Application

[snowblindmods]

Application

Applications are closed permanently. Thank you to everyone who has applied over the years! Before applying for a character, make sure you've read the rules and FAQ. You should also refer to the application guide to see what we're looking for in our applications. You may apply for one character per application cycle and three characters total. Please put your character's name and canon in the subject line of your application comment. Applications must be posted directly to this post and cannot be links. We will screen your application if you request it of us after we review it. Application challenges are allowed, but someone who did not place a reserve challenge cannot challenge a reserved application. Once reservations expire, an application challenge can only be placed before we process the character application of the applicant you would like to challenge. In the event of us nearing our application cap and having more applications than slots, we will attempt to choose the most well-written applications. First-time applicants will be processed first, then applications for second characters, and finally applications for third characters. We may allow more applications to be submitted than we have slots for in the name of greater selection. We will clarify in our response if an application is not being allowed into the game because of the cap or because of issues with the application not meeting the standards of the game. Canon Character Application <span style="font-size: 2em;"><font color="#509E99" face="garamond, georgia, serif">Player Information</font></span> <b>Name:</b> <b>Age:</b> <b>Contact Info:</b> <b>Other Characters:</b> <span style="font-size: 2em;"><font color="#509E99" face="garamond, georgia, serif">Character Information</font></span> <b>Name:</b> <b>Canon:</b> <b>Age:</b> <b>Gender:</b> <b>Canon Point:</b> <b>Background Link:</b> <b>Inventory:</b> <b>Personality:</b> <b>Flavor Abilities:</b> <b>Suitability:</b> <b>RP Samples:</b> Original Character Application <span style="font-size: 2em;"><font color="#509E99" face="garamond, georgia, serif">Player Information</font></span> <b>Name:</b> <b>Age:</b> <b>Contact Info:</b> <b>Other Characters:</b> <span style="font-size: 2em;"><font color="#509E99" face="garamond, georgia, serif">Character Information</font></span> <b>Name:</b> <b>Canon:</b> <b>Age:</b> <b>Gender:</b> <b>Inventory:</b> <b>World Description:</b> <b>Background:</b> <b>Canon Point:</b> <b>Personality:</b> <b>Flavor Abilities:</b> <b>Suitability:</b> <b>RP Samples:</b>

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Dio | Zero Escape | Reserved (reapp)

[myrmidowned]

Player Information

Name: Britt
Age: 26
Contact Info: hungriest
Other Characters: N/A

Character Information

Name: Dio
Canon: Zero Escape
Age: He looks as though he's in his early-to-mid-twenties, but his actual age is up in the air. He's from the fourth generation of a group of clones, but the game never actually says when his generation of clones was made.
Gender: Male
Canon Point: After taking the Myrmidon knife from Alice's dead body in the timeline where he stashes the knife between AB rooms and she finds it.
Background Link: Dio's background | Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition

tl;dr the characters from this game are stuck in yet another incarnation of the Nonary Game that is deliberately set up so that Sigma and Phi can jump from timeline to timeline in order to develop their timeline jumping skills so that they can stop an outbreak of a terrible virus that happened a looooong time ago and pretty much screwed humanity over, while Dio's the dickhead trying to stop them from doing so. With betrayal. And bombs.
Inventory: Just the clothes on his back (including his bracelet, which won't actually function - the screen will just stay blank). His knife and the detonation device would probably have been confiscated.

Personality: Dio isn't stupid - he's just an asshole. It's important to keep this in mind, because while he certainly acts like an idiot from time to time, he's not unintelligent. The sooner you understand this, the less likely it is that he'll be able to trick you, because he very often acts like he just messed up by accident to keep from being held accountable for his actions. (Not that it works during the Nonary Game; most of the people involved are to genre savvy when it comes to dealing with jackasses. But he does play the fool rather convincingly if you don't know he's a jerk to start with.)

He is incredibly selfish. Case in point: though it's definitely possible for everyone to escape from the Nonary Game alive, he purposely tries to just get himself out as quickly as possible and makes it obvious that he doesn't care whether or not his gamemates live or die. He states many times that his ultimate goal is to look out for number one. In the short term, this means getting himself out of the Nonary Game safely; in the long term, however, this actually means furthering the aims of the religious cult called Free the Soul and making the man called Brother proud.

Dio is a fanatical believer in the teachings of Free the Soul (which basically states that humans are corrupted by greed and are, in most cases, beyond redemption; the tl;dr version of it is that people must separate themselves from greed and worldliness, and then when they die they can be reborn in the form of a new, "pure" human being - in this case, meaning a clone). He was raised on them from birth (which is understandable, given that he is a clone) and this means that his default impression of other people is that they're just as impure and corrupted as the very worst examples of humanity. He believes that the only way to make everyone purely equal is for them to all be clones - there's no reason for discrimination, then, because everyone is the same. Individuality seems weird to him (though he does have traits that make him different from other clones, which sort of makes him a walking contradiction).

He is fiercely loyal to Brother, the leader of Free the Soul; he works so hard as the leader of the Myrmidons (basically the "enforcers" for Free the Soul) in order to make Brother proud. He believes that Brother is the one who can lead humanity to redemption and that he owes his existence as a "new human" to him - however, he knows that just being born a clone isn't enough, and that he has to earn it. He undertook the sabotage of the AB project and deliberately entered the Nonary Game in order to do so, an action that proves he's willing to take great personal risk just to further the fanatical goals of his organization. He's been described as a terrorist, and honestly, that's not an inaccurate description - much of his usual work is a form of terrorism (particularly when you think about the fact that Free the Soul was the one to unleash the Radical-6 virus as a bioweapon in the first place). Basically? He's an extremist.

But even being an extremist, he does sometimes fall off the wagon. He's so desperate to prove himself by sabotaging the AB Project because, even though he's the leader of the Myrmidons, he did once partake in something that has been described as a "sin" by his organization; because he's supposed to cut himself off from all earthly temptations, love and lust were off-limits, but he did once get up to some questionable activities with a woman. This caused him to be disgraced in the eyes of his contemporaries and his superiors, and he is now desperate to prove himself and make up for his mistakes so that he can claw his way back up to salvation by performing great deeds, which is what Free the Soul's teachings say will guarantee him a higher rank in the organization and will guarantee his redemption, as he was raised on the teachings from birth.

That being said, Dio is, surprisingly, not a complete asshole. He does actually have a hard time stomping all over the innocent (seen in how he once saved a kitten and how he couldn't bring himself to betray Luna in the first round of the Ambidex Game); it's because his religion teaches that humanity is corrupted, and when he sees people who are truly altruistic, it seems as though he's the one corrupted when he treats them badly. After all, humanity is supposed to strive to be pure under the teachings he follows, so it almost seems wrong for him to hurt people he can't see any bad in. It surprises him greatly when someone goes against his expectations (like Luna did - but then, spoilers, Luna's not human), but not greatly enough for him to stray from his path. His path is one that's meant to lead to humanity's redemption, after all; knocking down people who are further down that path than him just doesn't make sense in terms of achieving his goals.

He will literally do anything to achieve his goals, however. It doesn't matter to him if he ends up disposing of a few "impure" humans; it doesn't matter to him if he himself perishes in the act, because, after all, dying for the sake of a noble cause is going to earn him salvation just as well as it would if he came back successfully. He's willing to set and detonate bombs in the event that his plan of escaping the Nonary Game fails; he's willing to stab an old woman and murder various others for his goal. He's not afraid of dirtying his hands in order to create a more pure world, because someone has to, after all.

Flavor Abilities: one! He's a clone, but his only real skill is being a huge jackass. I guess we can assume he's got decent puzzle-solving abilities since his groups manage to make it through their doors even when the player character isn't with them.

Suitability: Dio is no stranger to dangerous situations, having orchestrated many of them himself. While he's never actually been to a place quite like Norfinbury before, he's also not the type to just lay down and die until his goals are met. He's going to view this whole thing as yet another trial he needs to overcome to prove his worth to Brother and Free the Soul, and also try to gather information on just how the heck everyone ended up here because wow, that sure sounds like something his cult would be interested in.

In the meantime, he's probably going to be a giant pain in everyone's ass and I'm sorry. He's back to ruin everything.

RP Samples:
action;
"Man, fuck this..."

Dio had been prepared to do a lot of things in his quest to regain Brother's favor and prove himself as worthy of the honors he believed he was entitled to. He didn't even bat so much as an eyelash at the thought of killing an old woman, had no qualms about leaving eight strangers behind to die, and wouldn't even have minded blowing everyone else - and himself - up, if push came to shove and that was the only way to succeed in sabotaging the project.

But this? Trudging around in the freezing snow, never actually knowing when he'd be able to find shelter, let alone anything decent to eat? Having to worry about running into those anomalies or whatever people were calling them?

There was very little he wouldn't do for Free the Soul, but that didn't mean he wouldn't complain about it while it was happening. Who was going to hear him? He was alone in a goddamn icy wasteland. With a frustrated sigh, he shoved his hands into his pockets, which didn't help with the chill much.

(He'd fallen face-first into a snowbank earlier, and his clothes were still uncomfortably damp.)

He couldn't die here. There was still so much he had to do, and while he'd been fully prepared to give his life for Free the Soul's goals, there was a difference between taking everyone out with him, knowing that he'd have succeeded, and dying alone out among the ice like a pathetic loser.

"Keep going," he muttered as he continued to put one foot in front of the other. "Just a little further."

He thought he could make out a vaguely house-shaped figure in the distance. There was still plenty of time until sundown. If he could just make it there, the next morning was sure to be better.

...or if not better, at least a little warmer. Surely Brother would understand if he took a day or two to rest, dry out his clothes, and prepare for his next excursion. He'd... investigate the network. Yes. Exploring the buildings was only one part of figuring out what was going on in this godforsaken hellhole, after all.

network - @1000gentlepoints, voice;
Okay, I'm just gonna tell it to ya straight.

I'm in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. I fucked up my ankle the day before yesterday when I made it to this rickety old house, but I'm running real low on rations and I can't find any food in this place. No idea how long it's gonna take my ankle to heal - it's looking bad, man.

[He sighs heavily.]

Look, I know it's a lot to ask, but do you think any of you could pick up something from the school and bring it over here? I'd say it's probably a day and a half away on foot if you're moving fast.

[What he's not telling anyone is that his ankle is fine, he can walk perfectly well, and this is just a test to see who's foolish - er, kindhearted - to go to the trouble to help a perfect stranger when they've all gotten the shit end of the stick. That's important information to know for the future, after all.]

I'd really appreciate it.

[Also, this is voice because he can't stop smirking a little at the thought of someone actually doing the hard work and getting food for him when he's just fine.]

