Vin's Second City Application/Info

Oct 17, 2010 22:18

[Contact Info]
E-mail: MightyNeonFraa@gmail.com
MSN: MightyNeonFraa@hotmail.com
AIM: YamiKuja

[IC Information]
Character Name: Vin
Series: Mistborn Trilogy
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Species: Mistborn Human

Appearance:
By all outward appearances, Vin is a regular-looking tiny girl. Standing at only about five feet tall, thin and pale from living on a world blanketed by ash clouds and her preference for the night and sticking to the shadows. Her hair is dark and kept above shoulder-length, just framing her face. She prefers dressing in simple, close-fitting clothing carefully chosen to offer little to nothing to grab and favors dark and muted colors. In Chicago, she’ll likely (attempt) to adopt modern day styles she sees girls around her age wearing to blend in as well as possible and will always be carrying a backpack, holding her metals as well as other items and equipment. She has a simple metal earring in one ear, a memento of her mother and she does like to wear the occasional piece of jewelry or touch of makeup and perfume but these are relatively rare. Notably, aside from her coins and gear she never wears metal as decoration, a practical choice from habit as an enemy Mistborn can exploit it and use it against her.
When out at night, Vin leaves her disguise behind, dressing in black, typically barefooted and donning her mistcloak, a long grey shroud made of strips of fabric designed to camouflage the wearer at night in the swirling mists of her homeworld. She typically goes barefoot despite the nighttime chill
At a closer look, somebody can clearly see the paranoid young thief and Mistborn in Vin. Her guard is always up and she’s constantly keeping a lookout at her surroundings, forever turning her head and casting her eyes about and moving with an almost unnatural grace and silence especially when in her element of the night and the mist.

Personality:
Vin is an odd girl of contradictions. Three different people seem at war within her at any given moment, the lonely street urchin, the powerful Mistborn hero and the noblewoman.

The first thing anybody might notice about her is her near-psychotic paranoia. Even if she has grown, she’s never quite lost the habits learned from her childhood on the streets. To her eyes, every shadow is a hiding place and at any moment that assassin might leap out, knife drawn to take her life or the lives of those she cares about. She trusts nobody the first time she meets them and stays aloof and distant as much as possible.

Deep down, after a life spent alone and afraid Vin has finally had a taste of companionship and love and is horribly afraid of losing it again, a fear that has come true in Chicago, at least in the beginning. Anybody who befriends her will find a fiercely loyal and protective friend who is willing to carve a path through any danger to come to their aid. A protectiveness that recently has extended to nearly everyone in her sight as well after seeing the lengths Kelsier and the others went to make life better for a million faceless skaa. She has no mercy in her heart for people who lord their power over the powerless and abuse them and will not hesitate to bring them down however she can.

She has a blunt and straightforward personality, speaking what she believes is the truth whenever asked and often times without having to be asked. She doesn’t mince words when telling somebody what they’re doing is insane or stupid but she’s also always there in the thick of it when push comes to shove. She has a deadpan sarcastic sense of humor and can be nearly obsessively studious when a topic catches her attention.

Though she’d never, ever, admit it Vin’s time as a noblewoman has also instilled a love of the “finer” things in life in her. She secretly misses her time at court, wearing pretty dresses and dancing amid the splendor of it all. She’ll often add jewelry or other pretty things she finds (never anything metal though) and occasionally wears scents, even if she only ever wore them around Elend on her world.

Vin may not know who she’ll finally grow to be just yet but one thing is for certain: she’s already become a formidable enemy, a powerful warrior and a devoted friend.

History:
Vin grew up an orphan on the streets with nobody but her older brother, Reen, the illegitimate child of a nobleman and a peasant woman. One day while still an infant her mother, in an apparent moment of insanity, brutally slaughtered her older sister and turned her wrath on Vin. When Reen saw this, he grabbed his new baby sister and fled their home, doing his best to raise her on the streets and teach her how to survive. Vin’s life on the streets was brutal and dangerous. Reen was a harsh “teacher” who would beat her, threaten to sell her to brothels and constantly reminded her everyday that she could not trust anybody and everyone, even himself would betray her one day.

A lesson he proved the day he abandoned her to the streets.

