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snowblindmods) wrote2015-04-06 10:43 pm
snowblindmods) wrote2015-04-06 10:43 pm
Application
| 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. Original Character Application | |||
Jared Rhys | Original | Reserved
Name: Mis
Age: 37
Contact Info: discord: mis#3940 , Plurk: brimstonemuse
Other Characters: None
Character Information
Name: Jared Rhys
Canon: Original
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Inventory:
Military surplus overcoat (winter), t-shirt, work boots, jeans
Leather, bead and cord cuff bracelets, crystal and silver charm necklace - stripped of magic
Steel cigarette lighter and case of hand-rolled herbal cigs
Small magic kit: Tin of chalk and charcoal, pine tar water, coil of silk cord and hemp twine, a couple small iron nails, small tea candle.
2 Condoms, packet of lube
obsidian worry beads
steel hip flask filled with cherry brandy
Small multi-tool
Wallet with $14 and some pictures
World Description:
Rhys comes from what is essentially the normal, modern world, except that the supernatural exists as a secret underground. Some creatures and practitioners hide in plain sight, like the gifted fortune teller or flashy “Catgirl stripper”, while others are so secretive their existence is unknown except for myth. Often, witches, magicians, and supernatural creatures band together for protection, but just as often they’re bitter rivals for territory and prey, or simply loners to avoid being noticed.
Anyone with the right discipline and knowledge can learn at least some magic, and some organizations throughout history, such as the Catholic Church, have taken it into their hands to keep track of certain things such as demonology and vampires, but real power takes having the right blood, being born under the right sign, or striking the right deal. In general, however, true magic is extremely dangerous...
And in between are all the things that people whisper about but never quite prove: the faith healers, the haunted houses, the weird lights in the woods and that stranger across the bar whose eyes are a little too bright and teeth a little too sharp to be safe...
Background:
Every family has their dirty secrets and for a middle class couple in California, that was Rhys. Born as Jared Riley, Rhys was the result of his mother Susan's one-night affair with a mysterious, magnetic-eyed stranger.
It wasn’t the sort of thing she ever thought she’d do. She was a good, upstanding woman. But she had been angry at her husband that day, and the man who approached her at the bar said all the right things...funny, that later she couldn’t remember what, or even what he looked like. But it happened, and for years to come, she would look at her son and remember eerily magnetic eyes that had no place in a human face.
Susan’s husband, Gerald, a strict and controlling man, was outraged at the affair and the idea that the child Susan gave birth to wasn’t his own, but there was no doubt when they looked into the baby’s eyes: There was something *wrong* with the boy, nothing that would have come from two normal parents. Susan’s confession came amid terror and tears. However, under the circumstances, keeping Jared as their own child was the best way to avoid a scandal...as well as hold the indiscretion over his wife for the next seventeen years.
A boy with a strangely quiet, thoughtful nature, Rhys was regularly seeing spirits and having visions by the time he was seven. His father was a dominating, occasionally frightening presence, his mother timid and wary of her odd son, and no one really knew what to make of it when young Rhys talked about “the lady in the tree who sang to him and brushed his hair”. He learned quickly to keep his special world quiet, for fear of punishment or mockery. The only one in his family he could trust with his tales was his mother's older brother, Joseph, an eccentric loner with a history of dabbling in “strange things” in his extensive travels.
When Rhys’s baby sister Kendra came along, his parents were relieved to have a child that truly was theirs to dote on. Their little girl became the focus of all their attention, and their strange bastard son could be quietly shuffled aside. Rhys faded into the background and the care of his uncle Joseph. Rhys's uncle trained him to cope with his abilities through discipline and education, teaching him languages and folklore, craftsmanship and history, and Rhys grew into a highly intelligent, thoughtful, if unconventional young man who studied medieval alchemy, cryptozoology, and Latin right along with his high school algebra.
He was nine when he drew his first ward, in Crayola markers to keep the ghost in the attic from coming down to his room to stare at him at night.
