I only ask that you consider letting me back into your life. I have very little time left in this world and I would like to spend it getting to know my son.

[ He pauses. There’s a barely-discernable expression on Kolyat’s face that seems to say he’d like that too.

The faintest of smiles curves Thane’s lips. ]

That is, if you’ll allow me.

THIRD PERSON:

This was his last night on the Normandy.

Presumably, anyway. One had to expect the worst on a suicide mission regardless of how good a squad and its commander might be. He wished he could say that he was ready to greet his fate with open arms. He wished he could say he did not fear the inevitable.

Both would be lies. He wasn’t ready to die.

He had been once, back when he first signed on for the mission. A death sentence had been meaningless to a man who’d spent a decade alone, who had long since resigned himself to his own mortality. He had seen a lot of terrible things in his lifetime, most of them by his own hand. He’d been stabbed, shot, beaten, and remembered each instance with perfect clarity. Those memories didn’t frighten him; they didn’t churn his insides or bring a tremble to his normally surgeon-steady hands. But the future did. The future terrified him, and in turn his fear brought unimaginable shame.

He rose from his chair and began to pace the small room. After what felt like a lifetime in solitude, he was finally cultivating a relationship with his son and he’d found a very dear and unexpected friend in Commander Shepard. There were people he cared about again and whether death came tomorrow at the hand of the Collectors or in three months from Kepral’s Syndrome, Thane was not ready to die.

It was the inevitability that got to him. Death cared not for sentiment, nor love. Death simply came, and Thane could see its shadow looming in his future.

This was his last night on the Normandy, and Thane Krios was afraid.

Raidou Kuzunoha XIV | SMT: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha series | Reserved (part 1)

[capital_asset]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Zoe
AGE: (due to darker themes of the game we ask that 16 and up only apply) Over 30.
PLAYER JOURNAL: zoifox
TIMEZONE: EST (currently GMT/UTC - 4:00 due to Daylight Saving Time, otherwise GMT/UTC - 5:00)
CONTACT: (e-mail, aim, plurk, pm; whichever is comfortable for you to give to us) fireplacecat @ plurk
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: (only applicable if you already play in the game) N/A, although I have a separate account set up for Raidou's demons

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Raidou Kuzunoha XIV
CANON: SMT: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha series
POINT IN CANON: post-Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (neutral alignment ending), including the Lucifer sidequest
AGE: late teens
APPEARANCE: (please provide either an image link or write a brief description, or do both - it's your choice) Image
CANON HISTORY: (we accept both WIKI links or 300 words minimum written of your characters involvement - again your choice)
Character Bio
First game (incomplete summary)
Second game (incomplete summary)

The year is Taisho 20. Raidou Kuzunoha has just left his family's ancestral village for the first time, accompanied only by his pet cat, Gouto. They are headed to Japan's Capital, Tokyo, where Raidou is to serve as an apprentice to Shouhei Narumi, an acquaintance of the family who runs a detective agency, while also attending a new school...

...Well, not quite. He's actually a devil summoner, sent by the Kuzunoha family and the nationalist organization they work for, the Yatagarasu, to protect the Capital from supernatural threats... while also apprenticing himself to Shouhei Narumi, who is acquainted with the Kuzunohas and has been vetted by the Yatagarasu, and attending school. He is accompanied by his talking cat, who is actually his on-site mentor, and several demon familiars. The school is normal, though. It is about the only thing in Raidou's life that could possibly qualify as such.

Raidou has spent most of his life previous to his move to the Capital in Kuzunoha Village, training extensively with sword and musket and learning how to subdue, contract with, and effectively work alongside demons. After a final test that included a trial by combat, he was awarded his title and given his mission to safeguard the Capital from harm, with Gouto assigned to him as his advisor. Having worked with his predecessors, Gouto was initially skeptical of his abilities, likely due in part to Raidou's relatively young age, but Raidou was eventually able to prove himself sufficient to the task, with Gouto being impressed enough to dub him possibly the best of those he's worked with.

He has been in the Capital for less than a year, and it has already proven dangerously eventful, with two major assaults on the Capital thus far. The first eventually pitted him against his own distant successor after a convoluted series of events that also saw him facing down a variety of minor gods and - of all people - Grigori Rasputin, who turned out to be an android from the future sent to "fix" Raidou's timeline before apparently getting bored with the idea. Raidou the Fortieth, unfortunately, proved more determined, and Raidou ended up having to chase his successor into the timestream itself to stop him/her from changing the future by destroying the Capital. Fortunately for the Capital, Raidou XIV was successful.

Raidou's second major case, meanwhile, started with a young woman attempting to find her brother, progressed to said brother calling a horde of giant locusts down on the Capital - and promptly losing control of them - in an attempt to help his sister, and eventually ended with Raidou having to battle an angry, nihilistic version of the god of the village from which the woman and her brother hailed. Virtually the entire sorry sequence of events turned out to have been instigated by Lucifer, who has apparently now taken an interest in Raidou as a result, much to Raidou's displeasure.

CANON PERSONALITY: (we want to see your grasp on their personality, their emotions, habits, flaws, relationships, anything and everything, 300-500 words minimum)
Raidou is relentlessly focused on his job. Having spent most of his life training to become the eventual protector of the Capital, with little to no time for anything else, he is unable to deal particularly well with a lot of downtime; if he doesn't have something concrete to focus on, he gets anxious. After all, something could be happening somewhere, and what if he misses it and disaster strikes? Of course, between his duties as a summoner, his job at the detective agency, and (occasionally) school, he doesn't have much downtime to begin with. School is invariably the first to fall by the wayside in a crisis... and often outside of one, because Narumi tends to keep him busy at the detective agency. Raidou doesn't mind this as much as he thinks he should; he knows that school is a necessary part of his cover story given his age, but he can't help but resent the time it takes away from his duties, and it's not as if he can explain to his teachers that the reason he didn't complete his schoolwork by the allotted deadline is because he was too busy trying to stop another apocalypse. He likes working at the detective agency a great deal, although he wishes Narumi wouldn't stick him with the chores so much. He especially likes working cases - the ones that don't threaten the survival of the Capital, at least - because it allows him to be helpful and to learn more about the city and its residents, human and otherwise. He is, after all, in charge of protecting them.

He is generally quiet and reserved around other people. He didn't really socialize with anyone outside of his trainers and the occasional demon while he was growing up; accordingly, he is now somewhat adrift when he needs to socialize with anyone else, especially people his own age, and he's constantly worried about saying the wrong thing. He tries to cover his awkwardness with general politeness, but he knows this can come across as indifference and he knows it bothers some people. With people who know who and what he is, he's somewhat more forthright, but he still feels awkward when the conversation strays into more informal areas, as it is wont to do with Narumi in particular. Even being around other summoners can be uncomfortable at times; those who are around his own age are mostly trainees at this point, and those who are on his level tend to be older, sometimes much older. And as Raidou is one of the four Great Summoners of the Kuzunoha clan, there are very few summoners of any age who are on his level.

Truthfully, Raidou is most comfortable around demons. They already know he's spiritually sensitive at the very least - he wouldn't be able to see or hear them otherwise - and conversations in general tend to be much more straightforward. They can certainly get weird, but it's a type of weirdness that Raidou can deal with, for the most part. He is not sure that his teachers would necessarily approve; many summoners tend to see the demons in their employ as simple, if dangerous, tools to be used as needed and discarded when not. Raidou finds it difficult to think this way. He never forgets that demons are dangerous - a fact that the demons appreciate as well - but to Raidou, they are still (mostly) living beings whom he can't help but treat with respect, although he will not hesitate to take them down a peg or three if necessary. He is fond of his own demons and treats them well, and they have rewarded him with loyalty and respect in turn - though they do test his boundaries from time to time, which Raidou finds understandable, if occasionally nerve-wracking.

Since moving to the Capital, he has tried to be as inconspicuous as possible... or at least as inconspicuous as a teenager running around with a sword and a revolver can be. Privately, Raidou doesn't think he's been particularly successful at being inconspicuous, as he doesn't think a teenager running around with a sword and a revolver fighting giant luck-eating insects and the like is all that easy to miss, but so far no one who doesn't already know about him has said much of anything to him about it, and he figures that as long as that continues to be the case, he should be all right. Of course, since one of his acquaintances is a news reporter, he doesn't know how long that state of affairs will last. He's actually surprised that it's lasted as long as it has, since Tae is far from stupid. Raidou wonders sometimes if she already knows and is just humoring him. He'd ask Narumi, but Narumi can be a little weird about Tae.

Then again, Narumi can be a little weird in general. Raidou is often not quite sure what to make of him; he's irritated by Narumi's laziness (although he can't help but wonder sometimes how much of it is real, given what little he knows of the man's past) and utterly baffled by his tendency to treat Raidou as, well, his age. This is something Raidou dislikes greatly, especially from Narumi, who knows perfectly well that Raidou isn't a normal teenager by any stretch of the imagination and should, in Raidou's estimation, know better. (That Narumi might find the idea of putting a teenage boy in charge of protecting an entire city more or less by himself disturbing does not occur to Raidou; after all, the Kuzunohas obviously have no issue with it, so why should he?) On the other hand, Narumi also makes a point of asking Raidou for his opinions about various things, which Raidou isn't quite used to. Opinions about battle tactics, yes; opinions about the possible motivations of the people he deals with, not so much. It's a little intimidating at times, because Raidou can't help but worry about making a wrong decision, but he is steadily growing more comfortable with questioning things.

He despises opponents who attempt to strike at him through other people. He still hasn't forgiven the Imperial Navy officer who used Narumi as a hostage to force Raidou to aid an admiral suffering from the effects of a curse... nor has he completely forgiven the Yatagarasu, who seemed to see nothing wrong with the officer's actions, much to Raidou's immense disappointment. The officer's case particularly infuriated him because if he'd approached Raidou directly, Raidou would likely have helped him willingly, thus rendering the officer's assault on Narumi completely unnecessary. The whole situation left Raidou unfavorably comparing human and demon behavior, although he was, and still is, careful not to do so aloud. He doubts either side would appreciate the comparisons.

As fourteenth in the line, Raidou knows his job is dangerous. He is also aware that "Raidou Kuzunoha" is greater than the individual who currently bears the name, and he is keenly aware that he can and eventually will be replaced when he is no longer able to perform his duties as summoner. He tries not to let himself think about it too much, not because he is afraid of death - he's not, and he takes pains not to mention this to Narumi or Gouto, ever, because he knows they'll react badly - but because he is afraid of the failure that leads to it. Failure of any kind rankles, because he feels he can and should do better. Failure great enough to disappoint the Kuzunohas is a terrifying prospect; he's heard stories about the fates of people who manage this feat, and he does not want to experience any of them firsthand. Failure to protect the Capital is too horrifying to contemplate. So he forces the thought from his mind as best he can whenever it tries to sneak in, and concentrates on doing his job. For better or worse, this is his city to defend now, and that is exactly what he will do.

Re: Raidou Kuzunoha XIV | SMT: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha series | Reserved (part 2)

[capital_asset]

POINT OF DEPARTURE: (if AU or PG, please take at least 200 words to explain the differences in background and personality from canon. Specify the game if PG, discuss the universe if AU, and then tell us how these things affected your character.) N/A

ABILITIES:
Raidou can see, communicate with, and summon demons, although the last requires a pact with the demon in question. He is capable of summoning two demons at once - most summoners stick with one due to the potential strain on their systems - and serves as a mana battery of sorts for the summoned demons, as long as he is conscious and has sufficient amounts of magnetite in his body for them to "feed" on. He is capable of changing into other people/animals, but this requires both the assistance of a demon and something of the individual he needs to become, e.g. hair or blood. The resulting likeness is good enough to fool even a mystical barrier set up by the person he was imitating at the time. He is also an expert swordsman and marksman, a competent detective, and (according to the second game) a pretty good singer.

In addition to helping Raidou to change shape, the demons can variously read minds (human and otherwise), manipulate emotions, light up dark areas, find hidden items, heat or cool an otherwise impassible area, and act as transportation. This is in addition to their combat skills, which vary from demon to demon and range from offensive spells to healing. In Raidou's world, demons are normally invisible to humans who are not spiritually sensitive.

INVENTORY; (what your character is carrying on them at the point they’re taken from)
Raidou is carrying approximately twenty demon confinement tubes, a revolver and bullets, a katana, holsters for the tubes and the revolver and a scabbard for the sword, a few locks of hair from different individuals (human and otherwise) for transformation purposes, various healing items, keys to the Narumi Detective Agency, and money for trolley fare.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?
"Raidou Kuzunoha" is not his original name. It is the name of one of the four Great Summoners of the Kuzunoha clan, and it requires a great deal of talent and years of training in order to be deemed worthy of claiming it - including a trial by combat. In essence, it functions as both a name and a job title. Raidou does not currently have a canon name, although the light novel refers to him as Jouhei.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: (what we’re looking for is how well you know the voice of your character; we’re not looking for what’s in the action/thought brackets. 8-10 sentences should do (or 100 words minimum), or we also allow a 10+ comment thread from a previous game as well as a thread from the test drive)

[The demons are not happy; Raidou can tell. Truthfully, he can't blame them. This jaunt has gone spectacularly poorly, and they're all nearly exhausted at this point. Raidou himself is running dangerously low on magnetite, and he doesn't know if he'll be able to keep his demons summoned for any length of time.]

