APPLICATIONS

[modmachine]

Navigate MAIN NAVIGATION FAQ RULES WOD FOR NEWBIES SETTING APPLICATIONS RESERVES TAKEN

Applications THE APPLICATION QUEUE 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. Canon/new arrival application <strong><big>OOC Information</big></strong> <br /><b>Player name</b>: [Your preferred name or handle here] <br /><b>Player age and gender</b>: [18+ folks only. Preferred pronouns go here, though please include one least one of he/she/they for the sanity of your mods and fellow players] <br /><b>Any other characters in game?</b> [Include past characters that have been dropped, if relevant.] <br /><br />[THIS IS THE END OF YOUR FIRST COMMENT. EVERYTHING AFTER THIS GOES IN REPLIES TO THE FIRST COMMENT.] <strong><big>IC Information</big></strong> <br /><b>Character name</b>: [Western order, please] <br /><b>Character canon</b>: [If your canon has multiple adaptations and you pull from one in specific, please note that] <br /><b>Canon point</b>: [If the character is dead at canonpoint, or taking a penalty for an illness/injury repair, please note that!] <br /><b>Character history</b>: [A short history of your character. Wiki links are acceptable.] <br /><b>Character world</b>: [A bit of information about the character’s world, such as its magic and technology levels and overall culture. Doubly important for OCs.] <br /><b>Character personality</b>: [You know what this is. What makes your character tick? Minimum ~500 words.] <br /><b>Character abilities</b>: [Include both supernatural abilities and more mundane ones] <br /><b>Samples</b>: [We require two samples, at least one of which must demonstrate the character interacting with another in a thread. There should be a little introspection between the two samples, but you are welcome to use either a thread and a traditional sample or two threads.] <br /><b>Intended decay path</b>: [What will your character become, as they lose memories within Hex? It’s okay to just have a few jotted down ideas for this - it won’t become relevant for quite a while in gameplay. This is just to give the mods some idea what you’re shooting for.] <br /><b>Stigmatic glitch</b>: [All characters entering Hex have a glitch that betrays their nature as stigmatics, a small flaw in the reality around them. It could be this in some way relates to the character’s home world or powers - a character from a pre-industrial setting might cause all electric lights near them to flicker like candles, for example. Or a glitch could simply be a physical mark of the character’s interaction with the God-Machine, such as a “tattoo” of gears that turns to a different position each time it’s viewed.] AU/native application <strong><big>OOC Information</big></strong> <br /><b>Player name</b>: [Your preferred name or handle here] <br /><b>Player age and gender</b>: [18+ folks only. Preferred pronouns go here, though please include one least one of he/she/they for the sanity of your mods and fellow players] <br /><b>Any other characters in game?</b> [Include past characters that have been dropped, if relevant.] <br /><br />[THIS IS THE END OF YOUR FIRST COMMENT. EVERYTHING AFTER THIS GOES IN REPLIES TO THE FIRST COMMENT.] <strong><big>IC Information</big></strong> <br /><b>Character name</b>: [Western order, please] <br /><b>Character canon</b>: [If your canon has multiple adaptations and you pull from one in specific, please note that] <br /><b>Canon point</b>: [If the character is dead at canonpoint, or taking a penalty for an illness/injury repair, please note that!] <br /><b>Character history</b>: [A short history of your character. Wiki links are acceptable.] <br /><b>Character world</b>: [A bit of information about the character’s world, such as its magic and technology levels and overall culture. Doubly important for OCs.] <br /><b>Character personality</b>: [You know what this is. What makes your character tick? Minimum ~500 words.] <br /><b>Character abilities</b>: [Include both supernatural abilities and more mundane ones. This is for your character's ORIGINAL abilities, before they were AU'd.] <br /><b>Samples</b>: [We require two samples, at least one of which must demonstrate the character interacting with another in a thread. There should be a little introspection between the two samples, but you are welcome to use either a thread and a traditional sample or two threads.] <br /><b>AU nature</b>: [Within Hex, what has your character become? How have their powers changed from those they had in their original world?] <br /><b>AU history</b>: [The history a character remembers as a native of Hex, highlighting especially how it differs from canon.] <br /><b>Justification</b>: [Why is your character what they are now? You don't need to go into too much detail, just give us an idea why you think it's fitting - or particularly UNfitting, if that's something you want to play with.] THE QUEUE Last updated: Dec 5 11:pm EST [New Arrivals] [empty] [Native AUs] [empty]

MADE BY TESSISAMESS

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Rikki Barnes | Marvel 616

[withoutaworld]

OOC Information
Player name: Birdie
Player age and gender: 28, she/her/hers
Any other characters in game? N/A

[withoutaworld]

IC Information
Character name: Rikki Barnes
Character canon: Marvel 616
Canon point: Post-Young Allies, pre-Onslaught Unleashed
Character history: Wiki
Character world:

Say it with me now: it's like your standard Earth, but....

Rikki literally comes from three different universes, but they're all variations on the same theme: along with regular humans, they're populated by superhumans (humans who gained special abilities through accident, science, magic, or a combination of any of the above) and mutants (those with special abilities from birth), with the occasional gods and aliens and a few other Terran species that keep mostly to themselves thrown in. Superhumans nearly always fall into the category of hero or villain, and despite the occasional tension between the various superhero teams and ordinary people are still considered human. Mutants, however, are considered separate from humans, and are often viewed with suspicion if not outright hatred.

The main superhuman teams are the Fantastic Four, considered the original heroes of the universe, and the Avengers, a fluctuating team of superhumans and humans with extraordinary skills, usually led by Captain America when he's not dead or absent for one reason or another (it's comics, these things happen). Together, these groups defend against threats that ordinary humans couldn't - they are very public, commonly a major part of the news cycle, and somewhere between celebrities and politicians in terms of how they're regarded by the general public. The main factions of mutants, meanwhile, are led by Professor X (generally benevolent and in favor of coexisting peacefully with humans) and Magneto (antagonistic and violent toward humans). You've also got SHIELD (Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, but it's okay, no one remembers that anyway), a military, espionage and law-enforcement agency often deeply tied up in superhuman affairs, alternately helping and hindering the superhero teams according to their own agenda.

With all of these powerful people running around, not all of them benevolent, it's not really surprising that they have a tendency to cause a certain amount of... collateral damage. Manhattan in particular, home to the Avengers and Fantastic Four and frequent target of supervillain attacks, is a place no sane person would live in reality, and has been taken over and partially destroyed and rebuilt who knows how many times. The response by ordinary humans ranges from appreciation of the superhero teams, viewing them as their saviors, to blaming them for the damage done and for bringing these threats on them, but by and large they still view global catastrophes the same way the Gulf Coast view hurricanes: relatively common, mostly unavoidable, annoying and generally best to hunker down and wait it out.

The technology level is more or less the same as on our Earth, with a few extreme exceptions not available to the general public. Pop culture's basically the same, though Rikki is several years behind and out of touch anyway thanks to worldhopping nonsense. History is more or less the same, except for the plague of superhumans they've been dealing with since the 60s. Do not question the telescoping timeline, it gives us all headaches.

Character personality:

Some people are seemingly born to be heroes, and Rikki Barnes is one of them. Maybe it was being raised by two veterans, both heroes themselves, or maybe it's just something intrinsic to her nature, but whatever the case, she is brave, self-sacrificing, and driven to help and protect others... as well as impulsive, kind of dumb about interpersonal relationships, and prone to blaming herself when things go wrong. All part of the superhero package.

Rikki is generally very straightforward, the kind of person who tends to be way more obvious about her feelings than she realizes, who prefers to take people and situations at face value, and who tackles problems head-on. This isn't to say she's incapable of looking beneath the surface or being subtle, but it doesn't come naturally to her, and her preferred method of problem-solving is always going to be to go directly after whatever leads she can find, confront people, or, if applicable, kick in the faces of the deserving parties.

She's prone to snap decisions, and in the field this has a tendency to lead her into serious trouble time after time. This also applies when it comes to judgments of people, both for good and ill - she doubts good people and trusts bad, on occasion, because her gut leads her in one direction or another... but she's right at least as often as she is wrong. She just doesn't like to sit around thinking things over, deliberating and planning and second-guessing, when she could be acting instead, and no matter how many times this smacks her in the face, she doesn't seem likely to change it any time soon.

She tends to come across as fearless - she jumps off buildings without looking and dives headlong into gangs of skinheads without pause, after all - but the fact is, she has a talent for converting fear into anger and purpose. However, when this fails, she completely freezes up... which is a very good reason, in her book, not to let herself think about things too much, if this is the alternative. She also has a pretty low opinion of her own value as a hero. It's not self-loathing, and she's not unsure of herself or insecure in any way - if anything, she's excessively cocky - but especially since Cap's death, she feels like her life would have been worth more if she had sacrificed herself so that he could live, and that it would be worth it spending her life to save someone else. She's always been a risk-taker, but these days, it verges on flirting with death and tempting fate for the hell of it.

Despite her tendency to act without much forethought, Rikki is very smart and observant, and has shown an impressive investigative ability. She's quick to notice when something seems off or something suspicious is going on, and extremely persistent in pursuing the question until she figures it out - once Rikki sinks her teeth into something, it's nearly impossible to shake her off it. Part of that doggedness may be that she really needs a purpose in life, a specific goal with tangible results, something being a hero gives her; she's been given multiple opportunities to walk away from it, to be a normal teenager with a normal life, and though a part of her obviously wishes she could, she wouldn't be able to live with herself knowing that there were people she could help and bad things she could stop and she wasn't doing anything about it.

In her personal life, Rikki is no less dedicated, though definitely less sure of what she's doing or what she wants. She's not shy or even particularly introverted, but she is very self-contained, or at least tries to be. She thinks of herself as some kind of lone wolf, even when it makes her terribly lonely; it's important to her to have her own space, to be able to stand on her own. She tries to keep her feelings to herself (even when they're blindingly obvious to everyone but her), she doesn't talk about her own problems much even when she's happy to help others with their own, and she only gets close to a limited number of people, who she trusts to have her back no matter what.

However, she does need that small group of people she gets close to. Even as she limits the extent to which she'll let them become a part of her life, she likes to keep them near her, be a part of their lives as much as they will let her. Rikki is fiercely loyal to her friends, there for them no matter what, and there is literally nothing she wouldn't do for them.

Character abilities: Rikki is not super-powered, just a physically gifted and exceptionally well-trained baseline human. She is athletic and highly trained in unarmed combat - she knows many different styles, but specializes in Muay Thai and Krav Maga. She uses a shield as both weapon and defense, and is probably more skilled in its use than anyone who has not actually been Captain America. She can get almost anywhere in an urban environment through parkour. She's also received all kinds of secret agent training from SHIELD: firearms, infiltration, hacking, deception, resisting torture and interrogation… all kinds of things someone her age has no business knowing. She also used to be a dancer, trained in ballet and modern dance, and though she's out of practice now, she's still quite talented.

Samples: http://tushanshu-logs.dreamwidth.org/72573.html?thread=7170941#cmt7170941
http://tushanshu-logs.dreamwidth.org/72573.html?thread=7211133#cmt7211133

Intended decay path: She'll likely have a life rather similar to what hers would have been if she'd never met Cap - a college student, a dancer, probably getting a little restless and considering something other than dancing for her actual career path… She's also some kind of supernatural, but I haven't decided what yet. Leaning toward werewolf or changeling, maybe?
Stigmatic glitch: Colors around Rikki seem unnaturally bright, almost like something out of a comic book.

Anya Corazon | Marvel 616

[cazamitad]

OOC Information

Player name: Mat (reserve under Zip, long story, unrelated to app, it is still me)

Player age and gender: 30, n/a (they/them or he/him)

Any other characters in game? no

[cazamitad]

IC Information

Character name: Anya Corazon

Character canon: Marvel 616

Canon point: Canon point being from a few weeks after the last arc of Avengers Assemble, when she was working with the Avengers to rescue her history teacher.

Character history:

Anya was born in Puerto Rico, though she spent a good deal of her childhood in Mexico City. Her father was an investigative journalist working to expose crime in the city. When Anya was six, her mother was murdered by an unknown culprit. After her mother's death, her father immigrated them to New York City, specifically Brooklyn, where Anya grew up. Her father improved his English and resumed working as an investigative journalist, and managed to become friends with the Fantastic Four over the years. Anya grew up into a curious (and kind of nosy) young woman with a blazing temper. Throughout middle school, she ended up picking fights with all sorts of bullies, and getting in trouble a little more than her father would've liked, though she was a solid B student (except in Math). Her very first day of high school started with some burly jock trying to threaten and intimidate her girlfriend best friend, Lynn. Despite her size, she got in his face, and a proper fight would've broken out if teachers hadn't intervened. Anya impulsively told the jock she'd see him under a nearby park bridge that evening to "finish this", and he laughingly agreed.

While on her way to meet him, she accidentally got involved in a battle between the Mage of the Spider Society aka Webcorps (a man named Miguel) and some members of the Sisterhood of the Wasp. She got between the Sisterhood and Miguel to protect him, and was fatally stabbed. Miguel drove the Sisterhood off and performed a ritual to save Anya's life, giving her a spider tattoo and special powers, making her Webcorps' Hunter, the flip side (and needed partner) of the Mage. She took the name Araña for her work with them.

Though Anya spent months working with Webcorps, her career with them ended with Miguel dead and Anya releasing the power of the Hunter to the intended Hunter. She still retained her tattoo and her ability to form a magical carapace of sorts around her body, armoring her. She continued to patrol the city as Araña, while also working an after-school job and not informing her father about her activities.

After the Superhero Registration Act was passed, just before her 16th birthday, she was tracked down as an unregistered superhero by Wonderman and Ms. Marvel. Despite her father initially being against the idea of her registering and training, and using her powers at all (due to the danger), Anya convinced him that she couldn't sit by and let bad people do bad things if she could stop them, registered, and began training under Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers. Carol and Anya became very close throughout the mentoring, to the point that Anya considered Carol to be like a mother to her. After a particular fight where she dove in against Carol's orders to try to help and protect her mentor, her carapace was destroyed, nearly killing her and taking away (for the time being) the last of her super-human powers and leaving her as a non-powered human.

After recovering, Anya resumed hero work, and discovered another teenaged hero working in the same area called Nomad. After a bit of stalking reconnaissance, Anya attempted (badly) to help Nomad in a fight. Despite Nomad's insistence that she didn't want any help, Anya decided to make it up to her by assisting in Nomad's investigation. Eventually, Nomad both discovered Anya's secret identity and grew fond of the other girl, agreeing to partner again with Araña and transferring to Anya's school, revealing herself as Rikki Barnes.

Rikki and Anya became girlfriends close friends and partners, and did a lot of crime fighting together. While involved in some dust up involving Spider-Man and Kraven the Hunter, a hero named Arachne gifted Anya her old costume, which Anya began wearing when she patrolled - it was at this point that people started mistakenly calling her Spider-Girl, and eventually she just stopped trying to correct them. While she still considers herself Araña, she has mostly adopted the Spider-Girl moniker. She and Rikki made some allies in the other young heroes Gravity, Firestar, and Toro; though they didn't form a team as Rikki had hoped.

A few days after that was cleared up, her father and the Red Hulk (General Ross) were poisoned while researching a group called Raven. The poison killed her father and drove the Red Hulk temporarily insane. The Fantastic Four responded to the commotion caused by the Red Hulk, and Anya eventually arrived only to find her father already dead, crushed (she thought) in the building collapse caused by the Red Hulk. She engaged him briefly in a poorly-thought-out fight, until the Fantastic Four helped get the situation under control.

Grieving, she confronted Ross and learned the truth about her father's death. Anya started an investigation, trying to track the group down and learn their purpose and get revenge for her father's death. While still in the midst of the investigation, Toro was kidnapped, and Rikki believed it was tied to a series of nightmares she'd been having. Steve Rogers took a team to Colombia to both try to find the source of Rikki's ominous nightmares and to hopefully rescue Toro, but forbid Rikki from coming. Rikki disagreed, and convinced Anya, Gravity, and Firestar to come help her rescue Toro. Though they found Toro, and the older heroes who'd already come down, Rikki's arrival was just what the being sending her the nightmares wanted. Rikki became possessed by Onslaught, who wanted to return to the reality he'd been banished from, so he could kill off humanity. Rikki managed to regain control long enough to tell them that the only way to stop him would be to completely destroy her, and asked Gravity to basically pull her apart into atoms. Left with no choice, Gravity did as she asked, as Anya watched, unable to save her.

