App for Singularity
Player Information ;
Your Nickname: Jae
OOC Journal: N/A
Under 18? Nope
Email/IM: anjelsword at gmail dot com
Characters Played at Singularity: Steve Rogers
Character Information ;
Name: Cy
Name of Canon: The Wild Road
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: N/A
Reference:
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wildroad/ Excerpt and information page from the publisher
http://www.sfsite.com/06a/cats58.htm Review of The Wild Road and it's sequel.
Canon Point: Just before the final confrontation with the alchemist/her 'death'.
Setting:
They live in a cat's world. That is to say, it's our world, but from their viewpoint. They treat humans with the same sort of care or dismissal that a human might give a stray cat, and don't hesitate to use people to get what they want. It's survival of the fittest, after all. Sealink put it best: "No one owns me, kitten. Nor ever will. But we share this world with human folks for good or ill, and we got to work around them. I heard some cats call humans it as if humans got no feelings. Wrong. Course, that's only my view."
One substantial difference between the world as we know it and as they do is the Wild Road. It's precisely what it sounds like; an old way, one to which only those tied to the earth, bird and beast, have access to. It's a path out of time, the place where the souls of animals go when they die, rushing endlessly along in a cold gray wind. When an animal runs the Wild Road it becomes what it was at the beginning of everything, runs across the landscape of the world as it was before road and canal changed its face. This power lasts for a few short moments after they leave the road; it's the reason for sightings of old, dead beasts the world over. Someone traveling the Wild Road can go hundreds of miles in a day, but travel through it also shortens the runner's life. A modern cat (or other creature) is not equipped to handle the power of the animal that it once was.
There are smaller, tamer paths, that don't change the shape of the runners. They go less of a distance, and fade over time if they aren't consistently used. They don't take as much of a toll; in fact, they can serve as small escapes, respites from the world.
The Golden Cat is a mythological being, said to be born from the King and Queen of Cats, that will heal the world. It's a creature of fantastic power, and the object of the quest Tag (the protagonist) is sent on.
The Alchemist is a human who is all too aware of the lives and actions of the animal world. He wants to control the Wild Road and the Golden Cat itself, harness the power, and become part of the Wild Road in truth. He has lived for hundreds of years, and has devised a way to travel the roads with the help of transformative powers and the mummified leg of a panther. However, his use of the roads is warping them. The souls of its animals are becoming lost, tangled, or corrupted, and travel on the Wild Road has become exhausting and potentially fatal, rather than rejuvenating and dangerous. The Alchemist experiments on animals, primarily cats. He has swarms of creatures at his disposal, sad and confused creatures that respond to his whims and mob whoever he sends them out against in mindless, lost flocks. Cy is one of the Alchemist's cats, one who has managed to retain something like a consciousness, though she's obviously insane and rather oblivious when it comes to the most obvious things.
The Majicou is Tag's "boss" in some sense. He is the one who has watched over Tag from afar since kittenhood, and charged Tag with the task of finding the King and Queen. He is the maintainer of the Wild Road, and draws power from it. He is capable of becoming his ancestral self while outside of the Road, and Tag is terrified of him. The Majicou rarely leaves the roads himself, sending messengers like the fox Loves a Dustbin or the magpie One for Sorrows instead. He has lived as long as the Alchemist, maybe longer, drawing strength from the Road. One could say it's his life support system; the longer he lives, the shorter a time he can spend outside it.
The King and Queen are Ragnar and Pertelot. Pertelot is ill when Tag finds them, and Ragnar, though he does his best for her, is something of an idiot. He is very strong however (being a Norwegian Forest Cat has its advantages), and has the ability to heal those he touches with his tongue. He's a good, solid creature, thick or not. Pertelot is a high-class gray Egyptian Mau, a frail, loving animal prone to visions of the past.
Personality:
Cy is crazy. Schizophrenia probably comes closest. She's cheerful and wild and spouts apparent nonsense almost all the time, though she often weaves fragmented bits of the past and future into her words. She has an attention span of about thirty seconds, unless she finds something particularly riveting, and regularly tries to eat the inedible. Everything from linoleum and bits of plastic or wax paper to metal and someone's old shoes. None of it is unreasonable to her; the world she lives in is her own, and everyone else is crazy. No one else understands what's happening the way she does, even if she can't articulate it, which leads to a great deal of frustration on her part and no small amount of scorn.
...Also, she's a cat. Scorn is sort of part and parcel of the whole thing.
Her understanding of reality, or at least her ability to interact with it, is limited at best. She has a kitten's approach to everything, and may forget something she was told just minutes before if it doesn't really apply to whatever she's doing in that moment. She also is emotionally sensitive beyond the norm, understanding moods far better than most, though she may (and often does) choose to ignore the troubled emotions of those around her. She's selfish, insensitive, and while she does genuinely care for her friends, it often comes in the shape of constant harassment and gifts of useless trinkets.