I know you don't like this, and I'm sorry. But we need to find a way off of this world, and to do that, we'll need to complete this investigation. And that means I'll need your help for a little longer. All right?

[He can hear grumbling from several of the demons, but eventually they acquiesce - some more grudgingly than others. The fact that Raidou is just as bad off as some of them are may or may not be helping.]

Thank you.

[He allows his eyes to drift shut briefly, before steeling himself and selecting a demon tube.]

Agathion. If you could cast Illuminate, please? There may be something we missed here.

[He can't keep the demon summoned for long; he has to conserve the energy he has left. Fortunately, Agathion seems to realize this, because he casts the spell without protest.]

Thank you, Agathion.

[Agathion bobs a bit in the air in acknowledgement, albeit a bit more erratically than usual. Raidou gives him a small, tired smile before quickly sending him back into his tube to rest.]

...All right. Let's see what we can find.


THIRD PERSON: (here is where we’re looking for your character’s thoughts, their reactions, your writing ability; if this is your first character in the game, then we ask that you write out this sample, 250 words minimum. If this is your second or third character then you’re more than welcome to use a 10+ comment thread from a previous game or a thread from the test drive)

He was doing his best not to let it show, but Raidou was furious.

Bad enough that he'd been pulled from his world, from the Capital, to be sent off in pursuit of some arbitrary goal that may or may not be benevolent, but to find that he still couldn't leave was utterly galling. He was meant to be guarding the Capital; he and his demons were more or less its only real line of defense. How long did they intend to keep him away? What would happen if someone else attacked while he was gone? The clan elders would be furious. Gouto would be furious. The Yatagarasu... would probably just ask the Kuzunohas to choose a successor and send them on their merry way to the Capital. They did tend towards ruthless pragmatism.

He hoped no one had told Narumi he was dead this time. The last time Raidou had been yanked out of his timeline, someone had done just that, which had resulted in Narumi haring off to "avenge" him. He had, admittedly, gotten surprisingly far, considering that he couldn't even see demons like Raidou could, but Raidou had needed to rescue him all the same. He wondered who would be able to do so in his stead if it happened again - Gouto? Nagi? No, Nagi would probably be training in Kuzunoha Village. And Gouto didn't have opposable thumbs.

He allowed himself an exasperated sigh. Ruminating like this was useless. He supposed it was a good thing that he was trained in detective work, because it looked like going along with this investigation was his only option. For now.

[thezerothlaw]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Jessie
AGE: 30
PLAYER JOURNAL: I don't have a personal journal, eep.
TIMEZONE: Pacific
CONTACT: sunnjessie @ gmail.com, zerothlaw on Plurk
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: n/a

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: R. Daneel Olivaw
CANON: Asimov's Robots
POINT IN CANON: After the end of Robots and Empire
AGE: About two hundred.
APPEARANCE: Completely human exterior. Lightly tanned skin, light red hair usually combed back neatly, a bit over six feet, slim but toned build. Has a habitually grave expression. While there are several places where his skin opens up for maintenance purposes, these seams are invisible when closed.
CANON HISTORY: Wiki is here
CANON PERSONALITY: Daneel, to someone unaware he is a robot, might seem to be a particularly altruistic and mild-mannered man. He's polite, deferential, and speaks formally, and thinks more logically than reasonably. Though he has programs devoted to appropriate facial expressions, he still seems very serious most of the time. While he's an oddity in that he's a "renegade" robot, without a master, he's devoted himself to the wellbeing of humanity, and this is his main driving force. He strives for this, and to understand humans to better accomplish it, and is uncomfortably aware of the ever-present risk of failure, and of his own death if he were to fail in a way that would cause irreversible damage in his brain by burning out his positronic pathways.

Although Daneel is an extremely sophisticated robot, and although he thinks in far more human ways than another robot might, he is still bound by the three Laws of Robotics: first, a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; second, a robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; third, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. Although being such a unique prototype his own sense of self-preservation is slightly stronger than with many robots, he cannot break these Laws. If told to do something, he will do it unless he can justify a reason it should not be done -- such as a conflict with one of the higher Laws. A conflict between the Laws, perhaps a situation where he must choose between harm of two different individuals, or obeying strongly-given orders versus the slight possibility of harm to a human being, produces a conflict which is perhaps as close to pain as a robot is capable of feeling, and may produce physical symptoms such as a sudden speech impediment or other difficulty, or a limp without cause. In most cases these symptoms will resolve themselves once the situation is eased, and Daneel has many failsafes to prevent permanent damage. In extreme cases, positronic conflict can cause the spontaneous and permanent deactivation of the robot. If asked a question, Daneel will answer truthfully unless he has a very good reason to lie. The more firmly an order is given, the stronger is his impulse to obey. This doesn't trouble him; in fact, he is more troubled by the fact that humans are not bound by any such laws. Even thinking of the possibility of not being bound by the laws is somewhat troubling to him, causing the aforementioned difficulties in the positronic pathways of his brain.

There is one important exception to this, however. He and the robot Giskard, with a great deal of difficulty due to the apparent circumvention of the Laws, developed what they term the Zeroth Law: a robot may not harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Though he and Giskard worked the Zeroth Law out themselves (and were well aware of the difficulties it presented, as humanity is a far less tangible thing than an individual human), Daneel would likely not have been able to press forward in this way at all were it not for the influence of Elijah Baley, a plainclothes detective from Earth Daneel had worked with some twenty decades before.

Daneel admired his friend Baley greatly, for his understanding of his fellow humans, for his intuition, and for his ability to push through difficulty against all odds. He tries to emulate Baley as much as possible: to be curious, to ask the right questions, to seek out the answers to problems, to push through difficulty to strength. While Daneel might be thought to be emotionless, this isn't really accurate. There are certainly things that please him, or displease him, or even bring him his own particular brand of robotic happiness, and it's a mistake to think him incapable of emotional bonds; he treasures the memory of those friends he has had. Regardless, he treats everyone with respect and deference -- even in the tensest situation -- and is very interested in pleasing or serving in any way he can, to be useful however he can; this is doubly true for those he feels affection for. He puts other before himself, always, and generally does not believe himself to be the equal of others – not in ability, perhaps, but in worth.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: n/a
ABILITIES: Daneel is somewhat stronger and faster than a human, due to being a robot. He has the ability to sense emotional states of minds around him, and if he wishes, to subtly adjust the emotions to affect the opinions or actions of those people. He's very reluctant to tamper, especially right now when he's new. I'm not sure how much this goes into the area of telepathic power capping intended by the mods, but I will take whatever judgement you have.
INVENTORY; Just the clothes on his back.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?

[thezerothlaw]

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: Here
THIRD PERSON:

Daneel has heard the complaint that robots are logical, not reasonable. It's true that there are differences in how he thinks when compared to a human being, differences which he finds both interesting and troubling, but all the same, he's not sure he's any more or less equipped to deal with this place when compared to anyone else. This is not a rational place. This... space that he's found himself in is irrational and inexplicable, and there's something uncomfortable about that lack of explanation. There should be an explanation for things.

The voices, too, that he now hears telepathically; it's nothing like what he's experienced before, nothing like what Friend Giskard had ever described to him. Giskard had described emotions, nothing so clear as distinct thoughts, but that is somehow what he's hearing, sensing, feeling, whatever the appropriate word choice is.

Still, he's been given a task. Daneel is familiar with that, even if he had already given himself one – the survival of all humanity. Is this greater a task? Lesser? He lacks the information to make that judgement, as yet.

In all things, this place is full of small familiarities made strange, and it's... unsettling, he has to choose that word after a moment's thought. Unsettling. It's unsettling to be expected to abandon his own tasks, to have his own (admittedly new) senses implausibly changed, to be in a place where the rules of the universe that he knows no longer apply.

Logical, rather than reasonable; rational, rather than emotional. Daneel is patient. The purpose for which he's been brought here is noble on its surface, and he will take it as much until he has reason to do otherwise.

[reviveswhenkilled]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Waku
AGE: 29
PLAYER JOURNAL: waku
TIMEZONE: GMT -6:00, no DST ever.
CONTACT: email: wakuseino@gmail.com aim: wakuseino plurk: Reisen
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: None.

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Shin Hakamada
CANON: Aphorism
POINT IN CANON: Chapter 48
AGE: 15-16 (His birthday isn't known, so we can't be sure he's not 16 yet.)
APPEARANCE: There's a handy image here, but for the sake of noting stuff: His hair is pretty obviously dyed, but it's not completely dyed, either: For whatever reason, a good portion of his hair is left undyed, creating a "crest-like" shape with the dyed hair. He has a cross-shaped scar on his left cheek, he's fairly athletic, and he has a tattoo of the character "蘇" on his right calf. Also worth noting, the tattoo can and will change positions if the spot it's on is damaged enough to remove it.

CANON HISTORY: In Japan, there is a famous high school known as Naraka high School -- those who graduate are guaranteed prestigious government positions and are basically set for life, though it has a very bizarre entry requirement: "You must be able to see the island in the sky." This is the only requirement for entry, and this is what's publicly known to most people. The truth of Naraka is a bit more complicated: Naraka was essentially formed by an entity with god-like abilities known as Yama, who was prophecized to destroy the world. In exchange for not destroying the world, the Japanese government is to offer those high-school students who can see the island in the sky. There, they are given a power based on a kanji, and are forced to fight for their lives against monster-filled trials known as "blights". Those that graduate are allowed to live, and are usually accepted into the government as part of a group dedicated to finding a way to do something about it. Though while this is officially a state secret, it's not as well-guarded as one might expect: Roughly half the students that attend the school every year know the truth behind it, and prepare themselves accordingly.

What's known about his backstory before entering school mostly comes from Mamoru Kuga. The two had been together for a large chunk of their education, and inevitably always wound up in the same class. However, the two were constantly on bad terms: Shin was a very aggressive person, and while he genuinely tries to help people, he has little tolerance for people that don't stand up for themselves, which ultimately wound up turning into outright bullying, with Shin trying to force Mamoru to stand up for himself and stop "running away from the problem" whether he wanted to or not. And of course, in the end, both wound up going to Naraka. Shin is indicated to be one of the students that knew the truth beforehand. Precisely how he knew about it has never been mentioned, though one of the information segments mentions he has and older brother -- The most common reason people are "in-the-know" about Naraka tends to involve a sibling as a graduate, so it's likely that his brother was a graduate.

When asked to choose his own character, Shin ultimately chose 蘇, meaning to revive or resurrect, under the reasoning that it would turn out okay if he just came back to life after he died. And while at the same time it almost guaranteed his survival, it also guaranteed that he had no particular protection from the inevitable blights. As a result, his first day in Naraka involved being killed by the initial blight, and when he managed to survive (thanks to his reviving power), he found out that Mamoru was his roommate for his time in Naraka, and Mamoru was heading towards a mental breakdown, and Shin being Shin, tried to get Mamoru past it through aggression and shouting at him. Mamoru responded by stabbing Shin in the heart with a pair of scissors. Of course, this really did nothing but antagonize Shin further, as he died and revived shortly after Mamoru ran away in shock, and a Blight came along.

It was a special kind of Blight, known as a "Separation Blight". Separation blights occur when the amount of students are divisible by three, and separates all the students into groups of three. Naturally, Shin wound up with Mamoru, but also wound up with the protagonist Momiji. Of course, once Shin found out he was paired up with Mamoru, he gave Mamoru a good punch to the face and decided that was enough. The trial in this case wound up being "fight a dragon! You can either use your powers, or use your strength!", and in an impressive moment of stupidity, Shin decided to kick the dragon. And thus Momiji wound up saving Shin from being eaten by a dragon and getting the way out, except Momiji wound up caught under a tree in the chaos. Shin did his best to move it, but wasn't strong enough to and tried to get Mamoru to help out, but... Mamoru instead tried to run away with the key, prompting Shin to try to fight him to get him to help, which ended with Shin getting impaled on a tree and dying. Mamoru was killed by the Blight a few minutes later, if you're curious.

When Shin inevitably came back to life after the Blight ended, everyone became aware of his character and ability. He thus became everyone's sacrificial friend! If they needed to find out what a Blight does? The best solution was to throw Shin at it and see what it does! ...Shin was less than pleased with this arrangement, but seemed to have largely accepted it before too long: He's against killing himself for nothing, but his tendency to jump into things to help people in trouble tended to wind up with him one of the first dead anyways.

