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modmachine) wrote2015-07-29 12:42 am
modmachine) wrote2015-07-29 12:42 am
APPLICATIONS
In order to keep the number of players from getting overwhelming for the mods, all applications are processed in a queue in the order submitted and characters are accepted as space becomes available (either as space in the game is increased or other characters are removed from the game). Acceptance into the queue does not guarantee entrance to the game; unless there are glaring errors in the application (such as a missing section) or moderator concerns, all applications go into the queue based on the time of reserve (if applicable) or submission. There are two queues, one for newly arrived characters and one for those who are already residents of Hex. At the time of game opening, there will be twelve slots for new arrivals and twelve for current residents, discounting moderator characters. (Moderator characters apped in after game start will be a part of the queue.) The remaining four slots in the game will go to whichever fills up first. Post your applications to this entry in the following format: First comment should contain the OOC information section only. Successive comments should be posted in reply to that comment, as many as you need. Moderator responses will be appended to the last comment of the application. Last updated: Dec 5 11:pm EST
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Character personality:
Casper has been through some shit, but you wouldn't know that just by initially talking to him, unless he was wearing shorts and you could see his prosthetic leg. The personality Casper does his best to put forward to people is a happy and friendly guy, who is always willing to help and sticks his foot in his mouth more than is generally advisable. This isn't wrong, really, but he does his best not to let people dig deeper. He's friendly because he cares! Because he genuinely wants people to be happy! Definitely not because he keeps needing to find ways of people validating that he's a decent, helpful person.
Of course not. That would be silly.
Casper's determination to be seen as helpful stems from a few things. One, he's just genuinely a person who tries to look for the good in people (though it's been tempered by recent events). Two, to hopefully win back some of the favor he's lost with his mother (and, to a lesser extent, the favor he never really had with his father). Three, to cover up his trauma by distracting himself. Being told that he was a failure, not worthy of even being able to hold on to his own soul was a huge blow for Casper. He'd frozen up, tried to do the right thing, and failed. To be cut down so much from a single mistake really hurt him badly, and while he resolved to do better, it drove home the point, more than anything else, that saving the world is not comic book material, it's not fun, no one really cares about the heroes, and things are not black and white. People fail, and fail badly, and he could fail - and sometimes there's no way to make up for failures. He'd thought that if he tried his hardest, things would turn out all right, but sometimes things just don't, no matter how hard you try.
Casper is, by his very nature, nonhuman and getting even more so by the day. There's nothing wrong with that, specifically, but spend enough time thinking you're one thing and then having the world itself pull the rug out from under you can mess with you. In a year and a half's time Casper has been turned from the shy and awkward skinny kid who reads stuff like the Key of Solomon for fun to a backflipping and ghost-punching superhuman creature. Human brains can process only so much without starting to break a little bit, and then there's the trauma of him having died, been told he was a failure, and climbed the World Tree itself to come back to life.
Casper's strongest virtue (literally, in terms of character sheet) is loyalty. It is very difficult for him to imagine a friend doing something wrong - or it was, before Caspian. His faith in the innate goodness of everyone he meets was shaken by Caspian's actions, but he still remains devoted to helping people he cares about. He just tries to be a bit more selective about who he cares about... though his judgement still isn't the best. He also does what he can to endure above almost anything else, because he can't help anyone if he's dead or otherwise discorporated. He has taken training his body much more seriously, even as he's refused to harden his heart. He will not stop just because something's dangerous, but he's become a bit more cautious about blindly throwing himself into the line of fire. He's never been stupid, but his battle tactics have improved out of sheer need.
One of his strongest and weakest points, however, is his perception. It's literally superhuman, and it means that he can see in an overwhelming amount of detail. While this is also an ability, it does mean that he has a lot of information to sift through. He's not stupid - quite the opposite - but he has a problem with sifting through everything he's seen. While he is perceptive in the immediate, physical sense, this doesn't translate to perception in the social sense. He has an alarming tendency to blurt out his first conclusion without thinking of what it might mean to the people around him, his foot arriving in his mouth at startlingly superhuman speed. He does his best not to arrive to conclusions that hurt people, but sometimes his hesitance to hurt is what hurts people the most, either by inaction or just incredibly dumb plans.