After Rikki's death, she threw herself even more into getting justice for her father. The day she finally tracked them down and meant to take them down, she discovered that she'd somehow developed powers quite akin to Spider-Man's, which was... odd, to say the least. Nevertheless, she simply used them to her advantage in fighting the group who had killed her father. Spider-man (who she called for backup) helped her capture them all, and she got her justice. And then almost immediately was thrust into trying to help deal with the Spider Virus stuff, specifically fighting the Sisterhood of the Wasp who blamed her and WebCorp for all the spider people running around and thought it was an attack on them. She teamed up briefly with villains Kingpin and Hobgoblin (thinking that she had to in order to help save the city), dealt with the Wasps, got the antidote for the Spider Virus, told Kingpin to shove his offers of employment (basically), and went back to being Spider-Girl, albeit with powers she hadn't had since before she even met Rikki. She threw herself into heroing, work, and school, and didn't really let herself do anything else.

After a couple months, Carol suggested she go to the Avengers Academy to get some distance from everything. Though she wasn't keen to leave New York, pretty much everywhere she goes has some memory of Rikki or her father, and she decided that Carol was probably right, and relocated to the west coast temporarily to try to heal a bit. She spent almost a year there, before deciding it was finally time to come back to New York. Back in New York, she re-enrolled in college, got her own small apartment, and did a little heroing on the side. Unfortunately, when the terrigen mists hit and people across the world were cocooning, her history teacher (a good man, someone who'd been helping her out a lot outside the classroom) being one of them. When her teacher's cocoon was stolen by AIM, she went to the Avengers for help, and ended up more-or-less being adopted by at least five of the adult heroes: Spider-Woman, Black Widow, Wolverine, Captain America, and Iron Man. The successfully rescued her teacher, defeated the supervillain, and has kept in touch with her fellow spider (spyder? :D?) ladies, at least. Which is good, bc she needed a new mentor after Carol forgot her, especially after Carol then left for space.

Character world:

21st century but with magic, aliens, and superpowers. Technology's a little ahead of us because of people like Tony Stark. "Magic", so to speak, can come from mystical sources or be caused by a certain mutation, though mutants tend to be a bit more "psionic" in nature than mystical, if that makes sense. There are a LOT of superheroes, and a LOT of supervillains, and sometimes those heroes and villains come from other planets or dimensions. While mutations and superpowers and the like aren't as common as they'd seem at first glance, since even every superpowered person makes up only a small minority of the world population, they're often somewhat of celebrities (if they're heroes anyway), and are common enough that I'd say pretty much everyone who doesn't live in the middle of nowhere has some story about running into a superhero or supervillain, or at least seeing a fight.

Character personality:

Anya is not an exceptionally complicated person. She's curious and loves to learn things, is generally cheerful, outgoing, and kind of dorky. She gets pretty much all of that from her dad (who, when he's not being an investigative journalist, is your average dorky, bad-joke-telling dad), though she remembers her mother being a happy person as well. She's loyal to her friends and family, and will help them out however she can if they ask, or even if they don't. She helps people and does the superhero thing because it's the right thing to do, in her opinion, which was part of why she kept doing it even when her dad didn't really want her to. Even when she wasn't really sure about registering and being trained by SHIELD, she stuck it out partly because of Carol Danvers (who she'd already begun to look up to) and partly because she really did want to keep helping people. Even after she lost her powers, she couldn't stay away from being a hero - she was sort of dragged back into it initially, and had to hide it from her dad, but she doesn't regret it a bit.

Anya hates bullies. She's got a temper, and if you really piss her off, she will try to make you regret it even if she's completely outclassed - before she was ever a hero or had any sort of combat training, she would pick fights with guys 2 or 3 times her size because they were being bullies and she wasn't going to put up with it. She once broke out of mind control when the man controlling her tried to make her hurt Carol, who was her mentor and the closest thing she'd had to a mother figure since her mom died, because she would not hurt Carol. The easiest way to piss her off is to hurt or threaten someone she cares about - even when her mother was the only person she'd lost, she wasn't about to put up with anyone else she loved getting hurt, but after the loss of her first mentor Miguel when she was 14 it just intensified. Since she's lost both her father and her best friend in close succession about a year ago, she's even more hair-trigger with stuff like that. She tries to keep people at arms' length even while she's friendly, because people she loves keep getting hurt or killed, but she's very bad at it. If you become part of her family, you will NEVER get rid of her.

Her father and her girlfriend best friend both died within a few weeks of each other, and that's left a mark on her. After the events of Spider-Island, she was having a really rough time dealing with the loss of Rikki and her dad, and on Carol's advice headed out to California to spend some time at the Avengers Academy, getting a bit more training and being surrounded by people near her age, as well as dealing with her grief in a place where most things wouldn't bring up painful memories. Since coming back to New York, she's been in a much better place (though Carol's memory loss of anything during her superheroing career set her back a little), and is healing. She's still heartsick over it, but it isn't as all-encompassing as it was for a while.

[cazamitad]

Character abilities:

Okay, so she never uses the carapace armor (explained below) anymore in her comic appearances, and I think Marvel's hoping to just pretend it never existed, but tbh as it wasn't actually a power that went with the Hunter magic she was given, it doesn't make sense to me that it would just DISAPPEAR ENTIRELY AS A POWER just because it was damaged. I choose to believe it went dormant in self-defense, sort of, if that makes sense?

After the events of Spider-Island, Anya is shown to have somehow either regained her own powers, or retained the Spider-Man-esque powers that she had gained (like so many other people) during the Spider-Island event, despite taking the antidote. As there is no further canon on her, aside from seeing her in the background of Avengers Academy afterwards, I have had to come to my own conclusions regarding this turn of events, and this is what I've come up with.

The Spider Virus, in her system, reawakened her dormant (and she thought completely lost) powers that had awakened when she was given the Hunter powers, though she was not initially aware of it. She has enhanced speed, strength, endurance, and (especially) agility; additionally she can summon a blue insectoid carapace armor, from the magically hidden tattoo on her right arm that is only hidden if she wants it to be. Also, apparently the Spider Virus mutated her existing powers or something, because despite taking the antidote (which should've removed any powers she didn't have before) she retains the ability to both climb walls and shoot webbing, and it doesn't make sense otherwise.

Also her hair has inexplicably gotten SUPER LONG in her character design, and I choose to believe that her hair has turned into soft, fast-growing, non-sticky spider silk, more or less, because it's seriously RIDICULOUSLY long, even for a superhero, okay? ...I can drop the hair thing if you want, it's mostly just silliness.

She can also be INFINITELY annoying by asking all sorts of prying questions, if she has a mind to. Plus some snark, as is all-but-required for superheroes of the spider persuasion. She can parkour like a boss, even without powers, and has a fair amount of hand-to-hand training - less any specific style than what will be useful. Other than that, she's basically your average 19yo girl.

Samples:
1) Thread with Captain Marvel
2)

Anya hated patrolling in the rain. It was wet, cold, and meant she'd have to be drinking tea and cocoa and coffee all day tomorrow just to get rid of the chill. Even worse was patrolling in the rain by herself. Rikki had met her on their normal rooftop and Anya had immediately told the other girl to get her ass back home and sleep, because when you have a fever, a cough, and look like death warmed over? So not the time to be fighting crime in the rain and 65 degree weather. Anya was no stranger to crime fighting with a cold, and it was not her best night, all told.

She settled near the edge of a roof, under a small outcropping from the taller building bumped up against it that blocked most of the rain, scanning the streets below her before pulling out her cell phone to shoot off a quick tweet to her adoring fans. Or, y'know, to stave off boredom.

Do you think Spider-Man waits in the rain for crime to happen, or does he have some kind of emergency hotline so he doesn't have to?

She'd give it another half hour. If she hadn't spotted any crime to stop in half an hour, she was going home and Rikki could be disapproving in the morning.

Intended decay path: I think I'm gunning for a Beast-seeming changeling with a spider theme? kidnapped when she was young, because she can't help poking her nose into corners and climbing up into trees and up on tall things, and they made her into a spider to climb up into the dark corners and watch. That's my thought, anyway.

Stigmatic glitch: Things seem slightly gold-tinted around her, like looking through a pair of goggles with yellow-gold lenses

Ryoji Mochizuki - Persona 3

[dangerouslyinlove]

OOC Information

Player name: Bookie

Player age and gender: 25, she

Any other characters in game? Nope

[dangerouslyinlove]

IC Information

Character name: Ryoji Mochizuki

Character canon: Persona 3

Canon point: Riiiight before he vanishes on January 1st (Female route)

Character history: Link!

Character world:
Persona 3 primarily takes place in 2009 Japan, in the fictional city of Iwatodai (which can reasonably assumed is similar to Tokyo, with Port Island being a substitute to Odaiba, due to some various landmarks). The main difference between it and the real word is the existence of creatures called Shadows, born from negative human emotion, that only come out during the Dark Hour. The Dark Hour is a hidden hour between midnight and 12:01am that normal people don’t remember due to them being concealed in coffins, which protect them from Shadows.

Certain people, however, can be awake during the Dark Hour- this can end very badly for those who can’t defend themselves, but those who can do so with creatures called Personas, which are in theory the tamed Shadows of the users. However, they can only be summoned by forcing the user to be aware of their own mortality and often eliciting that fear in them, usually done by pretending to shoot themselves in the head.

About 10 years before the start of the game, a group of scientists tried to create the ultimate Shadow, Death, in order to summon Nyx to the world and effectively end it. The plan was thwarted, Death being weakened and then contained by an Anti-Shadow Suppression Unit, a robot specifically designed to fight Shadows. This requires androids of this type to be self-aware in order to be able to summon a Persona. This is not common knowledge.

Character personality:
On the surface, Ryoji is energetic, outgoing, and flirtatious (bordering on perverted, especially in that one part of the school trip...), quickly proving to be a favorite among the girls at his school thanks to his looks and charm. He’s very friendly and polite, and generally takes rejection well, since his flirting is hardly ever truly serious (not that the girls he's flirting with always know that). It's very much second-nature to him, and he doesn't seem to be entirely aware when he's doing it; even as he's heading out with the PC he calls some of the girls falling them 'cute,' and another time he hits on Mitsuru, and then Yukari as soon as Mitsuru left. The fact that he didn't know why that earned him a slap sort of speaks to the fact that he really doesn't think anything beyond the moment in terms of those actions. He doesn’t seem to have a lot of ability to commit, unless he really cares about the person in question, and more likely than not he’ll feel like he’s not worthy of them anyway.

He ends up finding a good friend in Junpei early on, probably due to similarities in their personality. While Ryoji's more of a charmer than Junpei is, the two of them get along well in terms of energy level, not being fans of taking something seriously unless it's really important, and perverseness, as shown by the class trip in which they 'accidentally' stayed in the hot spring during the girl's time and spied on them. (Ryoji says that even though Mitsuru made sure they paid for it, it was totally worth it. And then apologized to the PC so she wouldn't hate him.)

In the female!PC social link, it reveals a very different side of Ryoji that’s much more caring and introspective. Initially, he flirts with her like every other girl, but soon admits that when he’s around her, he feels like he needs to be more honest with her about who he is. He winds up being very romantic towards her, still using some of his flirty pickup lines but much more sincerely. He's very gentle with her, and obviously cares for her very deeply, even if she chooses not to date him. Towards the end of the month, he starts have a bit of an existential crisis (brought about by the fact that he’s going to end the world, even though he doesn’t know it yet) and feels terrible about the fact that he feels like he’s going to make her sad, even though she’s so important to him.

Once he regains his memories, Ryoji also has to deal with a lot of guilt. Not only because of things he has done, like pretty much break Aigis when she confronts him, but also because of the possibility of ending the world or making his friends suffer. Honestly, the part about his friends seems to be of bigger conflict to him- he's very fatalistic and doesn't believe the Fall can be stopped, so he desperately wants them to be able to live their last few months as if they were normal high school students, without any real cares, even though that means forgetting him and everything that allowed them to grow during the game. In that vein, he's a tad bit selfish, wanting to give up things that were so important to them, even if it's for a more selfless reason. He considers it unfortunate that they make the decision not to kill him, but still respects their decision and tries to help them (even though he's sure it won't do any good).

He’s well aware of the fact that if he hadn’t been trapped in the PC for 10 years, he would have never have learned anything about being human, and he’s very grateful to her for that, even if it does make that what he considers to be inevitable harder for him to cope with. The conflict is a big element to his character, as Shadows are meant to not feel emotion and essentially drain it from others, but the part of him that's human from the PC is very emotional. This is a balance that he usually manages pretty well (generally in favor of the human side), but when it comes to more extreme emotions he's not always sure what to do about them.

Character abilities:
Ryoji has the ability to turn into the shadow Death (looking very much like the persona Thanatos), which serves as a beacon to Nyx and eventually turns into her Avatar. As the shadow, Ryoji has never used his powers, so really anything for that would be speculation (I usually say he's got the same spell list as the Thanatos Persona). However, Shadows in general are made up from the negative emotions of humans- Ryoji especially so, since he was made specifically from the desire to end the world. Most Shadows can only really recognize when something is stronger then them, otherwise attacking anyone that is not Transmogrified (basically, hiding in a coffin) during the Dark Hour. Because of Ryoji's human element, he has much higher processing than this and can keep his reasoning and emotion intact, even in the form of the Shadow.

As Nyx's avatar, he has the power of Death, plus the twelve other arcana SEES defeated that complete him (plus the Fool arcana, not sure how he got that but whatever). He also has fourteen different forms. How this works is that he starts off with the powers related to the Fool arcana; once his HP is gone from that, he uses 'Arcana Shift' to change to the next one (the Magician). This keeps going, all the levels having relatively low HP before he hits his true arcana, the Death arcana. At that level, he knows all the highest level element spells, in addition to being able to cast 'Moonless Gown,' preventing any damage from being dealt to him. The later only happens on the ‘promised day,’ while it seems he can turn into the Shadow form at will. He also is incapable of being killed by anyone who is not the PC.

Samples:
Sample 1
Sample 2
Let me know if I need more!


AU nature:
Ryoji, instead of being a Shadow, is now a Sin-Eater, with a tagalong geist named Thanatos. The memento Ryoji carries from his geist is a beaten and battered children’s book, of a Torn threshold with the Phantasm and Stigmata keys. (Ryoji tries to read it to Thanatos sometimes, because he’s a dweeb.)

Mostly Ryoji uses Oracle and Caul, since he’s super not about the violence. However, he can use Marionette to do actual damage, and he hits hard. He can conduct ceremonies to help the dead pass on, and use their voice to give their messages to their loved ones.

AU history:
Ryoji grew up as a normal child (other than the fact he could kind of see ghosts) until he was about ten years old, when he and his parents were involved in a violent attack by muggers. His father was killed, but Ryoji and his mother survived. …Sort of. Ryoji had died, but a creature apparently took some kind of pity on Ryoji and offered him a second chance. Being frightened, confused, and not really seeing a downside to the arrangement, Ryoji agreed, and from that day on the geist Thanatos was a part of him.

The year that followed was a rough one, as his mother had to deal with the new balance of caring for her son and holding down a rather demanding job. Ryoji, meanwhile, was dealing with another presence in his head. Oddly, the intimidating looking creature was often totally fine with doing more childish things, but occasionally a violent, angry edge would well up. Too young to really filter that, Ryoji got in a bit of trouble at school and even wound up in a few fights. It was largely decided that it was trauma from the incident and he was sent to counseling- luckily, Ryoji was smart enough not to mention what was actually happening. Not to mention he was an incredibly cheerful and optimistic person by nature, which helped him out more than once.