However, before long, a special Blight came along: Water. Water would continue to attack every day until it was defeated, and in an attempt to force one of his classmates to fight it, a group of people in Class 4 arranged the death of one of Shin's classmates. This wound up quickly escalating into an all-out war between Shin's class (Class 1), and Class 4, led by Tomonaga, who acquired the power "Steal" and used it to steal body parts off of people, including one of the government officials in charge of watching over them. While Shin only played a minor part, Tomonaga successfully killed Momiji for a short time by stealing his heart and stomping on it, and in Class 1's counterattack, Shin's attempt to stop one of Class 4's more dangerous members was countered when Tomonaga intervene, with Tomonaga leaving Shin comatose so that his revival power wouldn't trigger. Ultimately some of his classmates found him and threw him off the roof, but he wouldn't finish reviving until after another Blight arrived, causing another Seperation Blight, during which a zombie Momiji killed Tomonaga, ripped out Tomonaga's heart, and put it in his own body. As you can probably tell by now, things getting resolved while Shin's dead happens a lot.

As the fallout from Tomonaga's war continued, Class 1's leader Sanjuurou Hinata revealed to Class 1 the history of Naraka, and a group of Sanjuurou's most trusted allies went to have a negotiation with Yama... while Shin and fellow Class 1 member Eko were on guard duty, whose job was to alert the main group when Yama's bodyguards returned. After that, Shin wound up not being involved with the chaos for a while, aside from a short Blight where he wound up trapped in a monster-filled passage with Eko and an incident where everyone in the school had to work together in an attempt to counter the Flower Blight. Shortly after the Flower blight, the numbers of students reached a multiple of three once more, and with another Blight coming... Several students decided to take matters into their own hands. By which I mean that a group of them went to go hunt for Shin and kill him so that the Blight wouldn't turn into a Separation type. He's being pulled into things immediately after the Separation Blight began.

[reviveswhenkilled]

CANON PERSONALITY: Shin idealizes the concept of manliness, with all the good and bad that comes with it. He's a strong believer in independence and standing up for oneself, and automatically moves to help people he thinks are in trouble. this is also a major weakness for him: This also means that he actively refuses to ask for help even when he needs it, on the basis of it "not being manly", and he has a lot of trouble with problems that can't be solved by punching things: Probably the best example of that is his relationship with Mamoru, which is mostly so antagonistic because Shin thought he could beat Mamoru's problems out of him, which ultimately culminated in Mamoru killing him. Twice. And of course, when it comes to Blights, it's pretty frequent for him to panic because he simply cannot think of a way to fight many of them.

To most people, Shin tends towards acting rude and standoffish, and is known to curse frequently. Once again, this tends to tie to his ideal of manliness: A man doesn't bother with stupid rules! Even his hair reflects this, as dyeing one's hair in Japan is generally considered an act of rebellion. That being said, Shin only dyeing half of his hair is also rejecting the "rebellious" group as well. A man stands on his own! All of this combines to mean that most people's first impression of Shin is that of a punk or a wannabe gangster. Either way, he doesn't expect anyone to respond positively to him, and he doesn't care. Heck. if they want a fight, he'll give them a fight!

He tends to make a pretty big deal about fitness, as he's observed performing exercise and stretches regardless of the situation around him, and he makes a big deal about taking care of his body. While he's largely accepted that most people in the school look at him as expendable, he's definitely opposed to that sort of thing, nobody's messing up his body to test stuff out, that's just stupid. It's a different story if he's protecting someone, though -- he's realistic enough to know that he can take a blow that someone else would die from, and he's usually fit enough to push them out of the way, at least.

Probably the most important relationships to Shin are with Mamoru, and female classmate Eko: Shin and Mamoru had an especially complicated relationship, since the two completely misunderstood each other so much: From Shin's perspective, Mamoru was being an escapist coward who needed to be pushed to stand up for himself, while from Mamoru's perspective, Shin was just a bully picking on the weak for his own satisfaction. That relationship exploding violently showed off a lot about Shin's personality, to be honest: Someone tried to kill me? Punch them for it once I've recovered, and we're even! And even with someone who tried to kill him, he's still trying to push that person to help him help someone who's essentially a complete stranger. That honestly gives me the impression that he doesn't really carry grudges. To be honest, he doesn't seem to be able to even comprehend the idea of people killing each other, as revelaed by his reaction to Tomonaga's murdering spree, which seemed to consist of "why the hell would someone do that?! We'd better go sit on him or something until he calms down."

Eko is the person we see Shin interacting with the most, as the two often wound up as partners, paired up by others as "those two idiots". Beyond that however, Eko's someone that Shin's constantly trying to save -- most of the times he's trying to protect someone, it's Eko, and while he calls her an idiot who constantly gets him into trouble, he still seems to be relatively close to her, and the two are a surprisingly effective group when they're working together for once.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: Not Applicable.
ABILITIES: So, technically, Shin has exactly one super-power: Word magic. To be precise, it's the ability to utilize a single word and all of its meanings as magic. Depending on one's creativity and understanding of the history and meaning of the word, that can actually do a lot. The Aphorism wiki has some basic analysis of Shin's character, so I've stolen their explanation for 蘇:

"The ancient form of 「蘇」 is 「穌」. 「魚」means fish and 「禾」 stands for plants of the monocotyledonous flowering plant family. Writing two incoherent things (fish and plant) together, it means "incoherent"/ "interrupted" and "dividing". The meaning "dividing" turned into "pushing things out of the way". When a person is about to suffocate, the only way to "revive" is to "push his airway free".

As long as one knows and understands them, one can make use of all meanings of the word, including the separate pieces to an extent, so theoretically he could have confusion-inducing spells (incoherent), spell-disrupting spells (interrupted), magically cut things (divide), or even just shooting a wall of force at people from a distance (pushing things out of the way). He also seems to have a passive resistance to fish and plants, so if he somehow ends up fighting a fish or a plant, they won't hurt him as much as they should. There's also no reason he can't apply his Revive abilities to someone else, if he could... Think of any of this.

Honestly speaking, "thinking of any of this" is his biggest limiter. Shin is neither creative, nor intelligent. He does not seem to be aware of its potential for bringing other people back to life, and someone else would have to point it out to him. The same applies for all the potential powers I listed as well: All of these powers depend on him actually knowing his word's history, and he is neither intelligent enough to know any of those potential meanings, nor creative enough to find alternate uses, while at the same time he's too stubborn to even think about asking others for help to look for other ways to use it. He only uses it as a passive ability to revive upon death.

The passive ability to revive upon death appears to operate on some sort of "reset", function: Reviving seems to recover all wounds, even ones unrelated to the killing blow, as he shows no signs of any scars in spite of some of the... rather horrific ways he's died. At the same time however, he maintains the scar he had on his face from before he gained the Revive power, which leads me to believe that whenever he revives, his body is reset to what it was when he first got the character. In the case of it being used on other people (if it goes that way), it would presumably reset their body to what it was at the start of the current world. The revives themselves also take time: Shin's reviving seems to go "at the speed of plot": He will generally revive within a few minutes of the situation that killed him ending. So if he was killed by someone going on a rampage, he would revive only when the rampage ends. If there's a gunfight or a monster attack, the same thing applies: He stays dead until it ends, but comes back to life a few minutes afterwards.

Aside from that, he's fairly athletic, and has some impressive street-fighting skills, and he likely knows a little bit of martial arts. Such skills have mostly only been used in pushing people out of the way of fatal attacks and occasionally holding someone down to stop them from murdering people, though.

INVENTORY; The Naraka summer school uniform. I'm pretty sure that's it, to be honest. He was kind of busy with trying not to be murdered at the time he was taken.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: Someone's going to be assassinated, and we have to stop it. I get that much. But... Why the hell is the plan "disguise yourself as the target and die in his place?!" What kind of bullshit plan is that?! You think it'll be fine if I just come back to life later, is that it? Just let me say right now: Dying sucks! It hurts like hell even if it all gets fixed after! Look, we just need to focus on keeping him safe, right? Being a bodyguard is fine, I can do that, but I'm drawing the line at being a sacrifice! I have to deal with that enough at home!

THIRD PERSON: Protecting people was an obvious thing to Shin. If someone's in trouble, of course you should help them. Even if one took an injury or even got killed, it would be a mark of honour to do so. That's what he thought normally, but protecting people and being hunted down and murdered to avoid a bad situation was a completely different matter. Seriously, who even does that? Still, being athletic meant he was already prepared for this kind of situation. By the time one of his classmates was knocking on his door, he already had a rope set up so he could escape out the window. By the time they broke through his door while carrying a bat, he was already in the woods nearby. They were probably already on his trail, though – the thing about a place like Naraka was that there was no shortage of people that could track you down, no matter where you were. And so, he kept moving in quick bursts, hiding himself in between them. Why did he have to be killed when there wasn't even anything dangerous happening yet? There was no way he was going to allow that.

shu ouma | guilty crown | 1/?

[prayers]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Nami
AGE:  21
PLAYER JOURNAL: prayers 
TIMEZONE:  EST
CONTACT: aim: protosheis
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Shu Ouma
CANON: Guilty Crown
POINT IN CANON: Episode 14
AGE: 17
APPEARANCE: http://i.imgur.com/71HeezZ.jpg
CANON HISTORY: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilty_Crown
CANON PERSONALITY: In order to understand Shu we must realize that he's someone who's been shaped by specific events in his life.

The Lost Christmas incident affected Shu so much that his entire life revolved around the event. As a kid Shu was brave and decisive. He'd rush in to help strangers without even thinking about it. When Shu was young he saved a little boy named Triton who would later be known as Gai Tsutsugami. After the Lost Christmas incident occurred Shu lost his immediate family and grew up into a meek high school student. Shu ended up growing into someone weaker because of the trauma he faced on that day.

"I'm dense? Maybe it's true that my mind works out of step with everyone else's. It's just that I don't know what to say to other people. So I hide my nervousness and go along with what they say."

Shu always agrees with other people because he gets nervous during simple conversations. He'll force himself to agree with other people even if he might think otherwise. One of the biggest examples of this was when he explicitly told Souta that he had no feelings for Inori despite that being a lie. He only said that to Souta because he's the type of person who says what other people want to hear. This specific trait of his is still present even after he becomes the student council president. At first Shu thinks that the void ranking system couldn't possibly work because it would make other people feel bad. Later on he changes his mind saying that you need to distinguish people based on their void ranking. Shu's opinion can change because of other people. He never usually sticks with his own opinions.

At the beginning of the series we know that Shu has a tendency to be indecisive and passive. Shu's unable to make a decision quickly because he complicates things in his own head. He weighs both of his options and tries to consider the best course of action. The best course of action for Shu would be to essentially do what Gai does. Shu sees Gai as someone who's successful and well liked amongst others. He takes on Gai’s mentality hoping to attain the same results. Even after Gai’s death, Shu continuously asks himself how Gai would manage these decisions he has so much trouble with. Just because Shu tries to think similarly to Gai it doesn't mean that he can do it well. Shu often forgets that Gai wasn't just a strict leader with an arrogant attitude. When he thinks about what sort of action Gai might do he never considers Gai's emotions behind them.

Bravery is something that constantly comes and goes for Shu. Sometimes Shu can be extremely brave and face danger as if it were nothing. However, that isn't always the case with him. When Shu's brave he can easily be seen as a great fighter. He won't back down from a fight even if he doesn't always know what he's doing. We're shown this side of him when he confronts an Endlave for the first time and strikes it down without knowledge of his power. Another time where Shu was being brave was when he rescued Inori from the GHQ. He can become brave and surpass his limits if Inori's there with him. When Inori isn't influencing Shu he can also be seen as a coward. On one occasion he was too scared to pull out voids and abandoned his mission. Gai made Shu face repercussions of his cowardice and declared that he shouldn't show himself in front of Funeral Parlor again. Shu can be considered to be both strong and brave or a weak coward. It all depends on the situation.

"It felt like I'd peeked into your hearts without asking so I've felt guilty all along."

Using other people is not a concept that Shu can get comfortable with. His Void power doesn't necessarily help with that as each time Shu pulls out a void he's using someone's heart. He has serious issues with using people as tools and starts to feel guilty for it. Shu can be seen apologizing for using other peoples voids on multiple occasions. On that note, Shu also yells at Gai for using other people. Shu feels quite strongly towards the idea of using others for a greater purpose. He can't stand the idea of Gai using Inori and it frustrates him quite a bit.