Mina Murray | LoEG | Reserved

[not_harker]

Player Information

Name: Amanda
Age: 31
Contact Info: phurbur
Other Characters: Harley Quinn

Character Information

Name: Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray, (formerly Harker)
Canon: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Age: Early twenties
Gender: Female
Canon Point: After LoEG: V2, before leaving for Scotland (Sept. 30, 1989)
Background Link: http://lxg.wikia.com/wiki/Mina_Murray
Inventory:
- long, red scarf
- fashionable hat
- pair of brown gloves
- ankle-length boots with a low heel
- brown tailored jacket
- full-length red dress
- standard Victorian undergarments
- a walking stick

(as seen here)

Personality:
Mina Murray is a former teacher, a British adventurer, and agent for the British Secret Service. She is by all accounts a strong young woman who has faced and survived hardships to earn the respect of those around her. Her parents deceased, she proved to be hard-working at a young age when she earned her own way through life as an assistant schoolmistress teaching music, etiquette, and decorum. She would not lose this ethic as she went on to study law and the typewriter while working full-time, in order to better help and attend to her former husband in his own goal to become a lawyer. It would also pay of for both her and the country as she would go on to lead the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and determinedly see each one of their missions through. She has a strong sense of duty.

Mina is not only hard-working and well-educated but a very intelligent woman. It was not only her musical inclination that allowed her to succeed as a teacher, but her natural wit. She was able to keep up with her husband's studies, despite having to learn them on her own and on the side of her actual work. She was given the rather Victorian compliment of "having a man's brain". And later, as the league's leader, she was able to easily figure out the secret location in which Fu Manchu was building an airship and then after that quickly devised a plan to help thwart Moriarity's bombing of London's east end. She's perceptive and eager to use what knowledge she has for the better, always.

That said, Mina can be hard on herself when she believes she has failed, as seen when she blames herself for not realizing the league was originally working for Professor James Moriarty. It's a rare moment when she lets herself buy into the Victorian sexism she so often bucks, cursing her "female naivete". In reality, she hardly could have known. It can certainly be said that Mina was once naive, certainly, but after her traumatic run-in with Count Dracula and her subsequent divorce from Jonathan Harker she's changed immensely.

Mina is prim and proper, once the very Victorian ideal. She's also a proud woman. One of the worst things that anyone could to do to her is make her grovel. She's a very private person and refuses to discuss her divorce or her incident involving Dracula with strangers. She's highly self-conscious about her scars from Dracula's attack and wears a scarf to hide them at all times. She's traumatized by having to face such a monster and even more traumatized by the conflicting feelings he's left her with. She now faces each new fiend or foe that she comes across with the knowledge that she has always seen worse.

This has given Mina a great deal of bravery in the missions she's been sent on for the league. She never hesitates to go undercover or work her way through dangerous situations. She even volunteered as a decoy in order to catch the monstrous Mr Hyde in Paris. She also doesn't hesitate to defend herself or others when she able, saving Allan Quartermain's life in an opium den during their very first encounter.

She has proven herself to be quite a natural and talented leader. With a newfound comfort in raising her voice to men, she's fully grown into her independence and self-sufficiency, which lends well to her taking charge of others. A social outcast, she no longer has to play submissive in order to keep in line with society's expectations for women of her time. She's unbothered by her peers commenting on her having a "manly ilk". Mina is a capable young woman, handling herself better than most others' expect. In the midst of adversity, she always maintains a level head and is able to make sound decisions under pressure.

She absolutely has no patience for those who are less competent than her or unable to pull their own weight. Especially men. This comes from having to work so much harder than a man for any crumb of recognition. Men are seen as superior in her society and she does resent it. This has also led to her becoming a suffragette, rallying to bring the right to vote to women in Britain.

Mina is very organized and resourceful. She writes impeccable notes. She was able to collect, organize, and distribute every letter, journal, and newspaper article to her friends in order to keep them up-to-date with all of the information regarding Dracula before they killed him.

Despite coming off as cold initially, Mina is actually a very compassionate person. She doesn't like to hear of any creature suffering unnecessarily. She acts as a mother figure to the group that eventually slays Dracula, going so far as to be a literal shoulder to cry on for multiple friends. This caring continues to be a part of her character, even after that trauma changes her in so many other ways. She goes so far as to have compassion towards Hawley Griffin (the Invisible Man) after he assaults her, not wishing even him to suffer violently after what he'd done to her.

Flavor Abilities:
None.

Suitability:
I believe that Mina will be well-suited to this game for a number of reasons. She a sense for adventure and exploration with some considerable experience in it so far. Unlike my other character, she's also more inclined to participate in solving Norfinbury's riddles and work in groups towards this end. I'd like to use her to become more involved with the overall game plot. I think her past as an adventurer, leader, and agent of the Crown of England will lend itself well to this.

As for the horrors of Norfinbury, Mina has survived and/or worked with a considerable number of Victorian monsters and oddities. The technological aspects of the game might throw her, as her own world is still somewhat Steampunk, but the psychological horror that awaits her is straight from her resume. She's survived this far, she'd be nothing but interesting to watch survive this new setting as well.

RP Samples:
https://snowblindmemes.dreamwidth.org/37489.html?thread=12885105#cmt12885105

David Bouchard | Bon Cop, Bad Cop | Reserved

[jmencalisse]

Player Information

Name: LP
Age: 31
Contact Info: caffettiera
Other Characters: Flynn Carsen

Character Information

Name: David Bouchard
Canon: Bon Cop, Bad Cop
Age: 39
Gender: male
Canon Point: after the first movie
Background Link: First Movie

Since it's too new even for a succint wiki page, Spoilers for the Bon Cop, Bad Cop 2 movie below:

Picking up a decade after the original, Martin is a hardened RCMP officer estranged from his son, while David is a (re-)married man deep undercover in the heart of a car-stealing ring. The two men have remained friends, but time takes its toll and they have not spoken in almost a year. Detective Ward, now working for the RCMP, gets thrust back into Bouchard's orbit when it turns out that they're both working on the same case. Bouchard has been embedded undercover in a massive chop shop operation, and he suspects that there's a bigger plan beneath the auto theft ring then initially lets on. Bouchard agrees to help Ward's investigation, mostly because the RCMP have better resources, but friction between the two cops arise as the dangers and threats related to their job become more personal. Ward, long divorced, is unhappily coping with life issues that include estrangement from his adult son Jonathan and a terminal illness. Bouchard's family is strengthening, while Ward's continues to fall apart, and at a certain point the former starts showing extreme concern for the latter's well-being and newfound death wish tendencies.

The two start working together again, trying to track a terrorist plot that leads from the mobster's stolen cars to the side entrance of the U.S. They discover the stolen cars are going to be used as mobile bombs in a terrorist attack down south. Trying to alert the Americans over the threat doesn't go well and at one point, an outraged Bouchard finds himself in custody in a small New England police station where alarmed state troopers decide that his odd patois must be Swedish.

Ward comes to break him out and soon after they discover that Ward's son is unknowingly involved in the bombing plot, driving one of the cars (but unaware of it being a bomb). In a ridiculous high speed chase David and Martin seek out the van with the main computer system to disable the link between the various bombs before they can go off. They save the day by dumping the van into a river and are commended by the President of the United States. Martin and his son reconcile.

[snowblindmods]

Applications are now open for everyone.

Lilly Desange | Mama

[corknut]

Player Information

Name: Iddy
Age: 27
Contact Info: ihdreniel
Other Characters: Alfie Solomons | devoutish

Character Information

Name: Lilly Desange
Canon: Mama (2013 film)
Age: 6
Gender: female
Canon Point: Towards the end of the movie - after she has her little breakthrough moment with Annabel, but before Mama comes and snatches her and Victoria.
Background Link: Wikipedia link
Inventory:
Literally just the clothes on her back, which would be a pair of pants, a shirt, and a lightweight pink hoodie. I'll be nice and say she's wearing socks and shoes, but even that's a stretch, honestly.

Personality:
Lilly's life was atypical practically from its beginning, and it would be difficult to find any aspect of her personality that hasn't been affected by this in some way. Isolated from the world from the age of one, the only relationships - and the only interactions period - she had for most of her life were with her older sister, and with the ghost that raised them. Even after being taken back to civilization and put in the care of their uncle Lucas and his girlfriend Annabel, Lilly continues to have a large amount of trouble adjusting to normal life, and she is decidedly feral. She isn't toilet-trained, she runs around on all-fours, and she rarely lets people get away with touching her without raising a big stink about it. Unlike her sister, she shows little interest in learning how to be "normal". She's provided with plenty of food, but she still likes to find and eat bugs. She's given new, store-bought dolls, but she prefers the ones that Mama makes for her using sticks and twigs.

In addition to her social skills, her language skills are also severely stunted. There's evidence that she understands much of what is said to her - she'll respond to things with facial expressions or with a nod or shake of the head, rather than with confusion or blank stares. But she's rarely verbal, and when she does talk, it's clear that she's not at the level of a typical six-year-old. She says her sister's four-syllable name with picture-perfect clarity, but other, less familiar words and phrases sound as if they were spoken by a young toddler ("use the stairs" comes out as "yoo da deyrs", for example). Even to her sister, she tends to speak in short, simple sentences, and prefers to communicate with body language. Occasionally she's seen whispering inaudibly to herself (or to Mama); it's unclear whether she's actually talking, or just imitating the act of talking by making nonsense sounds. All in all, she has very little interest in talking for communication's sake. This is likely something that would slowly change if she was given the chance to get close to someone and needed to use words more, but it would take a lot of time (as in years, most likely) for her to even begin to become anything close to a talkative child.

But despite all this, she isn't shy or fearful. She's cautiously curious about the world, and will explore when given the opportunity. She has basically no experience with or trust in people, and when encountering somebody for the first time, she's wary, hiding and watching. But if they don't prove themselves to be a threat, she'll draw herself out pretty quickly, and can coexist with them as long as she has a place where she can squirrel herself away when she wants to be alone (she's fond of spending time under beds or behind furniture). And when she feels comfortable enough with someone to come out from under cover, she's likely to start to be open to the idea of communication. If she gets even more comfortable with someone - and in canon, she only manages this with Mama or her sister - she has an affectionate, playful side. She grins and giggles; she jumps on beds and plays games. She does have that part of her that almost feels like a normal six-year-old, albeit one that's rough-and-tumble rather than darling and sweet. Her level of innocence, too, also speaks to her age. Her sister Victoria had been three when they were taken in by Mama, and so she had some memories of their old life that, while forgotten when they were in the woods, did start to come back to her when they were rescued five years later. But Lilly? Lilly had only been a year old. She had no previous frame of reference to tell her that most little girls don't live in abandoned cabins, scrounging for wild fruit, bugs, and raw meat, and being looked after by a big, scary creature that looks like an eldritch abomination. The things about Mama that start to alarm Victoria simply never ping Lilly's radar as things that should worry her. Why should they? They're all she's ever known.

At home, Mama and Victoria fill all of Lilly's social needs, and her threshold for contact with people who aren't them is pretty low - when they're around, she's happily indifferent to basically everybody else. Without them, though, she'd be forced to branch out - contact with only a few people is something she's used to, but contact with literally no one isn't, and she wouldn't do well with total isolation. Still, she'd retain more aloofness than the average six-year-old, and she'd be okay with traveling alone, though she'd also accept another person or a small group as long as she got along okay with them and they respected her boundaries. And she isn't shy about making those boundaries known - if she doesn't like what someone is doing, she's perfectly willing to let them know, whether via frowns and snarls, a firm "No!", or even bites, kicks, and slaps.

