application;
[nick / name]: Ian
[personal LJ name]: pridefall
[other characters currently played]: N/A
[e-mail]: meaculpable AT live DOT com
[AIM / messenger]: priestlyish
[series]: Magic: The Gathering
[character]: Jace Beleren, the Mind-Sculptor
[character history / background]: Here and and here.
[character abilities]: In short, Jace is a Neo-Planeswalker capable of:
- Powerful Telepathy centered around the manipulation of memories.
- The casting of "Blue Magic," which allows him to create illusions, counter or redirect spells, and the like.
- Transporting himself from one universe -- or plane of existence -- to another, referred to here as: "Planeswalking."
- General supernatural or occult sensitivity, which is afforded to him through his "Planeswalker's Spark."
To cast his spells, Jace must either be near a body of water -- preferably a larger one -- or must already have some amount of blue mana stored within or on his person. He cannot naturally cast spells without some kind of liquid being present, and, though he can store a set amount of mana inside of himself, Jace is perfectly capable of running himself dry through overexertion.
Since Jace is potentially a very accidentally God-modey type of character through his telepathy, I've set up a permissions post asking others how they would like to handle his power in person, if it all. In the City, he'll be limited to only broadcasting telepathic messages to people he knows and has met in person, and will not be able to read the minds of other people unless they're near him.
[character personality]: Jace is one of a select few that embodies all of the traits of his "color" without going to the extremes. He is calculating and manipulative, reserved and logical, curious, rational, straightforward, and possessed of a strength of will tempered by a life spent making bad decisions and learning harshly from them. He is a deeply, deeply, deeply curious person who wants nothing more in life than to gain as much knowledge as possible, for good or ill. He doesn't care for material things or people unless he can learn something from them, and he most certainly won't hesitate to poke and prod inside of someone's mind if he thinks they're hiding something -- to Jace, everything is permitted, nothing is sacred, and the mind is simply another universe waiting to be explored.
Because of this, Jace often has times relating to others who he believes are either beneath him or simply not worth his time. He'd rather think than talk, and looks at menial or redundant tasks as if they were wastes of time; basically, if it isn't something he can learn from or about, or quickly "download" from another's mind and enjoy right then, then it's worthless and taking up time better spent doing something else.
In diametric opposition to the ideology his color dictates -- logic over passion, tabula rasa over predestination -- Jace is also passionate and caring, and genuinely regrets many of the terrible things he has done in the past. In his own words, he quite ironically feels guilty about not feeling guilty anymore, and wonders if he himself is the one manipulating events or the one being manipulated in the grand scheme of things. He does his best to learn from the past, but does so more because he's shackled by the guilt rather than out of any innate desire to be a better person.
This isn't to say that Jace is all tortured past and no substance, however. While he is still fairly troubled and conflicted about what he's done, he doesn't let his guilt influence or control him. He is both ruthless and careful toe the line many others have crossed, and will do nearly anything -- even if it means almost getting himself killed -- to gain the knowledge he so fervently seeks. Jace does realize that his methods are quite extreme, at times, but continues down his path both because he consciously excuses himself for his actions -- it's only a mission -- and because he has subconsciously blocked himself from remembering the one thing that should temper his actions the most. He knows that what he's doing -- and has done -- is wrong, but is so caught up in his search for knowledge that he fails to see his own mistakes when they're about to made.
He'll try to alter a person's mind instead of killing them, but not before taking anything of worth and erasing any memory of himself beforehand. It's just the way he is.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Right after the events of the Zendikar expansion, which was where we saw him last.
[journal post]:
[ Private; Telepathy ]
Idle thoughts. Emotions. Desires. Wants and needs. Flotsam. Chaos without form. Meaningless noises. So many -- voices? But none of them are known to me. None ring familiar -- have I been found out? Manipulated? Entrapped by my own hubris?
No Ravinican guild would have the nerve or the means. With Tezzeret gone, leadership of the Consortium falls to me, which leaves only -- no, no. . .I would've felt another Planeswalker far before fiction became fact. And neither Vohl or Garruk would take the subtle route; this is obviously the working of some higher, more malignant force. Something beyond my recognition. Monstrous. intelligent. Powerful.
--But who? Or what?
The most maddening questions are the ones which strike plain.
Focus.
