Application for luceti
Mun
Name: Sam
Livejournal Username: blue_raven64
E-mail: slgstudentmail(at)yahoo(dot)com
AIM/MSN: ironbirdobserver
Current Characters at Luceti: Flandre Scarlet/there_were_none
Character
Name: Murasa Minamitsu
Fandom: Touhou Project
Gender: Female
Age: At least 1000, I play her as much older. Looks some indeterminate adolescent age ‘cause she’s a ghost and died that way.
Time Period: Post-Unidentified Fantastic Object
Wing Color: Translucent sea-green
History: http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Minamitsu_Murasa
Personality: What a cheerful dead person! Polite and somewhat funny, though not at all modest-is how first impressions of Murasa generally go. And she has a good reason for that cheer-she was freed from an eternity of haunting the oceans by a Buddhist monk who in her honest and not at all biased opinion should be nominated for sainthood why hasn’t she already. She even has a semi-logical reason to be so morbidly humorous-she is, after all, a very, veeery old ghost that did not die peacefully. A jaded ghost who has drowned countless victims-nothing personal, though! Humans just tend to, yanno, drown when you capsize their ship. Which is Murasa’s superpower and what she was compelled to do for the majority of her ghostly existence-first out of frantic sense of finding the ship she fell from, leading to her death-and then for her own macabre amusement. She still retains a like and…dislike, of the ocean because of this; fondness for an old friend of sorts, hatred for the seas that killed her. It’s complicated-and why she latched onto the flying Palanquin Ship as more than just a vessel. It was symbolic of her own enlightened status, freed from the waves and elevated to something more than a mere spirit, however supernatural.
At the same time, her ghostly nature has made death an almost casual subject for Murasa; there are very few people whose demise would actually concern her-Byakuren or any of her admittedly small crew. Everyone else, well…modest surprise is the strongest reaction one could hope for from her. Short-lived surprise, at that. She speaks lightly of her own death, though almost always glosses over the specifics. The tendency for Luceti to resurrect the dead will inspire a great deal of bitterness in her.
“CAPTAIN” Murasa almost always introduces herself that way-usually emphasizing the captain part with enthusiasm-though Murasa isn’t even her real name. “Murasa” is something other people came up with, derived from her original name…which she can’t remember. This kind of bothers her. A lot. And it aggravates her greatly if someone brings it up, even unintentionally.
The entity that is Murasa has absorbed a great deal from the people she ended up drowning; even though she spent most of her time lurking in the Sea of Japan, parts of the Pacific Ocean and the South China Seas, she has learned a smattering of languages beyond Japanese (she’s particularly fond of Portuguese). And since most of these drowning victims were sailors, Murasa’s vocabulary is quite colorful and she’s not afraid to use it-except within earshot of Byakuren or her crew. Then she’s a model (dead) citizen. With an anchor. On the less-vulgar end, she’s also picked up a great deal of nautical trivia and general knowledge, from the mid-Age of Navigation right up to the almost-modern era. She’s happy to talk shop with like-minded souls for hours.
Murasa is also quite proud of her skill as a captain (shamelessly cannibalized from several different victims)-though she rarely uses the actual wheel when piloting a ship, instead possessing the entire thing to steer it directly. Her skill goes a bit beyond sailing on water, too. She can successfully navigate between different dimensions, (for example, from Gensokyo-itself a pocket universe-to Makai, a different plane of existence altogether) as long as she has some idea of where she’s going and a vessel to get there with. Obviously this will be less than useful in Luceti, as she has never heard of this place and has no idea where it goes in her mental interdimensional map of things. Oh, and she has no flying ship. That kind of puts a damper on explorative ventures.
Strengths:
Physical-As a ghost, Murasa isn’t limited by the physical restraints of a human; she can heft a five-ton anchor around with contemptuous ease, for instance (but cannot spawn nine or ten of them anymore because that shit is ridiculous and Luceti says no). She can also turn incorporeal at will and teleport about, though with Luceti’s power cap it will be an even shorter range than it is normally-ten feet at a time, at best.