Ultimately, she'd be incredibly lonely without anyone familiar around, and particularly without her close people. Mama is especially important to her, because she's the only caretaker figure she knows, and her loss would weigh heavily on Lilly's shoulders. That said, seeking out an immediate replacement to cling to wouldn't be her style. Even if she met people that she felt comfortable being around or traveling with, she'd still search endlessly for Mama - after all, she found Lilly in her new house away from the woods, so why shouldn't she be able to find her in Norfinbury? But that doesn't mean that getting CR with her would be impossible at all. She might not make a goal of looking for people, but people would still be there, and she'd inevitably encounter them, either on the network or in person. And once some of them became familiar, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for her to start slowly forming relationships, be they negative or positive.

Flavor Abilities: n/a

Suitability:
Lilly is, at once, both highly suitable and highly unsuitable for the game environment. She's six years old, which is a little ridiculous even for a setting that's seen children before. She's never been completely on her own, and while she wouldn't totally ignore the network, she wouldn't be likely to use it to its full advantage either. There are a lot of things that she just plain wouldn't understand, at first or maybe even at all. And yet, she was raised by a ghost alone in the wilderness, completely isolated from society and all its modern conveniences. She's used to seeing and processing creepy things (see again the picture of Mama linked above), and there's a lot in Snowblind's setting that would barely phase her at all. She's far from fearless, and things like anomalies chasing her or seeing herself affected by body horror fuckery would freak her out just as much as they do anyone else, but blood on the walls? Mysterious whispers in seemingly-empty houses? Strange shadows in unexpected places? She'd be cautious, but she'd also be curious. She'd interact. Really, it would all feel a lot more familiar than most of the stuff she's had to deal with since being taken out of the woods. She'd probably try to stay in whatever house she woke up in for as long as possible, only leaving when cabin fever drove her out. Being able to regularly pick up food would likely be one of her biggest challenges, because she'd have no idea how to read a map (luckily, she's tiny and used to scrounging, so she'd be able to stretch a week's worth of rations out for quite a bit longer than expected). Honestly, she'd probably die at least a few times, even outside of events. But then she'd wake up, likely not fully understanding what had happened to her, and continue on. She may not be all that adaptable, but she is very, very resilient.

RP Samples:

network sample

[The first time something strange and scary had happened, Lilly hadn't reached out to anyone after the fact. It had happened less than a week after she'd arrived, and she hadn't really had anyone to tell, or any reason to try to find someone - sure, there had been a call out on the network for people to share their experiences and pool information, but this had been back before she'd fully realized that people on the network were real, not just pictures like people on TV.

But by now, she's been here for a few weeks. Someone had tracked her down in person and showed her how the network worked, and explained to her that when scary things happened, everybody talked about afterwards, because a lot of the time they were able to find clues that would help everybody get home - clues that would help her get back to Mama and Victoria. So this time, when the town's done falling into temporary chaos and people are regrouping, Lilly jumps into the fray.

She sits on the floor with the tablet pointed towards her, centering it like she'd been taught so that her face, arms, and torso are clearly visible. She looks steadily at the camera, inhales, and begins.]

Warm.

[That's as good a place as any to start the story, because it had been the first strange thing that had happened - it had been warm where she'd ended up. She shoots her arms out, fingers outstretched, and waves them around in the air, indicating large amounts of space all around her.]

Warm. Biiiiiig. Dark.

[She'd found herself in nothingness, in a place so pitch-black that she hadn't even been able to see her hand when she held it in front of her face.

She holds up her arm and plants her forefinger and middle finger down onto it in a downward-facing V, like two legs of a person, and then crooks them so it looks like the finger-legs are crouching. Then she starts running her still-crouched fingers up and down her arm.

She'd sat down on the floor to try to get her bearings for a few minutes, and then she'd scampered around, feeling for something, anything, in the dark.

She opens her mouth in a silent yell, screwing up her face to try to look angry and fierce rather than scared.

She'd hollered and screamed and made a lot of noise, hoping that somebody would answer, but no one had. She'd been alone. She'd hopped around aimlessly, probably in circles, for what felt like hours and hours. And then...

She drops the finger-leg thing for just a second so that she can pinch herself, then forms them again, hopping them off her arm. She flops her hand forward so her palm is facing down and her two fingers are stretched out horizontal along the floor.]

Here.

[She'd felt a pinch and then woken up suddenly, lying down in her little nest under the bed. Had it been a dream? She'd wondered, at first... until she'd realized something.]

Tired, ver'tired. Ver'ver'tired from wunning.

[She's exhausted, like she really had spent all night moving, trying to find her way out of a black void. It hadn't been a restful night at all, so it couldn't have been a dream, right? That's what she's thinking, anyway. She yawns exaggeratedly, rubbing at her eyes, and then gives the camera a small wave before reaching forward to turn it off. She's shared her story, and now she's going back to sleep. Bye.]

TDM sample

TDM starter (in-person)

Kesara Freamon -- Original -- Reapp

[heavensreader]

Player Information

Name: Jax
Age: 32
Contact Info: plurk at lightsarestars
Other Characters: Beckett (bookofnope)

Character Information

Name: Kesara Freamon
Canon: Original
Age: 11
Gender: Female
Inventory: Kesara comes dressed in 1840s Afghan native garb, including a long shirt and undershirt, long baggy trousers, overcoat, a large sash around her waist, and over all that a pretty huge sheepskin coat meant to endure winter nights on the steppes. She also has a large Russian style felt hat with ear-flaps, thick wool gloves, and tall boots. Actually pretty Snowhell-ready!
On her, mostly stashed in that sash, she has:
1. A notebook full of scribbled Chinese and Tocharian characters, and charcoal sticks to write in it
2. Surveyor's compass, 1840 style
3. A wooden begging bowl
4. A rosary of Buddhist prayer beads, made of wood
5. The Book of Heavenly Names, a bit travel=tattered, spattered with some blood
6. A tiny marble statue of the bodhisattva Tara in the Greco-Buddhist style, found in the Tocharian ruins


World Description:
Kesara's world is very much similar to "our" world circa the 1840s, with some tweaking around historical edges, and one massive fantasy-historical conceit that the characters only become aware of later on. On the surface, her story takes place primarily in Central Asia, which in her world is usually called Serindia, referring to the lands enclosed between China, Persia, India and Siberia. In some respects the political situation is as it was in real-world 1840 - the British rule India through the East India Company, and are fighting a cold war of sorts with Tsarist Russia across Central Asia, a match of diplomacy and espionage commonly called the Great Game. Though formally at peace, both empires consider the other an expansionist threat - the British being sure that the Russians have their eye on India, and work in a variety of ways to curtail each other's influence and occasional moves towards gaining territory. A recent move in that "game" at the time is the British invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (the historical First Anglo-Afghan War.)

The important tweaks take place further East, where two major things are going on. Thing the first is the continued, historically-not-quite-accurate isolation of China. While historically 1840 saw the first Opium War, in Kesara's world this has not happened and the situation is closer to the first years of the 19th century, with the China trade being extremely limited and Indian opium not yet introduced in force. China remains almost entirely closed to foreigners, and uninterested in most of the rest of the world. The second tweak, which is about the one thing that China is interested in, is the rebellion led by adventurer-general Yaqub Beg in Xinjiang, China's westmost territory, which he established as the Muslim kingdom of Kashgaria. Historically this happens in the late 1860s; in Kesara's world, it happened about a year prior to the beginning of the story. Those changes are historically significant, but don't do much to the essential nature of the world otherwise.

Then there's the big one. In Kesara's world, Serindia's trade routes, the Silk Roads, were dominated until about the 7th century by a single nation - the Tocharians (a real historical people, though I'm really just borrowing their name and cultural flavour - they haven't existed for 1400 years so I don't think they'd resent it.) While other peoples and their occasional kingdoms came and went within their territories, they were the mercantile, and thus essentially political rulers of the vast heart of the Euroasian continent. They were able to maintain this power through the magic of their language and writing. Tocharian writing, when placed on an appropriate vessel such as a foundation stone or a stele, can be used to give magical names to places (cities, kingdoms, buildings), geographical features (rivers, wells, mountains), and routes. These names were assembled in annals called Books of Heavenly Names, and those who could read the books, could hold an absolutely accurate, constantly updating mental map of the places named in them, including everything from weather, to the mood of the local people. This complete knowledge and control of the terrain and of military, political and popular goings-on through their territory allowed the Tocharians to exercise absolute control of it for hundred of years, through the jealous guarding of two secrets: the Books themselves, and the fact that they could only be "used" by people who have learned Tocharian as their first writing system. The language needed to set itself into the reader's mind. Anyone whose mind has been conditioned to another writing system first could still read the Books of Heavenly Names, but only as books, without any of their magical effects.

In the mid 7th century, the Chinese Sui dynasty managed to get its hands on a Book of Heavenly Names, and learn the secret of the Tocharian place-name seals. The Sui proceeded on a concentrated effort to destroy and conquer the Tocharians. The mercantile empire was overwhelmed and dismantled, and its people were reduced to living as a tribe within what was now Chinese territory, around their original homeland in the east of Xinjiang. As the Tang dynasty ousted the Sui, Tocharian knowledge was mostly wiped out, and their memory began to fade. The Sui, the Tang, and following them all Chinese and other rulers of the Tocharians' new country, imposed a harsh law to prevent the tribe from ever rising again - the Tocharians were, and are, strictly prohibited from literacy. Reading and writing are both forbidden, and books of all sorts, in any language, are banned in the country. Twelve hundred years later, while the modern Tocharians themselves - now knowing themselves only by their Chinese name, the Yuezhi - are confined to their bookless land, all that's left of the Tocharians' empire are the occasional place-name seals, found all across Serindia and fascinating the Western scholars starting to bring the "new science of archaeology" to the Central Asian steppes. The memory of an empire of magical writing is completely gone.


Background:
Kesara's story rightly begins with the story of her mentor, Dame Doctor Ariel Stein, who came to Calcutta while neither a dame nor a doctor, as a young woman with her Company finace, and ended up parting from him in favour of dedicating her life to exploration and Orientalist research. In Calcutta, the still young Ariel came to employ a servant named Isaiah Freamon, who had no education, but a natural knack for languages. They would be trusty companions on the road for a number of daring journeys of exploration that built up Ariel's expertise and reputation as a scholar-explorer. By the time they were both thirty, Ariel - now Dr. Ariel Stein - was only just getting started, but Isaiah's health had suffered in the service of exploration and he was ready to settle down. He retired to Simla, where he married a local woman of mixed Nepali and Punjabi heritage, and within the year the couple had a daughter, whom they asked Dame Ariel to name - Kesara.

Kesara's father was determined to raise her British, despite her mixed origins, and his and his wife's employ as servants to a British officer in the developing hill station helped. Kesara spent her earliest years within the British settlement famous for its high society and growing political importance, but there was stopping the curious, lively child from absorbing some of her mother's native culture as well - most especially, her mother's language. By the time Kesara was four, she was speaking her father's English, her mother's Punjabi and Nepalese, and Hindi. This was when Dame Ariel, visiting between one of her expeditions, first met the girl, and was astounded by her talent.