Inori Yuzuriha's someone Shu cares greatly for. She was the main reason why Shu wanted to join Funeral Parlor in the first place. He was so happy that Inori saved him from the GHQ that he wanted to stay her. At first Shu only knew her as the vocalist for an internet band named Egoist and then he becomes much closer to her. Shu's relationship with Inori's a bit complicated. It's obvious that Shu cares for Inori and is protective of her. Some people within the canon (namely Gai and Segai) use this towards their advantage. Shu becomes extremely obedient and loyal if Inori's involved in the picture somehow. He doesn't want Inori to get hurt at any costs. Therefore, it becomes easy to manipulate Shu because of his strong feelings towards Inori. Gai uses Shu's feelings for Inori to get him to join Funeral Parlor.

Something important to note about Shu is that he has a big heart. During Gai's strategy meetings he'd be the first one who'd complain about possible casualties and risks. He says it's messed up to follow Gai because his plans have high risk rates. He doesn't want people to throw away their lives for the sake of victory. Shu's a very kind and compassionate person. He doesn't even kill people when he's asked to fight and he prefers to avoid battles instead. In episode 6 Shu can be seen holding a gun during the Leukocyte's attack and he doesn't even fire a shot.

"Isn't there something more that I can do?"

Shu has incredibly low self-esteem and it's one of the reasons why he looks up to Gai so much. He calls himself pathetic for letting the GHQ take Inori into custody. Then he says things such as "I wonder if it's the selfish people who get ahead in this world, after all." Even though Shu thinks lowly of himself he has difficulty accepting the fact that he's powerless. He wants to do the right thing even if it means being reckless. Shu saved Gai from the Leukocyte attack because he didn't want to sit around doing nothing while everyone else put their lives on the line. After spending some time in Funeral Parlor he starts to feel better about himself. He developed a bolder personality because everyone in Funeral Parlor believed that he was capable of getting stronger. Shu feels in debt towards Funeral Parlor because they changed him. He paid them back by saving them in episode 11. With Shu's new found determination he managed to gain the position of student council president.

As a leader Shu's burdened with responsibilities and he's tasked with saving the school from the GHQ. Shu acts confident and bold in front of everyone. He single-handedly stopped riots and maintained control over the students. However, when he's alone with Hare he becomes vulnerable the same way Gai does with Inori. He loses his confidence and dwells on his errors. When Shu's alone with Hare he talks about how he bends easily and he takes note of his own flaws. Only people close to Shu know that he doubts himself as a leader.

Overall, Shu's someone who often gets caught in between two extremes. He makes lots of mistakes and he tries to correct them. In the final episode Shu's described as someone who has human characteristics. That's the main core of his character. He's very human-like with his emotions and decisions. Nothing ever seems to go right for Shu, but he tries to do his best.

shu ouma | guilty crown | 2/2

[prayers]

POINT OF DEPARTURE: N/A
ABILITIES:  Shu has the ability to use the Void Genome. The Void Genome is a skill that allows the user to to manifest human thoughts and emotion into physical form. In canon it's described as "materialization of the soul".

It's interesting to note that Shu's an expert on using voids. The Void Genome itself was originally intended to be used by Gai, but by some chance Shu ended up with it at the beginning of the series. Even though Shu doesn't have that much knowledge on voids he still manages to be creative with them in battle. In episode 4 Shu uses the Anti Gravity gun on a waterfall so he can climb it. When Shu first obtains his void power he has some difficulty extracting voids from people. He gradually gets better at using voids as the series progresses. If Shu's void breaks then he dies.
INVENTORY; N/A
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? Nothing too important.
S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: 

a thread from a post in luceti.
I hope this is okay!

THIRD PERSON: Shu thought it was wrong to force people into doing things that they didn’t want to do. He didn’t want the people around him to feel as if they were risking their lives for no reason. He complicated things in his mind and he found himself worrying about the safety of others. Shu could worry as much as he wanted to. However, there was no way he could possibly tell what they would be thinking at a time like this.

Were they just as worried as he was or was he the only one who felt this way? He figured that the possibility of that being true was slim to none. Someone else must have felt the same way as him. After all, there’s no right way to deal with this sort of thing.

Shu heavily sympathized with the people who didn’t want to be here. He thought through all of this very carefully. The situation here was just like how it was back in Funeral Parlor. He knew that he had to fight so that he wouldn’t be selected out - they all had to do what they could in order to make it out safely.

The truth of the matter was that Shu was scared. He might have acted tough at some point but he was definitely frightened of what may happen in the future. He considered himself to be insignificant within the grand scheme of things.

“Can’t I be better than this?”

After Shu realized that he was alone he clutched his hand, cursing his own weakness. He thought he had gotten stronger, but he knew he was still pathetic. Shu has always taken note of his own flaws. Thinking these sorts of thoughts depressed him. He wanted to change, but above all else he wanted to be like Gai. If Shu could even get some things right about his interpretation of Gai then maybe he could manage.  

“I wonder what Gai would do if he was in my position.”

To be frank, Shu was tired of running away. He didn’t want to be blamed for things he could have prevented, but most of all he didn’t want the guilt of the loss of an innocent life on his hands. He had plenty to be guilty of. The sin of using his friends as tools was enough to make him feel guilty all the time. The only thing he could do now was wait. He figured that things would eventually become clear and that he wouldn’t need to feel so distraught. 

Toshizou Hijikata | Peacemaker Kurogane (PG/AU)

[momijizukamori]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Cocoa
AGE: 26
PLAYER JOURNAL: momjizukamori
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: momijizukamori on AIM + Gmail
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Toushizou Hijikata
CANON: Peacemaker Kurogane
POINT IN CANON: N/A (AU)
AGE: 34”
APPEARANCE: Hijikata’s appearance is close to canon - however, his left arm has been replaced with a cybernetic replacement, owing to injury, and he has some very light scarring on his upper chest and the left side of his face from the same incident, though you’d have to know it was there to spot it. His hair is also much shorter - he’s only been growing it out for about two years, so loose, it’s midback. His clothing is modern business-wear, if frequently rumpled because he just doesn’t care.
CANON HISTORY: History (written by Andy, used with player and mod permission)
CANON PERSONALITY: The side of Toshizou most people see is that of the ‘oni vice-commander’. Where Kondou and Yamanami are the kind ones among Shinsengumi command, the task falls to Hijikata to be the harsh one, enforcing discipline with an iron fist. He is responsible for drafting the Shinsengumi code to which all members are sworn, where the only punishment is sepukku.

It’s not a particularly forced role for him - Toshi is, by nature, a somewhat gruff individual. He’s blunt about expressing displeasure, and as he holds individuals around him (as well as himself) to very high standards, he’s displeased often. He’s the type that seems to love to have something to complain about. He can also be ruthless in his pursuit of greater goals - as evidenced by the code. He feels such measures are necessary to make the units cohesive, and protect Kyoto and Japan. He often butts heads with Yamanami, who takes a more moderate stance on the matter. Some of this is out of a striving for legitimacy as a samurai as well - unlike many of his companions in the Shinsengumi, Hijikata was born to a farming family, and not a bushi family. Becoming samurai was something he longed for from a young age, and having acquired that rank through his position with the Shinsengumi, he does as much as he can to not tarnish that reputation or that of those around him.

Despite all this, he’s a good person at heart, if rarely a nice person. He truly believes in his path and his goals, that they are the proper, honorable thing to do, and he’s willing to sacrifice himself for his country and ideals. He also does care about others around him, even if he’s not particularly good at showing it. Tetsu takes his assignment as a page as an insult, but Hijikata’s reasoning in the choice was to protect the boy from the full harshness of life as Shinsengumi; a page would not be required to adhere to the Shinsengumi code for instance and would thus not be forced to face the punishments it decrees.

He also shows a gruff sort of protectiveness towards Souji Okita, fussing over him at the first signs of illness and the like. He is also far more likely to give in to Souji’s whims, and while he’ll complain and glare the whole way, he will allow himself to be dragged out for candy-shopping or the like. Some of this is rooted in his tendency to blame himself for things he sees as being his fault, even if the connection is, in reality, only tangential, and he holds onto that self-blame for a long, long time. With Souji, he blames himself for Souji taking up the blade at a young age, and for the trauma Souji has suffered as a result. His resulting overprotectiveness of the Shinsengumi’s most skilled fighter is an attempt to make up for those past wrongs.


POINT OF DEPARTURE: PG + AU - previously a native of the universe of newbabylon
History:
Toshizou Hijikata was born the youngest son of a lower-middle class family on L4. He had five siblings, the oldest brother of whom more or less raised the rest of the family after their parents died - his mother when he was young, of pulmonary fibrosis from work conditions and pollution on the lower levels, coupled with congenital lung defects, and his father not long after, from natural causes. His older brother took over the family business, but Toshi knew he didn’t have the temperament for business, and decided for a career in the police force - he had a strong desire to make the world around him better, and to help keep his family from walking the edge of poverty.

Despite his background, and relatively young age when he joined the force (which is to say, as soon as they’d take him), Toshizou was intelligent, and had a forceful personality that rapidly got him noticed by higher ups - though not always in helpful ways. He quickly gained a reputation for strategic skill and firm dedication to the ideals of justice. While he was climbing the ranks, one of his elder sisters began showing signs of the same pollution-induced illness that killed their mother, and Toshi sent more and more of his savings to his family to help with her treatment. He also managed to gain his precinct a reputation a one of the less corrupt ones, among the NBPD - while he couldn’t single-handedly take of all the problems in his station, he did what he could.

When he was twenty-four, he received a major boost in rank, despite his relatively young age, and was made head of newly formed counter-terrorism unit. They operated efficiently and effectively for nearly a year - Toshizou’s tactical skills being particularly well suited to small-unit work. Then, disaster struck - they were sent in to a situation involving explosives they believe to be disarmed, but were not. The explosives were triggered, killing two members of the team, and seriously injuring several others, Toshizou included. Given the choice between an attempt at salvaging his left arm, with a good chance of permanent nerve damage, pain, and disfiguration, or a cybernetic replacement, his slightly pain-and-drug delirious answer was ‘cut the damn thing off’.

While on desk duty following the incident, as it was unclear how the team would move forward, he was given an offer by Eden Technologies - train one their own in weapons skills and tactics, and in exchange, his sister’s health problems would be taken care of at no cost, with far better quality than the family could afford. He reluctantly agreed, and took on the job - only to discover the man he was supposed to be training was a child, still, the product of an in-house experiment in bioware and gene manipulation testing.

He found the idea of the experiment distasteful, but followed through with his end of the deal for his sister’s sake. As he worked with the boy, he found a certain amount of fondness for him, despite his odd nature - growing up in the lab was a far different experience than growing up in the world outside, but Hijikata did his best to show him respect as a human, not just as a weapon.

When the scientists in charge of the project realized their specimen was not performing up to expectations, Hijikata was given an order to dispose of him, rather than get corp hands dirty. Angry at the way they’d treated him as an object rather than a person, he took the young man and fled to the lower levels, until the it was clear the corp had given up interest in pursuing the pair - Hijikata wasn’t about to sell the boy out to a rival, after all.

Once things calmed down, he set up shop ostensibly as private detective - though while an ex-cop, he gets sent a lot of the stuff his old precinct can't deal with easily through 'official' channels, leaving him and Souji to play a bit of vigilante justice.

Personality:
Toshi’s personality and point of view on the things surrounding him are very similar to canon, due to the parallels his origins between both worlds. As an officer, he treated his position as lawkeeper with a great deal of respect, far more than many of his coworkers, which lead to a certain amount of metaphorical head-butting. He doesn’t have quite as much guilt associated with Souji, though having taught the boy to fight and kill, he feels a certain respoonsibility for him, and as in canon, the two are very close.

ABILITIES: Hijikata’s main skills are a combination of in-born and a lot of hard training - as an officer, he became proficient in firearms and hand-to-hand combat, and he’s taught himself traditional swordforms - a slightly esoteric hobby, in this day and age, but one he enjoys. He’s also a skilled tactician and leader, and capable of making quick decisions in heated moments. His cyberarm is also stronger than the average human (and stronger than his other arm), though given that the rest of his body is vanilla human, this mostly just results in the ability to be really awesome at crushing things with his mighty metal fist.
INVENTORY: Cyberarm, now-useless smartphone, equally useless New Bablyon ID chip and credits, concealed carry shoulder rig with large calibre handgun and spare clip, pocket multitool, crumpled packages of cigarettes, bad attitude.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?
The game this version comes from was very short-lived, so there’s no carryover CR aside from things with Souji

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: Damnit. Souji? [Because he’s hoping to hell they haven’t been split up - that’s a recipe for disaster] Souji, if you can hear this, answer me back. [please please please - there is decidedly a hint of worry creeping into his voice, despite attempts to hide it] And stay where you are - I’ll find you. No point in both of us running around.

And I don’t know what the hell’s going on here, but don’t do anything I wouldn’t.
[...]
Unless you really have to.

[There’s a pause, and when he speaks again, any hint of worry is well-buried under irritated authority] Whoever’s in charge here, I want a sit-rep. Now.