Left all alone, Vin scraped by as best she could joining one thieving crew after another and making her way with her “Luck”, a strange ability she discovered she had to press on a person’s emotions to make them more willing to act the way she wanted. Her Luck was, of course, her Allomancy beginning to emerge, drawn from the contaminated water she had to drink on the streets. So it went on for many years, young Vin doing her best to remain unnoticed, sleeping little and fitfully always fearing that any time one of the men on the crew could come to her and kill her... or worse. It was a terrible time but it was her life and there was no changing that as far as she was concerned.

All that changed when she met the Mistborn Kelsier.

He took her away from her life on the streets, told her that her Luck was the beginnings of her gift as an Allomancer and took her into his own “crew”, a collection of Mistings who had come together with one insane goal: to overthrow the Lord Ruler, the immortal tyrant who ruled their world with an iron fit. Vin’s role was simple, to adopt the persona of “Valette Renoux” a young noblewoman who would be sent in to spy and gather information useful to the rebellion.

So began Vin’s teaching. Kelsier teaching her the ways of Allomancy and being Mistborn while the others did their best to mold the young street urchin into a young noblewoman. As time went by, Vin grew into both her roles, becoming a powerful Mistborn and convincing noble. During this time she met Elend Venture, an idealistic young nobleman, and despite her job there and everything she knew of her past, soon found herself falling in love with him. She soon found herself conflicted between her desire to be with Elend and to help Kelsier, who had become more and more like a father to her as time went by.

Everything finally came to a head when Kelsier raided the Lord Ruler atium mines at the Pits of Hathsin, prompting the Lord Ruler himself to appear. In the ensuing battle, Kelsier was killed before her eyes. In the blink of an eye, Vin found herself alone again. It was there, in her darkest hour that she finally understood what Kelsier’s plan had been. By sacrificing himself, he had set himself up as a symbol to the skaa rebellion. Finally, the people had something to look to aside from the tyrant who controlled their lives.

Spurred by revenge and a desire to see her surrogate father’s dream become reality, Vin confronted the Lord Ruler herself. After a long, nearly hopeless battle she discovered the secret of his immortality and killed him.

With the old government gone, Vin resolved herself to using her power to see the new one, led by Elend grow and become greater than anything her home had known in a thousand years. Or she would have... if she hadn’t found herself in Chicago instead.

Supernatural Abilities:
Vin is a Mistborn, an heir to a powerful supernatural ability called Allomancy. On Vin’s world an Allomancer is a person with the unique ability to ingest and “burn” certain metals, consuming them to power certain abilities. Most Allomancers, called Mistings, can only burn a single metal and access only one power but as a Mistborn Vin is one of a very elite few who can burn all Allomantic metals.

When Vin has swallowed a metal she can burn and extinguish it at will and can control how fast it burns, with the metal burning faster the more power is drawn from it. She can also “flare” a metal, gaining a large boost to the power it grants her. Allomancy does carry its dangers, burning an impure or badly mixed metal can result in illness or even death for her. Vin knows the right mixture of metals and one of the first things she’ll do is seek out a place to acquire them. Another is the threat of toxicity, letting metals digest in her stomach and be absorbed into her body can be just as dangerous, as such Vin always makes sure to burn away any leftover resources after she’s done with them.

There are eight base Allomantic metals, coming in pairs and each pair grouped into External Physical, Internal Physical, External Mental and Internal Mental.
The first set is the Internal Physical metals: tin and pewter. Burning these metals enhances Vin’s physical abilities somehow.

As the Pulling metal, tin enhances the senses of the Allomancer burning it, granting all five of her senses superhuman levels. A major drawback of tin, however, is that it enhances all five senses at once and cannot be filtered. A clever opponent can stun Vin using a sharp sound a bright flash of light and even strong scents. It also has the side effect of enhancing the sensation of pain, making relatively simple wounds excruciating.

The Pushing metal is pewter. When burning pewter Vin’s physical abilities are increased tremendously. Pewter enhances her strength and speed tremendously and toughens her body, letting her shrug off blows and impacts that could break limbs or even kill her. The drawback to pewter is the risk in using it, namely that just because injuries don’t affect her as much while burning pewter it doesn’t mean the damage to her body isn’t there. When the pewter stops burning she’s back to normal with all the pain and consequences of what happened while it was burning.

