Reality Shifted
Player Name: Alex
Player LJ: freege
Email and/or AIM: ttlynotPrinny - I've got my security settings set so that only people on my buddy list can IM me, fyi.
Timezone: AST
Other Characters: N/A, but I used to play Elincia Ridell Crimea here a looong time ago in a galaxy far, far away
Character: Anise Tatlin or, if you wanna include titles, Ionian Sergeant Anise Tatlin Oracle Knights Fon Master Guard
Series: Tales of the Abyss
Deviance: 1
Age: 14
Gender: Female
Species: Human
Canon Used: Game! Someday I will finally watch the anime. This day is not today.
Appearance:
Uno | Dos
Psychology:
Anise is just your ordinary, everyday, cute little girl. The nicest little girl you ever did meet, even if she does act pretty childish and likes telling weird stories. ...At least, that's what she wants you to think.
Anise is two-faced, putting up the front of an innocent and cheerful little girl. (Though she does sometimes genuinely act that way, I will note.) That's not to say it's always an effective front, however. She tends to try too hard to keep it up, resulting only in making herself look suspicious.
Her other side tends to come out when she's angry, upset, scared, or just when she thinks her cute act won't work. In those times she'll reveal that she can actually be foul-mouthed, vindictive, downright nasty, and actually hates being called a kid. Then again, there are some people with which she always acts this way, or at least a mellower version of it.
She's both sneaky and nosy. If she wants to find out something, silly little things like "privacy" won't deter her in the least. Eavesdropping and snooping could even be considered pastimes for her.
One thing she really seems to enjoy is telling tall tales. If she sees someone she thinks is gullible, she won't hesitate to tell outrageous lies to them, just for fun. Teasing others also seems to be a hobby of hers and she has a tendency for theatrics.
Anise is also really quite greedy and is determined to eventually marry someone rich. Are you male? Are you single? Are you rich? Anise will not stop trying to win you over and convince you to marry her. However, that's only one of the ways she's planning on getting rich. There are many things she's willing to do, all to earn some money (capturing a rare creature and tricking people into giving her donations for "tours" of Daath are just two of the things she mentions throughout the game). The real reason for her greed though, relates to the debts her parents constantly find themselves in. She's absolutely determined to pay it off and will allow no one and nothing to stop her.
In fact, most of Anise's fears go back to money. Her parents are so deeply in debt that it's doubtful they'll ever be able to pay it back just by working. She's terrified of not being able to get enough money to help them pay it back.
This ties back to fear for her parents. If Anise doesn't do as the man who had helped her parents with their debts says, she's afraid her parents could end up in danger. Her greatest fear is probably never being able to escape that man's hold. Because of this, she's very easily manipulated if it involves money and her parents.
To a lesser extent, she's also afraid of no longer having the Score. Shortly before her canon point, it was decided that the Score would no longer be read. Anise thinks that not having it anymore is scary, because, without it, no one knows what the future holds.
One other thing she's afraid of is of her friends finding out about her deception. She hates having to do it, but feels she has no choice. At one point, (though it's a little after her canon point and her situation was more desperate at the time, I think it still shows her feelings about it pretty well) she was so wracked with guilt about it she almost confessed to one of her friends, but couldn't bring herself to do it.
At heart, however, Anise really is a nice girl. She genuinely cares about her friends and family, even though she has a strange way of showing it, and really does want things to get better for the world.
Other Skills/Abilities:
Anise is both a fonist and a puppet master (the latter term according to the game's instruction book, it's never actually said in game). The first one means she's able to use Fonic Artes, her world's equivalent of magic.
The second relates to Tokunaga, her stuffed doll. While it was once an ordinary doll, it was modified to be able to change its size in response to Anise's fonon frequency (fonons being particles that, along with atoms, make up everything in her world). In battle, she makes it grow to a large size and rides on top of him. She's able to control Tokunaga's every action, making it so that she can actually fight physically. However, the strength all comes from the doll, not from her.
Other Weaknesses:
Anise can't fight by herself. Without Tokunaga and without others fighting alongside her, she has a hard time in battle, especially as she needs some time to cast her fonic artes. Since her specialty is said fonic artes, she's just not that strong physically (her fonic defense isn't anything to write home about either).
