bastionmods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bastionmods) wrote2013-04-04 06:09 pm
bastionmods) wrote2013-04-04 06:09 pm
Application
| Before you app |
| Applications are always open, but are processed every other Saturday. You can apply for any character from any canon as an OU or AU. You can also apply for an OCs. Be sure to copy the correct form below when you go to write your app. Currently there can be only one version of each character within the Bastion. That character can be either OU or AU. This is subject to change at a later date. The character limit is currently three. You can app up to two characters from the same canon, so long as the characters do not interact in canon and would not interact within the game. Exceptions to this rule will be allowed for special cases, so if you think you have a possible exception please contact a mod about it. If you would like to app a fourth character, you must have passed the previous two ACs in order to do so. If you did not pass the previous two ACs, then we will reject your application. Apps will be read in the order they are posted. If two people app the same character, we will make a decision on the first application before reading the second. The only exception to this rule is in the case of a reserve, where we will read the app from whoever has the reserve first. There are no app challenges. Please read the rules, FAQ, and setting pages before applying. Also be sure to check the reserves page and taken page. Please finish your app before posting. Once you are finished, post your application here. If you need more than one comment to post it, then respond to your first comment to finish your application. If your application is accepted, be sure to read all the information and follow all of the steps in the acceptance post. If we ask you for revisions, you will have 72 hours to post those revisions. If you are rejected, you must wait two weeks before applying again. As a note, OCs will be held to high standards. Do not skimp on details in any section of the application if you are planning to app an OC. |
| Application: OU |
| Player name: whatever name you want to go by OOCly Age: 17 and up please! Contact: A personal journal, a plurk name, an email, whatever. We just need some way to contact you. Other characters: Please list all the characters you currently play. Character name: Series: If there is more than one version of canon, please specify which one you will be playing from. Canon point: Please keep in mind that there is no way to canon-update your character when you choose a canon point to take them from. Summary: Sum up the character's history and personality. This doesn't have to be long, a few paragraphs should be fine. Powers: If your character has canon powers, please describe them and how they will be changing to fit within the setting. More information on powers can be found here. Entry: How will your character be entering the game? They can either find their way to the Bastion on their own, or they can be found on the Skyway by someone else. This is not a sample! This is to tell us if your character will need to be rescued from the Skyway, so we can arrange that. Don't put the day of entry in your app, we will do that for you. |
| Application: AU |
| Player name: whatever name you want to go by OOCly Age: 18 and up please! Contact: A personal journal, a plurk name, an email, whatever. We just need some way to contact you. Other characters: Please list all the characters you currently play. Character name: Series: If there is more than one version of canon, please specify which one you will be playing from. AU info: Please describe how the AU differs from canon Summary: Sum up the character's history and personality. Be sure to include how the AU has affected the character you are apping. Powers: If your character has canon powers, please describe them and how they will be changing to fit within the setting. More information on powers can be found here. Entry: How will your character be entering the game? They can either find their way to the Bastion on their own, or they can be found on the Skyway by someone else. This is not a sample! This is to tell us if your character will need to be rescued from the Skyway, so we can arrange that. Don't put the day of entry in your app, we will do that for you. |
| Application: OC |
| Player name: whatever name you want to go by OOCly Age: 18 and up please! Contact: A personal journal, a plurk name, an email, whatever. We just need some way to contact you. Other characters: Please list all the characters you currently play. Character name: OC info: Please describe the world the OC is from. This section should be a couple paragraphs long at a minimum. Summary: Describe the character's history and personality. Both should be covered in this section, but more attention should be paid to personality. Powers: If your character has canon powers, please describe them and how they will be changing to fit within the setting. More information on powers can be found here. Entry: How will your character be entering the game? They can either find their way to the Bastion on their own, or they can be found on the Skyway by someone else. This is not a sample! This is to tell us if your character will need to be rescued from the Skyway, so we can arrange that. Don't put the day of entry in your app, we will do that for you. |
| profile codes |
Nezumi | No. 6 | AU Reserved
Age:
Too Old35Contact:
Other characters: NA
Character name: Kobayashi Nezumi (Surname name given for AU character)
Series: No. 6
AU info: Please see below - it's described in each section.
Summary:
| CANON HISTORY (OPTIONAL): The Wiki
No. 6 is part of a post WWIII dystopian world where there are only 6 places left on the world that can support habitation, with each of the cities numbered according to their founding and each having signed the Babylon Agreement which stipulated that they would no longer produce or bear military arms. No. 6 is the most technologically advanced - and the most closed off and secretive.