She's also flighty and seems to have both an intimate familiarity with and deep misunderstanding of death. She's not threatened by anything, only really fears the Alchemist, and regularly drops herself into potentially deadly situations because she's either curious or oblivious. Also everyone but the Alchemist is her friend. Or her enemy. It depends on the day and her mood. Those she likes tend to fall on the 'friend' side of things more often than not, though she's truly trusting with very few individuals and only then after they've given in to the fact that once she inflicts herself on them she will. Not. Go. Away. Grudging acceptance is, to her, enough to go on as far as real friendship is concerned. That said, her loyalties still tend to skip around with annoying frequency, sticking only with those who she finds have a psychically grounding effect, a bit like spiritual lightning-rods.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
General Skills/Abilities: She has a certain amount of power gleaned from her time with the Alchemist, though little ability to use it without his direct manipulation. As such, when she uses what little power she has, bad things tend to follow. She's able to vanish from one place and pop up in another with annoying frequency. She is able to read minds, to a certain degree, and can penetrate mental defenses fairly deeply, though when she does it's usually by accident. She has a strong ability to hypnotize, mostly through vocalizations and speech, and can also, in sporadic moments, see the future or the "truth" of a situation, at least part of it. She is rarely able to articulate clearly what she sees. In addition, she can create tiny bright birds and summon electric-blue butterflies, can create glowing white moths, summon strange lights, and may have a negative effect on machinery if she puts her mind to it. She can see ghosts and dances with them; when she does, they become visible to others. I don't know I didn't write it.
General Weaknesses: She's a cat, and limited to what a cat of her size and stature can do. She's also extremely vulnerable to psychic manipulation and can be used as eyes, ears, and puppet by those who have the power to do so. She's particularly sensitive to negative intentions and tends to go into fits when something of particularly dark energy is around. She also - for whatever reason - tends to attract darker spirits and powers.
As far as limitations are concerned, while she's a strong psychic, she's so distractible it's easy to say that she's either not reading someone's mind or not able to focus on what she sees. Her other abilities are more or less harmless, and hypnotizing would absolutely only happen with player permission.
Inventory:
A sparkplug embedded in her skull and a dead vole.
Appearance:
http://pics.livejournal.com/cyfor/pic/00001xh7
She's a long-haired gray tabby with four white socks and small paws. She's very small and sturdily built; stubby, too, so that from a distance she looks like a kitten. The way she moves doesn't help. She has a kitten's uncoordinated gait, and often turns summersaults or chases her tail for no reason. Her tabby markings look like flames rippling down her sides.
Tag describes her as being all eyes; tawny yellow, direct and strange and full of laughter. She has a pink nose and a white spot under her chin that makes her look slightly-off kilter, like she's always tilting her head or listening for silent sounds. She has a spark plug embedded in her forehead, the skin around it healed perfectly all the way up to its base. It is usually hidden (at least mostly hidden) by her fur. She is almost always filthy.
Age: Estimated around two years old.
Samples ;
Log Sample:
She watches the fish inside the tank, circling circling in the dark, and sways in time to the song they can't hear themselves following. Follow follow following. The Wild Roads of the Fishes, the Wild Roads of the Chips. She thinks again of the wrapper she squirreled away for Tag and thinks he probably won't know to miss it.
It's a short somersault from the top of the stairs to the floor, a painfully cheerful tangle of limbs and sharp edges, but then she's under the aquarium's front counter shredding the greasy wrapper with her teeth and growling to herself and not minding the fact that the world has gone cross-eyed again.
Cy stops to leave the remaining scraps sprinkled across the chair behind the counter, payment for her visit, before tumbling her way out into the evening air. She's not going anywhere, per se, except that she needs the motion, and besides - Tag will find her. He usually almost always definitely does.
Besides, she can hear something new in the city. Her legs fall over themselves into a run, and she takes turns down several of the wrong streets before she manages to spiral her way to the right one. There's lights, ribbons of sound sparkling and sparking and cooing starsongs from the other side of nowhere. It's a Road she's never seen before, a Road that feels like men. She hisses, sidling sideways toward it, and takes one angry swing.
One angry swing, and then wild yowling as her city, her Tag, gets ripped away from her.
Network Sample:
[There is a nose. A scarred, dirty, kitty nose. She draws back just enough to fix the camera with one angry eye before turning so her buttocks is aimed firmly at her viewers. And, for the record, all of this is said with a vaguely Manchester accent.]
Fee fie fo fumble, I smell the blood of a dying star. [She glares at the camera again, upside-down from between her legs.] Going back now. Going back now. Where's the road you made? Open up, saysme. Mad Alchemists and fishmongers. [The last bit is muttered angrily. She somersaults into a pile of oddsbobs she's been busily transporting from the junkyard to the first garden zone, the light glinting off something nested in the long gray fur of her forehead.]
Tag needs me, I'm it. Where's the mad road-walker?
Note: SINCE I'M NOT ENTIRELY SURE HOW THE WHOLE LANGUAGE THING WOULD WORK, WITH HER, I'm going to say - given mod permission - that she was given human speech capabilities via transporter malfunction.