App for thevelvetkey
Welcome to spoiler hell, folks. Hope you finished NieR by now...
Player Info:
Nickname: Jack
Age: 25
Personal LJ: jadedgray
Method of Contact: (AIM) - claretGrimoire (plurk) - Verantze
Characters Played: this would be the first.
Character Info:
Name: Devola (no surname)
Age: Appears 24, actual age is over 1300 years.
Canon: NieR Gestalt and Replicant (I default to Gestalt, personally... cosmetic differences, is all.)
Pull Point: Prior to Nier's first encounter with the twins in the Shadowlord's castle.
Background Info:
History: Devola on the NieR wiki
The fan-translation of Grimoire Nier, a book made by the Game's developers and filled with supplementary information and details on the backstory.
tl;dr / Cliff's notes.
Devola, as well as her twin sister Popola, was created sometime around the year 2032. They are Androids, beings created to watch over "Replicants", the shells of humanity made to wether a mysterious disease that had slaughtered a vast amount of the original humans. The original humans themselves had become free-roaming souls, "Gestalt", waiting for the day they could reunite with their Replicants.
Observing the Replicants was a simple matter, they were mindless husks who worked tirelessly to remove the element that caused the biome-clearing disease from the world. They aged and died, but were easily replaced via the technology that created them in the first place. The first seven hundred years went along much like this -- slow and somewhat dull.
And then, unexpectedly, the Replicants became sentient.
This still did not cause much of a change in plans. The disease was purified from the land, and so the job of the Androids was to watch over them and replace them as they perished. Merely biding time until the Gestalts awakened and could be placed into their Replicants.
And yet another wrench was thrown into the plans, as Gestalts began to "relapse", becoming nothing more than mindless killing machines. These relapsed Gestalts became known as "Shades", and the Replicants took up arms against them. A war of Body versus Soul.
Devola and Popola then put a plan in motion to use the power of the Grimoires Noir and Weiss -- tomes of immense power created as a backup plan to force Gestalts and Replicants into merging. To this extent they sent Nier, a Replicant, out into the world to cause Weiss and Noir to meet. They did not expect Grimoire Weiss to grow fond of Nier and reject Grimoire Noir, dooming the plan and forcing the twins to take action themselves. This is the point Devola is pulled from.
The twins confronted Replicant Nier in the castle constructed by his Gestalt twice. They explained the vaguest of outlines of the whole, horrible, situation; warning him to turn back. He did not heed their advice either time, and, during the second encounter, slew Devola. A grief-stricken and enraged Popola soon followed her sister to the afterlife...
Personality: In essence, there are two major facets to Devola's personality. The songstress, and the observer.
The songstress is Devola's day-to-day face she uses while dealing with the normalcy of day-to-day life. As what amounts to essentially the co-mayor of one of the more sizable townships, she's outgoing, genial, and pleasant - and mainly by choice at that. Her part of the job deals with the emotional aspect more than the logistical, and this is something she exceeds at. She's a de-facto psychiatrist, being a good listener, knowing what to say, and when to say it. This is not to say she's all sunshine and compliments; she's got a sharp tongue and even sharper wit, should she choose to display them, and is more than willing to give someone the proverbial kick in the pants to get them moving. In the end, she's more of the cheery, pragmatic sort.
The observer is the android that has watched the Earth's dying gasps for over a millennium. A fate that has left her bitter and jaded towards everything, even, perhaps, the mission that forced her into such a situation in the first place. While she does not hate the Replicants she oversees, she is certainly envious of them. Their short lives, their ability to create songs on a whim, their lack of any care aside from a day-to-day existence. She is a literal slave to her mission, and though it is one she believes in, it has proven to be almost maddening. The saving grace that has kept her from madness is the bond she shares with her twin sister, Popola, who suffers through the same dreadful situation. In Devloa's own words, paraphrased, "We're twins because this world is too lonely for one without a soul." Put simply, the sisters' emotional reliance on one-another borders on co-dependence.
