Scorched App
Out of Character Information
player name: Suu
player livejournal: persephonics
playing here: nope.
where did you find us? I'd heard about you, but K (Malfatto-mun) and Chauni (Zack-mun) both double-piqued my interest.
are you 16 years of age or older?: Older by a depressing amount. :( 16 + 9.
In Character Information
character name: Asellus
Fandom: SaGa Frontier
Timeline: post-half-mystic ending; she's taken over rulership of Facinaturu, reluctantly.
character's age: visible: her teens (maybe 17 or 18; her age is never given too specifically in-game). Actual, somewhere in her fifties.
powers, skills, pets and equipment:
Powers: Charm-- basically it's a natural function of the Mystic blood, making her capable of Charming people. It works on both genders (though she's a lot more on guard about it with men, so in-game she isn't aware of doing it to women even when she does.) It's against her nature to use it in earnest, because it's dangerous to go Charming everyone and besides, that's what her (hated) predecessor usually did. But she sometimes can't control it, and it tends to mean that Asellus gets hero-worshipped a lot. In practice, though, barring extreme situations, the most she'll do is use it to defuse immediately hostile situations. She's also got a few types of magic she can use... but she's really bad at it, so she probably won't, and will probably chalk up her failures to her own lack of skill rather than the Mist. Her Mystic blood makes her immune to death that isn't at the hands of a blade-- poisons and illnesses don't affect her (though I'm planning to tweak that a bit so in the event of curses and the like, this will be an open avenue.)
Skills: She's a more-than-passable swordswoman, using her light (as in weight, not element) blade Asura, and she's naturally sort of defensive of other people. If this were an RPG (well, aside from the one she's... in....), she'd be HP and speed heavy, strength medium-to-low; she doesn't hard but she makes up for that with her ability to hit multiple times and with solid accuracy. It's unknown how much of that is the blade itself, though-- Asura has the capability to avenge its wielder after a hit, though I've gone entire playthroughs without it triggering for some reason, and if she loses all her LP (each hit once her HP is out takes LP, and she only has... I think 5 or 6 after the sword's bought for 3), it's game over, so you can't... rely on it and she doesn't, either.
Pets: I am not giving her the sentient turnip, tempting as it may be.
Equipment: Asura and clothing, as well as a flower charm necklace, a gold ingot, and about 3000 credits, which is probably about as useful as a hole in the head.
canon history: Here's the best rundown of the game's events, though it's somewhere between a rundown and an FAQ. I'll point out the major turning points for her, though there are only really three:
Firstly, when she was hit by the carriage in the beginning, she was killed. The only reason she's alive is the mystic blood (which is normally blue) that mixed with her human blood (which is red) and led to purple blood in her veins. She's got the flexibility of a human and the unaging, immune-to-death-that-is-of-natural-causes nature of a Mystic. But she's very aware that she's neither-- when she made her way home, she found out about the twelve-year gap between her life as a human and her life now from her aunt, who called her a monster and fled. She's got a lot of complexes because of this, and a lot of the game (especially the parts that were cut from the final script) is her seeing that humans are just as cruel as Mystics, and Mystics have the same insecurities as humans, but being a mixture means that she'll never be fully accepted as either.
Secondly, when White Rose is sacrificed to the Dark Labyrinth, Asellus is thrown into mourning-- and it lasts a long, long time. She's plagued with guilt, because the reason that White Rose was pursued is solely because she was helping Asellus escape-- they'd managed to defeat five assassins before Orlouge was pushed this far, all in an attempt to either neutralize or retrieve White Rose. On top of that, White Rose was with her from the very beginning-- she was the best friend Asellus had after her world was so violently shaken up. She's very prone to this sort of closeness, if she's with someone long enough, and it's sometimes easy to forget that Asellus was a teenager when she died, and mentally she's still at that age when all your friends are the most important people in the world. She's no exception to the rule: her friendships and the ones who help her are never far from her thoughts, and she'll go out of her way for anyone who does the same for her.