That bottomless ladle she carries around is something of a joke, one that she happily explains! It was given to her when she was a relatively young funayuurei-by the crew of a ship she approached along with a crowd of others of her kind, all calling for a hishaku, a ladle. If not given one they would never shut up and might get up to some other, more destructive kind of mischief, whereas if they were given one, they would pour seawater into the ship until it sank. Which is why some clever bastard took the bottom out of it before handing it over. Murasa kept it ever since as a kind of souvenir-and even if it doesn’t carry water, it can spit out water anyway as well as spectral danmaku bullets. While painful, these are…less than lethal. Usually.
The anchor she uses as a weapon isn’t from the time she drowned-for one thing, it’s of a wholly iron Admiralty design, something that wasn’t widely used until about the 1850s. Big pieces of iron were hard to make without the steam hammer, after all-before this, Murasa used her power and some creativity to capsize things. But. This was shiny and new and who doesn’t like shiny new toys? The chain is usually broken off and missing-befitting a ghost. When there is one, the cable is spectral at best, though Murasa has no trouble reeling it back in. The anchor sometimes has an eerily blue cast to it, implying that it isn’t quite real either.
She is also quite tolerant of pain, and can fly-though being a ghost, it’s more akin to floating-with-style. She swims about in a slightly similar manner-though Murasa interacts with the water regardless, only seawater responds to her presence, and even then it is a subdued response. Unless Murasa is actively using her powers, whereupon she can churn up the depths at her leisure. Freshwater ignores her entirely. This makes puddle-jumping a very disappointing activity.
She can also phase through most physical objects as easily as she can interact with them, such as walls, windows, closed doors and rooftops. She particularly likes appearing out of faucets and speakers, and has a rather limited possession ability, of both people and objects. When possessing a person, to actively control them rather than just hitchhiking around in their brain requires either a receptive host or smashing her will against theirs repeatedly until one wins. Murasa does not always succeed, which is one reason she doesn’t do this much.
She’s also really, really good at flipping tables ships, having had about…oh, a millennia or so of practice.
Mental- Murasa’s a very bold and proactive creature; not the type to sit around and think unless she has to. Cooling her heels underground for a thousand years has only reinforced this line of thought. Failure generally does not dampen her enthusiasm for any given venture. She is usually fully aware of the consequences of her actions, and will even cheerfully relate them! Even if they involve people with her dying-humans can be so fragile, you know. But at least she’s honest!
At the same time, without an obvious goal to shoot for, Murasa becomes rather frustrated. And bored. And quite vocal about this.
Emotional-Murasa, in her enlightened state, can almost always find something to smile about. Even when discussing morbid subjects. Especially when discussing morbid subjects. Which can be just slightly jarring. Her mood and confidence can quite easily become infectious, buoying up those around her, or…not, particularly if one finds her exceptionally annoying. Murasa rarely takes such things personally, but if she finds out about this she will make a point of bothering them. Constantly. Forever--or until she loses interest, which results in many very short forevers.
Weaknesses:
Physical- While Murasa isn’t all that susceptible to normal weapons, such as unenchanted arrows or bullets or what-have-you, she is very weak towards spiritual attacks. Exorcisms, for example, or any kind of spiritual barrier or blessed weapon. She has little experience actually dealing with this sort of thing, and would likely react poorly to such. Exploding into misty bits poorly; if it does not erase her from existence entirely, it would still take Murasa at least a few days to literally pull herself together.
Whenever she does turn incorporeal, Murasa’s form turns a somewhat sickly sea-green and slightly grainy, as if seen on an old film. Whenever she teleports, it is always preceded by a very noticeable low, growling, buzzing kind of noise, and Murasa’s form flickers into view wherever she wants to go before she actually gets there. Handy early warning signs both; either for “get out of the way” or “aim here”.
If repulsed from a possession attempt, the ghost is rather stunned for a few minutes and can be ejected from the person she was attempting to roost in with relative ease. Murasa is a bit out of practice with that last trick. By a few hundred years, give or take.
Mental-Though very, very old, Murasa is still, at heart, a teenager; she died as one, and has been in some ways frozen in this state. Though mellowed out during the millennia of her existence, this part of Murasa is still very much there to the observant. Her confidence is at times excessive, her energy almost boundless and of a nature that very much suggests that Murasa is convinced of her own immortality. She may well be right about that last one, considering she got that whole dying thing out of the way already.