Over the next two years, Dame Ariel and Isaiah went back and forth, as she tried to persuade him to hand Kesara over to her for an education. Isaiah was reluctant - on top of remembering the hardship of his own life as an explorer, he also remembered the particular difficulty of being an explorer's servant, with no chance of ever winning any of his own credit. Kesara had not only her race to complicate things, as he had, but also her gender. What decided matters was that Kesara, herself, had quickly and obviously attached herself to Dame Ariel, who treated her with awe and fascination, but also with seriousness, not like the little child she was. Six years old, Kesara was packed off to Calcutta, to live in Dame Ariel's household as both a maid and a student.

A major problem revealed itself almost at once. For all her linguistic aptitude, and the high intelligence that made itself quickly known, Kesara just couldn't seem to master reading and writing. She tried hard, constantly, furiously; if at first Dame Ariel - a strict and demanding teacher - accused her of sloppy studying, even she had to eventually admit that something more essential was wrong. Kesara was already known for embellishing the truth even then, and it was hard for her elders to believe when she claimed that the letters just wouldn't stay still for her, that she could just see them mixing up on the page until they couldn't possibly make sense. Doctors were called in, but no one found a solution.

But even a seven years old, a defeated exile back to Shimla was unacceptable to Kesara, and her talent prevailed over her "defect". She devoted herself entirely to her studies, figured out memory tricks and techniques to compensate for her continued illiteracy, made herself useful in other ways when questions came up of her continued presence in the household. Dame Ariel had no particular gift for languages, herself, which could be a serious problem for an explorer; Kesara stepped in naturally to fill the space that her father had vacated. When she was nine, Dame Ariel took her along for a small scale expedition, travelling up the Indus into the Punjab, towards the mountain passes of the Lesser Himalayas. This was not real exploration - not what Kesara got to do, at least, as she didn't get much further out from Peshawar. But she learned a great deal among the porters, cooks and animal handlers, the soldiers and the body servants, and proved herself invaluable as an interpreter. The expedition sealed things as far as Dame Ariel was concerned. Kesara was staying, and coming along everywhere she would go.

The next bit of "everywhere" was Kabul, two years later. After the occupation of Afghanistan, Dame Ariel was invited to the city by one of her oldest friends, Lady Frances Gavin, wife to a senior British officer in the city and herself an Oriental scholar, who, on the side, played translator, coordinator and local informant for the Queen's agents in the Great Game - though Kesara didn't know this at the time. Kesara adored Kabul, and spent her time there learning Urdu and Farsi, as well as Russian from Lady Gavin, and coming to the slow and horrifying realization that she was going to be twelve in no time. She was swiftly growing into womanhood. And she had never forgotten what her father warned her of before leaving Shimla - that for anyone who was not Dame Doctor Ariel Stein, womanhood meant the end of ambition. Time to become civilized, marry and settle down. Kesara was not ready to settle down.

She was not destined to. Six months after her arrival in Kabul, Lady Gavin recruited her, along with Dame Ariel, into a scheme. Lord Gavin's men has captured a smuggler carrying something priceless: a page from a manuscript in Tocharian, Chinese and Sanskrit. If the manuscript could be recovered, it could be the key to unlocking the mysterious language that Dame Ariel had been researching for years. But the smuggler was naturally unwilling to talk to her British captors. Lady Gavin and Dame Ariel hoped to use Kesara, with her skill at languages and lying, to pose as a fellow captive and win the smuggler's trust.

However, once Kesara was in the cell, the smuggler, a Yuezhi woman named Roksann, quickly turned the tables on her. Seeing through Kesara's ruse, she instead played on the girl's empathy, telling her the story - the true story - of how the motive for her smuggling was to get books into her homeland, where all reading and writing were forbidden. Kesara was instantly fascinated by this strange and heroic woman, and Roksann easily got her to settle close - close enough to snatch the gun that Dame Ariel had given Kesara to hide on her person, and use it to hold her hostage and demand her own release. This may not have worked had there not at the same time been a mob gathered around the British mission house, demanding the release of the supposed local women that the British were supposedly holding captive. Lord Gavin was grudgingly persuaded to release Roksann, on the condition that Kesara slip out with her and follow her movements, which was easy to do as Kesara quickly made herself useful to the smuggler, who didn't speak Farsi, as a translator.

She was taken by Roksann back to the caravanserai, and to the smuggler's partner, the Chinese scholar and polyglot Lao Dian, who quickly figured out her connection to Dame Ariel - whose work he knew and admired. He got the amazed Kesara to reveal her original purpose in following Roksann. All Roksann herself cared for was getting her treasure back, and she was willing to trade the knowledge of where she had obtained it for the thing itself, but Kesara warned her that Dame Ariel would never deal with a mere criminal. Instead, she was able to persuade the two smugglers that her mentor would be most inclined to parley with a fellow scholar - Lao Dian.

The meeting, which started tense and difficult, ended on a note beyond all Kesara's dreams. Lao Dian revealed that he and Roksann already held the book from which the page had been taken - a full document in three languages, the Book of Heavenly Names. The two scholars struck a deal. Dame Ariel agreed to provide funding for the two smugglers in their effort to return to Roksann's homeland in Sinkiang with their forbidden merchandise, and they agreed to let her join them on the search back for the origin of the Book, which Lao Dian himself was eager to discover. Making good on her promise to Kesara to take her everywhere she would go, Dame Ariel allowed the girl to join the expedition. Five set out: the two smugglers, Kesara and Dame Ariel, and Ali Qadir Ghilzai, a Kabul man in the service of the British serving as armed escort. [cont']

[snowblindmods]

Applications are CLOSED. Applications will open for reserved applicants only at 12:01AM EST on March 1.

[snowblindmods]

Applications are OPEN for reserved applicants only. Applications will open for everyone at 12:01AM EST on March 3.

Karkat Vantas | Homestuck | Reserved (reapp)

[quadrangle]

Player Information

Name: Lina
Age: LOOK CAN WE JUST ESTABLISH THAT I'M OLD ENOUGH SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO SHARE THE AWFUL TRUTH (30)
Contact Info: facetious
Other Characters: N/A

Character Information

Name: Karkat Vantas
Canon: Homestuck
Age: 16
Gender: Male
Canon Point: [S] Game Over
Background Link: wiki link
Inventory: BECAUSE KARKAT IS A RE-APP and he would be devastated if his porn collection vanished, I'm just. Yeah, here.

Davesprite | Homestuck | Reserved | Reapp (1/3)

[mrcreamsicles]

Player Information

Name: Nabi
Age: 27 oh no wait I'm 29 now god it's been a while
Contact Info: alchemicalheart
Other Characters: N/A

Character Information

Name: Davesprite
Canon: Homestuck
Age: At least 16. (The wiki lists him as just 16, but doesn't take into account the extra time spent in the doomed timeline via time travel. Davesprite didn't keep clear track, but from his statements one can assume it was between 4 months and a year. So at most, he'd be a few months past his 17th birthday.)
Gender: Male
Canon Point: After leaving the ship on LOMAX.
Background Link: Here (childhood up through the early "entry" section) and here. (Note: As a reapp, Davesprite will be retaining his memories of Norfinbury.)
Inventory: The t-shirt he's wearing (plain and orange), and his sunglasses. In canon the sunglasses have computer capabilities/can access the messenger program Pesterchum, but without access to that network they'll have no use and eventually run out of charge in Norfinbury. (Note: His old in-game inventory is here.)

Simon Jarrett | SOMA | Reserved

[theseuschip]

Player Information

Name: Pip
Age: 26
Contact Info: honchkrow
Other Characters: n/a

Character Information

Name: Simon Jarrett
Canon: SOMA
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Canon Point: Post-game, after launching the ARK
Background Link: wiki
Inventory: nada

Personality: Simon is a bunch of contradictions, in a sense — empathetic, but also self-absorbed; prone to rumination, but also prone to denial; clever and resourceful, but also a dumbass. It probably doesn’t help matters that SOMA starts with a Simon whose life has been radically altered by a car accident that killed his friend/co-worker/unrequited love interest and left him with PTSD and permanent brain damage, and that’s before the whole time-traveling to a post-apocalyptic monster-infested giant busted science toilet where he had to deal with about 15 mind-shattering revelations at the same time and do tech support on things he’d never even seen before.

Generally, he’s a pretty affable, good-humored person. His pre-PATHOS conversations with friends seem to be peppered with the same easygoing sarcasm that he very quickly takes up with Catherine, PATHOS-II scientist and his sole companion, who he starts calling ‘Cath’ about ten minutes after they meet. He’s quick to empathize with the robots they encounter and hates the idea of having to kill one for its tool chip or put a man’s brain scan through repeated traumatic simulations to coax a password out of him. He’s prone to guilt, even for the car accident (stated to be the fault of a driver distracted by her three children) that killed Ashley and preceded this hot mess; he tries to help or comfort some of the suffering people and delusional robots in PATHOS-II, even when it’s generally futile, and handles the prospect of euthanizing the last human alive, who begs for death, with about as much grace as anybody can. He has a strong sense of responsibility and keeps his promises, faithfully fulfilling Catherine’s shopping lists and carrying her past monsters and through WAU-infected ocean from one terminal to the next. Overall: A Nice Dude, Generally.

Of course, helping people is also deflection, and so is rambling about his philosophical Robot Problems; when something is just too big to comprehend or deal with, he prefers to think in the abstract. He worries about being replaced by a copy; about being the copy; about not having a reason to exist; about having nowhere he belongs, even on the ARK, where he expects to have trouble fitting in with Catherine’s colleagues; about having the identity of someone who is dead, in a body that is wrong (and gross); about having been created by the WAU for reasons he doesn’t understand. The knowledge that Catherine can’t relate and is too goal-oriented to give a shit doesn’t deter him from filling what might otherwise have been welcome silences with his anxieties. It comes off as entirely egocentric, and it kind of is, but in one fell swoop Simon learned the following: the surface of the Earth has been destroyed; his friends and family are dead; he is nearly a century in the future; he will never be truly human again; he is trapped at the bottom of the ocean; and also, he is going to have to get more exercise in ~36 hours than he probably got over the entire course of his human life or else he will be murdered.

So: abstract everything and rack up achievable concrete goals while he’s doing it. He spends the few days he’s in PATHOS-II in shock, looking like he’s coming to grips with things and not revealing how much he’s repressing until it’s too late to fix. So he’s the first to suggest that he and Catherine actually try to launch the ARK, something even she doubts they’ll be able to accomplish, because it’s a purpose. Even the station’s grotesque monsters aren’t enough to get him to quit. Almost everything Catherine suggests is pretty much met with “fuck it, why not”, even when he doesn’t understand what they’re doing.

Because, really, all of this stuff is extremely complicated. Simon’s not anti-intellectual — he’s a curious geek who worked at a bookstore, albeit one who owned way too many video games, and seems to have investigated whatever interested him, down to owning a book about, well, reversing brain damage — but compared to the brightest minds from a century in the future, he’s not really a mental heavyweight. And he really, really wants to believe his situation in PATHOS-II isn’t hopeless. So he doesn’t ask questions he should ask, and he doesn’t think about things he should think about, because deep down he doesn’t want to hear the answers. And he almost never goes full meltdown, but when he does he’s like a grenade that hits whatever’s around — which, in PATHOS-II, isn’t much. And that’s where his whole scene goes to shit. Simon had all of the information he needed to know that being uploaded to the ARK would leave him behind. By this point he’s done it twice. But when he finally has to confront reality — his copy will go on to experience a virtual-reality paradise, and he will be at the bottom of the ocean, on an empty earth, forever — he goes ballistic at Catherine for lying to him, for betraying his trust, even when earlier he’d accepted responsibility even for things she told him to do. After all, why did he have to think about it? The Simon who goes on — the Simon who isn’t left behind — is always him. It has to always be him. And then it isn’t, and he crumbles, overloading Catherine in his fury and unintentionally causing her to short-circuit.