Lastly, the ending. I'm taking her from the Half-Mystic ending, where instead of fighting Orlouge because of what he's done to humans (the Human ending) or to take his power and rule (the Mystic ending), she's fighting Orlouge because that's where her path has taken her, and she's tired of letting other people lead her around by the nose; at this point she's defeated Rastaban, who has been masterminding her coup so as to give her the power to change everything, and she says as much before doing so. The effect that actually stopping Orlouge has on her is that she gains that confidence-- she's now a trailblazer, the only half-mystic in history, and she's going to lead the Mystics as she chooses, not bound by the traditions and conventions of Mystic society. This, by the way, will cause her mentor, Ildon, no small amount of distress.
personality: At her heart, Asellus died as a 17 year old girl, and she will probably remain so until she comes to accept herself-- which she seems pretty loathe to do, whether out of grief for the humanity she lost or out of a refusal to become the tyrant Mystic she was borne from. There's a sense of play about her, a loud brash bravado and a cockiness that can be offputting at times and oddly magnetic at others; she's an incorrigible flirt with a compulsive fear of intimacy, an adult in a youth's body with all the hormonal shifts of both a teenager and a creature that is innately drawn to charm and desire. Her emotional and mental shut-down after White Rose was entrapped in the Dark Labyrinth shows that she's a bundle of paradoxes that make her something like a house of cards-- pretty to look at and fun to figure out, but prone to falling apart under the first stiff breeze that shakes her foundations. She's selfish at times, but she was a good girl (if a little prankish) before and she still basically is now, even as she's learned the truth-- that there is cruelty all over the world, not limited to Human or Mystic or Monster. She's an idealist who wishes it weren't so, but she's not blind to the truth, either.
Her mask of 'the cool girl' looks like steel but is more like tinfoil over a spun sugar base; she's sticky on the inside and tends to be a little suffocating and clingy when she finally lets those walls down, as evidenced by her bosom-buddies closeness with Princess White Rose while they escaped from Facinaturu and Orlouge's henchmen. Even so, she has a 'cool' exterior that strikes the people she joins up with; her take-charge attitude and reckless power are nowhere more prevalent than in Emelia's quest in-game, where she leaps forward to protect Emelia and White Rose from attack.
Asellus is also determined to the point of nigh-idiocy-- her tenacity and refusal to back away from a course of action led to three Elemental Knights, a Bat Knight, a warrior-type Arch-Princess, and her mentor's lover, a powerful Pluto Knight, fighting against her to keep her from stopping Orlouge's reign of terror (though the Pluto Knight may well have done so to spur her on further and inspire the revolution he'd been carefully planning from the shadows). She hasn't proven to be any sort of genius, but she's at least mentally quick when she's not distracted, and she asks a lot of questions in unfamiliar situations, such as when she wakes up twelve years after her death in the Chateau Aiguille, hinting at a curiosity that probably means intelligence.
She's also very insecure about her own place in the world-- she's not Human or Mystic, and she'll never be accepted by either. This is kind of stuck in her craw; she'll never forget it, and it does color her interactions. She doesn't advertise what she is, and she does maintain a friendly distance with people she doesn't know well. Even close friends will probably have to shake her until her teeth rattle to get the truth out of her sometimes, though she's not a liar. If she were asked point-blank if she was fully human, she'd probably avoid the question somehow, but she won't misrepresent herself. She just won't... elaborate on it. Note the 'fully' in that sentence-- if she's asked if she's human, she'll say yes. It's technically true, isn't it? She's got some human blood, doesn't she? That's the style of lying she uses.
why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting? She's from a supernatural setting with some anachronistic styles-- Mystic society is a great deal like Victorian or Tudor-era England, with set patterns and rules for interaction. She may ignore those rules when she can, but they're not unfamiliar to her. She's also used to strange situations, so it wouldn't be a constant barrage of "what's going on" from her. Instead, she'd be looking to achieve her goals-- whether that's 'kill this monster' or 'make good money' or 'find a home' or 'make friends'.
Writing Samples
Network Post Sample: [With a slight ping, the video feed comes on, looking at the ground. With a few sounds of exertion, eventually followed by a sigh of frustration, the feed shakes and then there are reddish-violet eyes looking into it with an intensity borne of confusion.]
How in the world-- oh! There it goes! Okay!
[Asellus seems to have gotten ahead of the curve; she's explored before even noticing the Forge, and has bartered her coat and the ingot she'd had in her backpack for a decent amount of money-- the initial amount quoted to her had been low enough to be scandalous, and it had taken a slightly... less than polite usage of Charm to get what she considered fair for it, but it was necessary. She felt bad, but she needed new clothes. Sticking out like a sore thumb was not okay.