He learned to better control the impulses Thanatos forced into his head, and learned to work with the geist to be able to use the powers he’s been gifted. Ryoji enjoys life to the fullest, knowing how precious and fragile it all is, and works to help the restless dead find peace- a process encouraged by his view on death being a cycle of reincarnation, and the ghosts he sees being trapped in their current stage. Currently, he is attending university, where he works hard (mostly), parties a lot, and still makes an effort to help those that need it. Though, he does also rather hate anyone who is not a Sin-Eater messing around with the dead, for some reason…

Thanatos’s history is almost entirely unknown to Ryoji, and barely known to itself, but worth noting. Originally a young boy, the geist was often ill and in a hospital. The doctor meant to care for him was researching geists and their creation, and had noticed that those who died from illness came out to be the same type. To view a difference sample, the doctor drugged up the child, explained his plan, and then violently murdered him.

Infuriated and betrayed, the child did in fact come back as a geist, and proceeded to haunt the doctor and interfere with his plans at every turn. The geist is entirely motivated by the desire to not let people who don’t belong disrupt or toy with the dead, eventually molding into a form that aims to be their defender. This can be stopping other types of supernaturals from abusing them, laying ghosts to rest, and in general making sure the whole concept is as low key as possible. Thanatos finds violence to be justified- after all, violence is what brought it into existence in the first place.

Justification:
The main difference is that in this version, Ryoji had more than a month to understand how humans and society functions. He grew up in it, so while he’s still cheerful and friendly, he’s no where as naive as his canon counterpart. Another major difference is Ryoji’s attitude towards violence. In canon, Ryoji was so upset about what he was fated to do that he didn’t want to harm any human, ever. This version still finds the idea distasteful, preferring to compromise, negotiate, or frighten others to achieve a goal, but he will still be violent if it’s the only option. This is largely in part to Thanatos’s influences and goals.

Unlike the original, this Ryoji also has some sense of self-preservation- he is not immortal, and it has been made very clear that he is not, so while he’s still very selfless and will do his best to protect people, offering to let people kill him is a thing that’s kind of off the table now. He likes living, he would like to keep doing that for a while. This is exacerbated a bit by the fact that he’s not nearly as guilt ridden, and has little reason to believe he’s inherently worth less than everyone else. However, exactly like the original, Ryoji’s got kind of weird views on death. It’s a natural thing that happens, and while it’s often sad, it’s life that should be celebrated rather than its loss mourned. He knows he will die again someday, and he’s made peace with that, and sometimes doesn’t get why no one else has.

As a side note, Persona 3 is cited as one of the inspiration resources in the Sin-Eater playerbook, sooooooo…

Haseo | .hack//G.U.

[betterlogoutand]

OOC Information
Player name: Lavvy
Player age and gender: 24, she
Any other characters in game? N/A

[betterlogoutand]

IC Information

Character name: Haseo (real name: Ryou Misaki)
Character canon: .hack//G.U.
Canon point: The end of vol.2
Character history: .hack//Wiki
Since the wiki likes to include all the noncanonical spin-offs under his history without any distinction, you only need to pay attention to Roots and the G.U. Games. Sora's history in SIGN, ZERO, Liminality, and the original games are also relevant, though Haseo has no memory of any of those events.

Character world:

Ryou comes from a modern-day Earth set in the year 2017. Technology is slightly more advanced, such as the popularity of VR headsets for both gaming and general computer use, more and more things becoming fully automated or done online, plans for the world's first space colony, and so on. Nearly all computers also use the same OS (ALTIMIT) due to a severe network crisis that happened in 2005, crashing all computers except those running ALTIMIT and causing global chaos. But besides all of that, it's roughly the same as our current Earth.

At the core of .hack's story is a VR game imaginatively named The World. The World was the first MMO to be released after the network crisis in 2005, so it immediately gained popularity. It was a fantasy game with magic, medieval weaponry, monsters, all that generic fantasy stuff that you'd expect, and it was generally very well received. However, The World wasn't just a game. Its true purpose was to create the ultimate AI, named Aura, using data gathered from players within the game to give it the capacity for human responses and emotion. The World was also meant to test the boundary between reality and virtual reality, pushing the limits of the technology to create a world that was truly alive. This whole plan backfired catastrophically when Morganna, the AI created to "birth" the ultimate AI, became self-aware and realized that it would lose its purpose if the ultimate AI was born. It trapped its creator inside the game's programming and began work on a long and elaborate plan to corrupt the ultimate AI and basically make sure it never stopped having a reason to exist. An anime and four games later, Morganna's plan was foiled and the ultimate AI was fully realized.

Aura ascended to an almost goddess-like state within the world's networks, watching over The World but also throwing the Internet at large into chaos whenever her existence was threatened. Every part of the series after the first anime/quartet of games is basically the results of some fucking idiot decided to prod the Almighty Goddess of the Internet with a stick or something, or just fucking around with her game world which isn't much better.

The World itself has gone through a recent revision after a fire damaged the servers (which was the start of the most recent goddess-prodding incident, but I'm not going to ramble on about the entire plot of G.U. here), but the heart of the game's strange existence remains the same. Most people are aware of rumours surrounding the game and its involvement in another network crisis back in 2010, but few people believe the stories. It seems impossible that a VR game could put someone into a real-life coma, and it doesn't happen normally. Only when those supernatural elements of the game world rear their heads do player's lives get put a risk.

Character personality:

Haseo is, first and foremost, a huge antisocial jerk. He's brash, rude, and selfish, always working to become stronger and taking down anyone who gets in his way. He prefers to play solo, rejecting and pushing away others when help is offered, and quick to complain whenever he's forced into playing as part of a team anyway. Despite his abrasive attitude, however, Haseo is actually a pretty decent guy all around (even if he gets super embarrassed when he's caught being nice to anyone). For all his complaining he's never the type to ignore a person in need, and he always shows up to help when asked. He's extremely protective of his friends and despises people who look down on others. He started his career as a PKK to obtain information on Tri-Edge, but protecting the weaker players of The World was also part of his motivation. Children are another soft spot for him, and he tends to act like slightly less of a jerk when talking to kids.

It takes a long time for him to open up to anyone, but when he does he's a very honest person. Haseo is incredibly blunt and to-the-point, and though his criticisms are usually harsh he's always looking out for the best interests of others. He is also extremely emotional oh my god this kid cries so much it's unreal. In a way, his jerkish selfish attitude is just a sad attempt to cover up how much of a delicate crybaby he is. He is so tsundere it's probably unhealthy. He might act tough and uncaring when beating people up in video games, but that act shatters into a million goddamn pieces the second someone is in real, actual danger—hell, when someone might be in real, actual danger, considering how badly he flips the fuck out when Shino gets killed by Tri-Edge, long before Haseo should have any idea what's actually going on there. Apparently, seeing someone's online avatar explode is grounds for spamming their voicemail and bawling all over your computer while screaming their name dramatically. Yeah. Haseo doesn't deal well with people getting hurt.

He is also super-competitive, and very easy to rile up. When Haseo sets a goal for himself he doesn't stop until he succeeds, often reaching a point of unhealthy obsession. Whether it's gaining more power, rescuing his comatose friend, or grinding for days to reach the top PvP rankings just so he can beat up some jerk who told him off, once you get Haseo going he's guaranteed to keep at it until he succeeds. He's very hard working, never the type to cheat his way to victory or lie about his accomplishments.

Haseo also tends to repeat things. A lot. He likes to remind himself of things out loud so he doesn't forget. He usually does this in his head but sometimes it creeps into his speech. It's kind of annoying.

There is also the small matter of Skeith. Skeith is an AI connected to Haseo within The World (who is also actually himself through shenanigans, .hack is confusing). Being an AI programmed only to destroy and invoke fear in others, Skeith encourages Haseo to act more genuinely assholish and violent, and also causes him to be more emotionally volatile when under its influence. It tends only attempt to take control when its host is in extreme distress or under highly negative emotional states, although Haseo is also capable of resisting those attempts if needed.

Skeith is intelligent, but very shortsighted. It will do whatever it takes to preserve its own existence, so its unlikely to be drawn out unless Haseo is met with something that he can't handle on his own and his life is at risk. Otherwise, Skeith is perfectly fine with remaining a backseat observer and pushing its negative influence on Haseo's mind.

Character abilities:

Lots and lots of video game bullshit, basically.

• Since he's inhabiting the body of his MMO character, he is actually very fit physically despite being a lazy teenager IRL. He also has a bit of muscle memory for combat. If you handed him a scythe/broadsword/twinswords, he could give a pretty decent impression of having any idea what he's doing without actually having any idea what he's doing.
  
  Sadly, his skills would fall apart completely in any real combat scenario. A more experienced fighter should easily be able to tell he's inexperienced, though they might at least be convinced he's had some form of training.
  
  
• Superhuman strength and speed. He's seen doing such feats such as jumping several stories high and wielding a weapon larger than his own body, all while maintaining a thin, lean body. Basically, he's an anime character who can do ridiculous anime things on occasion.
  
  
• As an MMO character, he has access to an inventory system and an internal messaging system ("flash mail"), as well as a variety of other menus. These menus are only visible to him and are mostly useless, besides the inventory. Flash mail can only be used to exchange short messages with compatible users, ie. he can use video game telepathy with other characters from MMO worlds probably.
  
  The inventory allows him to freely store and summon any object that would fit in his pocket. He can also summon his weapons and Steam Bike in this manner, but these are the only larger objects that can be stored. They're special.
  
  
• The Steam Bike! This is a large motorcycle-like vehicle that Haseo can summon at will, provided he's not "in combat". It supposedly runs on steam, which looks like magic blue orbs produced by tiny animals, but actually it doesn't seem to run on anything at all. It just runs. Somehow.
  
  
• An array of basic elemental spells that are as mildly impressive as they are incredibly weak. Haseo is a not a magic-based class. He can perform the most basic fire, water, earth, wind, dark, and light spells, but they're very weak and use a large amount of SP compared to his tiny SP pool. Not even worth it.
  
  
• On the slightly more useful side of the scale, he also has access to the most basic healing and resurrection spells. Again, though, he does not have a very big SP pool, so he's not very good as a healer. Small injuries wouldn't be any problem, but something larger or more life threatening would require a lot of recasting and waiting for his SP to recover, if he could even manage enough casts before the injuries worsened.
  
  For the sake of balance and the fact that this isn't a video game world, the resurrection spell would only work on someone who's just died, or about to die, and it would only restore their injuries to the point where they could potentially survive. They would still need proper medical treatment immediately to avoid dying.
  
  
• THE BIG ONE: Skeith, The Terror of Death. Skeith is a powerful AI bonded to Haseo's character data, acting as a link between Ryou's mind and his character's body within The World.
  
  The simplest way to put it is that Skeith is a large summonable monster (around 15 feet tall) that exists on another plane known as Avatar Space. Haseo can control it directly using their mental link and his own body's movements, kind of like a puppet. Since Skeith exists on a different "plane" of the game, it can only be seen by others who have access to that plane. However, Skeith and other Avatars can still affect things in the regular plane, such as attacking human players. Skeith is the smallest of the phases, but its also quick and powerful. Skeith wields a large scythe and can shoot energy bullets, but its true power comes from Data Drain, which allows it to remove and rewrite data in other entities (more on that in a bit). Skeith also gives Haseo a natural immunity and defence against other virtual entities of a similar type, such as other Avatars or AIDA.
  
  To translate this into the world of Hex, Skeith takes on a similar nature to that of a ghost. When summoned by Haseo, Skeith's form only exists in a plane similar to Twilight and cannot be perceived by non-player characters. It can still affect the physical world, but when "manifesting" in this way it can be physically interacted with by those who can see it, and thus it can be stopped or attacked. Affecting the physical world in this way also takes a great deal of energy, and he would need a 9~10 memory score to even consider using Skeith in this way. Anything less than that and they'd both exhaust themselves just trying to rustle a curtain.
  
  
• Data Drain is the ability to rewrite data, and coming from a world composed entirely of data that means altering the fabric of reality. Its primary uses are extracting harmful viruses or infections from users or destroying the data of a harmful entity such as AIDA. It also has its own methods of breaking through computer security systems and opening virtual back doors.
  
  In a living, breathing world, it's a bit more complicated. Data Drain is too simple of a method to work on something as complex as the real world, so at best it can only scramble the "data" of whatever it touches. On anything living, this would probably be fatal. On the bright side, living entities also have a natural resistance to the effects of Data Drain, so it'll only have the full effect against a target that's been heavily weakened and injured. Against a healthy target, getting hit by Data Drain can have any number of effects ranging from nothing happening at all to making them violently ill.
  
  Data Drain requires Skeith's Avatar form, though. Much like summoning Skeith, this ability is only available at a 9~10 memory score and degrades very rapidly with the loss of memory.
  
  
• Supernatural abilities aside, Skeith is still connected to Haseo even without a semi-physical presence. It doesn't try to interfere with Haseo's actions beyond implanted thoughts here and there, but if its host is in extreme distress then it won't hesitate to try and hijack control of the body to save him. Haseo has gotten better as controlling his emotions and resisting this mind control, and generally he would prefer not to give Skeith free reign like that, but it's an option that's available for the most dire of situations. If he managed to convince it to cooperate with him, he could also potentially use Skeith's knowledge or skills without giving up full control of his body (good luck with that one, though).
  
  As for what Skeith could actually do that Haseo can't on his own... Skeith is an advanced AI, so it has a very strong understanding of programming and computers, particularly sneaking past security systems and destroying systems. It's not held back by things like fear or morals. Skeith's influence isn't inherently a bad thing, since it can also be used to push Haseo forward even if he's on the verge of a breakdown. Skeith can fight a hell of a lot better than Haseo and prefers scythes and staves, though its also been known to straight up claw the shit out of people. It has a very wild, barbaric fighting style.
  
  
• The amazing ability to speak in emoticons.

Samples:

Sample 1 (Network)
Sample 2 (Log)
Sample 3 (TDM which I super dropped the ball on, but hey it's something recent to show I can still write good so why not)

[betterlogoutand]

AU nature:

Haseo is a Sin-Eater, with Skeith playing the role of his geist. His threshold identifies him as one of the Torn, and he can wield the Keys of Passion and Stigmata. His Manifestations of choice are Caul and Rage. His keystone is a six-inch long cross that doubles as a stake, and he also possesses a charmed chainsaw that jams a lot and is generally not as useful as he'd like it to be.

Further details on his abilities as a Sin-Eater can be found here, for those canonblind to Geist or anyone who just wants a better idea of Haseo's specific talents regarding his abilities (also for my own reference tbh).

AU history:

When Ryou was ten, he was involved in some horrific incident. Whether it was an accident, an attack, or something else—he doesn't know. It was traumatic enough that he completely repressed the memory, blocking out every detail except for the fact that he was in the hospital for awhile and missed several months of school. His parents were happy to let him forget, and so the incident became a taboo that was never to be discussed. He was transferred to a new school to further distance himself from the trauma. Ryou lived a relatively normal life, never thinking about that odd hole burned into the back of his mind.

He forgot, but it still changed him. Ever since that day, Ryou became something of a dowsing rod for the supernatural. He didn't see or hear strange things, but he had an attraction to anything haunted or marked by death. He was always able to pick out the charms and the mementos from ordinary trinkets, the true hauntings from the fakes or other supernaturals, but it was an ability almost completely unknown to him for years. He didn't think anything strange of the things he picked up on, and was too much of a skeptic to even consider the possibility of ghosts or otherwise. To him, he was just a perfectly normal, ordinary guy.

Over the course of eight months, his life completely changed. It started with a chance meeting that may not have been chance at all. Looking for directions in an unfamiliar part of town, Ryou realized too late that his "guides" were actually muggers leading him to a secluded alleyway. Before they could take a stab at him, a mysterious figure appeared to scare them off, saving Ryou's life. The man identified himself as Ovan, and the first thing he told him was that he had a gift. Ovan didn't elaborate further, though he did invite Ryou to meet with him again before parting ways.

Cautious but intrigued, he decided he wanted to find out more. This is what brought Ryou to join the group known as the Twilight Brigade—an occult club that teetered on the edge of being a cult, with Ovan at its center. The second-in-command who did most of the organizational work was a woman named Shino, who Ryou fell for almost immediately. He came for Ovan, but it was Shino that he stayed for.