Book quote: 'It was also built on the lands where the Forest People had once flourished. They were a people that, since ancient times, had lived in harmony with the wind, the earth, lakes and rivers, and the sky. They nurtured, respected, and continued to protect the forest. They lived peacefully within the bounds of nature without desiring prosperity or development. Even those who lived in the Town of Roses [the original founding of the city of No. 6, later known as the West Block] had no idea about their existence.
The entity worshiped by the Forest People was named Elyurias, however it wasn't Elyurias' power that allowed the abundant forest to survive on this land. It was because the Forest People protected it. Through the long, perpetual flow of time, they continued to protect the forest.
Nezumi is a descendant of the Forest People. He's also a descendant of the "Singers" -those who had the power to appease Elyurias and converse with her - [through his mother]. There were always a number of Singers among the Forest People.'
After the founding of No. 6 and construction of the wall that encircled the new city began, the city discovered the settlement of Forest People near the Mao lake, and learned of Elyurias and her powers. Shortly thereafter, the Mao Massacre occurred - wherein soldiers from No. 6 went into the settlement and slaughtered the unarmed villagers, burned their settlement down, then drained the lake and paved it over to make room for their airport. All for the purpose of capturing Elyurias and using her powers to their own ends, not that they were entirely successful in that endeavor.
Nezumi was four at the time and was saved by an old woman from the village. Unfortunately, when he was ten, she took him and attempted to kill the leader of No. 6 and was shot. Nezumi was thrown in with the other captives of the Manhunt. He managed to survive by climbing over the dead and dying, then scaling a rock wall until he found some underground caves where others had managed to escape to and were dwelling. He was taken in by the leader there and taught to hone his natural abilities and taught to fight... and then he was given a knife and handed over to the officials in No. 6 by the very leader that had trained him, with the suggestion that he be examined as the last survivor of the Forest People. That's when he escaped, met Shion, was helped by Shion, then escaped to the West Block. He's been on his own ever since.
| AU CONCEPT & HISTORY: New Babylon Game Overview
According to Nezumi’s earliest memory, his mother’s stories, their family had once lived outside the dome. They’d lived in a quiet village far removed from the large cities and their wars, under the true sky and a canopy of trees, in the serene shadow of a white-capped mountain. It was a place where technology was the exception rather than the norm until the last great nuclear war.
He always hated those stories.
Because for Nezumi, his reality has always only ever been New Babylon and the atrocities that were carried out in the name of Branch Industries, most especially by Harmonia Industries. In truth, Nezumi’s clan had once been one of the largest in New Babylon, back when it had been formed, before they’d even reached above ground – and they’d been one of the first to naturally develop mutant powers.
Most died at the hands of Harmonia ‘energy research’, but the vast majority of those remaining died in the civil war brought about by the Fire Bringers, save for a small, scattered handful – one of which was his grandmother and her young daughter, his mother, whose voice carried like an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and was capable of shutting down entire blocks around her when focused enough.
She disappeared during the last Mutant March somewhere on L7 and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Nezumi was around four at the time. After that, the old matriarch of their broken clan took him in. She had all traces of his true name and lineage removed from all the records, including his own memory cortex, save the ones she couldn’t reach at Branch and Harmonia. She gave him a new history and name: Kobayashi Nezumi.
From the day she took him in until the day she died when he was fourteen, she trained him, educated him, and carefully sculpted a wholly independent, emotionally bankrupt being. Her words, her lectures and commands were engraved into his deepest memories:
”Never sigh. Never cry. Or the demons will take advantage of your weakness. Sighing makes you vulnerable, so it’s best to keep your mouth shut. Don’t let your heart fall for anyone. Trust no one inside it.” ((direct quote from canon))
She was the one that taught him how to hone his connection with the rats that were allies to their clan, trained him mercilessly every day, and ensured he had the best instructors from near god-level hackers. She was the one that never let him forget the stories passed down, generation after generation, of the things that were done to their people in the name of New Babylon… and she was the one that got him involved with the remnants of the Fire Bringers, of whom hold his tenuous alliance.
Now, he does what he must to get whatever ‘ins’ he can get with the upper levels, all in the hopes of bringing them down. He makes enough hacking to support himself on Level 4, but works for the twins at the HostWorld, and has for the past two years, both as a host, a sometimes hacker, and a spy on his fellow workers for the twins, though he reports directly to Kaoru.
Due to his diligent efforts of attending school all the way through high school (a rare feat for those that live on L4 and below), he’s managed to catch the eye of the scholarship board at Harmonia and has received a full-ride sponsorship to University of New Babylon from them, which he started this last term with a dual major of Bioengineering and English Literature. The irony that they’re the ones paying for his education, just so he can find a way to tear them down from the inside, is one he relishes with absolute delight.