However... just because Casper is good and nice doesn't mean he can't pull on the serious act when he needs to. He's nice and good mostly because that's how he chooses to be. If he needs to, he will absolutely step in with his serious face. His voice goes cold and commanding, the happy light seems to go out of his eyes, and there's something about him that commands attention from those with no specific resistance to it. He impresses his will on the universe, and it answers. The fact that he has the ability to do this means that he feels comfortable not doing it most of the time. Free will is extremely important to him, which is somewhat of an oddity in his pantheon (though a bit less so amongst Scions as young as he is). His pantheon is, after all, doomed, and Fate itself does not miss appointments. Many of his pantheon have caught themselves up in oaths in exchange for power - and Casper sees very little reason to involve himself in that. It's in this way that, ironically, he impresses his will the most - because the choice of not using an ability is still, in itself, a choice.
On a more mundane level, Casper questions himself during quiet moments. What could he have done better? What went wrong? He almost never asks 'what went right' because he attributes such things to other people nine times out of ten. He was just doing what was right, that doesn't mean that he's anything really that special compared to the others... he always has a ready excuse as to why he shouldn't get the credit. He also has a tendency to wake up at night in a cold sweat, even outside of dealing with ghosts. Due to his... incident with Prince Crab, he has a deep fear of shellfish and lobsters and crabs. If it looks like a bug that's from the ocean or the beach, he wants absolutely no part of it. He's also somewhat of a giant nerd for occult information. While magic isn't his strongest point, he's still more than happy to spend a day digging through books of occult lore. His base of knowledge in general is fairly wide, and he's a fast learner once someone sits down with him and teaches him something.
Character abilities:
Character sheet is here, Knacks and Purviews sheet is here.
Here is an attempt at breaking it down into a more narrative format.
First, his basic abilities - he's incredibly strong, very fast, and can push through a lot of things. He hits hard and he hits accurately. He can literally climb the walls just as fast as most people can run, and he can jump a pretty long distance. He can survive off of any sort of organic substance (paper counts) and even the most polluted water. With a little supernatural effort, he can heal from injury and even regrow lost body parts (though not his missing leg). He can even make it so that injuring him heavily, should an opponent be able to do so, causes him to hit harder instead of more weakly. He can take a lot of damage before he's even really hurt - certain amounts of damage just don't get through his defenses.
It's hard to take Casper by surprise, because his senses are incredibly keen. He has a very good sense of navigation internally, and even if he's blinded he doesn't have a problem fighting. He can track people and things by scent or near-invisible traces, and he's so attuned to things that if someone tells a lie, he automatically knows that they're lying. (It's not specifically what they said that's a lie, just that they're lying about something. If someone says 'I visited my aunt last Tuesday', it could be that they visited their uncle last Tuesday, or that they visited their aunt on Wednesday, or that someone else visited their aunt but it wasn't them.) He can look over a crime scene and find a clue in an instant (with a little supernatural effort) and, perhaps most terrifyingly of his 'basic' abilities - he can simply order someone to follow a very brief command and they will. (This will, of course, be part of his permissions post, and the commands can be interpreted loosely - 'shoot yourself' could end up with the person shooting their hand or foot rather than interpret it as a suicidal command. It can likely be resisted with sufficient willpower, but it's written as something that can overpower a 'regular mortal'.)
In terms of more 'mundane' abilities, Casper has a broad selection of knowledges. His training lately has been in how to hit things hard and be aware of his surroundings, but for someone with a fake leg he can be somewhat sneaky when he needs to be. He's also had experience in how to speak in a way that gets people to listen - both in terms of the 'inspiring hero' sense and in the sense of knowing how to make his voice commanding and direct. He doesn't use it very much, so he's not actually great at it... not with people who aren't his zombie creations, at least.