The Twilight Brigade's activities were both vague and bizarre. They were told that they were looking for something called the Key of the Twilight, which was some vague and mystical item that most certainly did something, but no one had any idea what. Rumours about it floated around from time to time, but most agreed that it was entirely fictional. Still, Ovan insisted that it was real, and Shino did a good job of motivating the members to help out in the search. They would scour caves and tunnels for clues, or visit locations surrounded by rumours and myths to see what they could find... but rarely did they find anything. The Brigade had far more former members than current members, to say the least. People that knew of its existence considered it something of a joke, and Ovan an eccentric weirdo.

Ryou's presence started to change that, however, because Ryou had a knack for finding those clues that Ovan so desperately wanted. They started to collect strange fragments infused with supernatural power—pieces of a key that wasn't the legendary Key of the Twilight, but that supposedly held some relevance to the legend. Once enough pieces were found, Ovan guided them to an underground ruin where a ritual would be performed. The results were unmistakable. Up until that point, Ryou still had some doubts about the supernatural part of things and only played along with Ovan's games so he could stay alongside Shino. But when all the fragments were brought together in those ruins, a gateway opened up, if only for a brief moment in time. Ovan entered that gateway, ordering the rest of them to stay behind in case anyone tried to follow him. A few minutes later, the gateway closed shut.

Ovan never returned after entering the gate. He disappeared without a single trace, and the fragments that had once opened the gate lost their power. The remaining members of the group were completely shaken, both by their leader's disappearance and the bizarre reality that they'd witnessed, and everyone quickly scattered to the wind and cut contacts. The only ones who lingered were Shino and Ryou. Shino was the closest to Ovan, and Ryou wanted nothing more than to comfort her. It was never part of the plan for Ovan to vanish, but she believed that he would reappear and contact them if they waited patiently.

Unfortunately, things would not work out that way. One day, Shino contacted Ryou asking him to meet with her. The location was an odd but familiar one—an abandoned church that they'd once searched for clues. When Ryou arrived, Shino had collapsed in front of the cathedral's altar, a large triangular wound cut into her torso. The police and paramedics were called, but there was no saving her. She was dead before they arrived.

Ryou was briefly held for questioning, but he was let go when the investigation ran into more and more dead ends. There was no murder weapon, no clues, and even the cause of death was a mystery. The wounds on her body were deep, but she didn't die from the bloodloss. It was as if something had simply caused her heart to stop.

Rumours started floating around about similar mysterious deaths: a killer who carved jagged scars into his victims and disappeared without a trace. Some even claimed him to be a vengeful ghost or demon, but information was scattered and vague at best. There were many different names and variations of the tale, but the name that stuck with Ryou most was "Tri-Edge".

At this point, Ryou knew that there was something much greater than him going on. Despite that, and despite the obvious danger, he still wanted answers. He wanted to find Ovan, track down Shino's killer and put him to justice, no matter what. He dedicated himself to the task, using his few remaining contacts from the Twilight Brigade and searching online message boards for rumours and stories about the bizarre rumours. He also started giving a fake name around this time—if he'd learned nothing else from Ovan, it was that he probably shouldn't be giving out his real identity when meddling with supernatural affairs. In his day to day life he remained Ryou, but when investigating the supernatural he went by Haseo. He gained something of a reputation on the sites that he frequented, though his faith in them became less and less the more he searched. Finding real resources for the paranormal was difficult when there were so many fakes and false rumours floating around, and over time he stopped relying on those resources altogether. He became something of a legend himself—a mysterious hunter chasing after he ghostly Tri-Edge, seeking revenge for his dead friend.

Finding information on Tri-Edge was his main priority, but he also needed to know how to stop a supernatural killer, so Haseo found himself dipping into the research of hunters as well. Unfortunately, he never had much luck. He had no one to guide him, so it was impossible for him to know what would work and what wouldn't until he tried. He attempted to get in contact with some of the ex-Brigade members, but the few that he could get a hold of either refused to speak with him or didn't know anything useful.

Months passed with little to show, until finally Haseo received something unexpected: an e-mail from Ovan, asking to meet with him at a secluded location. He came, and sure enough, Ovan was waiting for him. Ovan spoke cryptically about his absence and, in the end, he never did explain where he was all those months. What he did give Haseo was a piece of information: the killer will return to the scene of the crime.

Looking back, Haseo would realize how foolish he'd been to return to that place. But he was desperate, and it was the only lead he had. The old church was empty when he arrived, but just as Ovan predicted, something appeared there. He attempted to communicate with "Tri-Edge", to get some kind of answer or explanation out of it, but it gave him no answer. When it finally decided to attack, he never had a chance to escape. All he could remember was the sensation of something thick and heavy piercing his chest, the sounds of his own screams, and an agonizing pain that engulfed his entire body before he lost consciousness. He was dead before he could comprehend what had happened.

Of course, death wasn't the end for Haseo. Before his soul could slip away, a terrifying figure of blood and bone appeared before him. The figure introduced himself as Skeith, the embodiment of the fear one experiences upon death, and told Haseo that he'd been watching him for quite some time. He mocked him for his failures, but he also offered Haseo a second chance at life, and another chance at revenge against Shino's killer. Haseo accepted the offer without hesitation.

He awoke on the floor of the church, his body still wracked with pain but otherwise intact. Whatever had killed him before didn't leave a mark on his body. "Tri-Edge" had completely vanished as well, leaving no trace that it had been there at all. He was back to square one in his search. Even so, it wasn't a complete loss. He very quickly learned what it meant to bound to a geist like Skeith. With the power to speak to the dead, finding out about Shino's killer suddenly seemed like a much simpler task.

Unfortunately, it still wouldn't be that simple. Despite her violent death, Shino didn't leave behind any ghost that Haseo could find or learn about. She'd either passed on immediately, or her soul was somewhere else he couldn't reach. With further investigation he learned that her body had actually vanished shortly after the autopsy. The details had been covered up to prevent any more rumours or panic, but the result was that he had no body or ghost to work with. All he had to go on were the whispers of what may have happened to her, according to the passing spectres who claimed to witness some part of it. The dead seemed more likely to speak to him about it than the living ever had, and so Haseo began taking on his duties as a Sin-Eater in order to gather those scraps of information. He also used this as an opportunity to hone his abilities and build more power, preparing for his inevitable rematch against Tri-Edge.

It's been three months since Haseo was reborn as a Sin-Eater. He's still an amateur who lacks proper training, but he's a quick learner with a natural talent for his line of work. Skeith's nature draws him to victims of murders, violent deaths, and the occasional murderer-turned-victim, many of them seeking revenge. He mostly works with the dead, but not always on the dead's side—having learned from his previous experiences with false information, he knows better than to act without hearing both sides of the story. He's known both for destroying the rampaging ghosts that terrorize innocent mortals and enacting justice on those mortals who deserve it. Killing living people is something he avoids (as much as Skeith would love for him to let loose and bathe in the blood of their enemies every once and a while), but sometimes forcing someone to face their darkest fears and suffer torment for the rest of their lives still isn't enough to fit the crime. For the absolute scum of humanity, he'll not only kill them but ensure that they go straight to the darkest depths of the Underworld. Needless to say, Haseo does not plan to take a lot of trips to the Underworld.

Despite accidentally becoming a key part of the Tri-Edge legends, Haseo is almost completely unknown within the real supernatural communities. He has his own (wildly inaccurate) rumours and stories of his quest for revenge, but most write them off as just that—rumours and stories. Tri-Edge itself is still something of a mystery as well, and different groups have their own theories as to who or what it might be, if it even exists. Haseo prefers to work alone and doesn't involve himself with other Sin-Eaters or their krewes, and those who do encounter him rarely make the connection between him and the Haseo of legend. Those who know enough to make the connection tend to assume he ripped the name off the Internet rather than being the real deal. The real Haseo is a bit underwhelming compared to the stories that have been made up about him.

When not being a vigilante of ghostly justice, Ryou still lives a (relatively) normal life. He's currently going to an expensive private school and living alone in a small apartment, both paid for by his parents. He works part time at a convenience store during the summer.

KEY POINTS FOR NATIVES:

• The Twilight Brigade was an obscure occult club/cult that existed until about nine months ago. It's founder, a man named Ovan, was known for being an eccentric. Little else is known about Ovan. Barely anyone remembers the cult at all because no one took it seriously before it fell apart.
  
  
• There's an urban legend that started within the past couple of years about a supernatural killer called Tri-Edge. Other names may have been given to it before the Tri-Edge name became more popular, or the stories may have been fused with other supernatural activities at some point. The deaths related to the rumour have mostly been either covered up or given very little publicity, but all of the victims died of mysterious causes and their bodies vanished. Victims do not leave ghosts, either because they didn't actually die or because something was done to trap their souls. Most don't believe in the rumours at all due to a large amount of false information floating around about it.
  
  
• About nine months ago, Haseo started frequenting sites asking about the Tri-Edge rumour. The only information he added to the stories was that it killed an unnamed friend of his, and that he was determined to hunt the creature down and stop it. After only a couple months he stopped frequenting these sites and became a part of the legend himself. Over time the stories became more and more exaggerated until Haseo became known as a skilled and powerful hunter of the supernatual, with all kinds of ridiculous stories of his supposed accomplishments. Most don't believe in these stories, either. Haseo finds the whole thing embarrassing.
  
  
• Local ghosts might speak of a "different" Haseo who recently started working as a Sin-Eater in the area. He prefers to deal with victims of violent deaths or dangerous ghosts that need to be put down. Other Sin-Eaters in the area may have heard of him or run into him at one point or another, but he's reclusive and prefers to work alone. He doesn't come off as anything particularly special.

[betterlogoutand]

Justification:

Haseo was practically made to fit this role. Here's a handy list of parallels.

• Skeith is nicknamed The Terror of Death, as well as The Shadow of Death, and is depicted as a grim reaper/angel of death in its appearance. Each of the Eight Phases are also meant to represent some aspect of humanity, and Skeith coincides with both death itself and responses associated with death and mortality.
  
  
• Haseo bonds with Skeith after a near (virtual) death experience. Technically, this happens twice, since Skeith is a constant presence with Haseo but is unable to properly manifest until certain conditions are met. The first event is when Haseo is killed by who he thinks is Tri-Edge: an attack that should have rendered him comatose in the real world instead just reformatted his computer and reset his character level, thanks to Skeith's protection. The second event is when he's outmatched by an opponent in the game's arena and about to lose, when losing would also mean losing his only shot at getting valuable information. This fear of loss and association with virtual death is enough to finally summon Skeith. There are other events after this as well where Haseo summons Skeith, both intentionally and unintentionally, due to a fear of losing and a threat of "death".
  
  
• Only Epitaph Users bonded to an Avatar can see AIDA, which are invisible creatures within the game world that can possess normal players and manipulate their emotions. They can sometimes manifest as black masses that even normal players can see. Basically, Internet ghosts.
  
  
• Similar to how a geist can protect their host passively by warding off infection/poison/etc., Avatars also allow their hosts to resist attempts at altering their character's data, such as viruses or infection in the virtual world.
  
  
• Near the end of vol.3, Haseo basically "dies" and has to reach an understanding with Skeith in order to "resurrect" himself, so that's also pretty blatant.
  
  
• Less of a real point and more of an amusing similarity, but Twilight is a term of great importance in both .hack and in Geist. In The World, Twilight refers to a great number of things, but all things related to Twilight are of something beyond the normal game that either can't be seen by normal players or that exists in another plane of reality within the game. Twilight in Geist refers to the plane where ghosts exist alongside the mortal realm, something unseen by normal people. Twilight in .hack also mainly refers to an "item" called the Key of the Twilight, and Keys happen to also be a major theme of Geist. Fun facts!!

I could probably keep going, but you get the idea. His history also translates really well to an AU so hey there's that.

holy shit why is this so long, i'm so sorry

Kitty | Shadowrun

[runs]

Player name: Kira

Player age and gender: 28/she

Any other characters in game? N/A

1/2

[runs]

IC Information

Character name: Kitty

Character canon: Shadowrun V

Canon point: 2078

Character history:

Kitty was born as the biggest kitten in the litter of a stray cat somewhere in the Rhine-Ruhr Megaplex, a huge, polluted, multicultural sprawl in the very west of the Alliance of German Countries, short ADL. The mommy cat didn't return one day, and this might have been the early end of the baby shapeshifter, had a little old lady by the name of Chantalle Schulz not found the hidden corner that Kitty had been born in and rescued the only surviving baby cat. The strangely large size of the kitten didn't tip Chantalle off about something being off with this cat, nor did the fact that she aged very slowly - and really, considering the neighbourhood, it could always just have been that the mommy cat had eaten some science lab's incorrectly disposed of waste, hindering proper growth in her litter. It wasn't that strange, and the woman was just glad that her new companion didn't require much food - or medical attention, really, never getting sick. And what a bright and understanding little kitten it was. No, Chantalle was way too happy and uninterested in questioning her luck to make enquiries. She was also not particularly inventive when naming her kitten.

Kitty on the other hand was quite happy the way it was as a young kitten. She did sometimes turn into a human, but always quickly turned back, so that Chantalle never noticed. And then, when she was old enough to comprehend the trideo news flickering on after the shows that Chantalle had fallen asleep to, she started learning about the world outside the apartment. One night, there was a documentary on magical critter extinction measures in Quebec, and shapeshifters were mentioned, too. For a long time after she thought that being hunted down and killed was what happened to animals like her, bigger than they should be and able to turn into metahumans, everywhere. And when she learned that most countries and companies just didn't consider them metahuman but also didn't hunt them, and that there were even a few countries where they were valued more, it felt way too late to tell Chantalle about who she really was. So she just pretended that it wasn't there when the old woman was around, and started experimenting with her human form elsewhere. For this, she started to sneak out of the apartment more and more regularly and through trial and error learned how to appear metahuman and interact with people like she was one.

Chantalle's apartment was located next to a waste facility run by the Shiawase corporation. One day, a curious new scent came from over there, so one young shapeshifter cat decided that sneaking in there was an excellent idea to figure it out. All went well until she suddenly found herself without a place to hide and two security trolls came towards where she was - and she did the next best thing and jumped into the back of an open transporter (not a waste one. It was very clean inside). The security trolls closed the doors and walked away. She was stuck in a dark, mostly empty space with no food and slowly decreasing amounts of oxygen.

Nothing happened for well over a day - she can't tell how long it was, exactly, but it felt like eternity - and she was too afraid of what they might do with her to start meowing for help. But then something did happen: Someone opened the door, and she only in time managed to jump into a hiding spot before yelling and fighting erupted outside, and just as the transporter started moving two street samurai, a human woman with a balance tail and a male troll, jumped into the back of the vehicle. As it sped out of the facility, gunshots erupted.

They made some head before people started following them, and while there was a moment of peace, the troll noticed Kitty. And recognized her as the cat that a little old lady had asked him to look out for earlier that day when he had been in disguise to find an observation point of the waste facility a few stories above Chantalle's flat. There was no more time than for a few nice words and an attempt to calm her down from a distance, but when the shadowrunners (because that was what they were, Kitty would later learn) got into trouble, and the trouble threatened to take out the whole transporter, including Kitty, the shock and fear made her magic abilities surface - she switched into her human form and sent an acidic wave towards the helicopter that was about to shoot big grenades at them.

The mix of surprise and the actual damage that her (rather weak because unlearned) attack caused got the group the time that they needed to turn the tides of the battle, and they managed to escape without casualties.

