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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 | |||
Rhys | Tales from the Borderlands | not reserved
Name: Avali
Age: 28
Contact Info:
Other Characters: N/A
Character Information
Name: Rhys
Canon: Tales from the Borderlands
Age: 29-30 (his co-protagonist partner in crime is 29, but there's no solid information on Rhys' age)
Gender: male
Canon Point: Episode 3: just after his agreement with the Handsome Jack AI
Background Link: Rhys specific
Episode 2 summary
Episode 3
Inventory:
-Dumpy (a sad, tiny, half broken robot pet given to him by Jack) his voice mod is broken at this point in canon, so he only screams.
-slacks, dress shirt, tie, jacket, skagskin shoes, all Hyperion made, all tailored to fit.
-1 d20 die
-1 now useless Hyperion ID drive
Personality:
Following in the lofty footsteps of a giant, megalomaniacal CEO in a world where corporations rule everything and everyone by default, Rhys is (naturally) kind of a dick. It's a byproduct of the universe itself-- maybe a little something to do with hero worship and heavy-handed propaganda-- but the bottom line is that living out the day-to-day in the belly of a corporation that burns both money and lives like nothing, there's no real cure for it: you move up, you step on who you need to step on to get there, or you find yourself either dead or someone else's doormat. Literally. Literally just a place for your boss to wipe his feet because it's funny to them.
And Hyperion, formerly run by CEO Jack (AKA 'Handsome Jack') until his gruesome, bloody death when he stepped down too hard on the Vault Hunters (treasure seekers, essentially: mercs and bandits capable of dealing with the nastiest monsters alive) of Pandora, is about as vicious as any corporation gets. Rhys cites it as a problem that started with Jack himself (despite the man's hero complex he murdered people for fun, tortured and maimed and still thought himself the good guy) but in canon Hyperion is a terrible, you-will-probably-die-if-you-work-here-but-you'll-be-rich-so-who-cares kind of place even while Jack himself was scaling towards the top from his own lowly position as a programmer. Four million dollars a year and four million deaths just to run a space station that's so massive it blocks the planetside view of Pandora's sun and moon on the regular.
But it pays well.
Really, really well. And success comes with power above and beyond just a desk and a fat paycheck: again, corporations run everything in the Borderlands universe. Being in the upper tiers of the heavy hitters is like a claim to royalty, and all it takes is shoving the right person down at the right time. Which Rhys, a low-level programmer doggedly fighting his way to the top via backstabbing and keeping a select few close (namely his best friends Vaughn and Yvette), desperately wants sooner rather than later.
By Hyperion standards he's a thoroughbred: expensive taste, a tendency to act like everyone around him is beneath him and the computer skills to match. At ten years old Rhys was printing his own business cards, and he calls it his life, his everything, basically. Even in brief discussions about how crushing and miserable it can be, he doesn't want his efforts to be for nothing. He doesn't want to fail, and he doesn't want to forget the picture-perfect imagery of what it'd be like to be on top. And while the idea of being the average worker in our universe is only so-so, even Hyperion's lowest standards are impressively high class. Rhys is literally drowning in privilege.
But for all the class and maturity he likes to think he carries, Rhys is prone to making really, really stupid decisions for petty reasons. When his corporate nemesis (Vasquez) gets promoted to be his direct boss and then promptly demotes Rhys to the lowest ranking job in the pile, Rhys doesn't take it well. Lashing out verbally (with stuttering threats because he's incapable of pulling off 'menacing' apparently) gets him a bloody nose and a trip to the floor, and his insistence on getting back at his rival leads the trio of bffs to steal from the company and Vasquez in order to screw him over. Later, when Vasquez uncovers the truth and tracks Rhys down to kill him and take his body back to Hyperion carrying a loaded prototype gun, Rhys hurls insults at Vasquez, then a shovel, and effectively makes everything worse. Long story short he's just emotionally driven and too vulnerable to cutting off the entirety of his nose to spite his face.
Surprisingly enough, though, when the rug's pulled from under his heels once Hyperion hears he and Vaughn have lost 10 million dollars of the company's money, he doesn't break or buckle. In part it's more the same expectation of success that plagues him on the regular, but Rhys dives in headfirst to recover the money, chasing it down further and further into dangerous territory and impossible odds rather than just lifting his hands and admitting defeat. He just expects to win, to find an outcome that'll work, and operates within those parameters like there are blinders strapped to his forehead.