Rhys's uncle died when he was fifteen and that was the beginning of the end of his family life. His father's resentment and disapproval grew worse as it became clear that Rhys did not belong. Not only was young Jared obsessed with the occult, but he had dreams of being an artist rather than a “real” career, and his love interests, rather than being proper, were wildly varied and included both male and female crushes. His first kiss was with another boy, at fifteen.
To an extremely conservative, image-obsessed family, this was simply not acceptable. Though his mother tried to be a model parent, he was a constant reminder of her infidelity, and Gerald Riley questioned if Rhys was even human. Rhys adored his younger sister, but Kendra was only 11 and he didn’t want her caught up in the war...which finally came to a breaking point.
Just after Rhys’s 17th birthday, his father made it clear the “charity” was at an end. Rhys left home on a rainy night with only what he could pack into the back of his battered Ford van. His mother stood by without a word, quietly relieved.
With only a summer job’s worth of cash to his name, Rhys headed for San Francisco and put his art skills to work apprenticing at a tattoo shop. He threw himself wholeheartedly into the weird, embracing the supernatural side of his existence, and started to call himself “Rhys” as part of his new life. He was a smart, adaptable young man, and from the first time someone shoved a guy with a bleeding scalp wound at him, he found he had a gift for dealing with crises. He began to build an identity for himself as a street witch and healer, working out of the back rooms of bars and tattoo parlors and pretty much anywhere he could find a few diollars’ worth of work and a safe place to sleep.
The streets were also a hard lesson for the young man, though, While his natural empathic abilities and magic helped him avoid critical danger, the emotional undertow was still there. He became increasingly involved in drugs, reckless sex, drinking, and eventually, exploring his mysterious non-human heritage. Away from his strict upbringing, Rhys was free to explore his powers in ways he was never able to before, and the nature of his non-human blood became clear.
Rhys's Other side was an incubus, a creature that controlled and stole human energy. Rhys started embracing his predatory nature, using his vices to numb his depression.
Things collapsed quickly. With both of them addicted to the high that Rhys’s powers created while feeding, Rhys nearly put his boyfriend into a coma, and while walking one night,was hit by a car and nearly killed. Laying in the hospital on the verge of death, Rhys hallucinated a black moth at the window, telling him that it was his Fate to die that night. Realizing something greater was at work than just bad luck, he begged for another chance...at whatever price.
Rhys did survive the night, and got out of San Francisco as soon as he was able. He also got a black moth tattooed on his ribs as a reminder: Whatever visited him that night had been a Power, and he was now permanently tied to a darker side of Fate..
For several years, Rhys wandered. All his energy went into surviving from day to day, working odd jobs, including selling his magic out of the back of his van. Turning away from drugs and his incubus cravings, he focused on his renewed pagan faith instead, and spent a great deal of time on the road and in the wilderness, He found other mages and learned from them, he helped people on the street and on the road and in the backs of shitty bars in the middle of nowhere. He lived in gutted industrial buildings and state parks, in cheap motels and the back of his van in parking lots. He got more tattoos to reflect his expanding life experience, each of them inscribed with blood and magic to protect him from the dangerous world.
And he fought. With his powers getting stronger and his empathy now a constant part of his existence, Rhys saw the supernatural all around him, and it wouldn’t let him be an innocent bystander. Perhaps as penance for his dark addictions, or perhaps because, as his Uncle Joe had told him, “You use the power, or it uses you”, Rhys tangled with some of the most dangerous and disturbing of his strange world. Being able to see the dead, he found himself a natural adversary of ghosts and demons, while also a strange ally of other supernaturals like him who just wanted to live in safety. His life became a strange whirl of allies and adversaries in the supernatural world, all while he passed himself off as a harmless travelling “Medicine Man”.
When he was finally ready to give life another try, Rhys settled in Portland. Now older and more stable, he made friends and took up bar work, with his quick hands and an easy smile. He could mix a drink, break a curse placed by a jealous girlfriend, or create a natural tonic for heartburn, and the ugly part of his life finally started to fade away. Another artist named Soledad Ferrara, who he nicknamed “Sunny”, took him under her wing, and between his home at the bar and his time spent with her, Rhys felt like he was finally becoming someone worthwhile. As one of the more powerful witches and exorcists in the city, he was gaining respect, and putting his power to good causes. He liked what he was doing, and he felt important.