He’s currently living in his grandmother’s old apartment on Level 4 - which is nothing more than a small apartment crammed full of digital books and equipment used for his less than legal activities. Work life and personal bled together for a time, as Nezumi and Kaoru spent time as temporary lovers after a series of traumatic events on Kaoru's part - enough, at least, for Kaoru to provide an alibi for him when he got arrested for terrorist activities. After this, Nezumi realized that their arrangement was starting to become more personal that he was willing to allow and cut that particular bond.
And then Shion found him.
Shion, to Nezumi, was an exception to his no-bonds rule and had been since they'd met at 14. In Shion, Nezumi found something he'd never seen before - at least, not outside his books. He'd found someone that wasn't corrupt by New Babylon, that gave without demand for something in return, and offered unconditional kindness.
He showed Nezumi that there were people in their twisted world that we worth reaching out towards and despite all of his instincts to the contrary, he could not look away. He wanted to see and understand the world through Shion's untarnished eyes even as he wanted the other to wake up and face the sordid reality that lay beneath the surface of their city. He's still trying to understand and come to terms with that upon arrival.
Re: Nezumi | No. 6 | AU Reserved
He truly believes the axiom ‘Survival of the fittest’.
It’s because of this that he learned to shut people out, to distance himself from them as much as possible to avoid attachment or perceived weakness on his own part. Jagged and jaded to the extreme, he became the perfect example of a hard-hearted loner, utterly cool, aloof, and uninvolved.
Experienced and unaffected on every level.
From his actions and reactions, it’s obvious that Nezumi is a seasoned close-combat fighter with reflexes honed in experience rather than simple instruction. He has an above average grasp of situational awareness, thus can easily take ‘stock’ of the moment and plan accordingly – a skill that makes it exceptionally difficult to catch him off guard. While he is proficient with using whatever is at hand in a fight, his weapon of choice is the switchblades that he always carries on his person.
He’s confident without being cocky in his fighting skill, and doesn’t brag or boast unnecessarily to appear greater than he is (at least in that respect). He’s self-aware enough to recognize his strengths and weaknesses… and how to hide them.
And yet.
He befriended a trio of mice early on, introduced to him by his grandmother - going so far as to call them his companions, and developed a deep, abiding passion for literature. Especially tragedies. He would spend all of his free time in the safety of his home – nothing more than a run down, two bedroom apartment on Level 4 left to him by his grandmother – reading every single e-book that he could get his hands on.
Books on science and technology, on mathematics and engineering, classics and religion. Shelf after virtual shelf, he lost himself in a wealth of knowledge contained in his run down apartment.He’s mechanically inclined, having developed his own miniature AI that looked like mice, complete with warm fur and fluid movements that he used to both infiltrate the government on the upper Levels and to find Shion again because for him...
Shion is the only one that can evoke such a confusing mix of frustration, irritation, exasperation, joy, and bemusement in Nezumi.
In canon, he can’t help the sarcastic teasing that he used with the other, nor the sharpness with which he berated the other for clinging to the bonds Shion still held in No. 6 . While talking to Shion in canon, Nezumi revealed a rather telling bit of advice that shows how he views survival:
"Back there, you threw away your citizenship card because it was a danger to us. So are feelings for other people. You get dragged around, pulled this way and that, and before you know it, you're in dangerous territory. Your mama, papa, your grandma, whoever― they're all strangers now. There's no emotional room in you to be concerned about strangers. Your hands are full enough trying to keep yourself alive."
New Babylon Nezumi feels the same, and yet...
For all that he continuously claims that he and Shion are strangers, he always follows harsh criticisms with almost gentle words or actions that reveal the shades of a lie beneath the assertion.
To Nezumi, reality is something that betrays people every day, with a disturbing ease even as it pulls people's lives in unanticipated directions. Reality is something that can coolly and casually fling them into despair, was equally cruel and violent, and utterly absurd. Reality isn’t to be trusted - it could make anything happen at any time, or take anything that was of value without hesitation.
Personal questions are ignored outright by anyone, and downright anger him if asked with any measure of persistence - because by his estimation, they’ll break down the safety barrier of ‘strangers’ that he has set between him and everyone else. It’s in these moments that people see the harder edge to Nezumi, an animalistic quality that bespeaks of a stubborn fight or flight instinct to avoid human attachments.
For all that Nezumi’s actions and words reveal a special case for Shion, this skittishness and wariness has become something too far ingrained within Nezumi. He also reveals, in constant subtle ways, that his own grasp on reality is often suspect. In canon, when spoken to by Shion with a blunt honesty, Nezumi automatically assumes Shion is quoting lines from a book or play. He doesn’t always connect sincere words and action to the truth or feeling, as he’s never really had the experiences in his life that would indicate those things exist outside of said book and plays.