Her loyalty to Byakuren is absolute and fanatical; happily doing whatever she asks without any intervening thought. She will suffer no insult to Byakuren’s name, even a perceived one, to the detriment of her usually logical mind. Whenever she gets into this state (usually when Byakuren’s methods a questioned even slightly), Murasa becomes highly irrational and next to impossible to deal with-and even once this fades, she will refuse to apologize for her behavior.
Also-if you’re looking for “sensitive”…look elsewhere. Murasa may be polite, but sensitive she is generally not.
Emotional-Though Murasa is normally quite good-natured and boisterous, there is a less friendly, monstrous side of her persona that is easier to coax out of hiding than she lets on. It’s usually a subtle change, at least at first; brought on by anger. She stops being quite so polite and becomes quite easy to irritate, further agitating the problem. Further down this path of regression, Murasa becomes increasingly violent, and though Byakuren has purged most of this wickedness, traces of the evil spirit she once was remain-and they all come to the fore in this instance. She will lash out unpredictably, irrationally and with an extremely hostile intent-much how Murasa used to sink ships.
She hates it when this happens.
Samples
First Person:
[Murasa’s been tinkering with this thing awhile, and has at least figured out that this book is…not quite what it seems. She starts speaking directly at it, as if conversing with inanimate objects was something she did every day.]
…I’ve never really liked books, you know. They tend to get soggy and then the ink blurs and then they rot. Even faster than corpses. They always win the rotting-race.
Can anyone hear me? Yes, no, I’m going to keep talking anyway. I’m not sorry. Sorry!
The wings are a nice touch. Though I guess whoever stitched them there must have been on a budget.
[There is actually a hiss of pain here as Murasa tugs on them. The whisper that follows is almost…surprised.]
…ow. That seems to be a bad idea.
[Then a clearing of the throat-something Murasa does out of habit rather than any real need to.]
First order of business: Hi! My name’s Captain Murasa, I do not like long walks on the beach, has anyone seen a Buddhist monk with gradient hair around? Or a flying ship. It’s hard to miss. It’s kind of big.
Seeecondly: Where is this? For some strange reason I don’t think this is the Pacific unless I ended up all the way across the pond to America’s west coast. It’s got mountains, right?
Finally: where the hell are my pants?
Third Person: Water is wet.
At least, it was supposed to be. Should be. It was goddamn water and yet Murasa would hardly know the difference by feel alone if she was thrown in it.
Judging by appearances, as seen through formerly dormant eyes, it would seem that she was in fact, submerged. And sinking, albeit slowly.
This should not be.
For one, slightly important thing, Gensokyo had no oceans.
For another, she wasn’t even supposed to be here, under the waves again. It was almost nostalgic-for all the wrong reasons.
Waking up confused and to a nagging sense of dread was not what the ship ghost had planned for. Even though she had no need of that mortal thing called breathing, being underwater not of her own volition summoned up some…unpleasant memories.
Murasa needed to get out.
With a kick of her feet and some waving of arms, Murasa righted herself-accompanied by only the slightest swish of water, not some terrible thrashing. That was good. At least that hadn’t changed. Another kick, another swish, and Murasa launched herself up at the surface, eating up far more distance with each stroke than humanly possible. But she hadn’t been human for a few millennia.
Breaking the surface was anticlimactic; no dramatic splash or burst of water as the ghost’s head abruptly appearing between one wave and the next with only the barest ripple. The swells were small enough that Murasa could easily see the horizon-and some very unfamiliar mountains, made pale and indistinct by the distance. Or was that snow?
Murasa scowled in a very ungentlemanly way in their general direction. Nothing was right today.
She lifted herself out of the water into the air, dribbling water only momentarily-something Murasa only noticed by the ripples below her. There was precious little tactile feeling-even as she began to fly, rather than swim. She heard the wind rushing past her face, her ears, but felt not a thing. Murasa dismissed such things from her mind, focusing almost entirely on those strange and distant mountains.
This could take awhile.