So here she is, in a simple blouse and a heavy-looking dark pink skirt of common weave. Astute observers will notice the sword along her side, and there's a deep green cloak that will have to serve as a coat until she can afford better hanging barely in the frame, on a hook on the wall. She might look like any typical hoyden, with that short hair, but for the fact that it's green. And not ]
It's been a long time since I've seen snow. I'd normally complain about this-- [And here she holds up an arm, her manner of doing so suggesting that she wasn't used to the style-- big, puffy lower sleeves were a liability in
battle, and the less said about the skirt, the better.] --but it's really pretty cold out there, huh?
So, I guess by virtue of the snow, I can make a pretty educated guess and say that this isn't where I'd intended to teleport to. I don't remember a whole lot about the process, but I must have fainted or something, because I woke up in this room. Hardly a surprise, as I've never been that good with magic. But anyway.
[The camera swings around in a vertigo-inducing circle before resting on Asellus again. Welcome to motion sickness, dear viewers.] Since this isn't < i>my room-- not that I'm complaining, it's very ascetic-chic and it is really, really cold outside--, I've obviously got a few questions. Anyone care to step up and help me out with them?
Third Person Sample:
"Hmm," was the first thing Asellus said upon waking-- though really it was less a word than it was a vocalization. Who was counting semantics, anyway? She'd just spent ten minutes wandering around the room, peering out of the window, and trying to shake off the headache that was lingering around her temples like a hangover gone wrong. The first thing she'd noticed when she looked outside-- aside from the clothing choices of the natives, similar to Facinaturu, though a lot less ornate-- was the snow, half-blinding her eyes as the sun reflected off of it. How long had it been since she'd seen snow? She remembered seeing it as a child, but not much after that.... so this wasn't anywhere she was used to.
The old Asellus, the redheaded good-girl who'd been long-gone for the better part of two decades, would have panicked at this point. The new Asellus.... didn't do so openly. Instead, she spent a little longer watching the people. They weren't Mystic that she could tell, which was either a blessing or a curse depending on the type of Mystics she was thinking she'd encounter. Human, then. It was easier to fool humans-- girls her age dyed their hair often back home, though here didn't seem to have that phenomenon as far as she could tell.
Oh, but that snow looked cold. And if she'd learned anything from the few years she'd spent on battlefields both bladed and diplomatic, it was that anyone dressed for the wrong weather stuck out and invited questions and hostility. As she wasn't sure how long it might take to work up the energy to try that teleportation spell again, she decided that she should probably avoid such things. So the first order of business-- try her best to look like everyone else.
The market wasn't far, though it was exactly as cold as she thought it would be. She'd had the foresight to pull off her coat upon entering the clothier's atelier, knowing the fabric was worth something on its own, and the lace something else. If nothing more, the gold thread was also something she could play up. With a second thought, she pulled a gold ingot from her pack-- it wasn't very big, about the span of her hand and heavy, but it should get her a decent outfit, shouldn't it? Of course. Something this simple--
"I can give you a cloak for it."
...No way. That was a blatant rip-off! And though her gut instinct was to flare up, something about how the man and other customers were watching her with barely-concealed distaste told her that that was not only a bad idea, but that it wouldn't end well for her. Sigh. Well, they did say that one could catch flies with honey more than vinegar, and her honey was a little sweeter than most, right?
It had been a long time since she'd had to use the skill she employed now, and something about it felt wrong-- but she needed those clothes, and stealing them wasn't an option, looking like this. She felt the Charm bubble up, and she directed it so that the brunt of it would be aimed at the shopkeep, who was still eyeing her as if she'd go off and destroy his shop at any point. She sighed and put on her best 'please?' face. "Are you sure that's all you can manage?" The psychic scent of roses was obvious to her, but unless there was a particularly sensitive person here, she was confident that he'd never catch on.
The dilation of his pupils was a positive sign, and he seemed to look at the cloth and the detailing and the gold, before sighing as if put-upon. "Suppose I could throw in a blouse and skirt and some underthings. You're a slip of a girl, and you'll be better served when you're on your way."
Well, that was vaguely insulting, but hey. Whatever worked. "You're very kind, sir!" she beamed, and he looked a little flustered as he packed her bartered goods up and gathered her purchases into a paper package. He ignored her as she waved on her way out, but that hardly mattered to her. She felt a pang of guilt as she climbed the steps to the room she'd woken up in , but it was short-lived as she began thinking of her next move.
Anything else? Not that I can think of....