But his life was upended yet again one terrible morning: Rhys came home from a long weekend to find police tape on their door. While he was gone, his gentle, brilliant Sunny had been shot to death in the kitchen of their apartment by her mentally unbalanced ex-boyfriend.
Furious and devastated, he took matters into his own hands. Due to a mistake in the handling of case, the police weren't able to charge Travis Spates, but Rhys had his own plans for justice. In order to defend against black magic, you have to understand it, and Rhys was no stranger to the black arts in his years of experience. Using a bit of Spates’ hair, Rhys worked a black magic ritual, lit a candle with full intent to kill, and Travis Spates stepped in front of a city bus.
With his heart broken, and the blackest mark possible now on his soul, Rhys slid down into total nihilism. His other friends tried to steady him, but the secret of Spates’ murder and his own grief was an isolating force. He relapsed into both drug abuse and his incubus cravings to dull the pain of guilt and loss, and turned to using his abilities for petty crime to pay for his vices or to lash out. The rampage lasted for months and ended when, in a fit of rage, Rhys set fire to a rival's car and house over a soured deal involving stolen rubies. He was caught and went to jail.
While locked up, Rhys realized that Sunny wouldn't have wanted him to destroy himself. Over the year and a half of time served, he stayed out of trouble, got clean again, and got his GED. When he got out, he also got two new tattoos: the Temperance card of the tarot on his leg, representing healing and balance to remind him of Sunny’s spirit, and a scorpion to remind him of his own destructive capabilities.
Rhys left town once again, going back on the road to start anew. He found himself in Boston, as far from Portland as he could possibly run. He tried to start up his old businesses, but his heart hasn’t quite been in it so he’s been doing menial labor, and the occasional small charms and sideshow tricks. This is where he would have been when he was taken: a drifter trying to rebuild his life after tragedy.
Canon Point: Rhys is joining the game six months after being released from jail and about three years after the death of his friend Sunny. He’s thirty-two years old.
2/2
Personality:
Rhys is, at heart, a kind and generous person. He's been through a great deal of hardship and has an innate understanding of what it's like to be alone and hurting, and he tries to do his best to ease that pain in others when he sees it. Due to his own distant upbringing, he thrives on affection, and when he gives his loyalty to someone, he gives it wholeheartedly, though not foolishly.
However, a lifetime of loss and hard living has also taken some of the shine off him. Because he loves so easily, the losses he’s suffered have hit him deeply, and it’s left marks. As much as he tries to be a good, happy person, dark moods follow him and he’s holding onto more anger and apathy than he would like to admit. Rhys is quick to help others, but sometimes has a hard time believing he deserves anything good himself- he feels that he was born tainted, and always holds back a little bit of himself because of it.
Rhys has difficulty with the fact he isn't human, and has coped with it by treating that part of himself as a completely different entity, which he refers to as his Shadow of his Predator. Suppressing this side of himself hasn't always been successful, particularly because it has a very high survival instinct. The more he uses his incubus abilities, the more physical edge he gets, but the more “high” on the power he gets and the more the predator mindset takes over.
Incubi are, essentially, sociopathic life-force-draining addicts once they start feeding. Rhys is simply on the wagon, but he is always aware of this destructive craving inside him. In the past, he’s soothed it with drugs, alcohol, and sex, but it’s there and he knows it. At his worst, he just trades one vice for another, and at his worst, all these weaknesses feed each other. He has, at times, managed to maintain himself as a functioning addict, but only because he is good at lying...and because his supernatural metabolism helps protect him from unpleasant side effects like overdoses and severe withdrawal.
Rhys gets most of his sense of self worth as a healer and caretaker: It’s the one thing in his life that he’s always been consistently rewarded for. Likewise, a great deal of his pride is tied up with his magic and general competence. Rhys has taken his incubus's natural predatory abilities to sense, manipulate, and steal life energy and turned it into healing skills, and that takes an incredible amount of focus and discipline. Magic is the one thing that has always been with him, his special talent and the one thing that’s brought him comfort at his worse moments, and he clings to that.