And that’s how Simon Jarrett died and died again and killed his only friend. Well, wait, he also mercy-killed the previous Simon. Hindsight is 20/20.

Flavor Abilities: Flashlight in face-parts, no actual face because he’s a spooky robot thing with glowy camera eyes. Also his brain is basically on a hard drive...?

Suitability: Norfinbury is basically a continuation of what Simon was doing in PATHOS-II, except less crushingly hopeless and claustrophobic. He’s from an Earth that was obliterated by a comet and everything and everyone on the surface died, so he has literally nothing to lose and no reason to want to return to where he was. Monsters are familiar; fetchquests and hunts for information that get spooky and grimy are familiar; enigmatic A.I.’s are familiar. The main difference is that this time there are actually humans and the Earth is intact and it might be possible to actually achieve things and live here instead of ‘shoot a computer full of people into space’ being the best option available. So he’ll pretty much be back to running around satisfying his need for hope spots and a feeling of achievement by looking for answers. Like an answer to how he can get a human-ish body. Catherine gets one.

RP Samples: one | two | three

Note: QUESTION, while I know Simon’s ability to walk on the ocean floor will be nerfed and he will be able to bleed like a human would and be vulnerable to cold exposure, I’m assuming he will get to keep the advantages associated with being a cyborg zombie and not.... having a head? Like not eating or breathing, for example. Please correct me if I’m wrong!

Catherine Chun | SOMA | Reserved

[arkproject]

Player Information

Name: Liv
Age: 28
Contact Info: chirality
Other Characters: None

Clover Field | Zero Escape (Reserved)

[nonarymagnet]

Player Information

Name: Rhi
Age: 34
Contact Info: amazinglystrange or PM
Other Characters: None

Character Information

Name: Clover Field
Canon: Zero Escape
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Canon Point: end of Phi End
Background Link: Here
Inventory: Clover will be bringing with her nothing except a ridiculously impractical outfit (as demonstrated in the VLR image on the wiki).

Personality: On the surface, Clover comes across as a cheerful, friendly young woman who doesn't take things too seriously. Even when thrust into a potentially dangerous situation, such as the Nonary games, she's not afraid to make jokes and keep things lighthearted - as demonstrated in the final few rooms of 999 (once Snake has been found) and through many of the puzzle rooms in Virtue's Last Reward, where much of her dialogue on investigating puzzles goes along these lines (such as when examining the IG replicator and she guesses that the IG stands for "Ice cream by the gallon").

However, this happy-go-lucky side of her is largely dependent on the presence and well-being of the people closest to her. In keeping with the Loyalist enneagram type which forms the basis of her character, Clover places a lot of value on the people she cares about most and looks up to which is demonstrated in her relationships with Snake (in 999) and Alice (in VLR). Should she have her important people by her side, she can face up to whatever challenges may come, even in a high-tension environment such as a Nonary game. Should something happen to those people, however, Clover regresses into a much more closed off and defensive attitude, allowing her paranoia to get the better of her as she distances herself from the people around her.

This highlights Clover's tendency to overly rely on others, and a degree of lacking self-confidence which sees her latch on to people she sees as being the kind of person she herself wants to be. It is this which sees Alice fall into the same role of "the loss of this person will cause Clover to stop being able to cope" as Snake did originally - it is evident in how she talks to and about Alice that Clover deeply admires her and sets her as a role model to try to live up to. While it's hard to know exactly how Clover would function without someone like this around from the start, it can be inferred that she would seek to find someone to fill this void as soon as she feasibly could, being reluctant to spend too much time alone even as it would be an opportunity for her to come out from others' shadows and gain confidence in herself.

Intelligence-wise, Clover can come across as something of a ditz and it's hard to tell, on occasion, how much is genuine and how much is her playing to the way that SOIS encourages agents to present themselves in a way that might lead to them being underestimated (which is given as the reason for Clover and Alice's choice of attire during VLR) - there are times where she can demonstrate skill with non-simple calculations or speak quite knowledgeably on antimatter bombs and others where she manages to misread the word "pantry" as "panty". Whatever the case, it would be fair to say that her intelligence is not how she defines herself - while it could be argued that her response to Sigma calling her an "idiot girl" suggests she doesn't get that she's being insulted, it could also suggest that she is quite aware that she has her less than smart moments and is comfortable enough to allow at least Sigma to poke fun at her for it.

Overall, at her best Clover can be lively, friendly and more talented in her role than she might seem - yes, she was recruited to SOIS mainly for her Esper abilities but she's learned a lot beyond that, too, as demonstrated when she helps Alice take down Dio on the path to Alice's ending. However, she's also a young woman ruled by emotion and reliant on others and can become snappy, paranoid and downright dangerous at worst when she suspects someone may have harmed or killed someone she relies on as a support mechanism.

Flavor Abilities: While Clover's Esper powers will be nullified (and are mostly useless without Snake around anyway), she will make the odd attempt to use them just in case.

In terms of actually useful abilities, Clover does have some skill in fighting as she demonstrates when helping Alice take Dio down in one path of VLR. Her SOIS training has given her a better grasp of infiltration and some technical knowledge (such as regarding antimatter and the bombs Dio plants in some branches) which she will try to make use of as best she can.

Suitability: Clover is quite used to being thrown into dangerous situations by now, having been caught up in three Nonary games so far. Also, as an SOIS agent she has training in how to deal with a range of situations, even if she is not particularly senior and was recruited mostly for her Esper abilities.

That said, she is capable of handling herself in a fight, assuming she either has weight of numbers or the element of surprise on her side. (And/or an axe to swing.) Not to say she'd provoke fights, but she can take care of herself enough to get by.

As for goals, her long-term goal will be to escape and get back to what she knows since even by her standards, Norfinbury will be pretty strange for her. In the short term, she'll be looking to find other people to work with since Clover is at her best when she feels like she has someone she can lean on when times get tough.

RP Samples:
(Prompts taken from TDM here)

Network

[Clover's used to going long stretches without sleep but it's a little different to be woken up constantly once she is asleep. Combined with the wintery conditions and the fact that sleep is her one chance to forget about where she is and why for a while, she grows increasingly cranky each time her tablet lights up with yet another shot of her sleeping form.

Now? She's pissed and she is determined to get to the bottom of this. Even if that means hitting up the network at whatever god-awful hour it is.]

Hey jerks, listen up! Whoever decided to hack into my tablet so you can take pervy photos of me while I'm asleep, knock it off! It wasn't even funny the first time and it's gotten even less funny every time since so just cut it out and leave me alone!

[It's not that she isn't aware it could be a glitch. It's just more satisfying to yell at a potential culprit and sounds less weak than suggesting she doesn't really know what's going on.]

Action

[Clover's seen a lot over the course of three Nonary games, much of which she would have once filed under impossible - especially during the last of the three, where she'd found herself so far into the future from what she'd last remembered. Which is why, at least at first, she's not too concerned about the room full of mirrors. Mirrors were used in puzzles, right? And even in the first game, she'd been in the group responsible for solving puzzles and transmitting answers so this should be a breeze.

Well. Maybe she's a little disgruntled at being faced with so many reflections of what life in the snowy wastes of Whereversville has done to her. But she can put that aside for now.

At first, she's too busy poking at each of the mirrors in turn to pay much mind to what reflections are doing, happy to assume her companion is doing likewise. Sure, she feels the odd moment of being watched for just a little too long but she's trying to concentrate.

It's only by chance, as she runs out of mirrors to poke and starts to wonder what else could be in the room that's of any use, that she catches the eye of her companion's reflection. Which is particularly eerie when her companion is not stood in front of the mirror in question. Her posture grows tense, hands curling into fists even as she tries to force a level tone.]

Okay...I really hope this is part of the puzzle because otherwise this is just creepy for no reason.

[snowblindmods]

Applications are now open for everyone.

[snowblindmods]

Applications are CLOSED. Applications will open for reserved applicants only at 12:01AM EST on April 1.

[snowblindmods]

Applications are OPEN for reserved applicants only. Applications will open for everyone at 12:01AM EST on April 3.

Master Neloth | The Elder Scrolls | Reserved

[telvanni]

Player Information

Name: Louise
Age: Still really super old
Contact Info: derpriffic
Other Characters: Angel

Character Information

Name: Master Neloth (he didn't spend years climbing the ranks of great house Telvanni to have people leave the "master" part off, okay)
Canon: The Elder Scrolls
Age: Really fucking old. Old as balls. Like he was old enough to call a 200-year old a "mere child" in Morrowind, which takes place 200-ish years before Skyrim does. I'm assuming he's lost count anyway. HE OLD.
Gender: Male
Canon Point: Post-Dragonborn
Background Link: Boop
Inventory:
- set of Telvanni robes, which are warm and layered enough that he won't need the freebie coat
- pocket change in the form of thirteen gold Septim coins (he left his coin purse in his other robes 8C)
- a pouch of ground-up canis root, suitable only for making tea with
- a wooden staff, disenchanted on arrival and now basically a fancy walking stick
- two filled soul gems, rendered pretty useless since he can't do his fancy enchanting any more
- the sense of superiority that comes from being a dunmer and not... one of whatever you n'wahs are

Personality:
The first thing that would strike most people about Neloth is his arrogance. It's a hallmark of Great House Telvanni in general - the Telvanni are less of a unified force than the other Houses, and the "every man for himself" attitude is not only prevalent but actively encouraged. In such a group, you would have to have a high level of power and self-confidence to do well.

Neloth does very well indeed. He isn't infalliable or invincible - stealing precious artifacts from him is considered a fun way to pass the time amongst the most powerful and cunning Telvanni, for example - but he's incredibly high-ranking and by the time he appears in Skyrim, he's one of the most powerful wizards in the world. While his arrogance is obnoxious, it's also well-deserved and born of genuine confidence in his abilities rather than exaggeration. In an environment like Great House Telvanni where might is right, this can obviously cause some problems when interacting with lesser people.

Basically: unless you have something to offer him, Neloth gives no fucks about you. You can be the nicest, kindest person ever. You can be rich and powerful. You can have literally saved the world from a dragon god, and Neloth will still not give you the time of day unless you are valuable or interesting to him in some way right at the present moment. This isn't to say that he'll be actively nasty - that would require more effort than he's willing to give. Convince him that you matter, and he's happy to accept that. Otherwise, you probably don't even register on his radar.

The easiest way to get Neloth to notice you is by appealing to his powerful curiosity. At least part of his ambivalence to "little" people is born from how deeply he is absorbed in other matters. He loves learning about things and seeing what makes them tick. That means things like vivisection, necromancy or human experimentation are far from off-limits: as well as his rather grisly experimentation on Ildari (his ex-apprentice), his tower contains a couple of caged spriggans, and if Neloth encounters a corpse in gameplay he can be heard musing about how he'll need someone to bring it back to his lab for him. He even states that he'd love to capture a dragon alive and keep it as a test subject! With all these fascinating things to experiment with, is there any wonder he can seem a touch absent-minded when it comes to less important matters? Yes, he does things like, say, forget that his steward is dead every now and then. But he remembers more interesting, useful things! Gosh.