But he does have a soft spot beneath all the demands and pettiness and played-up cockiness: he sincerely cares about Vaughn and Yvette, drops the facade of being a smug, corporate jackass in a heartbeat when the person he needs helping him turns resistant and shows a deep, emotional brand of earnest pleading, refuses time and time again to betray his friends and even calls them his 'family'. In a lot of ways so much of what defines him is an act, but underneath those burned-in survival instincts he's just a guy looking to find a foothold-- a safe haven for himself and the people that matter-- in a world that is unbelievably unforgiving. He pretends to be his hero, Jack, he pretends to have it all put together, he pretends because if you keep up an act long enough you can fool everyone-- even yourself.
Eventually in an effort to outmaneuver Vasquez (and Hyperion in its entirety) Rhys uses the digital input port embedded in the side of his head to install an alternate Hyperion ID. The chip that he uses, however, has a digital clone of the very dead Handsome Jack inside of it, and after a short period of blackouts, glitches, uncooperative cybernetics and disconnected commentary echoing in the back of his skull, the clone finally adjusts and starts talking to Rhys, visually and audibly present only to him via a digital projection from his left eye implant. Cool having your hero around to tell you how to respond, less cool when he's insane and expects you to become his personal errand jockey.
Way less cool when everyone else around you thinks you're absolutely crazy for talking to yourself, jumping at nothing, ignoring conversation and running away without so much as a cue for it - and for the most part, Rhys' reaction to Jack are neutral to negative for that fact alone.
Jack's not a hard character to pin down, and the AI reflection of him operates as a perfect reflection. He's selfish, egotistical, prone to acts of extreme violence out of anger (with a violent temper to match) or just because he thinks 'it'll be funny'. Treating himself like the protagonist of his own story, there's no cap on the overflowing bottle that is his self-image. He also has the sense of humor of a teenager: projecting his hand clipping through Vaughn's crotch to make a talking dick joke, laughing about phrases like 'booty salads', mimicking conversation and basically being a gigantic jerk.
And Rhys gets to live with him. Good times.
Flavor Abilities:
-Still has his cybernetic right arm, left eye and the port on the side of his head: his machinery is geared towards tech interfacing, not strength or armor, so they're all just functioning body parts at this point. The port won't have network access, and wouldn't be compatible with tech from this world.
-The Handsome Jack AI housed in the port inside his skull as a secondary personality. In canon he holds the ability to take over Rhys' body under specific circumstances (if Rhys is knocked unconscious or when granted permission from Rhys himself) and I'd love for that to stay a possibility, but if it's not okay, I'm happy to just leave him in Rhys' mind alone!
-His cybernetic eye has the ability to scan and compile information from the net in canon, but without network access it canonically reverts to 'Jack Vision' when Jack is active. All it means? Jack just gives commentary on people and stuff and Rhys can read about it.
Suitability:
By this point in canon he's still got the survival training wheels on, and is more reliant on other people's abilities/instincts than his own. Sure, he can probably make a crappy campfire or crack into shelter okay, but Rhys' MO is going to be finding people that'll pick up the slack for him. Probably most of it.
Possibly all of it.
But he's a social person outside of those specifics, even if odds are good he'll fuss at just about everyone that crosses his path, particularly if things aren't going well; Rhys has a habit of getting attached with ease (referring to his companions as a sort of family in canon) and it'll mean he's going to reach out for life and try to cling to it like a fumbling, arrogant, entitled lamprey.
RP Samples:
-general RP sample
-game setting specific sample
Net sample:
Yeah okay, still starving. Just an FYI for all you people out there that were like 'forage around and you'll find something': didn't find anything.
And unless I feel like spending the next week chewing on wood-- I don't, so don't get any ideas-- I'm gonna need a donation. Or ten. [He'd started this with every intention of chewing out whoever's on call for his own hunger, but with the silence of his own surroundings starting to sink in in the aftermath of his own message, Rhys flicks mismatched eyes around the frigid, half-lit room he's currently huddling in. Thins his lips and comes back with a voice that's slightly less assertive. Slightly less pissy, too.] Look, just-- get me something, okay. I'm getting really tired of this fight for your life everything.
ACCEPTED
A standard two-story house with a basement. The first floor has a kitchen, living room, and dining room, while the second floor has two bedrooms and a bathroom. The house is decorated in religious paraphernalia, from the "BLESS THIS HOUSE" plaque in the entryway to the crucifix hung up in the master bedroom. The other bedroom seems to have housed a very young child, with the bed suited for someone just out of toddlerhood and painted in soft pink.
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