It’s a weakness that only Shion has been unwittingly gifted the right to see by Nezumi, though Nezumi himself is quite unaware.
He uses harsh, often cutting words to maintain that distance between him and everyone else, then turns right around and softens the blow with an act of kindness or softer reassurances if that person is Shion. He’s a constant contradiction, but only with Shion.
And the reason? Nezumi firmly believes that he and Shion will become enemies one day. Because of Shion’s strong desire to still keep and protect those few bods he holds within No.6 (or in this case, New Babylon) and Nezumi’s intense hatred for all that No. 6 (New Babylon) stands for, Nezumi can’t see or accept that there will be a middle ground.
It’s one of the many ways Nezumi shows that his worldview is very much ‘black and white’. Upper Levels, Lower Levels, holding onto those bonds or cutting all ties, survival of self over acts of kindness to others. All things he views in strict lines, save for the few instances he crosses those lines.
Powers: If your character has canon powers, please describe them and how they will be changing to fit within the setting. More information on powers can be found here.
| Canon: He’s a survivor with a photographic memory - he can fist fight down and dirty with the worst of the street rats from the West Block (lower levels in NB) and specializes in close combat knife fighting... if he fights at all. If he can, he's rather use deception and misdirection to slip away because he doesn't see the point in taking unnecessary chances with his life.
Because of this, he can spin escape plans on the fly and has a heightened sense of his surroundings, an almost animalistic sixth sense that enables him to sense danger in his proximity enough for him to beat a hasty retreat before things get life-threatening... usually. (An example is, in canon, while still recovering from surgery and anesthesia, he actually wakes up and tells the people in his room to kill the lights and remain hidden and still moments before soldiers from No. 6 enter the clinic and kill everyone on the lower floors.)
Like his mother, Nezumi is considered to be a 'Singer' of the Forest People - and could, therefore, use his voice to either appease or converse with the 'god' of the forest people - Elyurias.
| AU Adaption: As a descendant of one of the first families to develop mutant powers, Nezumi has a few unique ones of his own. The first being that he’s capable of commanding and controlling mice and rats with his thoughts, an animalistic form of telepathy, though he’s more prone to use this ability to communicate with them like companions than anything.
The second being his voice. Or more specifically, his singing voice, which is capable of either hypnotizing his target, calming them, or evoking other strong emotional responses from them. And more importantly, if focused enough, he can use this ability to push them into a state of unconsciousness.
Just before the end of the game, he'd discovered the next level of his powers - that he could hear the 'voices' of nature - trees, wind, rivers, his ancestors - he could sense their presence and hear their voices.
Nezumi is quite competent with technological engineering. He specializes in building small, miniature AI mice that have a ‘living’ skin complete with heat sensor. These mice can be used to track people or items, or for audio/visual surveillance, or to create 3D imagery of secured locations, thus he’s an expert-level Hacker and makes the majority of his contacts for hacking jobs through his mice.
No one’s ever met him in person, at least not while he’s working as the hacker known as either vindico_mus or VC-103221.
| IC Examples: Nezumi was in game from March to August of 2012 so I've only listed the threads that had more of an IC impact on him - also, please note that most of the later threads listed below are incomplete because of the community closing, but all show clear characterization and CR developments.
Nezumi & his hacker mentor, Bonten. and them breaking out Branch prisoners.
Nezumi & Hitachiin Kaoru, his boss at HostWorld
With his previous academic mentor.
Breaking and entering with Bonten
Alibies complicate work relations with Kaoru
Meeting Shion again &
later that day.
Shion getting Rat flu wasn't his fault. REALLY.
Shion waking up.
Post-death of a mentor and taking Shion home.
Entry: He'll wake up on the Skyway and probably have a good bout of paranoia because it's not virtual reality, or if it is he can't hack his way out of it, the air isn't toxic, and the surroundings are too real to be augmented reality. Threats to persons that find him will probably ensue - great way to say hi, right?
ACCEPTED
Congratulations, your character have been accepted into The Bastion! They will be entering the game on DAY 67.
Please follow these steps:
- Comment to the taken page.
- Join
- Re-read the FAQ, rules, and timeline .
- Go to the housing post and fill out the form there.
- Check the calendar to see what day it is in-game.
- Make an entry in your journal to keep track of all Shards, Abilities, Talents, and Items your character acquires within the game.
- Introduce yourself in
- Once it reaches DAY 67 in-game, intro your character at
As a note, Nezumi's power to 'hear' nature and talk to mice would not be limited, but any attempt at controlling mice (IE forcing them to do something, as opposed to talking to them and saying 'hey want to do this?') and using singing voice to talk to gods would be subject to the 3 uses a day rule.
If you have any other questions, feel free to post them here.
Thank you for applying, and enjoy your stay at The Bastion!