Once escaped, introductions were made, and the runner team after some hasty discussions offered her a deal: She would help them in future runs, and in return they would get her ready to participate in metahuman society - get her the skills and the more materialistic means like a commlink and a fake ID - and also teach her how to make better use of her magic and her agility. It was a good deal for both sides. Kitty got what she needed at that time, and the runners got a team member that only wanted a small part of the monetary rewards for runs but due to her skills in infiltration and magic was quite valuable. Two members of the team became especially valuable to her: Ivokat, the mage, taught her how to use her magic and helped her find resources where what he had and could do stopped working for her. And Malicia, the street samurai with the balance tail, took her under her wing a bit and took her along for runs away from the other team members. This introduced Kitty to wetwork, aka assassination runs. Not that the other team members were unimportant: Leo, the rigger, who taught her some Japanese and got her a miniscooter to drive around on; Eärendil, the decker, who introduced her to the world of those of the upper and even higher classes; and Simon, the troll, who showed her how to blend in in parts of the town worse than the one she had been raised in. With the team having three Elves, two of which had ties with Tír na nÓg, an Elvish country, it happened almost naturally that she also learned some Sperethiel, the Elven language.

She still lives with Chantalle; the woman was overjoyed to see her return. But she has now become a free roaming cat, and after some panic the woman understood that her cat would always return to her,even if sometimes she stayed away for a few days.



Character world:

While not exactly the future of our world - the timelines parted a bit before the dissolution of the Soviet Union - the world of Shadowrun still in many ways is ours, just with a reawakened magic and the technology of 60 years into the future. And the pollution of 60 more years of only barely regulated environmental irresponsibility, can't forget that. I'll try to just name some highlights in each area.

The internet is wireless, you can enter it on a way more physical seeming level than today. Advanced technology makes it hard to avoid it; augmented reality (AR) is widespread and makes you be bombarded with AR ads instead of billboards or neon signs when walking around a shopping district. But you can also step into the internet itself, leaving your body behind and stepping into the virtual reality. People rarely drive their cars themselves anymore, vast advancements in medicine and technology have enabled a widespread use of implants and other technical enhancements to human bodies and advanced technology, guns typically come with network abilities... and so on. Oh, and most recently there are artificial intelligences that are fighting for their civil rights. Or stealing bodies and committing terrorist acts, that depends on your viewpoint.

And there's magic! Dragons and other magical animals, metahuman magic users, magic storms, astral planes, and yes, ...metahumans. While classic humans still exist, a number of them have been born or changed into dwarves, elves, trolls and orcs (and their subspecies) as the levels of magic in the world rose. Magic is everywhere, and it is not always nice - indeed, it can be pretty nasty. Magic critters can be quite dangerous, and in especially polluted areas they sometimes are more toxic than their surroundings. Viruses have created ghouls and vampires. All in all, most magical creatures in lore exist in the world of Shadowrun in one way or the other.

A highlight of pollution is certainly the SOX, an area in central Europe so radioactively polluted that it can only be entered in protective suits, filled with storms that negate all magic and thus kill spirits and dual beings. But other natural disasters are around too - water smuggling is a major issue in the countries of California and Australia because of the water shortage there. And magical calamities have joined the natural ones.

Nation states have lost most of their power where they still exist, with very few exceptions. Corporations have taken their place as the main power players; the biggest of them having their own extraterritorial areas all over the world and their own citizens. Organized crime is huge as well, and corruption and general shadiness is so widespread in all all three, countries, corporations and crime syndicates, that they often are less different than they try to pretend. Society can be roughly split in two groups: Upper and middle class people living in more or less highly controlled and pleasant environments with citizenship status and lower class people who are poor, often without a real ID and without any structural protection, who in turn at least don't have their every move tracked and controlled. To make it plastic: A poor person will only eat food made of soy and enriched with artificial flavours while a middle class person will sometimes have real foods and a rich person will have only that and real meat, too. ID-less people, especially when they are orcs, will often be killed in droves in "police raids" (there are almost no real police systems anymore, they're all private for-profit security firms now) without anyone caring or a good reason, while a higher up person might just discreetly vanish, but it would actually in some way be about them. There is minor movement between the groups - talents that are snatched off the streets or people who work their way into the corrupt systems, and people who for one reason or the other leave the perfect world to work in the shady underbelly of society. Chantalle is one of the poor people who have a state ID - a kind of ID that doesn't award real privileges as corporation IDs do, but at least she officially exists, which brings its own set of advantages, and has enough money to afford her own flat in a fairly safe section of the worse parts of the sprawl. Shadowrunners like the ones that Kitty met are in-betweens; they come from both sides of society and end up as highly skilled independent criminals for hire for various reasons. To use examples from her team: For the troll street samurai, it was a steep climb up the social ladder from a poor slum kid, for the elven mage it was a heavy fall from a high society member in his homeland to a fugitive in a different country selling his abilities. tl;dr: It's dystopian, but at least dead people aren't turned into soylent green. If they lie wounded on the street, they might however be disassembled for all their parts that can be sold with profit.

2/2

[runs]

Character personality:

Most things are a game to Kitty. She wasn't raised with duties and responsibilities, having been perceived as nothing but a cat for the longest time, and her nature didn't exactly support a sense for either forming. That doesn't necessary make her unreliable, but it takes a conscious effort of will for her to take things seriously enough to do them the fast and practical instead of the fun way. She can technically stab a person to death quickly and effectively before being noticed, but it is a lot more fun to not kill them immediately and make them jump around instead, isn't it? The matter can be as simple of complicated, as important or unimportant, as dangerous or safe as they may be, Kitty will only treat them seriously if she's either upset, disturbed, hurt or angry herself or if she is trying hard to not make it a game.

The one major exception to this rule are interpersonal relationships that mean something to her. She might still tease such people and play with things that belong to these people, but she will take the relationships themselves very seriously. That is why she can be dependable: Wanting a person she cares about to be safe and well is her main motivation for going through with something efficiently and for persevering in the face of frustration or boredom with a task. It even surpasses her own survival as a motivator, mostly because she does not worry for her own safety very much, subconsciously considering herself invincible in the way that children do sometimes. Consciously, she can make rather accurate estimates of the dangers in a situation and act on them, but when she doesn't have to or take the time to consider things thoroughly, all that goes out of the window. The other thing that can throw those accurate estimates off is when her phobia of rooms that are too dark for her to see and which have no available exit is triggered, which was acquired when she thought she would die in that transporter. Her functionality is severely limited under such circumstances, and it takes her much willpower to think about anything that is not flight.

It won't be very apparent most of the time that she cares about someone or is loyal to them, though, as she only really shows it clearly in a pinch. As a pinch constitute situations in which the other is in danger or seriously injured or sick as well as very sad, and comparable situations. She will try to do what she can to help, and if there is nothing, she will just try to stay close and provide comfort that way.

Another reason why she might get all close and cuddly is when she is feeling upset herself, is injured or otherwise isn't well. Or if she's just needy and wants attention. This kind of proximity is a lot easier to get than the other kind - while she won't go to a stranger with it, it only requires a very basic level of trust in the other person.

Let's return to the fact that she needs strong motivators to overcome frustration or boredom and still do something despite them. Normally, when the well-being of someone that she cares about isn't at risk, she will only do things that seem interesting to her and usually abandon a task when it stops being interesting to her - runs fall under the well-being of people that she cares about being endangered. Generally, she is full of energy, but she can also be supremely lazy and just lie or sit around for hours if she's content. Likewise, when something goes wrong or something awkward happened, she will abandon it and just pretend that it never happened. If confronted about it, she won't deny it, but outside of that it will be nothing to her.

Something else that is, while not nothing, a lot less troublesome to her than for most people is killing someone or inflicting harm on them. This is not due to trauma, as she grew up in a household where she was not treated as a human, yet still beloved and treasured. But most of her knowledge about the metahuman world comes from watching movies and from interacting with people who are more or less deeply stuck in the ugly, corrupt underbelly of metahuman society and life. She can feel compassion, she just tends not to. To a big part, this approach ties back into considering things a game, and it changes with people whom she doesn't consider a game. For them, she can feel very strong compassion. One could perhaps say that she isn't so much a psychopath as someone who hasn't quite learned to apply her theory of mind to people whom she isn't close enough to to have witnessed their personhood first hand. This incomplete ToM coincidences with surroundings where violence and other ugly things are fairly normalized and in which she is capable of being a (minor) predator, so that no external forces really keep her in check, either.



Character abilities:

- Cannot read and write and generally will have a hard time grasping academic knowledge or fine arts related things. She has a lot of street smarts, though, and possesses a good deal of knowledge gathered through listening to gossip, observation of places and people and consuming popular media. (Her housekeeping abilities are zero, too. Nobody asks their cat to do the dishes.)
- Stealth. She can use magic to make herself invisible, but even in her human form she's very quiet and moves fluidly and without more movements than necessary, and wears clothes that help her with not being seen. She also has solid experience with sneaking into well guarded places. In addition, she knows how to navigate most social situations in a way that will allow her to not draw attention to herself, and can always fall back on her cat form.
- Fighting. She can use pistols, handle daggers and has basic Krav Maga training. Generally her fighting abilities are tailored to allow her to either stealthily take out one single person or get out of situations of violence quickly. She's a scout and infiltrator, foremost, and when her abilities are needed in an actual fight it will be her magical abilities, not the physical ones.
- Speaking of magic, she's a quite adept shaman for her age. Being a dual being (existing on and perceiving the physical and the astral plane at the same time, always) helps, but it goes beyond that. Being what she is she doesn't see any merit in dabbling with spirits - her guardian spirit is more than enough of those guys, thank you - but she has poked at the other fields of magic (witchcraft and wizardry). That means that she can both handle free magic and magic bound to items. The spells that she can currently cast are invisibility, mask (an illusion that changes the appearance of her body to all senses and technical applications; primarily used to hide her cat eyes), acid wave, mana flash, immaterial punch, levitation, creation of darkness fields and physical barriers. She's currently training to learn mind manipulation and lie detection. Some of the spells that she can use, she can also trap in items so that they can then be used independently of her/that she doesn't have to go through doing them to use them on the spot. It is easier to trap them in natural items than in highly processed technology. She can also create foci, items that support a magic user's magical abilities, homunculi, and watchers.
- Regeneration. All shapeshifters, likely due to their strong affinity with the astral plane (where spirits reside) and magic, have an enhanced regeneration- it is so good that she would grow back lost limbs if necessary and that any implant below deltaware (the highest, most expensive, least accessible quality of implants) wouldn't stay in her body. Her healing rate is also vastly above average. It's still possible for her to die, though.
- This is not so much an ability as that it needs to go somewhere - ageing in shapeshifters is a /leshrug thing. While there was once the assumption that they simply aged doubly as fast as regular humans, research has shown a vast variety of ageing speeds and processes among shapeshifters that isn't even clearly based in the origin species. Kitty is seven and her human form looks 8-9.
- She speaks Standard German, Ruhrspeak (an amalgam language, made up of German, Polish, Turkish, Russian and a few other languages), a little English, Sperethiel and Japanese.
- Better senses: Sees better in twilight, hears ultrasound, perfect balance. In cat form, she has all the advantages (and disadvantages) of a cat.



Samples:

One
Two
Another one, in case the other two don't contain enough introspection.




Intended decay path:

She'll turn into a changeling (more specifically into a beast, having been nicked and turned into a pet kitten as an exceptionally cute toddler - old enough to have some memories and upon her escape still young enough for a sufficient amount of those memories to still be around).

Her memories will realign so that Chantalle becomes her human grandmother that raised her and her accident in the waste facility and subsequent work with the runner team becomes her escaping and making a new life for herself (I'm still unclear on how this would best align as I'm only starting to poke at CtL). Her shadowrunner teammates will become fellow changeling NPCs, annnd I'm thinking that with a bit of help (from not!Malicia? Whom she's working with now?) she'd have offed her fetch and live with her human grandmother again.



Stigmatic glitch:

There is a faint scent of industrial and, when she's stressed, toxic waste in the air around her. It's faint enough that she, who has grown up in the middle of a huge, polluted urban sprawl (and whose home base is located right next to a waste facility and a polluted river), won't notice it and might even comment on how fresh the air in Hex is, but it will be noticeable for people that have very good noses or who are very close, in a cramped space with her, etc.

Hajime Aikawa | Kamen Rider Blade

[chalicejoker]

OOC Information

Player name: Airdra

Player age and gender: 32, female

Any other characters in game? N/A

[chalicejoker]

IC Information

Character name: Hajime Aikawa

Character canon: Kamen Rider Blade

Canon point: Immediately following the events of the TV series

Character history: In the history of Hajime's world, ten thousand years ago, the creatures of the Earth decided to fight for the right to rule over the planet. Their desire to fight for supremacy spawned the formation of an immortal life-form called Undead. Fifty-three Undead were created, and they were ranked in the same manner as a modern deck of playing cards. The Undead were to fight each other in a Battle Royale, and when defeated, they were sealed into playing cards. Fifty-two of the Undead fit nicely into suits and ranks, and each of these fifty-two Undead represented a species vying for control of the planet. If one of these Undead won the Battle Royale, then that species would win the right to rule Earth. The fifty-third Undead, the Joker, was different. If Joker won, then all life on Earth would be eradicated. Human Undead won that first Battle Royale, and the remaining Undead were safely sealed away for ten thousand years.

Scientists researching immortality unsealed many of the Undead, causing the Battle Royale to restart. Joker was among the unsealed Undead, and he was quick to hunt down and seal the Mantis Undead, the most skilled fighter among the Undead. He then used his abilities to take Mantis Undead's form and power by using the proper card. After that, Joker targeted Human Undead...but Human Undead allowed himself to be sealed willingly. The combination of the Mantis Undead's fighting spirit and Human Undead's compassion had an interesting effect upon Joker--he started to develop emotions and feelings beyond being a mindless force of destruction. He also became unwilling to return to his original form, even disgusted by it. For the first time, he found himself without a screaming desire to destroy, and he didn't know why. He no longer wished to be called Joker, and so he took on the human name of Hajime Aikawa.

He was still, however, drawn towards strong enemies and trying to win the Battle Royale, so he continued to wander the countryside and fight other Undead in Mantis Undead's form. When he wasn't fighting, he was spending his time in Human Undead's form and trying to make sense of suddenly having feelings and emotions. When Hajime fought the Giraffa Undead in the mountains, a human photographer was fatally wounded in the crossfire. Hajime assumed his human form and approached the man as he died, and he was shocked when the man was unconcerned about his own fate--he only wanted to make sure his family was taken care of. He gave Joker a photograph of his wife and daughter and begged him to make sure they were safe. This was too much for Hajime's growing curiosity regarding the humans, and so he took on the identity of freelance photographer. The camera would be a useful tool as he indulged his growing curiosity regarding the humans. After all, humans usually pay more attention to the camera than to the photographer himself.

Hajime found the photographer's family, the Kuriharas, and was able to rent a room in the basement of their restaurant, the Jacaranda. Nine-year-old Amane took a shine to him, and, despite himself, he started to return that affection. Hajime was starting to learn about familial love, even if he didn't want any emotional attachments. He was also approaching the point at which he could reliably pass as a normal human, albeit a shy one who was uncomfortable around crowds and prone to asking awkward questions about emotions and human relationships. Hajime's behavior around the Kuriharas was different from his behavior around others--he made more of an effort to emote like a normal human.

It wasn't long before humans affiliated with an organization known as B.O.A.R.D. started using technology and the power of sealed Undead to create Kamen Riders, warriors who could seal the Undead. Hajime's transformation into Chalice was mistaken for another Rider, and he soon came into conflict with Kazuma Kenzaki, Kamen Rider Blade, and Sakuya Tachibana, Kamen Rider Garren. Hajime was initially hostile towards the pair of them, and he still saw humans as weak and useless...though he still had that love for the Kurihara family that he tried so hard to deny. It did not help that the Riders were aware that certain high level Undead were capable of disguising themselves as human, and they assumed this was the case with Hajime. He made no efforts to tell them otherwise. Why admit to being Joker when he now hated that part of himself?

Hajime fought against both the other Undead and the Riders as Kamen Rider Chalice until he was badly wounded in a fight with Garren and left unconscious and badly wounded in the woods. Kenzaki found him and nursed him back to health. This raised a few new concepts for Hajime--he was starting to learn more about human compassion. He didn't understand why Kenzaki might help an enemy, even if he did appreciate the help. This marked a turn in Hajime and Kenzaki's relationship, with Kenzaki making efforts to befriend the secretive Hajime. Kenzaki's reasoning was that there was good in Hajime--he'd seen the way Hajime worked to protect Amane. Hajime didn't understand this, but he slowly started to warm up to Kenzaki. For the first time, he found himself with a friend who had an idea of what he really was.