In the same vein, he is perversely proud of his destructive capabilities: skill is skill and perhaps his biggest regret isn't that he murdered Travis Spates, but that he murdered Travis Spates and *doesn't* feel bad about it. Oddly, this has less to do with his fear of his supernatural blood and more to do with very human grief and rage.
He may appear passive, but he simply chooses his fights carefully. When necessary, he’s a calculating and vicious fighter. Part of this is a wide protective streak, but part of it is also repressed frustration and anger. He couldn’t save Sunny, he couldn’t stay with his sister to protect her, so he holds onto his helplessness until an appropriate target *does* present itself.
Rhys does his best to forget this darkness, though, by living in the moment and taking his pleasure where he can. For most of his life, those moments of fleeting pleasure and comfort have been the best parts of his life, and he holds onto them. Rhys is openly and cheerfully bisexual, and has little shame about his hedonistic ways. He likes making his lovers happy, and it's a point of personal pride for him that he's good at it: it also ties into his caretaking nature. If having sex with someone will cheer them up, or help make them feel safe and loved when they need it most, Rhys is completely happy to do this without hesitation.
Nature worship is his chosen religion, and he is most at peace in the wilderness, where he can be alone and create without the stress and pressure of a thousand other minds around him. Not only is it the simplest set of beliefs for him, it’s the one that feels right, particularly when he can feel the flow of natural energy and magic as much as he can human emotions. His faith has been built over the course of years, taking practices from many different traditions and working them into one that makes excellent use of his powers and meshes with his desire for stability and harmony, and it’s in the middle of this that he feels most at home.
This leads to a tendency to run from his problems when his life gets difficult, though it's a fine line between “a new start” and simply fleeing a situation he doesn't want to face. This only lasts so long, however, because at heart he also craves contact and comfort, and loneliness always drives him back to try again.
More than anything, Rhys craves stability in his life. After years of uncertainty and loss, he just wants a safe home, comfortable things, and a purpose.
Flavor Abilities:
Most of Rhys’s Incubus abilities are magical or psychic in nature: part of his species’ natural camouflage is to blend in well with humans. He has very few advantages physically and these will be tuned down to human levels: namely, his supernatural health, pain tolerance, and resilience. His regeneration will be absent. He is in good shape and has excellent agility and reflexes (yoga champ), but no particular fighting skills aside from a few bar brawls.
Rhys’s ‘Incubus’ is his lizard brain, his most primal survival instincts. When that side of his personality takes over, his eyes will turn electric violet. He gains no benefits from this, just a kind of intensity his normal personality lacks.
Rhys has enchanted all his tattoos with blood magic. While they will no longer grant him extra protection, they are still bound to him and will repair themselves as his body does.
Years of study and discipline has also given Rhys excellent concentration and force of will. He is also a fairly skilled artist, and his ability to observe and record things he’s seen or read is very good. Experience with medical trauma care and street-level violence means he isn’t prone to panic in most mundane emergencies, and can often keep his focus even when Bad Things are happening.
Rhys is a natural empath. With that power gone, he will be forced to rely on normal senses but he's still very good at reading people from a lifetime of experience. Due to years working with the supernatural, he is very quick to recognize signs of the occult or hauntings, though he may come across as a bit “New-Age flakey” to someone who isn’t familiar with his world. .
Rhys is partially blind in one eye from a magical attack.
Rhys has integrated his magic and druidic religious practices together, and so will still perform rituals such as blessings, protective wards, or funeral rites when appropriate, even if there's no noticeable effect. It makes him look either very religious or very superstitious, but he is a strong believer in the psychological effect of such things as well as the focusing power of rituals.
Suitability:
First, Rhys has a tendency to run from his troubles, and that’s simply not a possibility in Norfinbury. I think forcing him to confront his difficulties in a survival situation will be a very interesting turn for him.