THIRD PERSON: (test drive prompt 5)
Hijikata was no stranger to rioting - while it had never been his assigned unit, everyone got called up at least once when things got bad. Keeping order was one of their main goals, after all. This island was smaller than New Babylon had been, but with restricted access to the upper levels, the effect was much the same. Too many unhappy people in a bad situation, waiting for something to spark them off. He wasn’t sure what that spark was, in this case, but it didn’t matter - from the sounds of it, things were already in full-swing, and they would be looking for anyone who stood out. Along from the general vandalism and property damage, of course.

The hotel was a bad choice - there was only one way to go once inside, and that was ‘up’. And it’d be a primary target for arson. He had some things stored there, but nothing important - that was all on him right now. Most important being his sidearm, though if he could keep weapons out of this, so much the better. That would only escalate things, and without back-up, it wasn’t like he could do more than simply protect himself - and he had enough training that unless they started shooting first, he could probably manage that without a gun.

The best thing to do would be to stay out of their way as much as possible. Go unnoticed. Undercover work wasn’t really one of his strong suits, though he had a lot of practice in ‘not getting shot’ care of living on the lower levels. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets to hide the prosthetic, wishing he had his gloves on them. Hunched shoulders and a gaze directed firmly at the ground were both good ways of warding off attention. He picked up his pace slightly as the noise started to move in his direction, and headed for a side-alley to hopefully let the worst of the mess pass by.

Supplemental: PSL prose log here

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

[shingetsu]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Andy
AGE: 32
PLAYER JOURNAL: shingetsu
TIMEZONE: CST
CONTACT: ladyluck1407@gmail.com
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A
POINT IN CANON: N/A (AU)

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Souji Okita
CANON: Peacemaker Kurogane
POINT IN CANON: PG & AU
AGE: 19

APPEARANCE: Canon Refrence
For the AU, it's more like This fanart image, with modern styled clothing instead of traditional Japanese, and his hair long but braided, instead of loose. He's on the short side for an adult male, only about 5'6", and very slight in appearance. He also has faint scars from various surgeries carried out in his AU backstory.


CANON HISTORY: Wiki link, which is pretty useless. So there is also this app, which has a much better write-up. I'm linking that with both player (Cocoa) and mod permission.


CANON PERSONALITY: Souji's personality is one of extremes. The face he shows the world is a happy one, probably best described as somewhat childish, tending to act much younger than his twenty-one years. He enjoys playing with children, has a sweet tooth, and likes to play practical jokes. He's quite polite, at least so far as language goes, but those he gets to know well should beware, because he also delights in teasing those he considers friends.
As a swordsman, Souji is a genius. His training began at the age of nine, and by eighteen, he had mastered the Tennen Rishin-ryu and began work as an instructor himself. He is easily one of the best swordsmen amongst the ranks of the Shinsengumi, an ability which earned him captaincy of the first squad.

This natural ability is not without its drawbacks, however. For when Souji picks up a sword, the other aspect of his personality emerges. As a fighter, he knows no restraint. He cannot participate in even the most informal of sparring matches without injuring his opponents, and when real weapons are brought into play, someone is likely to end up dead.

Souji is well aware of the dichotomy that exists inside himself. In fact, much of the light-hearted exterior is something of an act he puts on for others, as a way for him to fit in and interact with other people. His playfulness and lightheartedness should not be mistaken for innocence or naievity, for he is neither.

Souji's most obvious weakness is his lack of self-restrain. His fighting ability is superb, but the flip side of the coin is that his ability might be turned against friend as well as foe in a heated situation. This makes it difficult for him to train with others in non-combat settings, as while he is capable of a certain level of restraint, it is still possible for him to injure those he is working with.

Emotionally, Souji is somewhat stunted. His happy exterior is something of an act put on for others, and while it is not a complete ruse, he is not as cheerful or naive as he seems. While his behavior is not completely pathological, there is a difference between the way that most people perceive the world and the way that Souji relates to it. He has a habit of dealing with things in very simplistic terms, ignoring the shades of grey that may exist in a given situation, sometimes offering advice which may not, from an outside perspective, be completely appropriate to the situation (As an example, he frequently encourages the main protagonist of the series, fifteen-year-old Tetsunosuke, to pursue a path which will make him stronger. While this is what Tetsu wants, all of the other adults around him recognize that it's not the best course of action. Souji, meanwhile, continues to help the boy train so that he may eventually get his revenge.) He will readily listen to the problems of others, but when it comes to his own troubles, he prefers to withdraw and keep them private. This means that he does not always receive the help and support that he might need in times of stress. He is far more focused on helping and serving others than he is in taking care of himself.


POINT OF DEPARTURE: PG & AU from newbabylon

General Background: This version of Souji is being taken from a Cyberpunk AU where humanity has been reduced to living in closed cities, isolated from each other, and from the harsh conditions of what is left of the earth. Life inside these massive cities is highly caste-like, with only the richest individuals able to afford technologically-filled lives of leisure on the upper levels, while those without are forced to live on the lower levels, suffering from poverty, hunger, and deprivation, forced to eke out their own meager existence without the benefits of fresh food or even artificial sunlight.

Life in the cities is ultimately controlled by mega-corporations, which have the ability to keep tabs on all of the citizens via implanted data chips.

AU History: Souji started life as an experiment. Just how specialized a human being could science and technology really build? It was a chance for researchers to test their bioware applications in a completely controlled environment, free of the interference from the uncontrolled variables that came along with modifying adults. Instead, they would bioengineer their own test subject and raise him in controlled conditions meant to optimize the performance of their innovations. Of course, such a project was a long and costly affair, and securing funding required more than simply the promise of improved performance somewhere down the line. As a return on investment, it was agreed that the test subject would be trained with combat capabilities, allowing him to be used in security or outsourced for a variety of tasks at the company's discretion. All of this was, of course, kept top secret.

As a result, Souji's early childhood was a clinical one. While he was treated well, by most standards, he was also subjected to a strict educational program and frequent invasive medical procedures as his numerous bioware augmentations were installed. All of his socialization consisted of interacting with the scientists and doctors assigned to his program, and while they were not unkind, they were no replacement for a real childhood.

By the time he was ten, he'd reached a stage where combat training was considered appropriate. A former cop by the name of Hijikata was brought in to oversee his development in this area, and it was from him that Souji got his first taste of normal human interaction. He became very fond of the man and managed to break free of the introversion that had characterized most of his early life, developing a vibrant, if occasionally troubled, personality. While he learned a great deal of combat skills, he chose to hone his skill with bladed weapons especially, as a way to honor his mentor, who had a special interest in the art.

Unfortunately, as Souji grew older, it became clear that several things had gone wrong with the program. While he was very intelligent, there was a rift in his personality, which could go from cheerful (if somewhat childish) to frighteningly violent with only minor provocation. Worse, something in the original bioengineering done to his DNA had gone wrong, producing not the robust physical specimen they had hoped for, but instead a somewhat delicate young man. While much of this could be corrected with enhancements, they only masked the underlying flaws, and by the time he entered the end stages of his combat training, it became apparent that his body would simply continue to break down until it could no longer be salvaged, and that this point would not be long in coming. At that point, the project was officially declared a failure, funding was cut, and the test subject was ordered to be terminated.

Luckily for him, the man assigned to do the deed was his trainer, who took a poor opinion of their decision to throw away a human life as if it were garbage and got Souji out of the lab, taking him into the lower levels until the worst of the heat had passed, and giving the young man his first taste of a truly free life. Eventually, they set up shop on L4 as a private detective agency, though they often get work through somewhat less legitimate means as well.


Personality: Much like canon, Souji's personality is superficially charming, sometimes down-right silly. This is largely learned behavior--being raised in a lab, devoid of proper socialization, he mimics what he has learned is 'appropriate,' though he also enjoys acting in ways that draw responses from others which he finds personally amusing. For the most part, this is all benign, but a deeper instability lurks beneath the surface owing to the circumstances of his upbringing, which can result in disturbing or violent behavior in dangerous or stressful circumstances. The only person he has formed a 'normal' relationship with is Hijikata, and even that might be termed somewhat codependent.

ABILITIES: Souji has been significantly bioengineered in an attempt to test the limits of bioware technology. The base manipulation to his DNA granted him superior cognitive abilities (including genius-level intellect) , and further neural enhancement also increased the speed of his reflexes. Modifications to his musculature have granted him strength beyond what his natural physique would indicate, though not significantly greater than that of a well trained adult male in good condition. His sense of sight and hearing have also been augmented above that of baseline human, although not to truly superhuman levels.

His years of training have made him at home with a variety of weapons. He has an innate talent with nearly any combat weapon he encounters, though he currently favors the use of bladed weapons owing to the influence of the man who trained him.
INVENTORY; (Useless) New Babylon ID chip, half-eaten bag of gumdrops, a thin, very sharp knife in an ankle sheath.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? This AU is based on the short-lived Cyberpunk Game, New Babylon. More information on the game world is available here. Because of the very short life-span of the game, no significant in-game CR is being used here, save the history he and Hijikata share.


S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:
I think I can understand why they decided what they did. [There's a pause] Although I still don't think we failed, some decision had to be made. And maybe this time we caused more harm than good. I can't really say. But I'm glad I'm still here. I'd prefer to be traveling, really, helping, than staying in one place. [There's a laugh] And maybe that makes me a little strange, but I don't mind.

We'll just have to keep going. It's sad to lose so many familiar faces, but we'll meet new ones. That probably isn't very comforting, but there's still hope to be had, and that's not so bad, is it?

Additional sample: There are several threads in this post, although individually, they fall shy of the 10-comment requirement, so I'm just including it as a supplemental.


THIRD PERSON: Sometimes he marvels at how simple it's become. It shouldn't be; each jaunt takes him further and further from anything he might have recognized as home, stretching the narrow horizons of his birth nearly to the breaking point. And yet, it seems a role he was born for. If there is one thing he has always had a skill for, it is mimicry. He knows when to laugh, he knows when to smile. He knows when it is better to say nothing and observe, to let someone else show him what he needs to know to slip seamlessly into the next role required of him.
It makes things easy. Easier than they should be, perhaps. It certainly makes him useful, which he appreciates. It's good to have a role, to know what you're meant to do, and to know how to do it. And it's not destructive, for the most part. He can keep that part of himself safely tucked away while still helping. But it also ties him back to his old home, to sterile halls and endless tests, and he knows he'll never be able to escape what they made him to be, even if he's found another way to live now. It's a grand adventure he's on now, one he enjoys, for all its pitfalls. It will be over sooner than he'd ever wish, he's certain, but he's content for now, as each jaunt takes him further from his own suffocating past, even if it will never be able to free him from it entirely.

Additional: There's a giant PSL thread here.

[powersthatbe]

ACCEPTED!

Natasha Romanoff (Reserved) :: 1/?

[otrava]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: era
AGE: 29
PLAYER JOURNAL: sleepofreason
TIMEZONE: Pacific
CONTACT: sleepofreason | aim samsara survives | samsarasurvives @ gmail (dot) com
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: n/a

2

[otrava]

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow)
CANON: Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)
POINT IN CANON: post Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
AGE: Birth year give in canon thus far is 1984, making her 30 by the close of 2014. If MCU Black Widow's backstory goes in a direction similar to the Marvel comic's version of the character, that year (and her age) will change.
APPEARANCE: scarlett johansson as natasha romanoff
CANON HISTORY: [wiki's subsection on Natasha in the MCU] leaves quite a lot to be desired.

So let's go over each film one by one (with links, still): [Iron Man 2] [The Avengers] [Captain America 2].

What is missing from this list is a personal background/history. We have no confirmation in the MCU of whether or not Natasha was really born in 1984, if she knew the Winter Soldier before he was given to HYDRA, who trained her, or where all that red in her ledger even comes from. She says that she wasn't picky about what she did or for whom, but we also know that Natasha doesn't say anything to anyone without a calculated reason. We also know, by measure of history, that anyone working for the KGB born in 1984 would only be 7 at the oldest by the time the KGB dissolved in 1991.

Which is to say, part of that must be a huge glaring lie. But which part?

Considering that Natasha's "crimes committed for and against this country" and Soviet-made weaponry featuring throughout the film, I am going with the idea that '1984' is a cover year. Since there is not, as yet, a canon history that has been established as fact within the MCU I will be using a rough framework of events (but not pinning anything down to an actual year) that coincides with the comics version of Natasha's past.