He also loves demonstrating his knowledge of such things - and sharing it, to a point. He takes on apprentices as a matter of routine (after Ildari died, he quickly recruited a less ambitious replacement), and he's willing to train the Dragonborn in enchanting to a rather high standard. However, when they reach a very high level of aptitude and ask for further instruction, Neloth responds with "I could [teach you], but I won't. It wouldn't do to have you become better than me after all." Reading between the lines, this is about as close to a genuine compliment as anyone can get from him. Acknowledgement that someday, someone could potentially be better than him at something? EGADS. He's not a man to give praise lightly. For comparison: if the player performs a "shout" in front of Neloth (basically shouty magic, which takes years of incredibly intensive and dedicated study under the reclusive Greybeards to learn unless you're the super special Dragonborn), he drily remarks "yes, yes. You're Dragonborn. We're all very impressed."

FUCKS GIVEN: SO VERY FEW. Compare and contrast with basically every other NPC in the game, who generally soil themselves when the player shouts in their presence. This links back to the first point I made - Neloth can't gain anything from the player being Dragonborn, so why should he care? He's certainly not going to praise them for being marked by destiny or any such nonsense.

This may sound a touch like petty jealousy. Which just happens to be another of Neloth's wide list of flaws! If you manage to establish yourself as an annoyance to him, he can be a complete dick. Prior to the events of Morrowind he has a long-standing rivalry with the leader of House Telvanni, Archmagister Gothren, which largely manifests in them sending flunkies to attack each others' homes and/or steal each others' things. It's all very much like petulant little boys arguing over who is the smartest and has the shiniest toys.

Thinking about how he treats his enemies leads neatly into how he treats his friends. Which is a pretty easy question to answer, since he doesn't really seem to have any. It's extremely obvious by now that he isn't an easy man to like - he's cranky, arrogant and assigns most people the same level of importance that you might give to a recently-used handkerchief. In Skyrim, the NPCs living near(ish) to him in Raven Rock consider him to be dangerously insane and definitely a person to be avoided. They're not entirely wrong.

Still! When he's treated with intelligence and respect (but not overt grovelling and gushing - he has little patience for that), he can be surprisingly unobjectionable. He'll always be very frank and forthright about his views and if you say something stupid he will instantly call you on it, but he's not doing it to be nasty. What's the point in faffing about? He's willing to help and/or work with people if it benefits him, he'll answer questions about almost anything as long as they're not stupid questions... To put it simply: if you're reasonably intelligent, don't mind being spoken to bluntly and can tolerate a level of condescension, you'll likely get along with Neloth just fine.

Flavor Abilities:
Dunmeri fire resistance - Dunmer aren't immune to fire or anything, but they're twice as resistant to it as other races are. This will, of course, be incredibly useful in fucking Norfinbury.

Yer a Wizard, Nelly - He won't be able to keep his cool magic spells, obviously, but it's safe to say that there's some kind of magical enhancement going on that keeps Neloth spry and sharp-minded despite his age. If he could keep that, it'd be swell (it's nothing huge - he'll be no fitter than the average person, and he's still prone to getting aches in his joints).



Suitability:
Neloth is being plucked straight from the island of Solstheim, which is fucking cold. He won't have a cozy mushroom tower to retreat to, but he's used to living in a snowy environment filled with unnatural, aggressive creatures. Weird cults, brainwashing and the potential for tentacle monsters being at the bottom of things are old hat, too. Try harder, Norfinbury. He's used to your shit.

What he isn't used to is being helpless. He's a master wizard, and being without his powers is going to be the absolute weirdest thing possible. Also where are his servants? And his apprentice? Where is his morning cup of canis root tea??? He's going to be utterly disgusted with the lack of all these things. Do you even know who he is, @ADMIN? Ugh.

At least all the puzzles and interesting specimens people around the place should keep his mind occupied.

RP Samples:
1:

@masterneloth; video;
[ As usual, Neloth is holding his tablet at arm's length with a look of vague distaste. He hates this tablet thingy. It's so inelegant. And woefully mundane. Much like the people on the other end of it, honestly. Dunderheads, the lot of them, though at least there are a scant few specimens that at least seem to have some semblance of a brain. Maybe half of one, if he's being generous.

Meridia's bloody armpits, he can't believe he actually needs to talk to these people. ]

Rubble dust.

[ The term emerges from his mouth dripping in contempt like some kind of gross metaphorical afterbirth. "Rubble dust" sounds stupid. Neloth doesn't do stupid. ]

I am aware that the substance has been applied to other materials in order to bestow its properties upon them - for weapons, tools, etcetera. Indulge my curiosity: has anyone ever gone so far as to consume it?

If so, I would be very interested to hear about the results. And if not, well. One of you should. Preferably where I can see it and take notes on the effects.

[ He can't trust anyone here to take their own notes, after all. Are people of the lesser races even literate...? ]


2:

It would be accurate to say that Neloth is no stranger to bizarre and dangerous creatures. It would be an enormous understatement, honestly. Hell, he's created a few of them. He's lived a long life, and he's seen a lot of shit.

Still. These anomaly whatsits are rather interesting nonetheless. He stares out of the window of his current shelter, squints, and twirls his beard thoughtfully as he appraises the one that followed him here. It looks vaguely dunmeri - pointy ears, ashen skin, thoroughly cranky - but it's hard to see much more than that with the blizzard going on outside. Blast it. This is why he misses his servants: it'd make all this ever so much simpler if he could just shoo one of them outside to serve as bait. Then he'd not only get a closer look at the anomaly - he'd be able to watch it devour its prey! Imagine!

Oh, well. Perhaps he'll put in a request to the lady in charge later and prompt her to bring the help over. For now, he'll have to settle for squinting at the snow. You know, he thinks the thing might resemble Gothren a little bit. Something about the nose, and also the way it's trying to break into the house and murder him.

He can't help but smile a bit at that. Just like old times.

Extra:

Old tdm thread in case more is needed

[snowblindmods]

Applications are now open for everyone.

Tadashi Hamada | Big Hero 6

[tadashiwashere]

Player Information

Name: Jade
Age: 30
Contact Info: magicforbiscuits [at] gmail
Other Characters: NA

Character Information

Name: Tadashi Hamada
Canon: Disney's Big Hero 6
Age: 20
Gender: Male
Canon Point: Directly before canon demise.
Background Link: BG Here
Inventory:
His wallet with a few bucks, his student ID, and three small photographs – one is a family photo with his mother, father, Hiro, and himself. Another is a much more recent family photo with just the two brothers and their Aunt Cass. The third is a goofy “selfie” group shot with his nerd squad courtesy of Honey Lemon. He also has his San Fransokyo Ninjas baseball cap and Baymax’s medical and personality chip along with his moped helmet. The clothes he has with him consists of a pair of mint green sneakers, a green blazer, beige cardigan, white graphic T-shirt, and brown pants. He carries a brown messenger bag that is large enough to fit one over-sized Japanese bobtail named Mochi. Which he will re-add to his inventory if he can meet up with his friends again.

Personality:
Patient, kind, selfless, responsible, optimistic, devoted.... Tadashi is all of this and more.

Patience is one of Tadashi’s leading characteristics, followed closely by a kind and caring heart. He had to grow up quickly to fill the hole left by his parents, but Tadashi’s natural affinity for seeing the good in people allowed him to lovingly guide his baby brother through the jagged obstacle course of problems left in the wake of the accident. His Aunt Cass has long admitted that she doesn't know much about children, so it always fell to Tadashi to notice if Hiro was bullied at school and to step in to make sure his brother would be okay. Because he grew up quickly, he has a calm and serious side that seems beyond his years. He’s tapped into that aspect of his personality along with his intelligence to go far as a student as SFIT, working tirelessly to create a robot that could save lives.

More importantly than simply being patient and kind, Tadashi is a seriously selfless person. An extreme example is how he ran into a burning building, regardless of his own safety, to try to save his professor. He's more than just extreme heroics, though. Tadashi's dreams revolve around helping other people despite any detriments to himself. He really is happy as long as other people are happy. Right after the accident that killed his parents, Tadashi began inventing goofy little toys to cheer up his aunt when he saw the pain she was in. Tadashi has always been that kind of boy -- even when dealing with his own grief, his priority was to alleviate the pain of others. Almost everything he does, he does for other people. When Hiro began to be bullied at school, Tadashi built a bucket of rust and bolts that could only loosely be identified as a "ship", tacked on some thrusters, and dragged his baby brother along for the test drive. It took a serious investment of time and a risk of getting into trouble to do that, but it had the intended effect of cheering up Hiro and getting Hiro interested in inventing, which was all Tadashi could hope for.

On top of his selflessness, Tadashi is a driven man. He has goals and he works tirelessly to achieve them. He isn’t one to give up at the first sign of trouble, and always tries to find just the right angle to see through his problems. Despite dozens upon dozens of failures with his robotics project, Tadashi always continued. Exhausted, but never defeated. He nurtures the same attitude in others, always encouraging his fellow classmates (and especially Hiro) to reach their full potential. Seeing his brother waste his talents on illegal botfighting, Tadashi drove Hiro to his school to see how much more he could do with his intellect if challenged. Tadashi relies more on gently nudging people in the right direction rather than attempting to redirect them with brute force. Tadashi is basically everyone's perfect big brother. He's willing to do anything and everything to help other people, displaying a level of selflessness that few can match.

Tadashi is also, let’s face it, a bit of a nerd. He reads medical journals for fun, enjoys geeking out over new breakthroughs in science that he hears about, and sometimes has trouble keeping a lid on his emotions and maintaining his cool big brother status when he gets too excited about something. Nerding out aside, though, his life does not revolve around a computer screen. Tadashi is all about practical applications and pushing boundaries. Though he's graduated to less dangerous experiments compared to when he built the "ship" for Hiro's sake, he's still all about actuallydoing something. He doesn't want to just study ways to help people, he wants to actually be the one creating the helpful inventions or the one going out and offering assistance. Someone has to help, and he believes that he is that someone. Tadashi is not a man to do anything halfheartedly.

On another note, his baby brother didn’t receive all of the family sass, either. Tadashi exudes dry humor when the need arises. He enjoys a good joke and actually likes listening to crazy stories. Since Hiro is the more excitable of the two of them, Tadashi often relies on his dry observations to shock his baby brother out of his melodramatic declarations long enough to have an actual conversation. A notable example was when Hiro gloomily claimed that he had no ideas and Tadashi responded with a dry, "Wow, washed up at fourteen. So sad," before trying to help Hiro through his block. After his brother's presentation, Tadashi broke the serious atmosphere for a moment to tease Hiro about how, instead of saying how proud of himself he should be, he only asked for a moment to talk to tell Hiro his fly had been down for the entire show. He usually uses his humor to make a point or to put others at ease.