I do not know the face of my enemy. Too many voices ring out, obscuring -- this is not the work of Bolas or Liliana; it is too sudden, too reeking of the impersonal. I left Zendikar with the rest of them thinking me an ally, so why then would they -- perhaps it was Chandra? The girl wields enough power, but. . .No, no. She would prefer the more direct approach. The more violent recourse -- perhaps the Hedron are to blame? Or, perhaps, Zendikar has finally fallen, wiped away by whatever invading...thing took my mount for its supper. Perhaps I fell in some great battle, and this is where all Planeswalkers come to reside, once they've lived out their usefulness to the multiverse?
. . . Hn.
That explanation is a little bit too fatalistic, I think. This is nothing more than a prison, a planar binding. I must first find answers before proceeding. Clues as to the where and why. Allies. Information. Histories. An exit.
[ Voice; ]
--The construction of a proper defense is not accomplished by simply stacking bricks, after all.
[ A small pause ]
. . .What's this, then?
[third person / log sample]:
Tides.
Jace had loved them as a child.
Now, he often wondered about their application, when nothing else held his interest and the candles that lit his study burned low. Ravnica was a city of concrete and steel; but, even here there was an ocean, a sea whose subtle pull and push determined the very shape of the world. In Ravnica, the tide was both physical and spiritual, both magical and something. . .more. Something invisible. Cyclopean; something greater than the sum of its parts. When he overlooked the Forest-Oceans of the Simic, the gently lapping waves seemed so inexorable, so permanent in their rise and egress, as if some great, unseen architect guided their course, their coming and going. The city-plane lived and breathed the ideological foundations of its denizens, venerating both chaos and order, life and death, the blind loyalty of its citizens and those with intelligence enough to say no, I will not promote the society your Guilds have engender in all of us.
Jace knew himself marked as one of the latter, but did very little to dissuade others in thinking otherwise. He kept to himself, working solely to further his own goals, always hungry, always seeking to satiate himself on the knowledge found where others dare not tread. He had gone to Zendikar for much the same reason, and returned to Ravnica only when the going became too fraught with the unknown, the all-powerful, dangerous, and corrupt. He did not know the ken of the Hedron, but facing another thing as powerful -- if not more so -- than Nicol Bolas. . .
--But, he was getting ahead of himself. And the more he thought of the creature, the more his desire to know about it burned.
He licked his lips and drew in a breath, his sapphire eyes glued to the horizon.
Tides.
The waves of the ocean gently lapped at his booted feet, back and forth, forth and back, and then again. Unlike the sea of possibilities that was Ravnica, a natural ocean felt more dead than alive, more concrete than chaotic. As a child, he had devoured books filled with the sciences that made the oceans work as they did, and he had been suitably unimpressed with his findings -- a natural, planet-made ocean was simply too predictable, too easy to comprehend. Even now, he watched the clear waters pool in the footsteps etched into the sand before him, filling them wholly before withdrawing, erasing what little remained of their creator's passing with the oceans every wayward sigh. Tides were only the beginning and ending of an idea, and never the whole; he stood up and took a step back once he felt the surf shift and pull out, his fingers already moving to call up a spell.
Chandra's fireball crashed into the wall of frost he called into existence with a scream of steam and heat. Jace shook his head and wondered, briefly, if there was any point to this. Their encounter wouldn't turn out any differently from the last.
They were in his element, after all.
"Will you ever stop hounding me, Chandra?"
The girl's eyes burned with the flame of her reckoning, and the sea surged and broiled around her every step. Distantly, Jace felt, rather than saw, that their elementals had found each other and continued the battle they had begun at sunrise, both as evenly matched as their masters, one furious with rage, the other merely giving back in kind.
"You took something from me, you bastard. I want it back."
He sighed, again, and hoped that she heard the contempt in it. In her, too, he saw a kind of tide -- albeit one more furious, one more easily controlled and extinguished than his own. He lifted up his hand and snapped his fingers, almost wincing as he felt the sheer heat of her threaten to envelop him the closer she drew near.
"Have fun with that."
A moment later, she found herself launched back into the ocean, while up above, her elemental roared.
"And to think," he mused aloud, taking another seat as he waited for her to return and offer him up another chance to look inside of her mind while it was distracted elsewhere. "It took the Firemind hundreds of years of rigorous study to learn what I'm taking out of her in a day."