This involves training with the KGB (and knowing the man later to become the Winter Soldier as a KGB operative) and Clint Barton's assignment to assassinate her leading to his decision to bring her into SHIELD. I plan on avoiding possible canon contradictions through the fact that Natasha is highly unlikely to discuss her past with anyone, even those closest to her.

chikage kazama | hakuouki | reserved

[yasutsuna]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Rift
AGE: 27
PLAYER JOURNAL: siscons
TIMEZONE: PST
CONTACT: sistercomplex
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Chikage Kazama
CANON: Hakuouki
POINT IN CANON: Post death, Hijikata route
AGE: Unspecified, but likely somewhere in his late 20s/early 30s
APPEARANCE: Image.
CANON HISTORY: Here.
CANON PERSONALITY:

When Kazama is first presented to the player, it is as an enigmatic villain. He appears lazy and apathetic, his swordplay unrefined and sloppy. Yet he possesses such a great deal of power that such things ultimately don't even matter; he is able to defeat the greatest of the Shinsengumi, all accomplished swordsman, with seemingly minimal effort. Time after time he appears before the protagonists as a menace, a strange figure who seems unconcerned with their plight but nevertheless emerges to hinder them. He appears callous and cold, killing without a second thought and insulting whoever dares to challenge him. He defeats Souji Okita with ease during the battle of the Ikeda Inn, and likewise fights Toshizo Hijikata to a draw during another battle.

As time goes on, his story becomes clearer, and more layers are added to his character. He is revealed to be an oni, the head of the Chikage family, the greatest house of the oni of the West. He sees humans as inferior to him, but nonetheless fights for the Satsuma faction due to their past connection. During a major battle in the history of Japan, the Chikage house allied themselves with a losing faction. As a result, they were persecuted and scattered. At that time, the Satsuma aided them in their survival, and so Kazama now lends his strength to their cause. He has a great sense of obligation to these men, enough to fight for them despite his hatred of humans.

Yet despite claiming to care nothing for humans, he has a tendency to act rather humanely at times. During a major battle, the Shinsengumi are ordered to pursue a retreating force of Satsuma soldiers. Kazama intercepts them in order to allow the men to retreat. It is largely a symbolic gesture; as the Satsuma soldiers have already been defeated, they plan to commit ritual suicide in order to maintain their honor. The Shinsengumi hope to capture them in order to execute them dishonorably. Kazama derides the Shinsengumi for this and single handedly stops their advance so that the men will be able to take their own lives. Even as he claims to merely hate humans as inferior beings, he does show some measure of respect for them.

His primary motivation throughout the series, however, is to capture Chizuru Yukimura. Chizuru, the protagonist of the series, is revealed to be the head of another great oni family. This makes her a rare pure blooded female oni, and a perfect mate for Kazama. As the oni have been in decline over the years, Kazama seeks out a mate in order to produce offspring to ensure the future of their kind. Once he discovers what Chizuru is, he doggedly pursues her time and time again, though she has fallen under the protection of the Shinsengumi. How events play out differs depending on the route the player chooses, given the visual novel format of the canon, but Kazama always has a rather eerie obsession with his "wife." He has a tendency to unilaterally decide things for her, such as simply presuming that due to the fact that they are both pure blooded oni she should of course accept his offer of marriage. She usually has a very different view of the matter...

His relationship with Chizuru develops very differently, ranging from him giving up on her completely to dying as a result of his pursuit of her. Nonetheless, it is clear that his top priority is almost always the survival of his clan and the future of the oni. He has a very strong sense of responsibility towards his people and is always quite aware of this stature. In one route, rather begrudgingly, he accepts the marriage proposal of another oni woman since he recognizes that such is what would be best for his people. In some routes he seems to develop true romantic feelings for Chizuru, but it is clear that actual romance comes secondary to duty for him.

Perhaps due to those beliefs, he also comes to have a rather strong respect for the Shinsengumi and its members. This is most apparent in his own route, where you view his reactions to the deaths of the various other characters in canon. It's clear that learning of their deaths does affect him quite a bit, as he believes that such great men deserved a better fate. Viewed from this angle, the player sees a more fatalistic side of Kazama, one that has simply resigned itself to seeing the history of men play out before him as he decides not to take part himself. He would be quite content to simply disappear off the stage of history as long as he secures what he wants, a pure blooded bride to bear his offspring. He has no great aspirations for glory, as he's already quite sure of himself and his own prowess. He has nothing to prove since he already knows that he's the greatest there is (though, of course, this also leads to him frequently underestimating others and in two routes getting killed for it).

chikage kazama | hakuouki | reserved

[yasutsuna]

POINT OF DEPARTURE: N/A
ABILITIES:

Kazama is an Oni, a mythical Japanese creature that posseses a variety of supernatural powers. As an oni, he possesses much higher physical strength and speed than normal people. The oni are regularly portrayed as able to move quickly enough to be untraceable by the human eye, disappearing from sight simply through the speed of their movement. While high speed movement of that sort is all too common in anime, it's worth nothing that (other than the existence of oni) the setting that they come from is fairly mundane and meant to reflect a more or less realistic world. The oni are the only ones shown to be able to move at such high speeds, and the only ones who possess physical strength beyond what a human would be capable of. In addition to their strength, they are also shown to regenerate extremely quickly - guns are virtually useless against them, because they hear from normal bullet wounds instantaneously.

Furthermore, although oni are normally indistinguishable from normal humans, they possess a "true" form that serves to heighten their abilities further. In their true forms, their hair turns white and they grow horns, making their demonic lineage more apparent. Although in olden times, oni transformations were more elaborate, involving longer horns and different markings appear on the oni's body, over time the blood of the oni has grown weaker and the transformation more subdued. In this form, the strength of an oni becomes even greater, easily surpassing that of even the strongest of humans. Their regeneration rate also becomes much higher, to the extent that anything sort of decapitation or a blow to hurt is incapable of killing an oni.

Beyond the abilities granted to him by his lienage, Kazama is also considered an accomplished swordsman. Although his blood gives him a somewhat unfair advantage over his opponents, he is still considered by many to be among the strongest swordsmen in Hakuouki, if not the most skilled. His swordsmanship relies on his brute strength, though he's nonetheelss able to match and overcome even the most accomplished swordsmen of his age. On the battlefield he is known to be an accomplished soldier, able to sway the outcome of battles through his presence.

INVENTORY; His sword, the Dojigiri Yasutsuna. The sword has been passed down in the Kazama family, and is renowned for its ability to harm other oni. Although it is unclear just how the blade's ability works, Kazama notes that an oni's wounds do not heal when cut by its blade. Its unknown whether the blade possesses any other special abilities, but it is nonetheless considered a sword famed for its monster slaying abilities in Japanese folklore.

Otherwise, he'll have his tobacco pipe with him, as well as a change of clothing - halfway through the story he switches from Eastern clothing to Western clothing, so I'd like him to basically have a set of both loosk.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? Not really. Kazama is a world class creeper whose dream is to have 100 babies.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:

(( ooc: this is a first person sample originally used for another game - hopefully that's alright, if not i'd be happy to provide something else. ))

[ as the screen turns out, you're treated to a rather bored expression. whatever mysteries this world might contain don't seem to matter much to this blonde haired man as he seems to have nothing but apathy towards his new surroundings. ]

To think humans could create such a device... Wonders never cease.

[ he lets out a sigh at that, fiddling with it a bit more, before turning it upside down. not that he realizes what that does. ]

I seek answers. Where is this? Why have I been brought here? And do not merely repeat the empty words of that letter to me... it contained nothing but meaningless drivel.

If gods truly exist, I have never encountered them before, and I see no reason why that would change now. A demon has no need for deities. If you seek aid, then you've sought the wrong man. The fate of the cosmos means little to me... if this world is to be destroyed, I will enjoy watching it burn. The future is something you create by your own power, not by borrowing the power of others.

THIRD PERSON:

(( ooc: likewise, this sample was also originally for a different game. ))

Chikage Kazama was quite alert as he awoke, though his somewhat disheveled appearance may have implied otherwise. He propped himself up on his elbow, sitting up as he glanced around him. He did not recognize his surroundings, though he saw no cause for alarm. Whatever situation he found himself in, he doubted he was in any real danger. If anything, it merely annoyed him that one might have the audacity to pull such a prank on him.

"What is this...?" he grumbled irritably as he arose to his feet, reaching for his sword. It was still there, at least. Being without the weight of a blade at his side would have made him far more uncomfortable than anything else this place may have thrown at him.

Knowing he still had his sword, then, he at least knew he'd be fine. He let out a loud yawn as he contained to gauge his surroundings, looking for any sign of where he was. Nothing at all. All he could see before him was a pedestal. It seemed all too obvious that he was meant to approach it, enough to make him wonder if this was all just some elaborate trap. But so what if it was? If it turned out to be a trap, at least he would know more about what was happening.

He'd barely taken a few steps when the water rose all around him, encompassing him from all sides. Despite tensing for a moment, he otherwise did not budge an inch. He would give no enemy the satisfaction of knowing they had managed to startle him, even slightly. He merely eyed the water suspiciously, wondering if it was some sort of attack. His own form was reflected back at him, though oddly enough his reflection bore no garments. But more startling was the strange mark upon his breast. He felt a strange tingle as it seemed to burn itself onto his flesh, though the pain was passing.

"Useless..." Kazama growled, before drawing his sword and slashing at the water in one wide arc. The power of the blow was enough to displace some of the water, though the rest seemed content to fall to the ground around him once more, it's task completed. He glanced down at the water, bending to one knee to examine it more closely. Yet as he cupped some of it with one hand, it seemed to be nothing more than mere water once more.

With a sigh he stood back up again, sheathing his sword before turning his attention to that pedestal once more. He'd already gone through some trouble to reach it, so why not finish his journey...

Yuri Lowell • Tales of Vesperia • Reserved

[fatalstriker]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Aly
AGE: 26
PLAYER JOURNAL: lastalia
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: elympios
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Yuri Lowell
CANON: Tales of Vesperia
POINT IN CANON: After reuniting with the party in Dahngrest, Post-Zaude (PS3 version)
AGE: 21
APPEARANCE: image!
CANON HISTORY: Canon wiki; Yuri’s page

[fatalstriker]

CANON PERSONALITY:

Many who meet Yuri Lowell for the first time could easily draw conclusions, based alone on the way he carries himself. He’s often casual, laid-back, and rarely without a smart retort when the situation calls for it… which is often, based on the way Yuri reacts to situation. Even in a tight spot, he manages to joke with ease and make sarcastic remarks to his opponents.

And really, that’s not far off from Yuri’s base personality as it is. He’s had a bit of time to grow up and gain an understanding of how some of the things in the world around him work — politics, class disparity and most importantly, where he stands on these situations. He may not have always had a great understanding about life outside of Zaphias, the intricacies of guild culture, and many other things, but Yuri definitely knows what kind of person he is and how he elects to present himself. Despite looking like a slacker, he’s the sort who cares deeply for the people around him, whether he knows them or not. When people need help, he finds a way to do the best he can for them, and he has a very low tolerance for injustices being done to people. The motivation for leaving Zaphias was to recover the stolen aque blastia from the lower quarter — something they needed to get by. It extends far beyond this, saving kids, saving kids parents from dangerous and corrupt situations brought about by the empire. Even in the most dire of situations, where lives spanning the world have been sacrificed, Yuri is quick to state it simply to his foe: “I don't give a damn what you're doing this for. But you're making a lot of people cry.” It’s all about simple morality to him, no matter how he tries to hide or sugarcoat it at times. He can break it down as simply as knowing that people are suffering, and that’s enough for him.

It’s because of this inability to turn a blind eye to that sort of behavior that Yuri leads the life he does. He, alongside Flynn Scifo, had joined the Imperial Knights in an effort to change the corruption and injustices of the Empire from the inside. But Yuri learned rather quickly that following that set of rules wasn’t going to cut it for him at all. That method forced him to watch and see all of the things up close, and required the patience to move up the ranks that he didn’t have. So he left, while Flynn stayed and did just that. It causes an interesting split in ideals between two friends: ultimately, they want for the same thing, but they disagree on how to go about it. For a while, Yuri did very little to make those changes. He continued his life as a civilian, friendly and amiable (albeit sarcastic) with those around him, but also largely alone. Until he begins to travel with Estelle, there aren’t many people he confides in at all — he had the trust of his dog, Repede, but that’s about as far as it really went.

As a result of that, it makes what development Yuri gets through the game very much so centered on putting his trust on those who rely on him, and not shouldering burdens all his own.

That centers on the fact that Yuri does have a much darker side, one he doesn’t want to share with the people around him. Because of his inability to sit idly by, Yuri is more than willing and capable of taking matters into his own hands; at times, this means doing things that wouldn’t be seen well in the eyes of the law. After learning that two corrupt officials of the empire, Magistrate Ragou and Cumore, a member of the knights, would be let off for their heinous crimes with little more than a slap on the wrist, Yuri led them both to their deaths in the darkness of night. It isn’t something he does without moral struggle; he knew all along that the path he was taking wasn’t legal, and a dangerous path that could not only break trust, but lead him to a dark place of no return. Fully aware of it, he does so anyway, all the while trying to keep it hushed from his traveling companions. Eventually, it does come to light, and he’s reminded and told over and over that he can’t do things alone.