Overall, Tadashi is basically just a good guy. He has his flaws, of course. His patience can break and he can be harsher than he means to be. After saving Hiro from his botfighting fiasco, he was angry enough to let out his frustrations on the younger boy. That sort of thing is a rare occurrence, though -- most of the people he cares about don't make it a habit to put their lives in needless danger. The easiest of Tadashi's buttons to push revolve around needless recklessness or not treating other people with respect. He works so hard to help other people, that the idea of someone intentionally harming someone else or not caring enough to help a fellow human being can set off a fuse in him that normally does not exist. Despite his flaws, Tadashi always strives to be better than he was before and to help those around him improve, too. He has an eye to the future and he’s excited about what possibilities it will hold. Tadashi will never stop being optimistic and seeing the best in humanity.

When it comes to SnowBlind's setting, Tadashi's perseverance and optimism along with his drive to help others are going to be what really saves him. As long as he has Mochi to remind him of home and add an extra reason for surviving, he won't run as high a risk of growing overwhelmed. Because he's never been away from his little family, winding up in such isolation will still be extremely hard on Tadashi, and he'll have some trouble with fighting off the loneliness until he can begin connecting more strongly with the other characters.

Flavor Abilities:
For the most part, Tadashi is a squishy human. As far as physical abilities go, he's studied karate, but he's nowhere near any sort of mastery -- he just has what it takes to defend himself and do decently in his classes. He's never been in a real fight. Tadashi is, actually, highly intelligent. He might not be a genius like his younger brother, but he has enough brain power to work on a complicated problem like ending up in a frozen wasteland.

Suitability:
Tadashi is a man of science. Even though his specialty is robotics and he won't have access to technology beyond his tablet in this setting, his scientific way of thinking will still be a big help to him. He will work tirelessly to put together any information he can find to form answers for how he ended up in Norfinbury and why. He'll see the entire situation like a particularly confusing piece of coding that simply needs to be solved. Tadashi will try to organize or help organize some system of sorting through the discoveries they make and will try to promote frequent discussions about everyone's theories and the possibilities of what they might be dealing with.

RP Samples:
Here and here for log samples.


[When the video cuts in, Tadashi's expression is solemn, but as soon as he realizes that the feed has started, a ghost of a smile flits into place. He's supposed to be the optimistic one -- he's not going to broadcast to everyone that the isolation has started to get to him. Not when some of the others have it much rougher than he does.]

Tadashi Hamada here. Month two. Day nine.

[It's been important to him to keep track of the days exactly. He glances up at the ceiling, his eyebrows knitting together as he does some calculations and... yes. That's right. Day nine.]

As far as the last experiment that I reported on earlier... no progress.

[Actually, it was a complete and utter failure and Tadashi feels a little sick to his stomach about that.]

I'm rethinking my strategy and with any luck, we'll know something in the next few days. Meanwhile...

[Tadashi squints at the screen like he can pick out the people he's aiming the next few words toward.]

I heard some talk about giving up. I don't think we've reached that point -- keep thinking. With all of us working together on this, it's a matter of time before we get home. We've just hit a plateau -- that doesn't mean there's not more to this mountain. Look for new angles -- think outside the box. Just keep pushing a little further, guys.

[He pauses, smiling sadly as he reaches for the power switch.] Hope I see all of you again tomorrow. [And then he's gone.]

[whoisbehindyou]

Player Information

Name: Omega
Age: 28
Contact Info: osoroshia#9810 on Discord, or PM either account
Other Characters: Junpei (fiftheclipse)

Character Information

Name: Kyuusaku Yumeno, "Q"
Canon: Bungou Stray Dogs
Age: 13
Gender: Male
Canon Point: Post-appearance. Probably while still passed out.
Background Link: Here
Inventory:
Clothes, doll and bag as pictured here.
Detailed again under abilities, but the doll can laugh and shake in response to Q's pain and stress levels. (So that might put it under the "pet" category? It's not really a living thing, but it's clearly not a normal toy.)
The bag likely can't hold a full day's worth of rations, so he'd still appreciate a backpack as well. Definitely assuming they've been confiscated, but the contents of his bag were most likely along the lines of razor blades and barbed wire.



Personality:
At first, Q seems like a normal child. He's outwardly happy, friendly, and polite. His speech and attitude show a constant playfulness, and he won't hesitate to be overtaken by curiosity once someone catches his interest. He's overly aware of whether those nearby are showing him kindness and respect, and he'll get along with them quite easily, if they are. But others may find there's something else just below the surface.


From the age of six, Q has been under the care of Mori, and as a result, a member of the Port Mafia. As his ability wasn't known at the time he was recruited, Dazai was the one tasked with discovering what it was. It's likely this means he may have seen Dazai as a friend or a mentor for at least a short while. Before it was determined that he was too powerful, too dangerous, to leave unattended. Before the decision was made that he would need to be sealed away. Of course, that didn't mean Q was in agreement. He fought back, killing many before Dazai was finally able to stop him, leading to his imprisonment.


Seven years have passed since then. Even now, Dazai describes him as being a "walking catastrophe"-- his curse of an ability making him a threat to both friend and foe alike as he destroys every living thing in his wake. Chuuya recounts the horror, as well, of all the body bags he'd seen people returned in after the incident.

That this child's only released in such desperate times when the Guild poses a threat to Yokohama, and that Dazai is immediately offered protection as a result, speaks even more for just how much power Q must have.


When we first meet him, he seems sweet and harmless. He bumps into Naomi and Haruno, but when they apologize, he seems almost surprised to hear "sorry"-- repeating it back in confusion. It's as if nobody's ever shown him such consideration, and he quickly returns it by saying he's sorry as well and asking if either of them have been hurt. It can be assumed that, had their meeting been under different circumstances, this kind of interaction could earn others a free pass as he's aware they don't intend to harm him. He knows full well that certain actions should be appreciated, and he does know when it's customary to return them.

But we see another side to him fairly soon, as it turns out what he's been doing is using the first moments of his freedom to act on a personal grudge.

When the three meet up with Atsushi, Q walks right into him with the intention of getting hurt, activating his ability. He doesn't mask his cruelty, a smile never leaving his face as he claps in amusement and cheerfully encourages the fight his hallucinations have caused. It's clear that he takes great pleasure in the mental anguish he can bestow upon others.

Though the girls may not have been a target, he knew they weren't bystanders either, using them to find his way to Dazai, and hurt those closest to him. Understandably, he's never forgiven him for his betrayal, and quite happily tells him just how much he'd like to make him suffer for it.


A week after his release, he's seen walking the streets of Yokohama, commenting on how he loves being outside, and how everyone looks so happy. There've been no reports of his ability being triggered since the previous incident, so it's clear that with "revenge" out of mind, he does prefer to go about a more "normal" life.

Though he shows his age in how he wants to find someone to play with, he also shows an understanding in following rules, reminding himself that he's not allowed to play until his job is complete. Still, it appears he'll let the two mix quite easily, as when he recognizes Lovecraft as one of his targets, Q's first move upon approaching him is to tug at his sleeve and ask to "have fun".

Once again he's paired against an "enemy" that holds no ill intentions, so when he's shown an honest attempt to try to entertain him as requested, he does wait his turn before excitedly setting up his own ability and asking to see "madness" instead.

He's far outmatched, this time, showing us there are things that can terrify him. As Lovecraft obeys him once again, Q is left frozen, screaming in horror, and is easily captured.

Trapped once more, tormented both by pain and his captor, more extreme sides of Q's personality begin to show through. The physical pain, he can tolerate-- while intense and constant, all it does is draw forth whimpers and complaints of how it hurts. It's only when he's told of how the Guild plans to use him, how they intend to make his curse destroy Yokohama, that he breaks down and begins to cry. He insists that he never asked for his ability, and asks why terrible things have to keep happening because of him.

A contrast to how easily he can use it himself, we see what's really beneath everything. He never wanted to hurt so many people (We can look back at his interactions with Atsushi to see this as well: his targets suffer mentally-- those who truly get hurt or killed are more like collateral.), and he's horribly upset by the idea of using it to hurt even more. Of course he's also in a great deal of physical pain, but his words do make the emotional stress clear.

He's still just a child, after all. He only ever wanted a chance at a normal, happy life.


Extra things I have no idea where to fit:

Q's profile sheet tells us he dislikes hospitals, and the 15th novel gives him a cameo during a story about experiments that were done to create artificial abilities. While neither of these explicitly state a connection, there is a possible implication in his line "I never asked for this ability" that he may have been involved in this project as well. It may have been forced on him, and would thoroughly explain how he could already have been so broken and capable of killing others at only six.

On a lighter note, there's also a running joke in side stories that some of the Port Mafia can't tell whether he's a boy or a girl. This shows his actions and interests don't generally come off as masculine-- defaulting more to things aimed at "women and children" due to his age.



Flavor Abilities:

High pain tolerance.
Q needs to be hurt in order to activate his ability, so he's incredibly used to cuts and scrapes of all sorts. That doesn't mean he won't be hurt-- it just means he won't cry from physical pain as easily as he will from emotional pain like fear or sadness. He'll probably be able to touch the scrap piles without recoiling in shock, as well, but would still come out with just as much blood loss as anyone else.

Dogra Magra.
I'd like to keep just the visual effects of his actual Ability, with permission from other players? Because it's creepy. And this game's all about creepy.
When Q is hurt by others-- even if he's initiated it himself, such as bumping into them with razors or barbed wire against his skin-- a purple mark appears somewhere on their body, in the shape of a handprint. When he's taken on too much pain or stress, the doll he carries around will start to laugh, signaling the ability is ready to use. In order to activate it, all it takes is breaking or damaging the doll in some way.
If powers weren't nerfed, this would immediately cause all those with the mark to be tormented by hallucinations and thrown into a violent rage, attacking everyone nearby. When the ability's stopped, the marks disappear, so the same person won't be a target the next time around unless they harm him again.
Because powers are nerfed, I'd like breaking or damaging the doll to only stop the laughter. The mark can disappear on its own after a set time of the other player's choice, to keep things as simple as possible.



Suitability:
None, and yet he'll be perfectly used to this.
Q has been forced into isolation in the past, locked away because his ability was too dangerous for anyone to have. He can survive on his own, but he won't want to. He'll want to be around others, to keep from becoming bored. To keep from being driven to even more madness.

He also relies heavily on his ability, despite hating it. Without this advantage over others-- or rather, with the knowledge that this advantage is gone-- he's helpless, and fully aware of it. He is still a child, after all, and, despite the events that have hardened him, will fear things like anomalies or even just stronger, violent people.

As he has so few canon appearances, the game will also give a lot of room for Q's personality to grow. At his core, he'll continue to be the child we already know he is-- sweet, playful, and extremely unstable-- but some entirely new situations will be possible to explore, as well.

One major thing is we never see Q form an emotional bond with another person over the course of the series. His interactions with Naomi and Haruno, along with his dedication to Mori's orders, do suggest he can, unlike Dazai's claim, judge others to distinguish between friend and foe fairly easily. We're just never shown what the result looks like.



RP Samples: TDM toplevel

[snowblindmods]

Applications are CLOSED. Applications will open for reserved applicants only at 12:01AM EST on May 1.

[snowblindmods]

Applications are OPEN for everyone.