Other Undead started trying to target Hajime through the Kuriharas, although they assumed he was simply the Mantis Undead, Chalice the Legendary, taking human form. Hajime told himself these human attachments were nothing but a weakness he'd developed...and then he left the Kuriharas in order to keep them safe. He encountered a young man named Jin who dreamed of sailing the world, and he thought that would both keep the Kuriharas safe and get him away from the other Undead and the Battle Royale. It was clear that he missed the Kuriharas terribly; he sent Jin to check up on them without giving Jin a reason. Jin looked upon Hajime as an older brother figure, but when the Shell Undead attacked and destroyed Jin's boat before he and Hajime could set sail, Jin blamed Hajime for the destruction of his dream. Hajime had made a friend, and he was hurt by the rejection. At the same time, other Undead had targeted and kidnapped the Kuriharas. Hajime rescued them, but he allowed Kenzaki to take all the credit--he didn't want them to know of the part he played. The damage was already done; the Kuriharas had been associated with him for too long. He returned home to the Jacaranda, vowing to keep them safe as best he could. After all, if he was right there, then he'd be better able to protect them. Each time they were threatened, it became very clear that Hajime cared for these people, and that attacking someone he cared for was a very good way to get on his bad side.

Life got complicated for Hajime. A new Rider, Leangle, entered the fray. Leangle, a high school student named Mutsuki Kamijou, was possessed by the improperly-sealed Spider Undead. Hajime was outed as Joker by the other Undead, and this caused Mutsuki to fixate upon him, desiring to take Joker's power for his own. Tachibana believed Hajime should be sealed, but Kenzaki steadfastly refused. He swore that if Hajime were to become a problem, he would seal Joker himself--which was a gesture Hajime greatly appreciated. Kenzaki kept insisting that Hajime was now a human, and becoming a human had, by this point, become everything Hajime possibly wanted. He was growing tired of the Battle Royale and being targeted by the other Undead. He didn't want to destroy the world, and he was determined that this would not happen if he were to win the Battle Royale.

A brush with the Caucasus Undead damaged Hajime's repression of Joker. The easiest way to enrage Hajime was to threaten the Kuriharas, and the Caucasus Undead did just that after separating Hajime from the bulk of his cards, which helped to keep Joker's power in check. When Kenzaki attained Blade's King form by simultaneously using the power of thirteen Undead, it was too much for Hajime to take. That surge of power, combined with Mutsuki possessing Hajime's stolen cards, unleashed Joker's full fury upon the world once more. It wasn't until Kenzaki retrieved the stolen cards and the only remaining card in the Suit of Hearts, the Evolution King, for Hajime that Hajime was able to bring his Joker self under control through attaining Chalice Wild Form. Joker was successfully sealed away once more, and Hajime was even more determined to live as a human. He was Hajime Aikawa--not Joker. Not anymore.

The power in Blade's King Form that had caused Hajime to run amok also came with its own price--using that form's power for too long ran the risk of turning Kenzaki into another Joker. Kenzaki was manipulated into fighting Leangle to the point where it seemed as though he would fall to the power--but Hajime was quick to help his friend overcome the Joker that was threatening to awaken, saying that it was his turn to return the favor. He was happy to be the one helping Kenzaki instead of the other way around for once.

The entire time, B.O.A.R.D. scientists were still researching the Undead--the head of the organization, Tennouji, had been authorizing experiments on the Undead and was behind the Battle Royale restarting itself. Tennouji also wanted the Riders dead--they had outlived their usefulness in helping him weed out the weak Undead and collect Undead power. Tennouji unleashed a fused Undead that could both turn invisible and take the form of others. This Undead wreaked havoc among the Riders, causing Hajime and the now-in-possession-of-his-own-reason (following a sequence of events in which Hajime was not involved) Mutsuki to believe that Tachibana and Kenzaki were possessed by Undead. After being a creeper and unsubtly following Kenzaki around for a while, Hajime figured out what was going on, and he orchestrated a plan to trap this fused Undead. He faked a relapse into his Joker state, which caused the Undead to reveal itself in the hopes of defeating Joker. For the moment, it seemed as though everything was going well for Hajime--he had demonstrated that he had Joker fully under control, Tennouji's machinations had seemingly been stopped, and there was only one other Undead, the Giraffa Undead, left. He'd worked with all of the other Riders, and Giraffa didn't seem like he would be a problem under those circumstances. The Battle Royale wasn't yet complete, but he was feeling better about things than he had in a long time.

Tennouji had one last card up his sleeve, and he fused with the artificially created Kerberos Undead. The Riders, including Hajime, defeated him. At this point, Hajime and the Giraffa Undead were definitely the only ones left, and at one point, it seemed as though Tachibana was about to seal Hajime himself...but Tachibana decided to follow Kenzaki's lead and place his faith in Hajime's humanity. He almost died sealing the Giraffa Undead, leaving him incapacitated for what was to come.

With Giraffa sealed, Joker was the last remaining Undead--and the winner of the Battle Royale. As much as he tried to fight his fate, Hajime found himself once more trapped in his Joker form, and the uncontrollable army of Darkroaches spawned from the Undead Sealing Stone that governed the Battle Royale set about trying to end the world. Hajime had his reason and a bit of self-control, but his body was moving on its own to a certain degree. If anything attacked him, Hajime would be unable to stop himself from fighting back. He attempted to kill himself so he couldn't destroy the humans he had come to care so deeply about, but as an Undead, it didn't take. All he could do was hope Kenzaki would be able to seal him.

Mutsuki attempted to seal Hajime by himself, but Hajime warned him against it--he knew that Kenzaki was the only one with a prayer of sealing him. Hajime sent Mutsuki to the hospital, and, soon enough, Kenzaki came to put an end to the Battle Royale--though not in the way Hajime expected. Instead of sealing Hajime, Kenzaki fought Hajime using Blade King Form. King Form still came with the risk of becoming Joker, and Kenzaki used that. He willingly allowed himself to become an Undead, sacrificing his own humanity so that Hajime could keep his. Two unsealed Undead meant that the Battle Royale was restarted, and there was no winner. Because their Undead instincts would drive them to fight each other until only one remained, Kenzaki went far away, telling Hajime that he should stay and live with the humans--and that he would fight the Undead's fate.


Character world: Hajime's world is largely the world of the early 2000's. The biggest divergence is the existence of the Undead--not reanimated corpses, but immortal undying monsters who exist only to fight. Ten thousand years ago, the Undead came into existence to partake in a Battle Fight for control of the Earth. (Canon lore claims that they sprang into existence thanks to the will of the planets' creatures to fight. ) The Undead would fight, with the winners continuing to exist and the losers getting sealed into playing cards. There were fifty-three Undead, all sorted in the same way as a deck of playing cards. Fifty-two of those Undead represented a particular species--the Undead who won the Battle Fight would secure the Earth for whichever species that Undead represented. The fifty-third Undead, the Joker, represented the apocalypse. If the Joker was the last Undead standing in the Battle Fight, then the Earth would be destroyed. The Human Undead won that first Battle Fight and secured the Earth for the humans.

In the then-modern-day of the early 2000's, the Undead were unsealed by researchers working for an organization called B.O.A.R.D. who were seeking to harness the power of the Undead's immortality. This restarted the Battle Fight and leads B.O.A.R.D. to make use of Rider Systems in order to create Kamen Riders to send out and fight and reseal the freed Undead. The series starts a couple of years after the Undead have been unsealed. The Undead and the Kamen Riders are largely regarded as urban legends, and B.O.A.R.D. is just another unremarkable research company to the general public.

Events in the end of the series meant that the general populace had to deal with hordes of rampaging cockroach monsters, though they wouldn't necessarily know what these monsters were or why this was happening.

[chalicejoker]

Character personality: Because he is an Undead, Hajime has trouble with things that humans take for granted. He understands battle and having enemies quite well. Those are normal things for an Undead. What baffles him is the human capacity to care for others, in some cases to care for them more than one cares for oneself. Amane's early declaration that she'd love him even if he were a monster caught him totally off-guard, and Kenzaki's self-sacrifice for him in the finale is another thing he's unprepared to face.

He is aware of the fact that he has become more human in mind if not in body, and it initially worried him. Early on in the series, he tries to avoid the call of other Undead to come fight as much as he possibly can, only willingly leaping into action when the Kuriharas are in danger somehow. He isn't overly concerned with collateral damage otherwise, and other characters do comment on this, initially thinking of him as some kind of monster that only derives pleasure from fighting. He would prefer to be thought of that way--he seems equipped to be able to deal with that, but he is at a loss when other people call him out on the way he has come to care for his adopted family. Other Undead, when they learn of the connection or of the way Hajime has been hiding himself among the humans, are quick to use this as an insult, saying Hajime has gone soft or has grown weak thanks to this human influence. It takes him a while to accept that he has formed attachments and also to view these attachments as a source of strength.

When he fights, Hajime fights to win. He would also prefer to be in the thick of battle himself. He carries a bow, true, but he's more likely to use it as a bludgeoning instrument than he is as a ranged weapon. He's smart enough to back off and watch his opponent for a bit, searching for a weakness, but when he has decided to act, look out. He is absolutely vicious in battle, and he does not take losing well. It's in part a hard-wired Undead instinct, for to an Undead, a loss can be as good as dying. It's also an ego thing--he is the strongest, he needs to fight and win in order to prove that. This is also something he looks at with a bit of bitterness--the one time he wanted to lose, needed someone to be stronger than them and seal him, Kenzaki surprised him with another option. The Battle Fight is still ongoing.

Hajime is not good at explaining things. When confronted about some oddity or another, his preferred reaction is to go very quiet, look away, and then try to leave. Physical combat, he can handle. Verbal combat, not so much. He would rather leave awkward silence and unanswered questions in his wake than have to lie about something. Part of this is just due to his inexperience as a human--he doesn't have any decent alternatives to give as a lie in part because he doesn't know any.

Hajime builds up friendships very slowly, and this is not helped along by the fact that love and friendship tended to escape him at first in his existence as a human. His friendship with Kenzaki builds up in starts, with Hajime attacking him after the first time they fight a common enemy together. It’s not until Kenzaki insists on treating Hajime’s wounds after a battle with Garren that Hajime begins to warm to him, albeit in a slow, distant way. Even when he and Kenzaki have seemingly established a fairly strong level of trust, there are times when Hajime is still prone to claim that the only way they can really understand each other is through battle. Even though Kenzaki pretty much becomes his best friend, they still come close to killing one another on several occasions, in part because Hajime can be a pretty lousy conversationalist.

Hajime loathes the Joker aspect of himself. He has ever since he started assuming Human Undead’s form and the identity of Hajime Aikawa. Calling him Joker is a huge insult, and he desperately wants to get away from that side of himself and the path fate has lain out before him. He doesn’t want to destroy the world anymore. Thanks to the way his canon treated him at series’ end, Hajime is about as stable as he’ll ever be, humanity-wise. He’s been shown love and sacrifice. His best friend made a tremendous sacrifice so that Hajime would be able to live among the humans and his adoptive family, and he’s trying very, very hard to live up to that. He’s mellowed a little bit, although he remains quick to defend those he cares about and still will not back down from a fight.


Character abilities:
Hajime is an Undead, which means he cannot die, only be sealed into a Rouse Card after being defeated in battle. This also means that he has green blood and enhanced speed, reflexes, senses, and strength when compared to a normal human. He also does not appear to need to eat or sleep in the way a human might--he doesn't seem to get how to sleep in a bed and is often confused by offerings of food.

Hajime is the Joker Undead, which allows him to take the form of any other Undead that has been sealed into a Rouse Card. He uses the Two of Hearts, the Human Undead, to pass as a human, and he uses the Ace of Hearts, the Mantis Undead, to fight as Kamen Rider Chalice. If he uses the King of Hearts card while he is Chalice and has all thirteen of the suit of Hearts in his possession, he can take Chalice Wild Form, which is more powerful. As Chalice, he can also use these cards to perform special attacks. There is a list of all the cards he possesses and their effects here on his journal. In his Joker form, he's a large insectoid monster who will fight tirelessly and relentlessly, firing blasts of green energy at his enemies.

It is important to note that Hajime absolutely hates his Joker form, and he would do anything to avoid taking it again. The power of all of his cards combined keeps his Joker instincts and Joker's power at bay. If his cards are lost or taken from him, he will have trouble keeping it together--the best he can do is exert a considerable amount of will to essentially make himself go into a coma for a little while. If the cards are not returned to him, he will rampage.

In his human guise, Hajime is a freelance photographer. He's got a lot of experience maintaining and using film cameras and has a darkroom.



Samples: I've got a TDM thread here and here.


AU nature: Here, Hajime has become a demon. His demonic form is, for the most part, his Undead form--that of a bipedal bug monster. He has the ability to make a partial transformation into his demon form, which gets him his far less risky transformation into Chalice. At least his returning to a human form no longer hinges on whether or not he possesses a certain playing card.

He is now making use of Exploits and Embeds to mimic several of the powers he had in canon. He can shake off amounts of damage that would greatly wound or kill an ordinary human, can still kick things hard enough that they explode, and still has an inhumanly fast reaction time.

Because he's a demon, he has suddenly become a very competent liar, though he still prefers to avoid having to do so with people he actually likes.

He also has three glitches directly related to what he was in canon: one of them is green blood even in his Cover's human form. The other is that he's got a compulsion to always carry with him a partial deck of cards--just the suit of hearts. He will become agitated when separated from his cards, though they're just normal playing cards in this case. The third is that when he causes something to explode, he feels compelled to pose dramatically in front of it for a few moments.


AU history: Hajime was originally an angel who existed to destroy things for the God-Machine. This all came to an end in his Fall, which happened when he witnessed one human willing to be self-sacrificing for another. This caused him to show mercy for the first time. Like all fallen demons, he immediately adopted a Cover and went into hiding. He is still on his first Cover, and he is becoming quite attached to it despite himself. He has also made a pact with a young takoyaki seller for a secondary Cover in the future, though the takoyaki seller has no idea what sort of deal he's really made and Hajime's in no rush to either follow up on the deal or to tell him what he agreed to.

His current Cover is currently that of a freelance photographer who is boarding with the Ichinose family, which consists of a father, Yuichi, and his teenage son, Jin. The two of them do not get along well. Jin's in that rebellious stage where all he wants to do is run away from home and become a musician, while Yuichi's insisting that his son get his head out of the clouds and go for a more realistic goal. Hajime tries to stay out of these conflicts as much as he can, preferring to remain neutral in these very human arguments as he learns more about human relationships.

Hajime's Cover doesn't have much in the way of actual family or existing relationships of note, and so it's important to him to start building those up--even if he isn't quite sure what he's doing. He gets along well with his new family even with all the father-son spats, and he's had a couple of close calls regarding blowing his Cover in having to fight a few angels and other demons here and there. Unfortunately for him, Jin has caught a few glimpses of these fights. He does not know that, and he is unaware that Jin is laboring under the delusion that Hajime is secretly a transforming superhero like what you'd see on TV.


Justification: In canon, Hajime is a monster who tries to stop being a monster. Hajime met a dying human whose primary concern was for his family, not himself, and this leads Hajime to try living as a human. Here, his Fall was triggered by seeing a similar display, causing him to show mercy towards his would-be victims. He'll be hiding among the humans dealing with human emotions all the while being something that's very much not human.

The Undead are all organized by a fairly rigid hierarchy and all ultimately exist to serve one purpose--to fight and, in Hajime's case as the Joker, to destroy. Hajime wants to break free of that purpose, but he feels he's fated to end the world no matter what. As a demon, he originally would have existed for the purpose of destroying things in the God-Machine's name. He still gets the confusion about humanity and human emotions in general that he had in canon, just filtered through a different sort of monster background.