Now for his straight-up supernatural abilities, which are divided by 'Purview'. Each one is tied to an item of his, so without them he can't use those abilities (with the exception of Psychopomp, since it's tied to his lack of leg, and Jotunblut which is innate). That doesn't mean that someone could just steal them and expect to use his abilities, though.
Darkness (necklace):
- Dark Sight: Can see in darkness.
Death (necklace):
- Death Sense: Can see, touch, smell, and hear ghosts, although the sense of touch is illusory and no physical contact is actually made. Can also look at a dead body and get a general cause of death.
- Corpse Eyes: Look a corpse, ghost, or undead in the eyes and see a little bit of time around the time of death (before or after) from the victim's perspective. Takes place in real-time.
- Unquiet Corpse: Raise a corpse as a zombie. It remains until either it or Casper is killed.
- Home for the Spirit: Places a free-roaming spirit (like a ghost, astral projection, or human kicked out of their body) into a soulless body, corpse, or effigy. This is difficult to do, and is more difficult the longer the corpse has been dead or how custom-made for the spirit the effigy is.
- Mother's Touch: He can grapple ghosts and inflict fairly heavy damage on them. He can even throw something at them and do the damage that way.
Frost (baseball bat):
- Frost Immunity: Immune to cold. No matter what, the cold just doesn't affect him. No frostbite here!
- Ymir's Blood: He can freeze things! Either six cubic yards of water, or a thinner sheet over water that he's trying to stand on (so he can use it to walk across water). He can freeze plants and cause them to wither using it, too. He can also freeze non-liquid things to make them more brittle, though he can't do nearly as much material as he can water.
- Hrimmthurssar's Touch: Adds cold damage to unarmed attacks. If he's holding a metal weapon, he can use it to transfer the cold damage instead.
Animal (Raven) (Bob the raven):
- Animal Communication: Can speak to birds, but understands ravens the best.
- Scent of Man: Makes tame animals obedient/not skittish around him, and makes feral predators give him space (since it makes them recognize him as a predator).
- Animal Aspect: Meditate on a token of his animal, get stat enhancements associated with that animal. In his case, it improves his perception or intelligence.
- Ride Animal: Allows him to see through the eyes of Bob (or any raven, but Bob works best). Doing enough damage to whatever he's hitching a ride on forces him out.
- Animal Feature: Changes parts of his body to match a raven's. This means he can give himself wings, but he can't fly very far or very long.
Psychopomp (only without leg):
- Unerring Orientation: If a place is familiar, he knows how to get from one point to another. If it's unfamiliar, he knows compass directions. He can study a map for five minutes and retain the information forever. He can also tell the distance and direction to home.
- Where Are You: If in remote contact with someone, he knows how far and in what direction they are.
Magic (runes on the prosthetic leg):
- Unlidded Eye: Can see magic that would normally be invisible. He can also determine how powerful a being is.
- Bona Fortuna: Makes (another) person's actions more likely to succeed, but only for a little bit.
Jotunblut:
- Bestial Endowment: Feeds some of his blood to a beast, and it gets a little stronger but is forced to become supernaturally loyal to him for a month.
- Human Endowment: Feeds some of his blood to a human, they get stronger but are forced to become supernaturally loyal to him for a month.
Important to note, though it's not specifically a power - his soul is not in his body. Instead, it's in Bob the raven, who travels with him. It's never specifically addressed what happens if his soul goes too far from his body, but it probably wouldn't be good.
(Think a PMMM situation with soul gems - that's how I reason it out.)
Samples: Confronting his Shadow, IC Epic Mafia aftermath
Intended decay path: Sin-Eater, due to his strong connection to death and having died before. Bob will slowly start turning into his geist, and grow less and less physical and take on aspects of Casper's old serial killer ghost friend. He'll likely be Torn (because of the violence of his death) or Silent (because what he was 'starving' from was lack of willpower to stop things before they got out of hand).
Stigmatic glitch: He smells faintly of fresh dirt at all times.