The next set is steel and iron, the External Physical metals and are also the most straightforward. While burning either of these metals, Vin sees faintly glowing blue lines connecting her to nearby sources of metal and by Pulling or Pushing at these threads she can exert physical force on these metals. This force can only be projected in a direct line toward or away from her, so she can’t make metal fly around her like a telekinetic. Exactly what happens with these metals is generally determined by weight: if Vin weighs more than the object, it moves, if she weighs less than it (or the object is somehow anchored to something that does) she moves. She can burn pewter to offset this or she can anchor herself by Pulling/Pushing in the opposing direction which carries its own risk as too much force can potentially crush or rip her apart. Mistborn typically use these metals as transportation, Pushing and Pulling off metal objects around them to “fly” through the air without ever touching the ground. Steel is the
Pushing metal while iron is the Pulling metal.

The Internal Mental metals, bronze and copper are directly related to Allomancy and won’t see much use unless another Allomancer arrives in Chicago. Burning bronze lets her detect when somebody nearby is using Allomancy and by focusing on it, she can tell just what metal is being burned. Copper surrounds her and the area around her with a “coppercloud” that cancels out bronze, masking Allomancy in its area of influence.

The two External Mental metals are brass and zinc. These two metals influence the emotions of those around her. Zinc lets her Push on a person’s emotions, Rioting them and making them feel a desired emotion stronger than others. Brass Pulls on emotions, Soothing them and making them weaker than others.
Note that these metals don’t let her create emotions or totally remove them, only manipulate feelings that already exist nor do they let her control a person and somebody with a strong will can overcome her tampering, especially considering she’s rather unpracticed in the more subtle uses of these metals. For example, avoiding a fight by Rioting fear or apprehension in a person while Soothing away anger.

Aside from the base eight there are three other metals Vin knows of at the time she’s pulled from her world: gold and atium. Burning gold lets an Allomancer look into their past and see what they may have become had they made different choices. Vin has burned gold only once and found the experience more than a little disturbing. Another is aluminum which entirely depletes a Mistborn’s metal resources when she’s tricked or forced into burning it.

Atium is the most powerful of the metals, giving an Allomancer the ability to see and react a few seconds into the future. While burning atium, Vin can see “atium ghosts” surrounding people, broadcasting their next action and letting her react accordingly, dodging attacks and striking precisely where the person will dodge. However, atium exists only in her world so it can’t be found anywhere in Chicago and it burns extremely fast, giving her less than a minute of burning with each use and also degrades quickly when exposed to stomach acid. Vin will be extremely judicious in using her atium (in other words it will be a plot thing when/if she ever does use it).

In Chicago, Vin’s Allomancy will consume metal faster than on her home world with what should be simple uses burning through her stores faster than they should. A flare will deplete a large amount each time and high burning for extended periods (such as fights) will cause her to quickly run low.

Natural Abilities:
Apart from Allomancy, Vin is a capable thief and a strong fighter. Trying her best to be tiny and inconspicuous has made her masterful at stealth and silence, often moving in complete silence and able to fade into the shadows without the aid of her metals. She’s quite intelligent and intuitive, reading people and situations even finding and exploiting the secret to the Lord Ruler’s immortality on her world. Her thieving experience has also taught her the best way to do things and she often anticipates possible attacks long before they can potentially happen.
She’s extremely resourceful and quick-thinking both in and out of battle, using Allomancy and more mundane tricks to her fullest advantage.

Possessions:
She carries little except for her clothes and mistcloak. She always carries a coin pouch as well as several small metal objects, ingots, bars etc... for use with Ironpulling and Steelpushing. Typically she carries a pouch of low-value coins around, using them in battle as well as moving around in the air, most likely pennies, nickles and dimes in Chicago. She always has several vials of Allomantic metals on her, many of them carrying more than one, stored in an alcohol solution. At the time of arrival she’ll also have a single use of atium available to her. She also carries a pair of sharpened glass daggers with hilts wrapped in leather, the weapon of choice for Mistborn as they have no metal that can be used against her by enemy Allomancers.
At any given time Vin would be carrying about four vials. A "general" vial with a small dose of each eight base metals, a "travel" vial containing large doses of steel and iron with mid to small size doses of tin and pewter, a "battle" vial containing large doses of steel, iron and pewter with a smaller dose of tin, an "espionage" vial containing tin, brass and zinc and a "stealth" vial with tin, copper and bronze. She'll also have at least one vial containing a single large dose of pewter hidden away if not on her person for when she has to recover from injuries or operate for long periods of time.
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