[personal LJ name]: pridefall
[other characters currently played]: N/A
[e-mail]: meaculpable AT live DOT com
[AIM / messenger]: priestlyish
[series]: Magic: The Gathering
[character]: Jace Beleren, the Mind-Sculptor
[character history / background]: Here and and here.
[character abilities]: In short, Jace is a Neo-Planeswalker capable of:
- Powerful Telepathy centered around the manipulation of memories.
- The casting of "Blue Magic," which allows him to create illusions, counter or redirect spells, and the like.
- Transporting himself from one universe -- or plane of existence -- to another, referred to here as: "Planeswalking."
- General supernatural or occult sensitivity, which is afforded to him through his "Planeswalker's Spark."
To cast his spells, Jace must either be near a body of water -- preferably a larger one -- or must already have some amount of blue mana stored within or on his person. He cannot naturally cast spells without some kind of liquid being present, and, though he can store a set amount of mana inside of himself, Jace is perfectly capable of running himself dry through overexertion.
Since Jace is potentially a very accidentally God-modey type of character through his telepathy, I've set up a permissions post asking others how they would like to handle his power in person, if it all. In the City, he'll be limited to only broadcasting telepathic messages to people he knows and has met in person, and will not be able to read the minds of other people unless they're near him.
[character personality]: Jace is one of a select few that embodies all of the traits of his "color" without going to the extremes. He is calculating and manipulative, reserved and logical, curious, rational, straightforward, and possessed of a strength of will tempered by a life spent making bad decisions and learning harshly from them. He is a deeply, deeply, deeply curious person who wants nothing more in life than to gain as much knowledge as possible, for good or ill. He doesn't care for material things or people unless he can learn something from them, and he most certainly won't hesitate to poke and prod inside of someone's mind if he thinks they're hiding something -- to Jace, everything is permitted, nothing is sacred, and the mind is simply another universe waiting to be explored.
Because of this, Jace often has times relating to others who he believes are either beneath him or simply not worth his time. He'd rather think than talk, and looks at menial or redundant tasks as if they were wastes of time; basically, if it isn't something he can learn from or about, or quickly "download" from another's mind and enjoy right then, then it's worthless and taking up time better spent doing something else.
In diametric opposition to the ideology his color dictates -- logic over passion, tabula rasa over predestination -- Jace is also passionate and caring, and genuinely regrets many of the terrible things he has done in the past. In his own words, he quite ironically feels guilty about not feeling guilty anymore, and wonders if he himself is the one manipulating events or the one being manipulated in the grand scheme of things. He does his best to learn from the past, but does so more because he's shackled by the guilt rather than out of any innate desire to be a better person.
This isn't to say that Jace is all tortured past and no substance, however. While he is still fairly troubled and conflicted about what he's done, he doesn't let his guilt influence or control him. He is both ruthless and careful toe the line many others have crossed, and will do nearly anything -- even if it means almost getting himself killed -- to gain the knowledge he so fervently seeks. Jace does realize that his methods are quite extreme, at times, but continues down his path both because he consciously excuses himself for his actions -- it's only a mission -- and because he has subconsciously blocked himself from remembering the one thing that should temper his actions the most. He knows that what he's doing -- and has done -- is wrong, but is so caught up in his search for knowledge that he fails to see his own mistakes when they're about to made.
He'll try to alter a person's mind instead of killing them, but not before taking anything of worth and erasing any memory of himself beforehand. It's just the way he is.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Right after the events of the Zendikar expansion, which was where we saw him last.
[journal post]:
[ Private; Telepathy ]
Idle thoughts. Emotions. Desires. Wants and needs. Flotsam. Chaos without form. Meaningless noises. So many -- voices? But none of them are known to me. None ring familiar -- have I been found out? Manipulated? Entrapped by my own hubris?
No Ravinican guild would have the nerve or the means. With Tezzeret gone, leadership of the Consortium falls to me, which leaves only -- no, no. . .I would've felt another Planeswalker far before fiction became fact. And neither Vohl or Garruk would take the subtle route; this is obviously the working of some higher, more malignant force. Something beyond my recognition. Monstrous. intelligent. Powerful.
--But who? Or what?
The most maddening questions are the ones which strike plain.
Focus.