Corwin Gardener | OC

[crazycatvampire]

OOC Information

Player name: Gail

Player age and gender: 35, she

Any other characters in game? None

[crazycatvampire]

IC Information

Character name: Corwin Gardener

Character canon: OC

Canon point: NA


Character history:
Corwin had a childhood spent largely at home, going out only for school and coming straight home afterwards. His mother was alcoholic, extremely controlling, and emotionally abusive. Corwin is always quick to say she never actually hurt him, though he's privately sure she might have wanted to and just held herself back for his sake. If anything, however, it was because she lacked the courage. Even as a child, he grew up like a weed, and towered over her already by twelve.

Between moving about once a year due to evictions, his mother's controlling nature, and his own quieter nature, he never really had friends. The only real friends he ever managed to make were neighbors' pets and stray animals, and that only with a lot of time and patience. Because it was all he had, Corwin did well in school, working hard and generally not having trouble understanding the material. His grades got him into college, just barely, for a computer programming degree, and after that he never went back to his mother, moving as far from her as he could without actually leaving the country.

Corwin's sire, an older vampire named Jared, discovered him when Corwin was twenty-nine. It took the vampire three years to turn him. He watched him for a long time before beginning a correspondence and finally turning him on their first face-to-face meeting. Once Corwin got over the fear of the "attack" and being dead, actually understood what had happened, and realized that Jared was not lying about being "family" now-- it helped when Jared introduced him to a couple other Strigoi vampires who lived nearby, and they were unreservedly accepting-- he was overjoyed.

Jared took his new progeny to New York, so Corwin could meet as much of the "family" as he wanted. They stayed there for two years, Corwin eating up everything he could about the Strigoi line, way of life, and abilities and making friends for the first time in his life. When they returned to home to Detroit Corwin decided, with his sire's fondly amused support, to try and share the gift of family immediately, and purposefully set out to find the unhappy, downtrodden, and outcaste and see if he could help them.

His first choice, a teenage boy named Eric, seemed painfully familiar: bullied, clever but friendless and lonely, with a difficult home life. Taking a cue from his own sire, Corwin watched-- perhaps "stalked" might be a better word-- for a whole year, then spent another sharing emails and internet conversations with his chosen. Rather than surprising him with teeth and blood and death immediately, however, he actually met Eric in person before he turned him. He liked the idea of letting the boy know what he was in for, first, rather than putting him through the fear Corwin had dealt with, and having someone willing to cooperate with the procedure made things easier. After a few awkward moments while Corwin convinced him he wasn't a demon and he was still his friend, Eric actually took it surprisingly well, and after Corwin's rather passionate testimonial, accepted the invitation.

Except it didn't work. Instead of a vampire, a son and a brother, what Corwin got was a ghost. Eric had trusted him so much that he wasn't going to pass on when he died that he didn't, but his new unlife was not at all what he'd expected. Corwin was horrified, Eric confused, and no one happy.

Eric forgave him, but Corwin wasn't about to forgive himself. Panicked, afraid that he'd done something wrong, Corwin tried again, this time with Theresa, a battered wife with a stubborn streak that applied to everyone except her husband, a bitter outlook on life, and a loner's nature. He was much hastier this time, and didn't reveal himself, afraid of giving her false hope-- and what if the fear was necessary, and that was what he did wrong with Eric? Except that didn't work, either. All that happened was that the terror she felt when he killed her, and her fury at being killed, led to her staying behind as a ghost, as well-- only she, unlike Eric, did not forgive her assailant when he penitently explained what he'd done.

Now unable to deny that something was wrong, he finally dared to face his sire with his "terrible mistakes", as he saw them. Jared explained sympathetically that some vampires simply were infertile and couldn't turn others. The "defect" was devastating to Corwin, despite the assurance that it wasn't his fault and he'd still be accepted among the family no matter what, and he now feels that he has to do something else to make up for his lack. It feeds into his subservience to older Strigoi vampires, increases his protectiveness towards those he would otherwise take into the fold, adds to his unwillingness to turn away stray animals, and often leads him taking on strange missions or crusades in the hopes of helping the helpless. He doesn’t stay in one place much, these days, instead moving around with a couple of stray cats, the pair of unquiet spirits, his laptop and cell phone for freelance programming work when he needed cash, and the hope that he can maybe make a difference in the world.



Character world:
Corwin’s original world, a now-closed original-character role-playing game called Praelitis, is actually probably a lot like the World of Darkness world: there are vampires, there are werecreatures, there are mages, there are spirits and demons, there are even angels, though they’re not much like the angels of the Machine. The supernatural stays underground there as well, with those few too sensitive, too unlucky, or too curious for their own good stumbling onto it now and then, for good or for ill.

The time is modern, early 2000s, and the setting is mostly like the USA of our world, only with the addition of those hiding supernaturals. Vampires in particular come in several varieties, and though they all share certain traits-- weakness to sunlight and fire; supernatural strength, speed, and healing; conditional immortality and the need for blood-- they are different enough to have their own specific species traits. Corwin’s type, the Strigoi, are the ones with the ugliest outsides but the kindest hearts. They take in outcastes and the abused, try to give them a family in undeath, somewhere to belong and someone to look out for them, but the turning warps them physically into something hideous and frightening, a truly inhuman monster in appearance. Their special abilities include the summoning of one specific type of animal (in Corwin’s case, cats); a painless or even pleasant bite, if he’s careful about it; an unerring sense of direction and ability to navigate; and a tendency to kill plant life in the vicinity of anywhere they take up residence, though that’s more like a curse than an ability. The Strigoi’s oldest and most powerful vampires in the States live in New York City, in the subway tunnels beneath the streets, where they keep watch on the homeless there and protect their own, and keep records of their kind. Their culture is one of protection, watchfulness, and acceptance, with little of the vying for power that other vampire lines tend to engage in.

The game setting itself is a small town in Michigan, where the supernatural tends to congregate, it being out of the way from any major cities and unusually magical in nature. One of your typical settings for a modern supernatural game, really. Corwin’s friends there included a pair of demons, a wereraven, and a blind dreamwalker-- which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

[crazycatvampire]

Character personality:
What Corwin is like depends quite a bit on who you are. To animals or someone who he's comfortable with he is awkwardly kind and extremely gentle, if a bit likely to stammer and put his foot in his mouth. His patience with people who seem willing to give him the time of day (or night, in his case) is endless, and when his loyalty is won, it is hard to shake, to the point of carefully ignoring a person’s more negative traits. He sees others as far more important than himself, and if he can do anything to give them a chance at a happier life than he had, he'll do it.

To someone who he sees as cruel, bullying, or mocking, however, he's cold, defensive, and very, very nervous. He'll glare, growl, and threaten, but he's more than a little afraid of mockery and cruelty, and the easiest way to get him to back off is to confidently insult or belittle him. If there's immediate danger to someone other than himself, however, and he doesn't have time to think about it, he'll just dive in to try and help. If he doesn't know what kind of person someone is yet, he's quiet, shy, and more than a little jumpy, half-expecting to be made fun of. He tends to err on the side of suspicion with new people, unless they are obviously and carefully non-threatening-- not particularly common given the first impression one usually gets of him is looming, ugly, and tattered.

Corwin does have a lot of trouble fitting in, and not just because of his fearsome appearance and massive height. He never had a whole lot of social interaction growing up-- he was awkward and unattractive even before he was turned, and with his controlling mother, he didn’t have much in the way of friends-- so most of what he’s learned has come from other Strigoi vampires. And as their way of life is hardly typical, either… well, that means neither is he. He’s one of those who tends to think stalking is acceptable behavior, taking the Strigoi tendency to watch humanity to the extreme. When he finds someone of interest, he sees nothing wrong with following them, learning everything about them, watching them sleep, listening in on their conversations, or having one of his cats follow them around. How else can he find out whether they're happy or need help? He is more likely to come to your window than your door if he wants to see you, and petting someone’s hair or shoulder doesn’t seem any different to him than petting a cat: you do it gently, and you back off when the cat hisses at you, but otherwise you do it liberally. He’s bad at reading body language and expression, though excellent at reading tone of voice, which can make things interesting when they’re at odds.

On the whole, Corwin acts younger than he is, particularly when one considers the decade or two of living as a vampire on top of his age when he was turned. Part of that is how he never really had a childhood, and his turning gave him the chance to go back and be a “child”, in a sense, all over again, and part of it is his incomplete socialization as a child to begin with. Because of the latter and because of his setbacks since turning, however, he is very mature in some things, and understands a lot about loneliness, depression, grief, and emotional abuse. Whether he can apply that understanding properly to actually help someone is another issue entirely.


Character abilities:
Vampire Traits: Conditionally immortal, subsisting on blood, quick healing, stronger and faster than your average human-- albeit more towards the strong side than the fast side, given his six and a half feet of height and tendency towards clumsiness-- immobilized by a stake to the heart, and likely to go up in flame if touched by the sun… typical vampire stuff.
Strigoi Bloodline Traits: A painless or pleasant bite, the ability to summon members of a family of animal-- small cats, in Corwin’s case, mostly housecats but with the rare chance to call a bobcat or cougar-- an unerring sense of direction and impeccable memory for navigation, and an aura of plant-killing.
Miscellaneous Supernatural Abilities: Whether as a result of being haunted for so long, or due to some quirk of mind from when he was turned himself, Corwin can see spirits unless they are actively trying to hide from him. He cannot affect them in any way, just see them and communicate with them.
Mundane abilities: Rudimentary first aid for animals of many kinds, programming in several computer languages and the ability to build a computer from parts, and familiarity with a lot of video games.


Samples:
Sample 1, from the test drive

When the third cat came home limping in as many days-- and this time it was Patches, who was the least scrappy animal he knew-- Corwin decided, probably belatedly, that this wasn't a random fluke, accident, or presence of a new and feisty cat in the area. Someone had been hurting his animals, possibly on purpose. Probably on purpose.

So he did what he did best: he watched, and he waited, until he could catch whoever it was. It gave him something to do. He followed the cats out for three nights, picking a different one until he stumbled upon the right one. Horus had wound up injured, too, while he was creeping through the shadows and along rooftops following Davey. So had Corwin himself, falling off one of those roofs, but that wasn't really pertinent to the chase.

When he finally did find the right one, it was Patches again, following a route through one of the parks in the nearest suburb, the one he had a feeling Horus had been on the night before. The cats had territories around his house, but they frequently wandered through others on almost regular circuits, sometimes looking for better hunting or sometimes, he thought, just out of boredom. Corwin knew his older cats' routes by heart.

The little tortoiseshell cat was trotting along through the park, tail waving jauntily enough that she didn't seem nervous, when the first stone came flying out of the trees-- right past Corwin's unsuspecting nose-- and hit the tree right behind her, narrowly missing her hind end. Patches whirled and hissed, and another small rock sailed just over her head. Not being a particularly brave cat, Patches bolted.

"Missed!" a young man's voice complained, and footsteps came closer down the hard-packed dirt path this park boasted.

"Damn," chuckled another one. "Now what'll you practice aiming at?"

Corwin shrank back into the shadows off the path, scowling at the approaching small group of teenagers. Throwing rocks at cats? To practice their aim?

"Trees don't move, John," another boy snorted. "Maybe you'll have better luck with them!"

"Cats are more fun," the first retorted. "When they get all puffed up and mean-looking and shit. Trees don't do anything."

That was more than enough to get Corwin angry. Even if they hadn't been attacking his cats, he would have been angry. And he hadn't had a decent meal in a couple days. This, then, would be perfect. A good scare might teach these kids a lesson, and he could tide himself over for another couple days.

"Maybe," he spoke up roughly, coming out onto the path behind the kids and trying to be as clear as possible, "you should try practicing on something that can fight back."

All of them turned in surprise and confusion, and froze at the sight of the tall, clothes-muffled stranger. Not a one of them came anywhere near his height.

"Hey, man," one of them said nervously but with an attempt at bravado. "Mind your own fucking business."

Corwin barely resisted the urge to flinch-- it was automatic, even now-- and instead yanked down his hood and scarf and bared his massive, uneven fangs at the bullying boys. Almost as one, they let out frightened yells and bolted. Corwin pounced at the one who'd actually thrown the stone-- the one who'd complained about missing-- and ploughed his face into the dirt with his heavy landing.

"You," he growled thickly into the young man's ear, "are a cruel, vicious person, and you deserve this."

"You're a freak!" the kid cried, struggling under the heavy weight of angry vampire, and this time he did flinch.

Freak, Theresa's insubstantial form echoed behind him. He hadn't noticed her reappearing, and he flinched again.

Leave Corwin alone! Eric spoke up in protest.

"Let me go!"

You think you're going to prove anything? Theresa sneered, ignoring the other ghost and the wriggling adolescent. Teach him anything? Ha! You're not going to make a difference in how a kid behaves!

She was right. Of course she was right. Corwin had never made a difference, how would that start now? He might even make this boy, this young man, worse towards others by frightening him. He'd seen it happen. He should've thought of that. Why did he never think these things through before he did them?

The bullying boy managed to wriggle himself free while Corwin was distractedly berating himself, gave his captor a sharp shove to get him the rest of the way off, and scrambled to his feet before taking off after his gang. Corwin sank back on his heels and braced his face in his hands in frustration. He was a vampire who couldn't even get dinner properly.

You're pathetic, Theresa said smugly.

At least that night no cats came home limping.



AU nature: Ulgan Promethean, the Riven

AU history:
The first thing one of the Riven remembers is his spiritual death, in pain, at the spectral hands of hungry spirits, and Corwin is no different. His next memory is of his awareness being dumped back into a tall and gawky body, the one he’d left though he doesn’t remember leaving it, only now it’s not quite alive anymore, and it keeps leaking darkness everywhere. It doesn’t feel quite right, either, because now it’s lacking the soul, the Kut, that was torn away from it. His creator, another Promethean, explained to him what he now was and what he must do to regain a soul.

What he doesn’t remember anymore is that his life up until that point was much like the life his original self experienced: the life of a withdrawn, socially inept programmer with a great love of cats and video games. His recreation into a Promethean mirrors his turning into a vampire, only rather than the acceptance of a new family and the protection of the outcastes, his new goal now is transcendence and a return to mortality. He’s still a fairly new Promethean, and has only hit his first milestone, and that recently: when his creator turned him out on his own and he got a job to pay rent on a tiny apartment-- he works as a garbage collector, which he actually enjoys since he can learn a lot about people through what they leave behind-- making him feel independent for the first time. That happened within a year of his creation, and he’s only been alone in the city of Hex for a few weeks, at best.

Most aspects of his original personality before Hex remain the same. For example, he can’t quite understand why it hurts when the local alley cats, stray dogs, and even pigeons flee from him, but it definitely does hurt-- particularly the cats. He has no trouble whatsoever falling into the pattern of watching humans and trying to learn from them what it means to be mortal, again to the point of stalking those he approves of or is curious about, and sees nothing wrong with it since obviously he means no harm. He has a fierce protectiveness over the creatures he would like to rejoin someday, ready to leap to their defense at a moment’s notice, and an endless curiosity about them.

Corwin’s bestowment is ethereal flesh, the ability to communicate with and interact with spirits, and his only transmutation at present is vitality, supernatural strength, which he achieved at his first milestone. It is not very strongly refined as of yet, so he can’t use his strength for more than a minute or two. I hope over the course of the game to teach him luciferus, the manipulation of light... largely for the irony factor.


Justification:
I liked the juxtaposition of Corwin’s oddness with the desire to “fix themselves” that the Promethean class has, it might make him actually think about his neuroses and grow a little to compare the two once he starts getting memories back. Plus it gives him an innocence I think will be fun to play with, and the curiosity is a good reason to interact with others in the game, both in a positive and negative way. The idea of playing with “what does it mean to be human” is very appealing to me, and I think fits his themes of belonging and acceptance well. Both his vampire self and his Promethean self are very disturbing to look at, too, which I love, as I like weird-looking characters in general, and they share a number of abilities, which is handy for their integration.

Plus, Prometheans are just so damn cool, and I wanted one :)

Tobias | Animorphs

[notachickenhawk]

OOC Information

Player name: Matt

Player age and gender: 27, male (he/they)

Any other characters in game? None (apping Makoto Fukami)

[notachickenhawk]

IC Information

Character name: Tobias

Character canon: Animorphs there is no TV show only books

Canon point: Middle of book 54.