Especially since by that point, he’d become a member of the guild Karol started, Brave Vesperia. One of their policies is to always act in the interest of the guild — something Yuri’s vigilante murders did not fall under. While Yuri does agree to not go it alone, he stands firm in his policy of doing the jobs that need to be done, including the ones nobody wants to do. Whether that means acting as the second in Union leader Don Whitehorse’s honorable suicide, or taking down a friend who poses a severe threat not only to them, but to the world… it’s a burden Yuri is willing to bear. That’s the important thing about Yuri. He does the hard things, the painful things, and the dangerous things so that others don’t have to dirty their hands. He does wrong things to that right things will be brought to light, and he makes efforts that will ultimately shape and change the future of the world and society they live in. It’s a truly thankless job — nearly all of Brave Vesperia’s more heroic actions are completely unacknowledged by the world at large, making Yuri and his friends some of the greatest unsung heroes of Terca Lumireis. And he doesn’t mind that, either. His actions are carried out fully knowing that Flynn and the Knights will get all the glory, while he’s viewed as little more than a common criminal to the many knights he once worked along side.

He cares about the greater good, and about others more than himself. He’s the type to constantly look out for others. He encourages Karol and helps him with leading the guild, he constantly reminds Estelle to choose her own path in life — he’s incredibly supportive of his comrades. He’s not the type to force; even when they learned that something they would have to carry out would cost the lives of Ba’ul’s friends, Yuri was adamant that he would never do so by force, even if it was for the greater good of the world. He can very often see through people’s veneers, even if he doesn’t understand why they’re put up to begin with. He was able to forgive Raven’s betrayal (and consequential sacrificial action to save them) with a condition, he understands that beneath Rita’s prickly exterior, she’s kind and caring for all their compatriots, and he respects Judith’s wishes to keep her status as the blastia-destroying dragon rider a secret until it all comes to light. With Patty, he expresses his concern and willingness to help her in recovering the Maris Stella — and her memories in turn… despite being off-put often enough at her passes at him.. Even with Flynn, he’s good at being the reminder that he has to be everything Yuri isn’t.

When Estelle’s safety is at risk, and Flynn is expected to uphold his duty to the Knights, Yuri states plainly that Brave Vesperia will be the ones to save her. In return, Flynn requests to join Brave Vesperia — prompting a reaction from Yuri that’s telling on it’s own. The Empire and the Union are two separate entities, and Yuri knows that joining a guild means abandoning the Empire for the Union. So he’s blunt with Flynn, telling him that not only can a Knight not join a guild on principle, but that Flynn isn’t suited for such a thing. He’s blunt and quick to remind Flynn of where their ideals differ, though he ultimately lets Flynn travel and take part in the fight with him, stating “If you want to come with us though, I won’t stop you.”

More of a listener than an advice-giver, Yuri is pretty good for being there for his friends, even if he’s not very good for returning the sentiment and sharing his deeper concerns or worries with anyone else. For Yuri, it’s easier to pretend that an attempt to help a stranger was coincidental, or that he doesn’t have much to struggle with aside from the very obvious. For him, a snappy remark, some sarcasm, and maybe a joke or two at the expense of someone else is a lot easier than burdening others with his problems. He shoulders a lot, though he doesn’t always realize just how obvious that can be.

Some of the other things that shine about Yuri are much less deep and dark. He cooks often for the party, and though he lays claim that it’s not something he particularly enjoys doing, it’s clear he excels at it. He picks up recipes a fair deal quicker than many of the others, and the care he puts into preparation goes noticed by those who eat it. But one of the things Yuri enjoys most is fighting. He may wield his sword for justice, but there’s little more that’s obvious than how much he enjoys battles. He finds them fun and invigorating, and likes having any excuse to hone his skills and come up with new artes and techniques to incorporate. Things like the coliseum melee challenges are fun to him — a stark contrast to Estelle, who much prefers nonviolent means whenever possible. In their group, he and Judith are the ones most likely to get wrapped in a discussion about how much fun their last monster battles was, especially when they end up being a challenge.

In that regard, Yuri can be considered something simple. Unlike his friends, who have a wide variety of interests from art and figurines to blastia, research, and… women, Yuri’s just a simple downtown boy with his sword and his dog. His relatively collected nature means that that not much gets under his skin beyond the world’s corruption. He’s not easily angered, or even genuinely annoyed. Equally so, he doesn’t get flustered very much either, though it does happen on some very rare occasions with a certain scantily clad Krityan who wears her figure very proudly.

When push comes to shove, he just wants to make the world a better place. Yuri wants people to be able to live peacefully and happily, even if they don’t have the riches and luxuries of the nobles; he wants those will less to live without suffering and having to catering to whims of the upper class. He wants to eliminate the toxic corruption that plagues their world — the very same one that ends up threatening their existence as a planet. Even as a simple journey to recover a blastia turns into saving the world from the greatest possible catastrophe they could ever see, he never loses sight of those ideals. “Do what’s just.” is the way he believes, and he sticks by that. Even if what’s “just” means taking a life, or doing something else that doesn’t fall under law-abiding. He’s dedicated to the right outcome, though his decisive nature means sometimes he takes the “wrong” path to get there. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and a statement like that almost seems to exist with Yuri Lowell in mind.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: N/A
ABILITIES:

Through the use of the bodhi blastia he wears on his wrist, Yuri’s capable of learning many artes (attacks) and skills that he wouldn’t have been able to without it. First and foremost, he does wield a sword; having formal training as an Imperial Knight has made him very competent in this regard.

He uses a combination of artes that he learned during his time as a knight (with some creative modification to give it a personal twist), as well as new techniques created and modified from the length of time he’s spent fighting since leaving Zaphias on his journey. Most of his artes are straight-forward strike and slash abilities; some a combination of the two as well as punches. Some of Yuri’s artes do have elemental attributes to add to their strength:

Azure Edge, Final Gale, Azure Storm, Lone Wolf Storm, Frigid Blast all have a wind attribute
Destruction Field, Pyre Havoc have a fire attribute
Crushing Eagle has an earth attribute
Frigid Blast has a water attribute
Guardian Field has a light attribute

Artes fall under three categories: Base, Arcane, and Altered (with Altered being just what it sounds like, an altered version of another arte).

In addition to this, there are a few other things Yuri can do. In Over Limit, he can perform Burst Artes, which are stronger and have higher knockdown probabilities. While in Over Limit mode, he’s also capable of performing Savage Wolf Fury, a multi-strike mystic arte, and the most powerful attack in his arsenal. He also has a fairly keen understanding of exploiting openings and weaknesses allowing him to make Fatal Strikes — instant kills on most enemy monsters, or a strong hit on more powerful foes.

In addition of his arte arsenal, he’s also able to learn weapon skills. These are abilities crafted into weapons that are unlocked by capable wielders. His skills allow for a variety of things, including attack and defensive properties, skills to alter artes, and even ways of getting stronger. A full list of Yuri’s artes can be found here, and his skills here.

[mindoirsurvivor]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Matt
AGE: 29
PLAYER JOURNAL: matt-doyle
TIMEZONE: CST
CONTACT: c.matthew.smit@gmail.com
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Eren, Joscelin, Remy, & Tim.

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Commander Jae Shepard
CANON: Mass Effect
POINT IN CANON: The opening of Mass Effect 3
AGE: 32
APPEARANCE: 6’2”, muscular, with grey eyes and brush-cut auburn hair, and a medium brown Asian skin tone. He has extensive facial scarring and subcutaneous cybernetic implants that give off an orange light.
CANON HISTORY: (as Mass Effect is an RPG and your choices shape the events of the game and even backstory, some of this is necessarily headcanon. Every event mentioned here is a factual part of Mass Effect history, confirmable on the wikis. The details and nature of Shepard’s actions and reactions, however, I have had to fill in.)

Born on the colony world of Mindoir to Hannah and Mark Shepard, both Navy veterans, the oldest of three children, Jae Shepard grew up on the colonial frontier of space, an independent rough and tumble existence, learning more respect for discipline than authority. He grew up exploring the unknown, cataloguing newly discovered flora and fauna, repairing ramshackle colonial machinery, and watching the stars. Even at a young age, he was too much of a cynic to call his childhood idyllic, but it certainly looked that way in light of what came after.

When Jae Shepard was 16, batarian raiders hit Mindoir, killing or enslaving the entire population. Mindoir was beyond the edges of Council space, the colonies there unsanctioned, and help was slow to come. Forced by his parents into a root cellar, Jae evaded detection until the Systems Alliance Navy, the human military, arrived to drive off the raiders. Lieutenant Ernesto Zabaleta, an old service buddy of Hannah Shepard, was on the ship that respnded, and took personal responsibility for helping her son. He helped the sullen, combative boy through a therapy program, made sure he was properly fitted with a new L3 implant when he manifested biotic abilities, and sponsored his early admission to the Navy.

Entering the Marines biotic sentinel training at 17, he entered the Interplanetary Combatives Academy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to receive his N1 certification - Special Forces. From that point onward, the Marines were Shepard’s life. For six years he put boots on ground on as many foreign worlds as possible, approaching every problem with bullheaded, single-minded determination and assembling an enviable record of commendations. In addition, he pushed through every Special Forces certification available, spending as much time in further training as in the field, achieving N6 status at the age of 22. Shepard’s squadmates were proud to have him on the team - as long as they didn’t have to let him behind the wheel of a vehicle or stand near him on a dance floor, where he was jerky, graceless, and convinced of his own indestructibility.

Shortly after receiving his N6 Certification, First Lieutenant Shepard was a squad leader in a batallion deployed to the colony world of Akuze when it went dark. Akuze was a frontier world, and the chatter suggested batarian slavers were likely responsible, part of the ongoing brushfire conflicts as batarians and humans both continued the same unauthorized expansions in that region of space. While Shepard had held onto his fascination with alien worlds and cultures, to say that he was nursing a grudge against the batarians was a gross understatement. The batallion went in hot… and found no batarians, and no survivors. Mammoth underground worm creatures called thresher maws, frequently seeded on alien worlds, had destroyed everything - but where thresher maws were generally solitary creatures, on this one small patch of Akuze there were dozens of them, in a state resembling a feeding frenzy.

Fifty-one marines touched down on Akuze. One returned to the landing zone. Shepard. Mandatory psychological evaluation found Shepard every bit as combative and resistant as he’d been at seventeen, and four months he was grounded, confined to administrative duties, acting as an adjutant at a veteran’s hospital on Elysium… and wearing his N7 insignia, only awarded after an N6-certified Marine had demonstrated their training in the field.

In 2176, during Shepard’s posting on Elysium, the planet came under attack by batarian forces and assorted pirates of many species, a treacherous surprise attack known as the Skyllian Blitz. Shepard rallied the staff and patients of the Veteran’s Hospital and defended it from batarian assault, convincing the brass that he was once again fit for duty - and spoiling for action to a degree that, at another time, might have earned him censure for insubordination.

On active duty again, Shepard took an active role in the retaliatory attacks the Systems Alliance Navy launched against the batarians, particularly a bloody raid on Torfan in 2178. Faced with a personal offer of surrender from a large but outmaneuvered batarian force, Shepard nearly declined… before remembering Akuze, and considering the toll it would take on human forces. Reluctantly, he conveyed the offer to his superiors, ending the battle with less bloodshed than there might have been.

This exemplary record and dedication eventually brought Shepard to the attention of decorated captain David Anderson, who personally recruited Shepard to be his XO and Marine commander aboard the SR-1 Normandy, pathfinder for a new class of stealth frigate.

Before long, however, politics and greater events intervened. The Systems Alliance, working with the galactic government known as the Council, wanted a larger role, and was pushing for a human to join the SPECTRE service - effectively, the Council’s special police force. After disturbing events reveal the possibility of a rogue Spectre, Shepard is given the job, and command of the Normandy as well, in order to track him down. The resulting manhunt reveals the seeds of an ancient conspiracy and a war between an extinct race and a mythical one, artifical life forms known as Reapers who come out of hibernation every fifty thousand years to wipe the galaxy clean of starfaring civilizations. The first Reaper has already awakened and co-opted a Spectre, and Shepard must stop them from using the Council’s space station, the Citadel, as a beacon for calling in its fleet - Reapers are immense, sapient starships.

Shepard’s maverick actions and crew of elite alien recruits attracted both praise and skepticism, and he was sent to do patrol missions, as the Council was unconvinced that the Reaper was in fact part of any larger group. On one such mission, the Normandy was attacked by a very different alien vessel - attacked and destroyed. Two-thirds of the crew made it off the ship in time, but Commander Shepard wasn’t one of them. He died in orbit of Alchera, his spacesuit punctured in the Normandy’s death throes.