I do not know the face of my enemy. Too many voices ring out, obscuring -- this is not the work of Bolas or Liliana; it is too sudden, too reeking of the impersonal. I left Zendikar with the rest of them thinking me an ally, so why then would they -- perhaps it was Chandra? The girl wields enough power, but. . .No, no. She would prefer the more direct approach. The more violent recourse -- perhaps the Hedron are to blame? Or, perhaps, Zendikar has finally fallen, wiped away by whatever invading...thing took my mount for its supper. Perhaps I fell in some great battle, and this is where all Planeswalkers come to reside, once they've lived out their usefulness to the multiverse?
. . . Hn.
That explanation is a little bit too fatalistic, I think. This is nothing more than a prison, a planar binding. I must first find answers before proceeding. Clues as to the where and why. Allies. Information. Histories. An exit.
[ Voice; ]
--The construction of a proper defense is not accomplished by simply stacking bricks, after all.
[ A small pause ]
. . .What's this, then?
[third person / log sample]:
Tides.
Jace had loved them as a child.
Now, he often wondered about their application, when nothing else held his interest and the candles that lit his study burned low. Ravnica was a city of concrete and steel; but, even here there was an ocean, a sea whose subtle pull and push determined the very shape of the world. In Ravnica, the tide was both physical and spiritual, both magical and something. . .more. Something invisible. Cyclopean; something greater than the sum of its parts. When he overlooked the Forest-Oceans of the Simic, the gently lapping waves seemed so inexorable, so permanent in their rise and egress, as if some great, unseen architect guided their course, their coming and going. The city-plane lived and breathed the ideological foundations of its denizens, venerating both chaos and order, life and death, the blind loyalty of its citizens and those with intelligence enough to say no, I will not promote the society your Guilds have engender in all of us.
Jace knew himself marked as one of the latter, but did very little to dissuade others in thinking otherwise. He kept to himself, working solely to further his own goals, always hungry, always seeking to satiate himself on the knowledge found where others dare not tread. He had gone to Zendikar for much the same reason, and returned to Ravnica only when the going became too fraught with the unknown, the all-powerful, dangerous, and corrupt. He did not know the ken of the Hedron, but facing another thing as powerful -- if not more so -- than Nicol Bolas. . .
--But, he was getting ahead of himself. And the more he thought of the creature, the more his desire to know about it burned.
He licked his lips and drew in a breath, his sapphire eyes glued to the horizon.
Tides.
The waves of the ocean gently lapped at his booted feet, back and forth, forth and back, and then again. Unlike the sea of possibilities that was Ravnica, a natural ocean felt more dead than alive, more concrete than chaotic. As a child, he had devoured books filled with the sciences that made the oceans work as they did, and he had been suitably unimpressed with his findings -- a natural, planet-made ocean was simply too predictable, too easy to comprehend. Even now, he watched the clear waters pool in the footsteps etched into the sand before him, filling them wholly before withdrawing, erasing what little remained of their creator's passing with the oceans every wayward sigh. Tides were only the beginning and ending of an idea, and never the whole; he stood up and took a step back once he felt the surf shift and pull out, his fingers already moving to call up a spell.
Chandra's fireball crashed into the wall of frost he called into existence with a scream of steam and heat. Jace shook his head and wondered, briefly, if there was any point to this. Their encounter wouldn't turn out any differently from the last.
They were in his element, after all.
"Will you ever stop hounding me, Chandra?"
The girl's eyes burned with the flame of her reckoning, and the sea surged and broiled around her every step. Distantly, Jace felt, rather than saw, that their elementals had found each other and continued the battle they had begun at sunrise, both as evenly matched as their masters, one furious with rage, the other merely giving back in kind.
"You took something from me, you bastard. I want it back."
He sighed, again, and hoped that she heard the contempt in it. In her, too, he saw a kind of tide -- albeit one more furious, one more easily controlled and extinguished than his own. He lifted up his hand and snapped his fingers, almost wincing as he felt the sheer heat of her threaten to envelop him the closer she drew near.
"Have fun with that."
A moment later, she found herself launched back into the ocean, while up above, her elemental roared.
"And to think," he mused aloud, taking another seat as he waited for her to return and offer him up another chance to look inside of her mind while it was distracted elsewhere. "It took the Firemind hundreds of years of rigorous study to learn what I'm taking out of her in a day."