It is worth noting that the emotions exhibited by Devola and Popola may in fact not be genuine. They refer to themselves as "soulless", and imply that whatever emotions they feel are false ones, a mimicry of those exhibited by the true humans and the Replicants. It is stated that, at the very least, they can feel envy -- gained from observing as the Replicants evolved from soulless automatons into fully emotive beings, grief -- due to the loss of one another, and rage -- see: "grief."
It is safe to assume that, much like the Replicants, they too evolved into growing emotions. However, due to the nature of their first true emotion - resentment - they never fully realized this fact.
Game Specific:
Arcana: The Moon
Justification:
Entertainment: "What kind of idiot sings a song without knowing what it means?!" "This kind of idiot...?" Front or not, Devola is primarily a songstress. Dealing with the emotional and spiritual aspect of leading a small village is her forte. Simply put -- back home, it's rare to not see her singing or at least playing a musical instrument.
The need to escape: "Those two have watched the world wither for time immemorial... the cruelness of such a fate is difficult to imagine." For 1300 years Devola and her sister had overseen the slow death of an entire planet, watching the world crumble and the civilization that had grown upon it barely subsist: a fate none deserve.
Obscuration and Secrets: "Under the command of the true humans we live eternally for the sole purpose of controlling others. That's the only reason we exist...": In attempts to successfully complete Project Gestalt, Devola employed liberal amounts of misinformation, trickery, and outright lies. Furthermore, over the 1300 years of watching over the Replicants, obscuration of information as to their true nature was crucial to the well-being of Project Gestalt.
Samples:
First Person Sample:
[The audio feed clicks on, Devola's voice coming through shortly afterward. Her tone of voice seems thoughtful, almost nostalgic.]
You know, I think half the reason I took this job was for the irony of it. Back home my sister worked in the library most of the time -- sure, we'd do the ol' twin-switch sometimes, but for the most part it was all her job...
[A pause, and she laughs.] Wow. Don't even know why I was voicing my train of thought there. Anyway, I just wanted to say the library's not too good on information for that time of the day or those weird things. At all. There's a decent bit of stuff on Prospero itself, though not much more than you can find anywhere else -- just more detailed, I guess.
Pretty good fiction section too. If you've got the time or inclination for that. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say.
[And the audio cuts.]
Third Person Sample:
It was fast approaching the dark hour once more, and all Devola did in "preparation", as it were, was to continue jotting notes down in a small notebook she'd purchased earlier in the day.
- Unknowns. Tentative name, Shadows. Abominations that appear only during a time of day unknowable to normal humans. There, they will attack those unfortunate enough to find themselves active within this forgotten time, killing them or worse. Though varied in shape and size, the one constant trait shared by all iss the possession of a mask -- and even then there appear to be differently-shaped masks among the shadows.
-Shades. The broken, warped shells of what was once a human being. Without a supply of purified "Maso", the element that defined magic, they will degrade into violent monsters. Even with a supply of Maso, the degradation is a very likely occurrence. Though more varied in appearance than their original forms, they all share the same language - that of magic itself.
They were simple summaries of both creatures, but simple was what was needed at the moment. To drown in excess details was bad for one's chain of thought; or so Devola believed at least. Regardless, despite the similarities they were definitively two separate kinds of creature. Furthermore, shadows shared next to no similarities to either the Legion, or to Red Eye.
Her current hypothesis on the situation was that she was, indeed, still Earth. But far back in time. A point in time before even she had been "born."
A world where she would not need to be created.
On one hand, she was pleased that humanity would not have to suffer as it did in her Earth. On the other, to see a civilization she'd observed the dying gasps of at it's prime -- no, at a point higher than she herself had ever seen it? It was a strange feeling, to say the least.
She looked to the clock - 11:56 - and sighed, putting the pencil down. Introspection could wait for another time. Though she'd not been attacked in her current location yet, she was of the sneaking suspicion that nowhere was truly and completely safe. She'd have to be on guard, for a while.