Saleh | Tales of Rebirth

[saleh]

Player Information

Name: Yunnu
Age: 28
Contact Info: Yunnu#8255 at discord, PM.
Other Characters: N/A

Character Information

Name: Saleh
Canon: Tales of Rebirth
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Canon Point: After getting stabbed by his partner, before death claims him
Background Link: Canon Setting, Character Background (main canon). Information about AU canons here.

It's important to note that the world of Rebirth differs from our own in many ways. It is one made up of one huge kingdom, Callegea, where people with animal-like features, called Gajuma, and humans, known as Huma, live in relative peace. While technology as we know it is non-existent, the existence of magic makes up for it. Said magic is known as Force, and it manifests itself in the form of a specific element. It is said that the element of the Force is based on the user's heart and is also the representation of the user's psyche.

Emotions play an important part in the whole setting of Rebirth's world. Powerful emotions equals a powerful Force, but sudden outbursts can make Force go out of control as well. Negative emotions are extremely destructive in a broader sense that they are more easily contagious, creating a cycle of negativity. Too much negativity can make the manifestation of negative emotions, Yuris, materialize and endanger the whole world. It's heavily hinted that Yuris' powers can influence or control an individual's actions. While this was never outright confirmed in the main canon, Saleh is called a "distortion" and "negativity itself" by one of the Rebirth characters in an AU game that came out a few years after Rebirth, heavily implying that Yuris' negative powers influenced him.

Inventory: Just the clothes he's wearing, as pictured here.

Personality:

"I want to have as much fun as possible in life."

This sentence describes him best. However, his idea of fun is wicked and twisted, for he is a cruel and sadistic young man who enjoys mocking other people, and is highly amused by their misfortunes and suffering. Watching people in agony, be it emotional or physical, is what he enjoys the most, and he doesn't make the slightest effort to hide it. In fact, it's just the other way around, he often adds fuel to the fire, in hopes to witness an even better show.

While it's said he has always been like this since a young age, there is little in-game information on the reasons for this. In an interview, the game developers explained that they made Rebirth's main theme to illustrate the idea that people are "reborn" every day, in a positive sense that even when they fail, they can keep trying their best in the days to come. In contrast to that, they wanted to make some of the villain characters evil beyond redemption, giving them no tragic backstory to justify for their actions. Saleh is one of the three. It's also heavily hinted in an official magazine that he belonged to a group of assassins as a child and fought the parents of two of the main party members, who were members of the Royal Shield at that time. His eyes were said to hold a cold gaze since that time, suggesting that his negative view on life is closely linked to this hostile environment he grew up in.

As far as contact with others goes, if one is reasonably civil with him, he'll most likely be civil - in his own sardonic way - in return. Despite the gentlemanly air he might have about him, his words and mannerisms are almost always noticeably drenched in sarcasm. In truth, he looks down on everyone, and even mocks and berates his superiors in a polite and indirect manner. If a chance to get the twisted fun he seeks arises, he will not mince his words, regardless of whom he's talking to. However, having a knack for reading other people's emotions and situations, he knows how to keep quiet and behave if necessary. Partly because of this, he doesn't target people mindlessly just for the sake of spreading chaos. He usually opts for more discrete or indirect (but not necessarily less cruel) options when he's aware his actions might earn him some kind of punishment or leave him at disadvantage. The sense of satisfaction when he sees displays of negative emotions like despair and anger is what he seeks, and because of that he can settle for taking a more passive stance as long as there are people in distress to keep him entertained. He uses words and threats more often than he resorts to physical violence, but he's not above the latter either.

Although he doesn't actively try to hide it, he's an extremely uncaring and detached person, and his presence alone is said to be able to make some people feel uneasy. It's as if he oozed some sort of aura that gives away the fact that he's never up to anything good. While he seems to understand the concept of kindness, such as when he mockingly notes it would've been kinder of him to finish off a weakened Mao instead of prolonging the boy's suffering, he harbors nothing but distrust and contempt for other people. He openly scoffs at the Queen he's supposed to protect when she's left to deal with the consequences of her naivete and tells her she has no one else to blame but herself for placing her trust in someone else.

He usually acts like nothing in the world bothers him and laughs everything off. Despite his general aloofness, there a few things that set him off, although he often tries to mask his anger with sarcasm and disdain. But if the right buttons are pressed, his hidden temper will surface. It's not unusual for him to uncharacteristically raise his voice or get violent if one ignores his orders. Towards his superiors or in situations where he doesn't have the upper hand, he takes a more passive-aggressive attitude, denying or downplaying facts while sugar-coating his words in heavy sarcasm. Cornering him psychologically, by outsmarting him, or seeing through his schemes and pointing out their flaws is another way to trigger that kind of response. It chips at his pride and triggers a defensive reaction, which often translates to a distinctively curt or outright violent attitude, depending on the situation he finds himself in.

But the easiest way to set him off is through the "power of the heart". Cheesy, humane ideals like love, hope, friendship and justice? Those are utter nonsense to him. He vehemently refuses to acknowledge those, no matter what. His ideals are the polar opposite: hatred, despair and destruction are some of his favorite words. The mere mention of the subject is enough to trigger the bitter memories of his defeat at the hands of the protagonists, and that's the surest way to get on his bad (or worst) side.

Being an extremely stubborn and prideful man, he isn't the kind of person that takes a loss very lightly. That doesn't mean, however, that he doesn't learn from his mistakes. Although begrudgingly, he can accept a loss, even though it hurts his pride a lot. Which is what happens when he is defeated by the protagonist, Veigue, for the first time. Saleh's pride renders him unwilling to take the power of the heart seriously, and thanks to that he suffers his first major defeat. He then accepts the power of the heart as something powerful, but never manages to bring himself to accept that he lost to something he deems worthless. Heavy damage to his pride leads to obsessive behavior and endless revenge attempts. A loss against the humane ideals he loathes so much deals an even harder blow to his pride to the point he would rather be killed off than be pitied by an enemy.

Not unlike his pride, his aspirations are also limited to his own twisted, personal interests. He doesn't think much of most things normal people aspire to, such as honor and good reputation, and doesn't care about what others think of him either. He claims to like people who give their utmost effort in achieving their goals, but that's only for the sake of getting a good laugh out of their wasted efforts and the look of despair on their faces when they fail. Which is curiously controversial, because despite his overall detachment to life, he is abnormally hard-working and goes to ridiculous lengths to get what he wants when his pride is at stake.

As one who served as the royal family's personal guard, he's an skilled soldier and is definitely not above hurting others to accomplish a mission or to get what he seeks. His methods can be downright cruel, going as far as using his authority or powers to force others to do as he demands if met with any resistance. Manipulation is another tool he has no qualms about using if that means bringing despair upon others, such as how he helped orchestrate Queen Agarte's (Claire in Agarte's body) execution from behind the shadows despite being one of the Queen's bodyguards. He knew all along that Agarte was the one inhibiting Claire's body after the ceremony and vice-versa, but he still supported the revolution which almost got Queen Agarte (actually Claire) killed. All of this to ignite war between the two races, which would be the most exciting moment in his whole life according to him, and also to make Veigue plunge into despair at the cost of his dear friend's life, crushing the power of the heart the other man believes so firmly in the process. After all, he just wants to have fun by watching others in distress and spreading despair. The more lingering the despair, the more he revels in it.

His nonchalant and spiteful nature might be influenced by the negative aspects of the society he grew up in. The two races of his world were rarely on truly good terms, and at one point of the story, although under influence of strong negative emotions, one wanted the extermination of the other. He doesn't believe that people can see eye to eye and get along, for there will always be disagreements, leading to conflicts and wars. This negative and twisted view of life applies to his own existence, and he goes as far as to say he loves the word "destruction" and warmly welcomes it. Considering how Rebirth deals with manifestation of emotions, it's possible he is either influenced by negative emotions or is one of the very sources of them. The manifestation of negative emotions, Yuris, probably influenced him and made him see the world in a negative light, and he acts upon the same negative emotions, creating an unending cycle of negativity. Since his superior, Zilva, was being manipulated by Yuris unaware of its power over her, then there's also a possibility Saleh was as well.

Assuming he did live part of his childhood as a member of a group of assassins, then this cold, give-and-take view of the world he firmly believes in is to be expected. He can also be considered the very antithesis of Veigue. Orphaned at a young age, Veigue was taken by a loving foster family, and grew up surrounded by people who valued him. Thanks to this, he grew to value life, like any other normal person. Saleh, on the other hand, places little value on life, and views the world through negative lenses. If he really met and fought Veigue's and Tytree's parents, and assuming they held beliefs similar to those of their children, it's no wonder Saleh plain snaps whenever Veigue rambles about the power of the heart and Tytree tells him to just "live on", ignoring his demands to be finished off. At some time in the past he probably heard those same words from the very people he fought against - and possibly killed - but the cold truth, the despair of their deaths still reigned over whatever humane ideals they held. But sadly, this is purely speculation based on the little information that hints at his past and just part of my headcanon.

Flavor Abilities: None aside from his skills with a rapier. He probably won't be happy to find himself without his weapon and unable to use his Force of Storm, but he'll get used to it... eventually.

Suitability: Considering that at some point of Rebirth's storyline his plan to trick the protagonists with false information involved disguising himself and waiting for them in the snowy city of Nolzen, this kind of extreme weather is hardly something he's unfamiliar with. But given the limited resources and the lack of Force to help keep himself warm, he's as defenseless to the biting cold as any normal human. However, he is a good at reading situations and has a sharp mind (when his pride doesn't render him blind), and also partly thanks to his detachment towards life, he can adapt to adverse situations with relative ease.

... Except that when it involves cooperating with people, he has a few limitations he's unwilling to change his ways for. He sees other people as mere toys, and trampling on their emotions is what he enjoys doing the most. It does not mean, however, that he isn't willing to cooperate to get something done, so long as he gets something useful or some (twisted) fun out of it.

His detached attitude towards life can be beneficial in a minimalist sense, but at the same time it pushes him to cooperate even with those who might even be plotting against him, if it means the chance to get the fun he seeks outweighs the risks. In a sense, it works as a double edged sword. It's exactly this attitude, coupled with his hurt pride, that led him to his death in the original canon. Because having fun is all that matters to him.

Most of the time he will be pestering people over the network, trying to get under their skin, occasionally pushing luck in exchange for greater amusement... and maybe getting himself killed once he learns how the concept of death works in Norfinbury.

RP Samples:

1. Network (April TDM: ONE: SOOTHING AMBIANCE)

[When the video feed starts, it shows a young man looking mildly interested. Not looking scared or uneasy as one would expect. Between his gloved fingers is a small SD card.

He's well aware his former "partners" from his world hated his guts and he wouldn't put it past some of them trying to control him with their Force to get him killed... but this? It's not like they are here to begin with. And ever since coming to Norfinbury, he became unable to use his powers, and as far as he could tell, the same applies to everyone else.

Perhaps the biggest irony is that the same kind of cruel trickery he often uses against others would be used against himself. But then again, the never ending sense of misery is what makes his stay in this place worthwhile.]

Hello, Norfinbury.

If any of you is responsible, or happens to know the one responsible for the so carefully hidden, brainwashing messages in this... [He flashes a small smirk.] Please do share the details. I'd really like to know how this was made.

[Imagine all the things he could do with the knowledge and right tools.]

2. Action (from another game's TDM, warning for slightly nsfw-ish themes)

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