Second, I think that putting Rhys in a situation where his skills are not only wanted but critical will be very good for him. Rhys is entering the game from a difficult time in his life. He is just a few months out of prison and completely adrift. He’s lost the person in his life who had the most faith in him, and he’s having a hard time getting that back. Be believes in terrible necessities at times, but has lost his ability to trust his own judgment. I think having other people rely on him will bring that back, especially in a situation where those decisions have to be made quickly and without hesitation.
Rhys is a thoughtful, resourceful person who is used to improvising, especially under pressure. He's spent a great deal of time on the street and has learned to adapt quickly to his surroundings because of it. These are all traits that will be valuable in this setting, and Rhys is a healer at heart. Taking care of other people is always what’s made him feel whole and worthwhile, and I think giving him something to fight for will help him heal.
I also think that being without his magic will be healthy for Rhys in the long run, as he learns to cope with situations as a human, and not as an “outsider”. For much of his life, he’s blamed his feelings of alienation on his half-blood nature, and while it is a major factor, he’s undergone a lot of trauma that would affect *any* person deeply. His problems are very human, he’s just never allowed himself to cope with them that way. I think without his powers, he’ll also be less afraid to connect with people, as he no longer has to worry about corrupting or ruining them to satisfy his own hunger. As painful and frightening as it might be to be blind and powerless, I think it could also be very freeing for him.
RP Samples:
Network/Setting
http://snowblindmemes.dreamwidth.org/31851.html?thread=11799147#cmt11799147
2) Prose
When it gets cold enough, for long enough, pain sets in. It was something Rhys had never really realized until coming to Norfinbury, but here it was, a dull, bone-deep ache that settled in to stay and wouldn't let him get comfortable no matter what he did.
It was in his hands, too, down in the joints, and as much as he flexed and massaged them it didn't quite chase all the soreness away. Still, it's enough to get some feeling back, and it's something to do while he's thinking about his options.
Keep moving, or take the risk of staying and resting? The idea of slogging through the cold for yet another day makes his bones start to ache anew, and all he wants to do is curl up. Just a little while of not having to move, of not listening with every breath, is the most profound paradise he can think of right now.
But if he stays too long, the madness sets in. And that's terrifying, too, the idea of laying here with his own thoughts until they become frantic, maddening panic that drives him back out into the cold.
He had enough of that in jail, those long nights of listening to his cellmate snore, staring at the painted concrete walls and feeling like if he didn’t move, didn’t scream, didn’t run, he would die. Nearly two years of that, by the time it was done. And then stepping out of those walls had felt like falling, and, goddammit, he just couldn’t win, could he? But right now, his bones hurt and the couch is the most comfortable thing he’s felt in days.
He thinks for a long time, before he reaches for his tablet and turns it on.
The face on-screen is worn, but game, his long black hair pulled into a low maintenance braid and a crop of sparse black stubble covering his chin. Tired, but still in the fight, with his mouth set in a crooked-half-smile that’s not really a smile, but at least trying. "Hey. This is Jared Rhys. I wanted to let people know I'm going to be settling for a couple of days, so if anyone needs medical treatment or therapy care, it's a good time to catch up with me."
There. That's a good compromise, isn't it? Do some work, keep his mind busy to keep the crazy from setting in. Two days? Maybe three? Just long enough to quiet the pain a little, rest and get some strength back before he braves the bitter outside again. He looks at his tablet, then at the still, empty walls of the house.
“Or if you just want to come for some company, that would be cool, too,” he adds after a few moments of thought. “This place seems to be pretty quiet. I think the mattresses upstairs are sobbing quietly, but if you're polite and pretend not to notice, just leave them alone, I think it should be okay.”
ACCEPTED
A two-story A-frame house. The first floor has a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms. The second floor has a master bedroom, master bathroom, and balcony. It looks like all of the windows were smashed in with something like a bat, but they didn't smash all the way and instead left countless spiderweb-like cracks in the windows, making it difficult to see out of them.
Please reply to this comment with the journal you will be using for the game. After that, join
Thank you for your interest in our game!
Note: Rhys will not be permitted to keep the cigarettes or flask. He may keep either the multi-tool or the lighter, but not both. Please reply to this comment letting us know which he'll be keeping, and, if it's the multi-tool, what tools it includes!
Re: ACCEPTED