Player Info:
Nickname: Jack
Age: 25
Personal LJ: jadedgray
Method of Contact: (AIM) - claretGrimoire (plurk) - Verantze
Characters Played: this would be the first.
Character Info:
Name: Devola (no surname)
Age: Appears 24, actual age is over 1300 years.
Canon: NieR Gestalt and Replicant (I default to Gestalt, personally... cosmetic differences, is all.)
Pull Point: Prior to Nier's first encounter with the twins in the Shadowlord's castle.
Background Info:
History: Devola on the NieR wiki
The fan-translation of Grimoire Nier, a book made by the Game's developers and filled with supplementary information and details on the backstory.
tl;dr / Cliff's notes.
Devola, as well as her twin sister Popola, was created sometime around the year 2032. They are Androids, beings created to watch over "Replicants", the shells of humanity made to wether a mysterious disease that had slaughtered a vast amount of the original humans. The original humans themselves had become free-roaming souls, "Gestalt", waiting for the day they could reunite with their Replicants.
Observing the Replicants was a simple matter, they were mindless husks who worked tirelessly to remove the element that caused the biome-clearing disease from the world. They aged and died, but were easily replaced via the technology that created them in the first place. The first seven hundred years went along much like this -- slow and somewhat dull.
And then, unexpectedly, the Replicants became sentient.
This still did not cause much of a change in plans. The disease was purified from the land, and so the job of the Androids was to watch over them and replace them as they perished. Merely biding time until the Gestalts awakened and could be placed into their Replicants.
And yet another wrench was thrown into the plans, as Gestalts began to "relapse", becoming nothing more than mindless killing machines. These relapsed Gestalts became known as "Shades", and the Replicants took up arms against them. A war of Body versus Soul.
Devola and Popola then put a plan in motion to use the power of the Grimoires Noir and Weiss -- tomes of immense power created as a backup plan to force Gestalts and Replicants into merging. To this extent they sent Nier, a Replicant, out into the world to cause Weiss and Noir to meet. They did not expect Grimoire Weiss to grow fond of Nier and reject Grimoire Noir, dooming the plan and forcing the twins to take action themselves. This is the point Devola is pulled from.
The twins confronted Replicant Nier in the castle constructed by his Gestalt twice. They explained the vaguest of outlines of the whole, horrible, situation; warning him to turn back. He did not heed their advice either time, and, during the second encounter, slew Devola. A grief-stricken and enraged Popola soon followed her sister to the afterlife...
Personality: In essence, there are two major facets to Devola's personality. The songstress, and the observer.
The songstress is Devola's day-to-day face she uses while dealing with the normalcy of day-to-day life. As what amounts to essentially the co-mayor of one of the more sizable townships, she's outgoing, genial, and pleasant - and mainly by choice at that. Her part of the job deals with the emotional aspect more than the logistical, and this is something she exceeds at. She's a de-facto psychiatrist, being a good listener, knowing what to say, and when to say it. This is not to say she's all sunshine and compliments; she's got a sharp tongue and even sharper wit, should she choose to display them, and is more than willing to give someone the proverbial kick in the pants to get them moving. In the end, she's more of the cheery, pragmatic sort.
The observer is the android that has watched the Earth's dying gasps for over a millennium. A fate that has left her bitter and jaded towards everything, even, perhaps, the mission that forced her into such a situation in the first place. While she does not hate the Replicants she oversees, she is certainly envious of them. Their short lives, their ability to create songs on a whim, their lack of any care aside from a day-to-day existence. She is a literal slave to her mission, and though it is one she believes in, it has proven to be almost maddening. The saving grace that has kept her from madness is the bond she shares with her twin sister, Popola, who suffers through the same dreadful situation. In Devloa's own words, paraphrased, "We're twins because this world is too lonely for one without a soul." Put simply, the sisters' emotional reliance on one-another borders on co-dependence.