History:
Anise was born to Pamela and Oliver Tatlin in Daath in the planet Auldrant. Daath was the headquarters of the Order of Lorelei, so naturally, her parents were very devoted to religion. So devoted that they believed entirely too much in the goodness of people and were easily taken advantage of.
When Anise was a little girl, her father got scammed for a large amount of money and ended up deep in debt. The Grand Maestro of the Order of Lorelei, Mohs, helped them. However, he made it so that they'd both have to work for the cathedral without pay. Everything they earned would go to paying back their debt. When Anise was old enough, she too began working for the Order of Lorelei and for Mohs. She joined their military, the Oracle Knights.
Eventually, she was promoted to the post of Fon Master Guardian. This made her one of the protectors of the highest member of the Order of Lorelei, Fon Master Ion. Mohs saw an opportunity in this and ordered her to report all of Ion's actions to him. Though it wasn't long before she came to see Ion as a dear friend, she knew she was lying to him from the beginning and it made her feel incredibly guilty. (And maybe... just maybe... her feelings for him were deeper than that.)
There was just one little snag with being made Fon Master Guardian. Anise was promoted to this post to replace someone else, a girl named Arietta, and she most definitely didn’t agree with this new development. Arietta had been in love with Ion and grew to hate Anise for taking her place with him, saying that she’d "taken Ion away from her." This led to a rivalry forming between the two girls, as Anise resented “Gloomieta’s,” as she began to call the other girl, treatment of her. Even with Arietta joining the Order of Lorelei’s God Generals-- a group made up of six important members of the Order-- she never stopped resenting Anise’s new position and wishing it was her in it.
Two years after Anise became a Fon Master Guardian, Ion was working to avoid a war between the countries of Malkuth and Kimlasca. The two of them were sent, along with Colonel Jade Curtiss of Malkuth, by the Emperor Peony as emissaries of peace to Kimlasca. Along the way they met a young man and a young woman, Luke fon Fabre and Tear Grants. Turned out Tear was the sister of an important member of the Order, Van Grants, and Luke was the son of a duke of Kimlasca. (Naturally, Anise immediately became determined to marry him.)
They got Luke to agree to get them an audience with the king of Kimlasca and all was well. ...Until some of the God-Generals, Arietta among them, attacked the landship they were traveling on, using information about their location that she herself had passed on to Mohs.
Thankfully, that trouble didn't last for too long, though Anise was separated from the rest of them during the fight when she was knocked out of the landship. No problem though! She caught up to them in no time again when they were crossing over from Malkuth to Kimlasca.
Shortly after that, they had another run-in with the God Generals, Arietta among them again. She once again claimed that Anise had taken Ion away from her. Ion tried to explain why she’d been replaced, but was unable to actually say the reason. At the same time, Anise found out that Arietta had a new reason to hold a grudge against her and now her friends. Previously, before Anise had met Luke and Tear, they’d fought and killed a monster which Arietta had considered part of her family--she’d actually grown up with monsters. Thus, Arietta now wanted both to “take Ion back” and take revenge for the monster’s death.
They stopped her and continued on their journey, eventually meeting with the king of Kimlasca. It was decided that the five of them, along with Luke's servant Guy and the princess Natalia of Kimlasca, would travel to the city of Akzeriuth to help the people who were suffering from the effects of a poisonous gas called the miasma.
However, there things took a turn for the worse. Luke was tricked by Van into using an ability of his that ended up destroying the city... and killing the thousands of people who lived there. (There went her plans to marry him. She couldn't even stand to look at him anymore! And he kept saying it wasn't his fault!) They also found out that Luke was a replica, a clone, something even he hadn't known. The "real" Luke fon Fabre was actually one of the God Generals, Asch.
They separated from Luke for a while, but eventually met up with him again and found him to be genuinely sorry about what happened and wanting to make up for it. (Was there still hope for her plans?! ...Maybe not without at least giving him a hard time for it first.) The group continued to try to stop the war, something which Mohs insisted had to happen because it was foretold in the Score. Of course, things were a lot easier for him than they should have been in that front, what with Anise's constant supply of information.