For most people, that would have been the end. But the xenophobic human-supremacist terrorist organization known as Cerberus felt that humanity needed a rallying point, especially given that, in the corridor of space Shepard was patrolling, human colonies have been vanishing. Recruiting as many of the Normandy survivors as possible, Cerberus recovers Shepard’s body, well-preserved as it is, and through a combination of cybernetic operations, organ cloning, and experimental procedures, successfully resuscitates him almost two years after he was pronounced dead.

With a rebuilt Normandy, a dossier full of dangerous mercenaries, and a mission to find out why human colonies have been vanishing, a bitter, confused, traumatized Shepard is put back to work. Reinstated as a Spectre but not as a member of the Systems Alliance Navy, Shepard tracks down the people and information he needs, fighting betrayal on multiple fronts, and ultimately survives a suicide mission to the home of the mysterious species responsible, uncovering yet another connection to the impending Reaper invasion; defying Cerberus’ more sinister intentions, and taking the Normandy on a crusade to prevent galactic genocide, single-handedly if necessary.

Before long Shepard finds where the Reaper invasion will arrive, and discovers, to his horror, that they are already in-transit. The only way to prevent it is to allow an asteroid to collide with and destroy the relay where they will arrive… and the resulting energy discharge to destroy a batarian colony. Other forces intervene, some trying to divert the asteroid, some to make certain it lands, and in the end the best that Shepard can do is warn the colony, hoping that some few batarians will evacuate… and in the wake of that event, permit his own arrest by human military forces, standing trial for the destruction of the colony as a war crime.


CANON PERSONALITY: Shepard is sarcastic and cynical, bent on getting the job done at any cost, shaped as a resilient, never-looks-back survivor by the traumatic experiences of his life. His innate compassion and curiosity have been tempered by hard experience, and while he still experiences thrill and wonder, still wishes for better, he doesn’t allow those feelings to dictate his actions except in rare situations. With no surviving family, Shepard lives for his career, taking on his own crew as a surrogate family of sorts, and certainly as his only close friends. Impatient with bureaucracy and hidebound procedure, Shepard tends to cut straight to the point, to respond to provocation with violence or the threat of violence, and to consider matters of morality and justice separately from legal or ethical considerations. Kindly, one could call him goal-oriented. These tendencies only became more extreme after his death and revival, cut loose from any larger organizational structure to answer to, only paying lip service to his alleged Cerberus loyalties.

Shepard’s the man who gets the job done. The man who survives. But as much as he initially seems a blunt instrument, there’s more to him than that. Shepard is as hungry to learn as to achieve, mastering his biotic abilities, learning everything he can about security intrusion, computer systems, and other experimental mechanical innovations, studying alien races… the universe astonishes him, and Shepard is, despite how closed off he may seem, always open to the next curveball the world will throw him, flexible in his mindset.

That curiosity extends to people as well. Shepard’s command style is almost contradictory - one moment dictatorial, the next conciliatory, and always, always hands-on. Shepard believes he knows best, demands input, expects compliance when he takes control - but he trusts his crew, and he expects that obedience because he expects their trust. From the moment he’s placed in charge of a unit, Shepard is fully versed in the crew’s dossiers, taking all the off-duty time he can to get to know them, get in their heads, to understand their strengths and weaknesses, what motivates them, and how they can all be better, together.

To those people who respond, he’s just as quick to open his mind, forging as much understanding between them as he can… but even to those people, he doesn’t discuss his personal life or his past more than he he has to; just how he thinks, what he wants. Shepard prefers to live in the moment, or better yet in the future, outside his own head and his memories.

Despite his bluntness, impatience, and privacy, Shepard exhibits a constant concern for the psychological well-being of the people around him, helping keep their head in the game, willing to lend an ear if he has to, but preferring to lend a hand. His own wounds and losses have made him compassionate to distress in others, except when frustration over-rides his concern. Shepard cares for his crew, but he doesn’t coddle them. He finds ways to make them live up to his expectations - but he never relaxes those expectations, not for anyone.

ABILITIES: Shepard is a decorated marine. He’s trained in the use of multiple advanced firearms and heavy weapons, as well as close combat fighting. As a Sentinel, he has extensive training in security intrusion, computer sabotage, and basic technical proficiencies, as well as possessing a biotic implant and amplifier which allows him to use ambient dark energy to manipulate local gravity fields - the so-called “mass effect.” This makes him effectively telekinetic, able to lift or throw large weights at a distance, to warp or shred matter with conflicting gravity fields, to create inertial barriers around himself, freeze people in place With the right gear, Shepard is trained in the use of ablative armor. Additionally, he has extensive first aid training, although without 22nd-century medical tools he may be at something of a loss..

INVENTORY; Having been placed under arrest at the time he was dragged into his first Jaunt, Shepard has no gear but his biotic implant and his omni-tool, a powerful wrist computer and communications device with limited ability to project hard-light holograms that can serve as tools of close-quarters weapons. Because he’s been locked up for a while, I’m also going to give him a hard-copy edition of a magazine called Fornax, which he’s going to try not to let anyone else read.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: http://thoughtformed.dreamwidth.org/739748.html?thread=34481060#cmt34481060

THIRD PERSON:
http://thoughtformed.dreamwidth.org/73649.html?thread=2830257#cmt2830257

Revised Third Person Sample

[mindoirsurvivor]

Someone jogs Shepard’s elbow, and for a moment, he’s sure it’s an attack. He pivots, microgestures activating his omni-blade, world gelling in that distant slow-motion blur, and he wonders if this is another damn nightmare, a screaming Prothean prophecy shoved in his skull, Or a flashback to the Collector ship. Or maybe an insane asari matriarch with a head full of bugs has decided to rip open his psyche.

Hey. All in a day’s work, right?

He’s got just enough time to see that the man next to him is wearing a three-piece suit, looking the other direction, just starting to turn in alarm, and he manages to click off the omni-blade. Hell, he even manages not to deck the careless son-of-a-bitch. That’s progress. That’s better than he managed the day KhalishaAlJilaniWesterlundNews cornered him on the citadel when he was two weeks off the slab and still warming up, still dealing with headaches and weird sleep things and skin the consistency of clay, with light seeping under his flesh as he shaved and the aching recital of twenty names, twenty more people he’d survived, more or less, through no fault of his own. The damn reporter had opened fire, so he hit her, before he remembered it was just words, and she was only a damn civilian. He’s not proud of that.

He hit her, but he doesn’t hit this guy. Gives him a smirk, and says, casually, “Watch where you’re stepping.” Then, because his arm is still forward between them, he pretends it was on purpose and shakes the man’s hand. “The name’s Shepard. You got any idea what the Hell is going on here?”

He can keep it together. One victory at a time.

Bruce Banner | MCU (AU) | Reserved

[angermanaging]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Chel
AGE: 25
PLAYER JOURNAL: N/A
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: chirality
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Bruce Banner
CANON: Marvel Cinematic Universe (AU)
POINT IN CANON: Post-Avengers... given changes for the AU.
AGE: 43
APPEARANCE: Edward Norton!
CANON HISTORY: MCU wikia, though 616 and Ultimates are influencing this AU quite a bit.

[angermanaging]

CANON PERSONALITY: Headcanon for MCU is in green.

Character-wise, Bruce is quiet, guilt-ridden, and uncommunicative. He's incurably paranoid and justifiably so - he hasn't used credit cards or had an ID in years, and he rarely uses his real name. It's easy to understate how deeply he feels responsible for what he does as the Hulk, but in one deleted scene from the movie we see that he tried to kill himself in the Arctic of Alaska, only to be stopped by the Hulk itself. While a small scene, the implication that Bruce is readily willing to commit suicide - even for such an altruistic reason as protecting people as a whole - is undeniably telling. There are largely two levels to him: what he admits and accepts about himself, and what he denies and tries to eradicate. This push and pull between the facets of his personality is psychological; the Hulk is but a representation of it.

In general a decisive, unassuming person, Bruce doesn't flinch from his circumstances. He is withdrawn and broods more than is healthy, but in the end he is very practical and constructive about what he does. When it's more prudent for him to return to civilization instead of retreating to hermitage, he does so. He is, actually, very lonely, and longs for something as simple as being able to make friends without putting them in danger - yet his sense of responsibility is too strong to put aside. He's a person that takes absolutely nothing for granted.

He is a deeply emotional person that nonetheless rules his decisions by logic. Inherently wary after an abusive childhood (comic canon that Edward Norton has stated he used as material for his role), as an adult he maintains poor self-image and a strong reluctance to argue or yell. This is a naturally developed trait and not one he trained himself into after gaining the Hulk. Despite this deep well of negativity, though, his rational mind is constantly overriding his emotions, discarding or ignoring those that are hindering him and examining critically even the ones that aren't. However much he doubts himself, his unceasing capacity for sharp logic keeps everything else in check. Uncomfortable as it may make him, Bruce is willing to do things against his conscience and his feelings if logic dictates that it's the best course of action. This is exemplified in how he completely leaves Betty behind for her own safety, and how later he does endanger her when needs must.

The abuse his father inflicted on him made him a wary person at the outset, and years of living on the run has compounded his innate caution. Bruce has long trained himself into emotional distance from other people, particularly now that it would put them at risk - if not from the government, then from himself. Those people that with calm persistence make it past his internal barriers gain a lifelong, loyal friend. Because it takes Bruce so long to trust and open up to someone, by the time he does he is absolutely certain that they are worth his consideration, and he rarely if ever reverses that decision. The list of people he openly cares about is a short one; in canon, we pretty much only see him display this sort of committed devotion to Betty.

Bruce is drawn to Betty because of a combination of factors. On their own, these are not unique character traits, but together they are compelling to him: ready kindness, an intelligence and wit that can keep up with his, and a kind of independent strength that we see when she stands up to her father time and again. Betty is well able to take care of herself, but cares about Bruce simply because she finds him worth caring about. The unconditional simplicity of this is powerful to him. Someone that relied on him too heavily would make it difficult for him to relax around them, unable to stop thinking about his responsibilities; as strongly responsibility-driven as he is, then, Betty's ability to compel Bruce to stop and think about himself compassionately is crucial. She is one of the few things that unequivocally provokes a sense of calm rest in him - even as the Hulk, something unique to her.

The Hulk itself is a purely visceral expression of emotion, an outletting of everything Bruce denies himself during his conscious, waking life. In some story lines in the comics, the Hulk is written almost as an alternate personality, but ultimately it is simply an expression of repressed anger and hurt. In a very real sense, there is something of it in everyone alive. Bruce states in the movie that he isn't interested in controlling that other force, only in getting rid of it. This is a very childish, if understandable, reaction. Wanting to 'get rid of it' as he does lends it more power, and it's at the end of the movie when he decides to try to control it that he's able to accomplish something more - a glimpse of a reasoning, thinking Hulk. There's hints of this earlier, when it protected Betty and took care of her, but those were abstract and basic concepts. Once Bruce does work in cooperation with it, the Hulk speaks and starts to understand consequences on both a real and emotional level.

His intense reluctance to accept the Hulk is a clear mirror of his reluctance to accept himself. While rationally he understands that this is a product of unproductively low self-esteem, practically that makes little difference: Bruce struggles with his own identity and his unwillingness to acknowledge that inside of him is the capacity to be the same kind of monster that his father was, a perfectly human one. He grew up with his father convinced that he himself was a monster, and had genetically passed it onto his son, so this is a very real fear to him (comics canon again). To Bruce, the sheer possibility is horrifying, no matter how unlikely we may realize it is for him to ever become a selfish, angry, violent person. He obsesses over control, ever striving to maintain a perfect grasp on his every emotion and action. Obviously this is impossible, but his deep, gnawing fear of being a monster in truth - one without the excuse of gamma radiation - drives him to attempt for it constantly.

The true irony here is that, at least in the movie version, Bruce is incredibly selfless and moral. He does have a sense of humor, sardonic and rarely seen, and in average interactions is calm, unjudging, and even kind. He is the kind of person you would trust your baby to after you just met him; there is a compelling levelness about him. When he is not in danger and has room to think for himself, out of the heat of the moment, he is extremely reliable and not unfriendly. Dauntless and constantly thinking of others, Bruce is always, always focused on doing what is morally good - the proverbial right thing that so often eludes the best of us.

Nilin Cartier-Wells | Remember Me | Reserved

[quoted]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Jinx
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL: corsetjinx
TIMEZONE: EST (GMT -5)
CONTACT:
BurialApplicant
AIM: Corsetjinx

OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: No go.

[quoted]

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Nilin Cartier-Wells
CANON: Remember Me
POINT IN CANON: Post Game
AGE: 25-ish
APPEARANCE:
Equip Combat Skin

CANON HISTORY:
Tiny Bio
Game Info #1
Game Info #2