It is worth noting that the emotions exhibited by Devola and Popola may in fact not be genuine. They refer to themselves as "soulless", and imply that whatever emotions they feel are false ones, a mimicry of those exhibited by the true humans and the Replicants. It is stated that, at the very least, they can feel envy -- gained from observing as the Replicants evolved from soulless automatons into fully emotive beings, grief -- due to the loss of one another, and rage -- see: "grief."
It is safe to assume that, much like the Replicants, they too evolved into growing emotions. However, due to the nature of their first true emotion - resentment - they never fully realized this fact.
Game Specific:
Arcana: The Moon
Justification:
Entertainment: "What kind of idiot sings a song without knowing what it means?!" "This kind of idiot...?" Front or not, Devola is primarily a songstress. Dealing with the emotional and spiritual aspect of leading a small village is her forte. Simply put -- back home, it's rare to not see her singing or at least playing a musical instrument.
The need to escape: "Those two have watched the world wither for time immemorial... the cruelness of such a fate is difficult to imagine." For 1300 years Devola and her sister had overseen the slow death of an entire planet, watching the world crumble and the civilization that had grown upon it barely subsist: a fate none deserve.
Obscuration and Secrets: "Under the command of the true humans we live eternally for the sole purpose of controlling others. That's the only reason we exist...": In attempts to successfully complete Project Gestalt, Devola employed liberal amounts of misinformation, trickery, and outright lies. Furthermore, over the 1300 years of watching over the Replicants, obscuration of information as to their true nature was crucial to the well-being of Project Gestalt.
Samples:
First Person Sample:
[The audio feed clicks on, Devola's voice coming through shortly afterward. Her tone of voice seems thoughtful, almost nostalgic.]
You know, I think half the reason I took this job was for the irony of it. Back home my sister worked in the library most of the time -- sure, we'd do the ol' twin-switch sometimes, but for the most part it was all her job...
[A pause, and she laughs.] Wow. Don't even know why I was voicing my train of thought there. Anyway, I just wanted to say the library's not too good on information for that time of the day or those weird things. At all. There's a decent bit of stuff on Prospero itself, though not much more than you can find anywhere else -- just more detailed, I guess.
Pretty good fiction section too. If you've got the time or inclination for that. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say.
[And the audio cuts.]
Third Person Sample:
It was fast approaching the dark hour once more, and all Devola did in "preparation", as it were, was to continue jotting notes down in a small notebook she'd purchased earlier in the day.
- Unknowns. Tentative name, Shadows. Abominations that appear only during a time of day unknowable to normal humans. There, they will attack those unfortunate enough to find themselves active within this forgotten time, killing them or worse. Though varied in shape and size, the one constant trait shared by all iss the possession of a mask -- and even then there appear to be differently-shaped masks among the shadows.
-Shades. The broken, warped shells of what was once a human being. Without a supply of purified "Maso", the element that defined magic, they will degrade into violent monsters. Even with a supply of Maso, the degradation is a very likely occurrence. Though more varied in appearance than their original forms, they all share the same language - that of magic itself.
They were simple summaries of both creatures, but simple was what was needed at the moment. To drown in excess details was bad for one's chain of thought; or so Devola believed at least. Regardless, despite the similarities they were definitively two separate kinds of creature. Furthermore, shadows shared next to no similarities to either the Legion, or to Red Eye.
Her current hypothesis on the situation was that she was, indeed, still Earth. But far back in time. A point in time before even she had been "born."
A world where she would not need to be created.
On one hand, she was pleased that humanity would not have to suffer as it did in her Earth. On the other, to see a civilization she'd observed the dying gasps of at it's prime -- no, at a point higher than she herself had ever seen it? It was a strange feeling, to say the least.
She looked to the clock - 11:56 - and sighed, putting the pencil down. Introspection could wait for another time. Though she'd not been attacked in her current location yet, she was of the sneaking suspicion that nowhere was truly and completely safe. She'd have to be on guard, for a while.