At the same time, they had to deal with the possibility of other parts of the world suffering the same fate as Akzeriuth. What Luke had done had set events into motion and it seemed like the world's only hope was to lower it to its original location. They had found out that the crust of the planet they lived in had actually been sent up into the sky to escape the miasma. Safely lowering the Outer Lands, as they were called, while trying to neutralize the miasma, became their goal.
Luckily enough, things went just as the group planned, thanks to some help from Asch. Even with Van, Mohs, Arietta, and the rest of the God Generals trying to stop them-- more like "GIVE ME ION BACK" in Arietta’s case, but close enough!-- they still managed to get Kimlasca and Malkuth to sign a peace treaty and to lower the Outer Lands, at the same time isolating the miasma inside the planet's core.
War was averted, the Outer Lands were lowered, Mohs was arrested, Van was dead, four of the God Generals were supposedly dead, one was arrested, and Asch was safe... Ion had even decided that the Order of Lorelei would no longer read the score for anyone. (And Anise was, once again, determined to convince Luke to marry her. He had so much money...! ♥ Even with Mohs arrested and the possibility of having her freedom back, she still had debts to help pay!) Everything was well for a while.
Obviously, that won't last at aaaalll.
Canon Point: After the first time in the Absorption Gate
Reality Description: ohgod my head hurts just thinking about filling out this part
OKAY, here goes! The planet Anise lives in is called Auldrant and, along with having the weirdest calendar ever, it has two things about it that make it super special awesome.
Numero one: This was a secret for a good long while, but the land/the crust of Auldrant was pretty much just floating for quite some time. The land had all been raised with the help of structures called the Sephiroth Trees in order to escape the poisonous gas called the miasma that existed in the surface of Auldrant.
Only slightly before Anise's canon point, though, the land was all lowered back to its original location.
Number two and most important now! The planet is surrounded by rings made out of fonons. What are fonons? The simplest way to explain them is that they're like atoms only with sound. Fonons make up just about everything in Auldrant and are used for magic. There are different types of fonons, your usual six elements - Earth/Gnome, Wind/Sylph, Water/Undine, Fire/Efreet, and Light/Rem and Dark/Shadow. Along with these is also the seventh fonon, which is even more awesome than the others: Sound/Lorelei.
Before going on to the REALLY AWESOME parts of fonons, I'll note that they're also used for technology in the form of fontech. It's really just your average machines, only they're powered by FONONS.
People who can use fonons for magic are called fonists and those who can use the first six can really just use your basic elemental spells seen in just about every JRPG ever. Seventh Fonists are a little more special though. They can heal, yeah, but so can some of the other elements. The really important thing is that Seventh Fonists can read the Score. What does that mean? It means they can read the future!
But "what is the Score, you're not making any sense!" you may say. The Score is referred to as the planet's memory and is found in those rings we talked about earlier. Those who can read the Score can read the rocks that fall from those rings and find out the future of both the world and its people from them. A great amount of people are dependent on it, with some extreme cases even consulting it for what they should have for dinner. Certain people though, believe that the Score is only one of many possible futures.
This takes us to political things in Auldrant. Anise is from Daath, an independent city and the headquarters of the Order of Lorelei, the planet's main and only religion. The leader of the Order of Lorelei is the Fon Master Ion, who Anise is charged with protecting. Though he's the leader of the Order of Lorelei, he's one of those who believes that the Score is only one of many possible futures.
Too bad not everyone agrees with him. The Grand Maestro Mohs (also the person using Anine's parents' debts to manipulate her), second only to Ion in the Order of Lorelei, believes that the Score must be fulfilled NO MATTER WHAT and, let me tell you, he'll even encourage and/or start wars to get that to happen.
This wouldn't be quite so bad if it weren't for the fact that the Order of Lorelei is divided among people who support Ion and people who support Mohs. As you can imagine, this leads to a lot of conflict, though the Order is supposed to be neutral. Oh, and the Order has its own army too, the Oracle Knights which Anise is a part of.
Besides Daath, Auldrant has three other major countries. The kingdoms of Kimlasca and Malkuth, between which there are tensions, and the independent nation of Chesedonia. Chesedonia kind of just gets screwed over a lot by Kimlasca and Malkuth.
That is all. The end.