Character history: Tobias, the series in general.

Character world: In general, the Animorphs world is pretty much our world in the mid-late 1990s, in particular California. (It's never stated really specifically but this is the fandom's best guess.) 56k modems are a thing, cell phones really aren't, and everything seems perfectly normal... which would be true, aside from the remnants of the alien invasion that happened - only recently revealed to have been occurring over the past three years.

Character personality: Tobias used to be a shy boy, a dreamer, and an artist. He was bullied relentlessly in school, only occasionally saved by people like Jake. He felt unwanted by his aunt and uncle, and kept his head down as much as he could. He felt weak and powerless and didn't know how to change at all. After he and the other Animorphs started fighting together, though, he starts gaining self-confidence quickly. He develops an intense crush on Rachel. Though they don't go very far (for one the species difference, for another they're both young and also fighting a war), their relationship is one of the things that drives him.

He fights with himself, trying to moderate between human and Beast. He has trouble with the drive to survive matched with normal human desires for companionship and friendship. He comes off as aloof sometimes, even if he doesn't mean to. He has a fierce independent streak now, and doesn't want to show weakness - because in the wild if you're weak, you're killed, and his hawk brain knows it. He doesn't want to lose all his humanity, but it's a constant struggle to remember simple things like warmth and touch. Tobias, even when not hunting, possesses a strong 'predator' instinct, due to all his time in the Primordial Dream. He also has a little trouble with human mannerisms like not staring intensely at people and using his fingers. He's still kept his human intelligence, though, and is good at practical problems and figuring out ways around things. Even if someone is 'prey', that doesn't mean he'll bully them - he still remembers what it's like to be harassed, bullied, and unwanted. However, letting go of his predatory instincts isn't easy. It's got to be life or death - nothing in between.

He jokes around a lot, and pretends that things are all right, but it's pretty obvious that things are never all right. Especially after he gets tortured by Taylor, one of the Strix, he has flashbacks and trouble dealing with the stress of what happened. It's difficult for him to deal with things like that, since not only isn't that something that he can really ask anyone about because teenage boy embarrassment, but it's also difficult because of the need to keep secrets. He doesn't really care. He pushes through because of the predator mindset, because he doesn't really have any other options. Besides, he can't stop - everyone needs him. They have things that need to be kept at bay. They're going to have to keep going, because letting humanity fall is entirely unacceptable. He used to miss being human, but not anymore other than in a vague sense since it would make things easier. He's accepted being a Beast and the fact that his life is going to be short and brutal, but he has to survive. It's just difficult when you don't know exactly where the end is.

When interacting with new people, Tobias reacts in one of two ways: fight or flight. That is to say that he either stares them down, leaning on his hawk instincts to give off an 'air of a predator' - or he goes quiet like he used to, and hopes the person will simply stop bothering him if they get too uninterested. Neither position leaves him feeling very good about it, but at this point he doesn't really know many other options. He feels trapped by his own nature, and by nature itself. He's a creature that should not exist by all the rules of nature, but he does. He does and he has to carve out his own niche. Interacting with new people is strange and scary and not something he has to do very often given the fact that they have to keep things secret. He's incredibly out of practice.

But to the people he knows, cares about, and fights with he's incredibly loyal. He would never betray their trust or their ideals, and is prepared to die to protect them if he has to. After all, he's the one Animorph who doesn't have a family. He's more expendable, at least in his mind. He will fight beak and talon to keep them from coming to harm, and even more so when Rachel is involved. His bonds are few, but strong. It would take a force greater than the entire Strix population to break the connections he feels with his teammates.

All of the Animorphs come out of things with a lot of mental damage, but Tobias may be one of the hardest-hit of all of them. The shock of being thrown from the position of a quiet, bullied, and somewhat abused boy to a creature that needs to hunt and kill to survive takes its toll on him. It takes him a long time to give in and start hunting, and longer to kill something on his own. It gets easier over time as he removes himself from the killing, but it makes him wonder if he's lost his humanity in the process. His psyche takes a further blow after being caught and tortured, and he feels somewhat worthless even if he did agree to be caught as part of their plan.

He recovers a bit, but it's not until he faces his torturer again that he feels he's reclaimed part of himself. Which self he's reclaimed, though, he's not sure. There's no longer a distinction between boy and bird, human and Beast. He is a strange combination of both, and he holds onto that identity because it's the one he has left. He can't lose himself into the Beast mind entirely, but he's no longer fully human. This is the foundation of his new identity - not discarding his past, not discounting the future, but focusing on the present and the immediate tasks in front of him. He will push through what he has to, enduring what he can, for the future of people who don't care about him because it's the right - and only - thing to do.

He's basically had to admit to himself that he's not as much of a human anymore as he thought he was. He's been forced into fight or flight as things got more and more serious, and flight isn't an option. He's helped make tough decisions, he's seen way too many people die... the whole group has been under constant stress but Tobias is one of the ones that's had to speak more from a place of logical fighting rather than emotions. That's usually been his role, but the team has kind of fractured. The relationships they had before just aren't the same. He's seen way more people die than he saw before, and people die that were on their side. He used to be the sad, gentle kid. Even more than before he has to realize that he can't even try to go back to that. He's not a kid anymore, he's barely human anymore, he's a Beast. And the love of his life got killed and he feels like his heart ripped out. Grief is hard to process and there's no one in the world who can really understand how he feels.

Right now he feels kind of like a zombie. It'll take some time for him to get over the shock, and some more time to adjust to the fact that she's not coming back, even if he goes back. He's mad, of course, but he sees the rationale behind it, and that scares him. This was war, they all knew the risks, he just... didn't think that the risks would ever come to pass. They've all been close to death before, but a death of someone on the core team, and especially the death of Rachel... he's just barely coming out of that. He's aware Rachel would want him to live, but it's difficult to imagine a new way of living without her. He's glad it's over, he really is, but it's kind of a cold comfort. He doesn't like the limelight. He doesn't like being the center of attention. There's got to be something for him... just not something amongst humans at home.


Character abilities:

- Morphing ability (the ability to change into any being that's touched and 'acquired')
* Thought speech (mental conversation, though he can't read minds to get an answer back)
- Hawk base form (he is a red tailed hawk, he has claws and wings and a beak and he will use them)
- Artistry (he can drawings good)
- Focus (he is very good at focusing in on details and absorbing them)
- Perseverance (he sticks to things and follows through because if they don't do it, no one will)


Samples:

Tobias and a werwolf plot to take down some mages.
The tale of the Battle of Oatmeal


AU nature: Beast - Ugallu Ravager
Specific abilities:
Atavisms - Eye of Heaven, Wings of the Raptor, Limb from Limb, Cyclopean Strength
Nightmares - You Cannot Run, You Will Never Rest, They Are All Around You
In place of flying ability from canon he uses parkour and Wings of the Raptor. He also has good rapport with hawks, and his lair takes the general form of a wide, windy field with a tree border that also stops all electrical/complex machines used inside of it.

AU history:

Once upon a time, an angel fell for a human that he was charged with protecting. The new demon married her, and they had a child. This story is not the story of the demon.

The demon wanted to take care of the woman and her child, but had to leave so they wouldn't be hunted. The woman suffered an accident when her child, Tobias, was a few years old, leaving him with his aunt and uncle. The pair hated each other and soon split, shuttling Tobias between homes every few years.

Tobias was a quiet, sensitive child - he read books and sketched birds, and always seemed to end up a target of bullies. He tried to be kind to people, even as he grew more and more tired from strange nightmares of being hunted by something flying above him. One day, another boy came to his rescue - boy named Jake. From then on, Tobias decided that Jake was now a good friend.

Tobias followed Jake around for a while, until one night his dreams took an even worse turn. The thing hunting him drew closer and closer, until finally it was on top of him. At that moment, he knew that he wasn't the prey - he was the predator. The creature devoured him, and he became the creature that had taken up residence inside his soul.

No one suspected Tobias - how could they? He was too kind, and he kept that act up. Slowly, he discovered that Jake and his best friend, Marco, also had strange dreams. Diving into the Primordial Dream, he guided the two to accept their creatures as well - and then Jake's cousin, Rachel and her best friend, Cassie. The five of them bonded quickly, and started to hunt down creatures they found in the night - especially a group of beings that were taking over people, known as the Strix. It was subtle at first, but the changes were there - and Jake's brother Tom was one of them.

They were later joined by a person who went by the name of 'Ax'. Ax was strangely knowledgeable about the creatures they were fighting, and eventually once they revealed their secret, he revealed his - he was a demon. The group had never clung too tightly to tales of the Dark Mother, but they knew that a creature like a demon was not one of their family. But Ax was definitely one of them - he'd fought alongside them enough to be considered part of the family. Maybe not his whole species, but Ax, definitely.

Their missions grew more and more dangerous, even leading Tobias into being captured and tortured, until finally they'd struck enough of a blow for the creatures to be truly afraid of them. Tobias rained down destruction from the skies, and finally things seemed to calm down.

And then tragedy struck. Rachel was killed during the course of a mission - they'd thought it would be easy enough. Horrified and lost, Tobias pulled away from the rest of the group and cut off contact with them other than letting him know he was alive. He didn't leave Hex, but his hunts became solo affairs rather than team efforts once more.

He'd wipe out the rest of those things with or without the others. They needed to pay for taking Rachel from him.

Justification: Tobias is a bird in canon, so Ugallu fits him well. His big issues have to deal with feeling not human anymore while still being able to walk among them. He has the constant alienation of being different - and he's handpicked by a being greater than himself - the Ellimist in canon, the Dark Mother (maybe) in his AU history.

Makoto Fukami | Kamen Rider Ghost

[transient_specter]

OOC Information

Player name: Matt

Player age and gender: 27, male (he/they)

Any other characters in game? None (apping Tobias)

[transient_specter]

IC Information

Character name: Makoto Fukami

Character canon: Kamen Rider Ghost

Canon point: Episode 50.

Character history: Here's the wiki.

Character world: Basic 2016 Japan technology level - at least for the human world. The Ganma world merges human technology with some very undefined magic powers and has (or had) people with the ability to stuff souls into small items called Eyecons. Eyecons not made of living people tend to be formed from items connected to so-called 'Heroic Spirits', people who have made impacts on the world in a major way. (Edison, Goemon, and Mozart are all examples of Heroic Spirits from the show.)

Character personality:
Makoto tends sets himself up to be an antagonist. While it's not wrong that he's naturally antagonizing and somewhat blunt, he's more driven than anything else. His top priority in life is his sister and her safety (and yes, the fandom takes this too far and canon didn't help with it). Takeru and people he trusts draw out the more caring side of Makoto, but he remains driven, running towards his goal with very little real regard for his own safety. He's not protagonist-reckless, but pretty damn close.

Makoto doesn't talk about what Arcadia was like very often. It's no place for human children, even with the protection of the fey. Like it or not, he was a captive, which only proved to make him less likely to rely on others. He didn't even have to eat, which definitely must have come as a shock.

While not afraid to get his hands a bit dirty, other people tend to pull him back towards his moral center. Many of his more tender moments people can draw out of him surround either his sister or Takeru's father, who took in the two siblings when Daigo Fukami walked out on them. Makoto views Takeru's father as his real father, and harbors a lot of hate and resentment for the person who abandoned them. Movie events may have changed it very slightly, but no one has put out a translation. The biggest issue he has, however, is a struggle for identity, both literally and metaphorically.

In a more metaphorical sense, he's been away from Earth for ten years, and while he's gotten up to speed quickly it's still sometimes a bit strange for him. In an isolated place like the freehold, it's not hard to be out of the loop, but when he heads into town there's just... things that are different. He's a stranger in his own home, really. In a more literal sense, he's met his fetch, and he fought with it. It beat him and taunted him and asked him if he was sure he was the real one.

Makoto is driven, purposeful, and willing to leap into things. He is caring to those who are his allies and absolutely ruthless in battle if he decides he needs to fight someone. He doesn't always win, but that just makes him fight harder. He does not hesitate to leap in and take a blast for his allies, and he does not abandon them easily. Even when pushed, even when tested, he at least tries to do the right thing.

Character abilities:

- Motorcycle riding: Where he learned we don't know, but he's a Kamen Rider. He can ride a motorcycle because it's pretty much required.
- Hand to hand combat: Makoto has trained for years in hand to hand combat against both Prince Alain, others in the royal Ganma family, and other Ganma. His style tends towards swift and brutal strikes, generally erring towards punching rather than kicking.
- Ghost Driver: Makoto possesses the ability to summon a Ghost Driver, basically a transformation belt that lets him become Kamen Rider Specter. He uses his Eyecons to transform into different forms, though he only has Specter form available.
* Specter form: Increased speed/strength/etc. because it's a transformation. He also has access to his Gan Gun Hand, which is either a rod or a gun on its own, but if he attaches the Cobra Keita (cobra phone) he can make it into a scythe. He also has a kick finisher that uses spiritual power, a rod finisher that does likewise, and a sickle mode that does the same thing.

Samples: Hex test drive and a totally immersed Makoto in a PSL.


AU nature: Summer Court Changeling, Beast kith - specifically Truefriend (Winter Masques, page 67).

AU history:
Makoto and Kanon Fukami were born to a relatively poor family. Makoto was about two or three when Kanon was born, and complications from the birth led to their mother's death. Their father grew more and more mentally unstable, leading to him abandoning his children in the care of Ryu Tenkuji, a local Hunter. They were raised alongside Ryu's son, Takeru, until one day the two siblings were approached by a man who said that they knew where their father had gone.

Unbeknownst to them, this man was in the employ of some True Fey, and the two quickly were dragged into Arcadia, into the realm of a pair of Gentry that were once Changelings themselves (though neither of them ever revealed that). Both of the Fukami siblings were changed by the experience - Kanon became a 'doll' for Alia, and Makoto became Alain's loyal hound. Makoto spent day and night fighting other creatures in the 'arena', eventually coming to earn his master's favor. He was allowed to sleep on his master's bed, and when he was injured his master would tend to his wounds. Makoto cared deeply for Alain in return... but when he found out what had happened to Kanon, he knew he had to leave.

One night he escaped his 'kennel' and broke into Alia's area of the realm. He grabbed Kanon and dragged her back with him, past the edges of the broken city that made up most of the realm. They plunged back through the Hedge, Makoto fighting off everything he could. Finally they found a stone monolith, and touching it opened a door back into the human world. Makoto pushed Kanon through first, and almost didn't leave... but as much as his heart belonged to Alain, he needed to take care of Kanon.

Eventually the pair made it to the local freehold, where they were taken in. Makoto joined the Summer Court, never telling them how much he wanted to go back. He would never sell the others out, of course, but in his dreams he still ached for Arcadia. Makoto grew in power, using it to defend Kanon where he could, but kept his distance from most other supernatural creatures. He's carved out a basic 'human' existence - he works as a motorcycle courier and occasionally takes jobs where there are definitely no questions asked. It's enough for a basic apartment in the poor part of the city, and it helps pay some of the other Lost to keep her healthy - she suffered much worse damage coming back through the Hedge than he did.

Notable powers:

In mechanical terms, he has lowish levels of Fang and Talon (Canines), Den, Fleeting Summer, and Punishing Summer.

Justification: In canon, Makoto and Kanon are both dragged into the world of Ganma for ten years. (We really only know the specifics of what happened there in brief flashbacks, and Makoto's time is covered somewhat more in-depth.) Makoto and Alain are friends, though they started out as sparring partners and he had to earn the Prince's trust and friendship. But once it's gained, Makoto does not give up this friendship, even when he has to fight Alain in order to convince him of the rightness of the cause he's joined.

ACCEPTED

[modmachine]

Congratulations! Welcome to Hex - we're glad to have you!

To complete your entry into the game, please reply to the Taken Post with the journal you'll be using for the game, along with the other important information (character name, canon, your name, and the creature they are if not New Arrival). Then send your join requests to cityofhex, peopleofhex, and (if you're so inclined), worldofmemeness. Then once you've been accepted and given access to the mod journal, head over to the Player Contact page!

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